What sunk the TNG movie franchise: Insurrection or Nemesis?

fair enough, but I'm just pointing out, that if you compare the two movie series, the "TOS did more to change things up" is largely a myth.

By STVI, the entire crew except for Sulu is still on an Enterprise together, no matter what their ranks or titles are at that point.

 

I'd say the Enterprise-E is more of a change than the Enterprise-A. At least with the E, it's a constant reminder that it's not the same ship.

The A looks exactly the same on the outside. The interior looks a bit different but it would've been updated in TFF anyway, with or without the suffix, because William Shatner wanted to update the look. And then Nick Meyer changed it again. In TUC, it would be very easy to forget that it hasn't been the same ship all along.

The Enterprise-E doesn't look or feel like it's just some updated version of the D. It's not cut from the same cloth at all. To quote Worf, "It will not be the same. The Enterprise I knew is gone."

 

You know my problem with the movies was that we already had 7 seasons with these guys.

A lot of stories had already been told.

The movies are an extension of the TV show, but they never really shook anything up - with the possible exception of the destruction of the Enterprise D. They really needed to take risks in the movies.

They attempted to do some stuff with Data but there was a lot of backtracking in INS & NEM with his character. I 'm with Lord Garth, I never warmed to the Enterprise E either. The ship was supposed to look good from all angles but I think its the worst hero ship we've had in hindsight.

And in Nemesis, only Picard & Data have a plot - everyone else is just wallpaper...

 

I don't remember that quote. When does he say that?

 

"The Way of the Warrior", the fourth season premiere of DS9 when Worf joins the series. Specifically, it's the scene where he and O'Brien are talking in the Promenade.

 

Never did like the Enterprise-E, felt like the took the Connie-refit, the Excelsior and Voyager put them all in a bag and stomped on it. And the color scheme of the interiors are downright depressing.

 

ah, thanks. That's a good episode and a good quote, I can't believe I can't remember it.

 

Totally.

The bridge is so angular and uninviting. Its almost as if they went "lets do the exact opposite of the Enterprise D"

Really, the only good thing Stuart Baird did in NEMESIS was change the graphical colour scheme on the bridge. That improved things. Slightly.

 

They ran out of ideas. The TNG era designers' natural tendency was to believe "thinner! sleek! better!" so after D (a so-so design, IMO), here comes E, which was a horrible mashup of the Excelsior and who knows what else, with all of the off surface stripes and angles.

They never appeared to be functional, powerful ships, but glorified model kits.

 

Agreed. Liked the marriage of Will and Deanna . Wasn't a fan of Data's singing though . On a side note, got to see a part of Star Trek V recently and the scene where Kirk, Spock and company were singing around the camp fire had me . Felt so sorry for poor Spock (row, row, row your boat -- seriously Kirk --> ).

My biggest disappointment in the last film was with the makeup and the way it was shot. Both of those seemed really cheap. Especially during any of the outdoor scenes (yes Picard in a jeep I'm looking at you ) -- I was almost blinded by how bright that scene appeared O_O. And the makeup, heck some of the stuff that was in TNG, series wise looked better. The Klingons and the Romulans looked downright fake.

Was very disappointed by it .

 

I put together a model of the E-E and it really looks impressive as a hand held object. I gained a new appreciation for it, thought it's still not on my top 10 favorite starships list.

The new sleeker, more modern, better protected design ethic has been very popular in fandom, as well as for creators, with ST:Online and the book artists taking it and turning it into the greatest era of starship creativity in Trek since the new design ethic of STNG. We've had the Titan, Aventine (which I like even more than the E-E), etc.

RAMA

 

^ yeah, I don't mind the Sovereign class. But the Galaxy class was the TNG ship, on millions of TVs, and I think TNG lost some of its 'branding' by switching ships.
This is, I think, aside from preferring the Galaxy design myself. I like a lady with some curves...

 

Do you realize the power of what you wrote?

That is absolutely the most condemning thing anyone could say. To say that after $60 million and thousands of hours labor they instilled within you a feeling of indifference.

Wow!

People, by our nature, are prone to feel something. It is only an extreme case when something leaves us feeling nothing. There can be no solace or upshot to that from the point-of-view of the cast or crew. That makes it an unqualified failure for all concerned.

And I think people have it wrong to say "there was no place to go." They had an exceptional mix of characters and the univesere literally as their metaphorical oyster. Star Trek (TNG included) could go anywhere and do anything it wanted. It is, by design, uniquely crafted to tell any kind of story imaginable.

As for the aging, again I claim bull-schtick! The TOS folks did it. They did it by simply aknowledging their age and embracing it. That is all TNG had to do.

The Riker-Troi wedding meant nothing because they never really laid the groundwork for it to mean something. Fans tried to make something out of it because they had all this outside information that general audiences didn't. And that kind of symbolises TNG's big screen problems - all their movies (save First Contact) were all about taking short-cuts.

TWoK, for example, culled a villian from TOS run on TV roughly 15 years earlier which organically created a tension and a gravity to the drama. TNG, in Nemesis, tried to manufacture the same relationship between Picard and Shinzon in an instant and it felt painfully contrived. Just as Data's mock sacrifice tried to recreate Mr. Spock's powerful death scene also in TWoK.

No, what killed the TNG films was the total taking for granted the wonderfulness of what they had by all concerned taking shortcuts. The lack of quality which resulted was seen and felt. In short, it was a suicide.

 

?

Ummm... ...



... no?

No.

Yes, and I'm involved in an independent film right now. I've put in long, 20 hour days.

If someone says that film does nothing for them when it comes out, then that's what happens. You get praise, you get criticism... you get indifference.

The soundtrack is a bit playful. There... I felt something.

The rest of your post is addressed toward other people so I won't bother to get into that.

Yes, and if Insurrection weren't tied down to its December 11, 1998 release date no matter what they would've had time to make a better film.

For that reason, while it's too bad it's taking four years for Star Trek Into Darkness to come out, it's better if they took their time to get it done right than done quick.

For the record, the film I'm involved with is I Am Monroe? and my name is Roland Khorshidianzadeh. For those who've known me online for a decade or more, yes, I finally got myself into the industry. It's one of the many reasons I post a lot less than I used to.

 

I applaud your "making it" and will look for it. In fact, the title "I Am Monroe" sounds familiar to me ... Without getting too far off-topic, how about a quick blurb regarding its release info?

I am a big believer in supporting independent filmmakers - they are the most consistant source of sincere cinema (how's that for a another response to mock? Don't you feel rather insensitive and loutish in the face of my open-hearted support of your artistic endeavor? )

Peace and I truly hope "I Am Monroe?" hits big for you.

 

Insurrection is the one that honestly pisses me off the most and turned me off of Star Trek for quite a while. It had a great concept and totally squanders it. Then I read the 'Making of' book and it pisses me off even more because it seemed like they allowed Stewart and Spiner to derail the whole thing behind-the-scenes.

 

I seem to recall reading the same thing in various articles. It only got worse with Nemesis.

With the TOS era films even the worst one came across as near-miss. I still believe there were a lot of good moments in The Final Frontier and the kernals of potential greatness lay there largely unpopped - All it needed was one more top-to-bottom rewrite of the script before heading into production.

"Generations" was the victim of novices attempting to write for the big-screen, but even that was really just another near-miss. "First Contact" was a homerun. "Insurrection" struck out at the plate, while, "Nemesis" was, for all intents and purpose, a forefeit where, in odd fashion, those inolved attempted to re-enact the highlights from a previous game played by a different lineup.

You couple that with the bush league effort of "Enterprise" on weekly television no wonder attendence went down and fans left in favor of the stadiums of other franchises (both new and old).

 

I would say it was a combination of both. Whilst neither film was bad, they weren't great either. They were just short of average. If NEM had good critical reviews and madea decent sum of money at the box office Paramount would have made another film.

If you look at the TOS movies generally TWOk, TVH and TUC are considered to be the best of films. Whilst TMP, TSFS and TFF are considered the weaker. So you had one weak, followed by one good. Whilst for the TNG films, FC is generally conisered to be the strongest whilst the other three the weaker films.

 

Here's how I always imagined Nemesis being pitched:

"Okay, ready? So Data has... a twin!"

"Uh... okay... but wasn't that already done in the series? Hmmm... maybe that could be the b-story. How about a truly cinematic A-story?"

"Okay, okay, I got. So Picard... get ready for it... Captain Picard has... a twin!

 

It wasn't a TNG film that killed Star Trek forever, it was a collection of certain scenes. The joystick on the bridge, the dune buggy, "Blue Skies"', Kirk's death, etc. All of these combined to create a warp core breach, and up she went.