Happy 19th Birthday, Star Trek Generations!

Well, after the trailer, I was expecting that Kirk was actually in command of the Ent-D at some point and had to destroy it.

 

Which would've been so much cooler than what we got and it would have been a proper sendoff for Kirk.

I always found it odd that a single TOS character that appeared in TNG never made it to the bridge of the Enterprise-D.

 

I like the idea that the Nexus is actually an impossibly advanced starship, but the crew are long lost to their fantasies and it's been on autopilot for the last million years or so.

 

I've just watched Generations for the first time in at least 7 years, and I feel like my opinion of it has changed somewhat, I saw it on the big screen 4 times as a scruffy 19 year old student and loved it, but as time went by it gradually slid down the pecking order until I stopped watching it.

Now upon revisiting, I absolutely adore the way the film looks, the cinematography, lighting, score - all first rate, the scenes on the Enterprise near the Amagosa station are stunning looking lending the film a real big screen quality that the likes of 'Insurrection' sorely lacked and to a lesser extent 'First Contact' and 'Nemesis' I don't think a Trek film looked as good until JJ came along to be honest, I just didn't appreciate it all those years ago. The other surprise is how well the visual effects hold up, in that they do very well indeed and barely seem to have dated against all but the blockbusters of the last decade or so, the Enterprise looks awesome in every shot it's in - check out the approach to the Amagosa station - gorgeous, the destruction of Veridian 3 easily holds up to and perhaps even beats the destruction of Vulcan in ST09 - and that is no mean feat considering the films age. The Enterprise crash still holds up very well today also - very clever use of models and slo-mo give the scene a realistic edge, I don't think that the CGI of the time would have worked anywhere near as well. (We'll just forget about the recycled footage of the BoP explosion eh?)

I was seriously upping the films ranking as I was watching it last night, then I remembered what I disliked about it. The moment you see Picard spinning with the blindfold on my heart sank as I recalled this is pretty much the moment the film falls on it's arse for me, not just the whole stupidity of the Nexus plot, but the very cheap looking climax at the rocket launch site combined with some cheesy dialogue and the lousy death of James T threatens to undermine the rest of the movie, which for the most part I found to be quite excellent up to that point.

I enjoyed it as much as I did back in '94 again in the main and now see it as a pretty solid installment in the series that has aged a lot better that I thought it had.

 

When Soran kills the sun and the Nexus fills the sky, rushing towards him ... it's epic! Every time. I never get bored with that scene or judge it differently. It's so Over the Top and seems to represent the tone that the movie, overall, was after. Unfortunately, it never achieves that, anywhere else. Not even Kirk's death holds that kind of drama. It's sad, but it's so flat in its delivery it's almost boring. And I absolutely agree on the cinematography and the look of the ENTERPRISE. Gates and Marina are absolutely beautiful in this movie and where the look is concerned, this movie succeeds wildly.

 

Visually I'd rank it up there with TMP and the two Abrams films for eye-catching beauty. Even if you don't like the story or Kirk's death Generations is amazing eye candy that grabs you.

 

Seeing Jonathan Frakes trying to squeeze into Avery Brooks' DS9 unform is pretty eye-catching, I'll admit, but far from beautiful.

 

Totally agree - great scene, it's pretty much everything after that scene that I've got a problem with, the film seemed so grand and visually stunning up to that point, with what seemed at the time ground-breaking effects, then we get a load of nonsense in the nexus and Picard gets his arse handed to him for the second time in the movie, then all we get is a couple of old guys fighting on a cheap looking set - I know it was on location but the whole thing reeked of 'we've ran out of money'

In a way it almost feels like the moment all the rest of the TNG movies would eventually follow - films done on the cheap. But for a glorious 75 minutes on the big screen I was really optimistic for the Trek movie franchise.

Thats not to say I dislike the TNG movies, I do, I like them all, but looking back, they were just unable to compete with the other blockbusters of the day. I guess that's part of the reason the JJ movies are like they are.

 

Agreed, sir! GENERATIONS follows in the footsteps of the TOS movies, by reusing as much as possible. The space station interiors were a reuse of some set, or another. And, as I understand it, they made it a point to milk it for all it was worth. Unfortunately, they chose not to focus on Soran's dealings there, but chose to have it be about Data's Emotion Chip. Giving Malcolm McDowell something meatier to do in this movie could only have helped it, but this movie isn't called "SORAN" and there's a reason for that. Data's so annoying throughout the "Looking for Trilithium" sequence, that I tend to fastforward a lot through this scene. Annoying your audience isn't really a good idea, but ... the set did get shown alot in all of its sort of "glory." And that's what's important.

 

wonder what else couldve been done once Picard enters the nexus?

actually i don't have a problem with the Xmas scene as i think it works well. Going from the planet to the Xmas scene, picards ultimate desire and the deduction of what happened via the baubles give it an eerie twilight zone feel. Ok guinan appearing isnt too good but i guess she has to as it ties in with their prev scene and he has to get to kirk. Also PS mustve had some input into that scene with his love for Xmas Carol, plus its nice to have an Xmas scene in a trek film to bring out at xmas!

however kirks nexus wasn't great. Its like we get the build up to the anticipated Picard meets kirk scene and its the log cabin better to have had it on the Ent A (or B) bridge with kirk in his standard uniform (besides wasn't it kirks ultimate desire to be back in the chair? kind of the opposite to Picard) then have them argue/debate around the ship and at some point we see the Ent A in space again, and maybe instead of the horse scene they appear in Kirks apartment from Trek II & III (no horses, Picard meets kirk not shatner!)

then when they go back to defeat soran kirk somehow ends up on the Ent D sacrificing himself to save the ship?

 

I don't have a problem with the nexus scenes themselves, they were all beautifully shot and scored, my problem is the story of the nexus itself - once in is it a hallucination? If so where is the physical body? If not does that mean what you can see and touch is real? If it's so difficult to get in to the damn thing how can you just choose to walk out? If you chose to leave in a point in history that was thousands of light years away how does the nexus get you there? I could go on and on and on...

For me it was just too big a plot hole to swallow, and I'm sure they could have found a better way to get the two captains on screen together, just straightforward time travel (which I dislike at the best of times) would have been much better, say when on the maiden voyage of the Enterprise B, something goes wrong with the warp drive and throws Kirk into the future, just keeping it more simple would have done the movie a massive favour IMO. Soran could have simply been making a trilithium weapon to take revenge against the Borg or something, his role would heve been unaffected to a point.

Plus there's my personal problem with it in that we're supposed to be watching the climax of a big screen Trek outing - not some sentimental christmas movie.

Shame, as up to that point I'd rank it up there with any of the other movies

 

For me, the opposite is true:

I would've been able to forgive - and forget - the lack of NEXUS origin, meaning and purpose, if what we got inside of it was any good.

The problem is that fans of either, or both TOS and TNG would've been disappointed with what their favorite Captains fantasized about and got to live out. And casual fans, or the curious, are going to be bored by it. Picard's Christmas wish. Kirk's homey, log cabin. Nobody cares about this kind of shit, especially after Picard's been informed, prior to meeting Kirk in his fantasy, that none of what goes on in the NEXUS has anything to do with the movie, itself. That being, trying to stop an obsessed madman from destroying alien solar systems. The movie's already wasted so much time on the Armagosa Space Station, as it was, that - love it, or hate it - this movie does end up being rather "thin."