Did Insurrection kill the TNG franchise?

[DAYoung]

I know little of the behind-the-scenes guff, but Insurrection was a poor film, and turned many film-goers--fans and otherwise--off the franchise.

Star Trek has always been prone to wooden acting, clumsy dialogue, rushed plotting, limited character development and awful mawkishness.

Generations and First Contact had bits of these, but they were balanced by fun, action, better-than-average scripts and acting, or workable plots.

Insurrection had most of the vices with few of the virtues. Dull characters, sentimental plotting, ham-fisted characterisation, flat dialogue.

We know Frakes was capable of much better. Perhaps he did his best with a poor script, little studio enthusiasm. I don't know.

Having said all this, the films' takings, adjusted for inflation, put ST: TMP and ST: TVH under Abrams' 2009 film. Which is odd, as they were not, in my opinion, superior to ST: TWK or ST: TUC.

[wahwahkits]

DAYoung wrote:

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I know little of the behind-the-scenes guff, but Insurrection was a poor film, and turned many film-goers--fans and otherwise--off the franchise.

Star Trek has always been prone to wooden acting, clumsy dialogue, rushed plotting, limited character development and awful mawkishness.

Generations and First Contact had bits of these, but they were balanced by fun, action, better-than-average scripts and acting, or workable plots.

Insurrection had most of the vices with few of the virtues. Dull characters, sentimental plotting, ham-fisted characterisation, flat dialogue.

We know Frakes was capable of much better. Perhaps he did his best with a poor script, little studio enthusiasm. I don't know.

Having said all this, the films' takings, adjusted for inflation, put ST: TMP and ST: TVH under Abrams' 2009 film. Which is odd, as they were not, in my opinion, superior to ST: TWK or ST: TUC.

It also seemed to me that no-one could be bothered, everything seemed so laid back. At least with Nemesis they tried to make a decent movie.

[NrobbieC]

T'Girl wrote:

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James Kirk would have beat up and captured Archer.

What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck.

[King Daniel]

T'Girl wrote:

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James Kirk would have beat up and captured Archer.

NuKirk vs. Archer would be funny. They'd both somehow manage to get their asses handed to them.

[Mage]

People loosing interest in Star Trek is what killed it.

Ratings and interest were already dropping sooner then Insurrection and Enterprise. It's so simple to point a finger at one series, or one movie, and blame that. But it's not as simple.

Insurrection, strangly enough, was far more Star Trek/TNG then First Contact was. Wether or not you agree with it, it had a moral dilemma. Not a very strong one, but still. It tried to resolve issues without boomboomboom and fancy lightshows from phasers before adding boomboomboom and fancy lightshows from phasers. First Contact had 2-dimensional bad guys and far more action then any Trek film to date. The plot itself could have been a generic SF/Action flick, and didn't particulary scream Star Trek.

No, blaming Insurrection is a simple answer to a difficult question. What killed Star Trek, was a franchise that was stuck and unwilling to change its format to a more 21st century way of tv. They wanted to, with a fresh new concept for Enterprise, but ultimatly that was just Voyager Redux. And Voyager was also stuck in repeat mode, doing the same thing over and over again.

[sonak]

Mage wrote:

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People loosing interest in Star Trek is what killed it.

Ratings and interest were already dropping sooner then Insurrection and Enterprise. It's so simple to point a finger at one series, or one movie, and blame that. But it's not as simple.

Insurrection, strangly enough, was far more Star Trek/TNG then First Contact was. Wether or not you agree with it, it had a moral dilemma. Not a very strong one, but still. It tried to resolve issues without boomboomboom and fancy lightshows from phasers before adding boomboomboom and fancy lightshows from phasers. First Contact had 2-dimensional bad guys and far more action then any Trek film to date. The plot itself could have been a generic SF/Action flick, and didn't particulary scream Star Trek.

No, blaming Insurrection is a simple answer to a difficult question. What killed Star Trek, was a franchise that was stuck and unwilling to change its format to a more 21st century way of tv. They wanted to, with a fresh new concept for Enterprise, but ultimatly that was just Voyager Redux. And Voyager was also stuck in repeat mode, doing the same thing over and over again.

The Borg, time travel, and space battles don't seem like Star Trek to you?


And how did INS resolve it's issues without "boomboom" and "light shows?" The second half of INS is mostly an action movie, complete with Picard/Ru'afo fight at the end.

The only Trek movies to not follow that formula are TMP, TVH, and (arguably) TFF. All of the TNG movies were action movies. INS was no more cerebral than FC, and the story was a lot stupider, including the lame dilemma.

[R. Star]

KingDaniel wrote:

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NuKirk vs. Archer would be funny. They'd both somehow manage to get their asses handed to them.

So true!

[NrobbieC]

KingDaniel wrote:

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NuKirk vs. Archer would be funny. They'd both somehow manage to get their asses handed to them.

I'm too dirty minded for this conversation

[Mage]

sonak wrote:

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The Borg, time travel, and space battles don't seem like Star Trek to you?


And how did INS resolve it's issues without "boomboom" and "light shows?" The second half of INS is mostly an action movie, complete with Picard/Ru'afo fight at the end.

The only Trek movies to not follow that formula are TMP, TVH, and (arguably) TFF. All of the TNG movies were action movies. INS was no more cerebral than FC, and the story was a lot stupider, including the lame dilemma.

Turn the Borg into 'a cybernetic alien race' and the rest could be any SF story.

From the first moments of FC, everything was about action. Only during the second half of INS, did Picard resolve to fighting. He tried diplomacy, he tried talking. He only used violence as a last resort. He talked to Galatin, instead of kicking his ass, reasoning with him. The Enterprise only fired it's phasers twice I believe.

And the dilemma is, in my humble opinion, far from stupid. Why? Because even now, more then a decade later, we are still discussing it, with different opinions flying back and forth. I'd say that's what Star Trek was all about, no??

[t_smitts]

I gotta say, I think Insurrection gets a bit of a bum rap. It's certainly nowhere near Nemesis.

I liked the performances by F. Murray Abraham, Anthony Zerbe, and Gregg Henry.

I liked the shuttlecraft chase as well. It's no "First Contact", but I'd say on par with "Generations" and, again, considerably better than "Nemesis"

[wahwahkits]

t_smitts wrote:

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I gotta say, I think Insurrection gets a bit of a bum rap. It's certainly nowhere near Nemesis.

I liked the performances by F. Murray Abraham, Anthony Zerbe, and Gregg Henry.

I liked the shuttlecraft chase as well. It's no "First Contact", but I'd say on par with "Generations" and, again, considerably better than "Nemesis"

Can't say I agree with you there... Nemesis ain't a classic but for me it's better than Insurrection.

[horatio83]

The worst thing one can say about INS is that it is TNG's TFF, a movie which tried to resemble the series too much and failed precisely because it did not dare to be something different (in the case of TFF it was the cheesiness of TOS, in the case of INS the Picard vs. the evil Admiral moral tale of TNG).

[t_smitts]

wahwahkits wrote:

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Can't say I agree with you there... Nemesis ain't a classic but for me it's better than Insurrection.

I found no investment in the idea of an insane Picard clone, nor in his desire to destroy Earth (been there, done that).

If conflict had been between the Romulans and Remans themselves, it might've something more original.

I probably consider Nemesis to be the weakest of all the films. Even TMP had some interesting moments, and Final Frontier at least had some camp value.

[VOODOOXI]

There wasn't one thing that killed the TNG film franchise, but Insurrection did not help. It was a rather bland film that would have been better suited as a TNG tv episode rather than a major motion picture. There was nothing cinematic about it.

Beyond being a bland film it was quite frankly a terrible film that imho is the worst of all the ST films thus far.

Also, at the point that Insurection was released the Star Trek franchise was suffering severe over saturation. There just wasn't anything special enough about this story that would make fans run out to the theatre to see it when they could get ST for free at home.

The TNG films in general with the possible exception of "First Contact" were not big/epic enough to carry a film franchise. Instead of kicking off the film franchise with the depressing death obsessed "Generations" TPTB should have kicked the TNG film franchise off with a fun action adventure film that involved the TOS meeting the TNG crew and a proper passing the torch in a manner that would have fired up the fanbase...Instead we got a totally forced cameo by William Shatner where Kirk is killed off for no reason in particular. As a matter of fact Generations didn't bring the fanbase together it did the exact opposite by killng off Kirk and minimizing TOS fans (It's no coincedence that when the series needed to be saved they went back to Kirk/Spock) Generations was too depressing and polarizing a film to kick off the TNG film franchise.

First Contact was a step in the right direction, but Insurrection and Nemesis with their corny story lines (B4, Data, Picard, Worf singing etc) were just horrible and the final nail in the coffin of the series.

I hope the TNG series gets a better ending someday. Perhaps a tv mini series or film.

[mos6507]

Nemesis I think was intended as the TNG equivalent of VI, a proper farewell, not a comeback with more sequels to follow. The difference, besides the quality which we all know is subjective, is that in VI, Paramount gave it a very small budget (I heard Meyer had to fight for every penny) and Nemesis got a blank-check. So right from the start they raised the stakes so that the film had to pull James Cameron style numbers when the franchise was clearly dying after suffering the dud of insurrection and then waiting 4 years.

When I found out Nemesis was coming out I was shocked, because usually it doesn't take that long to have a sequel. The franchise was clearly dead for a while and there was some sea-change at the studio that made them want to resurrect it one last time, but you can't just let a franchise wither like that and then raise the Titanic.

So I think the odds were against it ever being seen as a success on the part of the studio, even if it had been rated as highly as VI.