Revisiting the films...

[Warped9]

I do intend to revisit GEN and FC, but I've no interest in the others.

[RAMA]

BillJ wrote:

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You blew your credibility by naming Nemesis the fifth best movie.

I don't care what other people think, I've already explained my reasons on this forum before and the reasons are just as valid if not moreso than for you liking STV or whatever.

RAMA

[RAMA]

Warped9 wrote:

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I do intend to revisit GEN and FC, but I've no interest in the others.

I certainly intend to revisit ST09!! I have a friend who never watched ST of any kind before and she recently watched ST09 a few months ago, she watched it 8-9 times in a row....she couldn't stop! Its that good. These are the kinds of future movie goers that will make ST2013 a $500 million hit.

I certainly have no intention of seeing STGEN or STV anytime soon!

Warped9 wrote:

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Then again you and I hardly ever agree on anything.

That's because I have good taste!

RAMA

[Lord Garth]

I'd be worried if the two of you ever did agree on anything. I'm an atheist, but in the remote case I'm wrong: I don't want it to be frozen if I end up in Hell.

[RAMA]

Lord Garth wrote:

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I'd be worried if the two of you ever did agree on anything. I'm an atheist, but in the remote case I'm wrong: I don't want it to be frozen if I end up in Hell.

Yeah, the Mayans probably had some sort of date marked on their calendar for Doomsday if we ever agreed to anything!

[Lord Garth]

One of you must start a thread about ST XI or XII in December and the other must reply. This is unconditional. Provide an argument of epic proportions. Literally epic.

The fate of humanity depends on it. Tell PKTrekGirl and M'Sharak I said so.

[EliyahuQeoni]

Warped9 wrote:

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I do intend to revisit GEN and FC, but I've no interest in the others.

Good. I look forward to reading your observations on those films.

[Warped9]

RAMA wrote:

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That's because I have good taste!

RAMA

Uh, sure...

[Warped9]

Lord Garth wrote:

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One of you must start a thread about ST XI or XII in December and the other must reply. This is unconditional. Provide an argument of epic proportions. Literally epic.

The fate of humanity depends on it. Tell PKTrekGirl and M'Sharak I said so.

Considering the heaving ST09 induced when I watched it it's not likely I'll bother with the sequels. I already have zero respect for J.J. and his work so why subject myself to more of it?

I'll check in on the next reboot whenever it may happen.

[Maurice]

^^^We've seen both of you guys endlessly disagree about '09 Star Trek. Can we move on?

[Warped9]

Star Trek: Generations (1994) *

Picard enlists the help of the presumed dead James Kirk to defeat a madman bent on destroying a world.

If you want a better story of the crossing of Trek generations then read the novel Federation by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. It’s a much better work.

The beginning of this film is painfully embarrassing. Everything about it feels forced and contrived (of course, it’s fiction) and there isn’t one whit of at least trying to make it feel natural. And if anyone ever makes another joke about Shatner’s hair they really should take another look at Koenig’s doo. Yeesh!

The stupid “Tuesday” jokes are really lame. Who would launch a ship without being fully ready? The christening bottle idea felt dumb, particularly when we see liquid when the bottle breaks. Excuse me, but wouldn’t wine, mostly composed of water, be completely frozen in the absolute zero of vacuum? I’ve never been crazy about the Excelsior design, but it would have looked better than this one with the added bits. The design goes from looking ungainly to dorky—perfect for the equally dorky Captain Harriman. And again we get an Enterprise being the only ship within reach of an emergency. It’s just one dumb thing after another. Still, the one slightly redeeming element of this sequence that it did feel like a more fitting end for Kirk then the one setup at the end of the film.

I like to think I have a sense of fun, but the next sequence of the E-D’s crew aboard a holodeck sailing ship just to give Worf his promotion to Lt. Commander was yet another really lame exercise. I can’t see ever being done this on the series. It just felt like something you’d read in a fanfic and yet not see on the actual show. Riker’s joke on Worf and Data’s “joke” on Beverley Crusher were also cringe inducing.

Both beginning sequences aren’t an encouraging start for this film.

I don’t really care for the darker interiors of the E-D. It’s jarring compared to the series and feels wrong. It’s far too dark. I like the idea of switching to the newer DS9 style uniforms, but with replicator technology wouldn’t it have been easy to have everyone wearing the new attire rather than the mix of the two designs we see? And how come Data’s emotion chip is now the size of something that has to be implanted in his head when the original series version was small enough to fit into one of his teeth? The icing on the cake is after implantation of the chip Data behaves like a total nutjob and it’s annoying as hell.

Part of what’s wrong with this film is that they are so obviously trying to cram as much crap into it as possible. The Romulans are referenced, the Borg are referenced and the Klingons are again prominent in a Trek film. Can’t these guys think of anything else? The film could have been a lot better if they could simply have told a more straightforward story not weighed down with so much crap. And emotional Data is damned annoying as hell.

The battle between the Klingon BoP and the E-D is complete and utter B.S. Everything about the sequence just grated on my nerves. And the final crashing of the saucer section was just the cherry on this pile of foul smelling pudding. I absolutely hated this entire sequence. Why is Deanna of all people at the helm? No other qualified helmsman? Oh yeah, Mirina Sirtis needs something dramatic to do to feel integral to the story.

When the refit Enterprise was wrecked I was moved. I found it sad. When the E-D is wrecked I felt…not much because the whole thing felt so contrived. That and the E-D was never romanticized the way the original ship was. Actually that sums up the entire first hour and a half of this film. It’s all a bunch of stuff just crammed into it in a force fitted manner to try to make interesting. The result, though, is an utter failure.

Seeing Jim Kirk again doesn’t really improve much. While he provides the only real charm in this film it’s far from enough because the rest of it feels just as contrived as the preceding parts. It doesn’t help either that it feels more like were watching William Shatner on the screen rather than Captain Kirk. That said it was chilling watching Kirk die. I admit it really hit me despite all the nonsense leading up to it. Kirk will always be a hero for me and one of my favourite fictional characters ever.

Burying Kirk under a pile of rocks on some barren rock was symbolic. To me it represents what the franchise has become. It became a pile of contrived nonsense without any heart to it and a deadweight of rubble atop much better work that has been done in TOS and TNG.

A lot of people can groan over STV-TFF, but it has energy and a measure of charm and enthusiasm. At heart TFF has a better story even if it is weighed down with extraneous silliness. TFF also has a far superior soundtrack to GEN.

In the end GEN is a really sad and pitiful effort. To call it a heavily padded one hour episode would be kind.


Oh yeah, I neglected to mention the story yet again begins on Earth. Well okay, Earth orbit.

[Lord Garth]

I rewatched all the movies in 2009. I thought the shift from TUC to GEN was the most jarring. It really shows that the movie was written by people who were out of their element in this installment.

I thought Data's emotion chip was annoying too. And, really, is that the best time and place to install an emotion chip? Data has always had a hard time grasping humor, it's nothing new, so why should he feel his growth has reached an impasse any more than it has before? Another consideration is that with never having had emotions before -- with the exception of "Descent" -- what would Data's level of emotion maturity be? Even the youngest officers have two decades of experience dealing with emotions. What does Data have? He'd need to have psychiatric examinations to re-evaluate if Data has the temperament to function in Starfleet.

There might be more that comes to mind but it'll have to wait until Tuesday.

[BillJ]

This one has massive holes, yet I have a soft spot for it. I think there was a good story in there somewhere and the Enterprise-D exterior space shots were stunning.

[The Laughing Vulcan]

Got nothing against the champagne bottle staying liquid in space, as there's only radiative heat loss to cool it down out there. No convection or conduction. Chuck out a bottle of wine at a starship and the contents should stay liquid long enough for it to hit the ship and break the bottle...

But as soon as the bottle smashes, the contents should probably have crystallised as soon as the drops are small enough...

I'm not going to touch the movie though...

I do remember that I loved the lighting of the film, it was the first time TNG felts cinematic.

[Warped9]

The Laughing Vulcan wrote:

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I do remember that I loved the lighting of the film, it was the first time TNG felts cinematic.

It did in some respects, but in others it was poor. The darker interiors aboard ship are the most obvious example. The exterior ship shots were pretty good.

Generally speaking, though, very few of the films did well with the space scenes. After TMP and TWOK it becomes very hit-and-miss.