1) The humour is terrible. The humour in "Generations" was painfully lame (especially Data's) and after they fixed it to be a lot more subtle and effective in "First Contact", it reverted back to the more immature and broad variety here. Examples: Troi/Crusher breast joke, Worf pimple joke, Picard wearing a stupid headdress, Data singing in the shuttle, etc.
This is nothing but opinion; I required at the outset of this thread something more substantial. To say a joke lacks humour is subjective at best. A detailed study of why said joke failed would be enlightening, not merely a statement of its failure.
Personally, I found ALL thoses moments funny, btw.Gray areas bug you, clearly.
I don't think such a thing as "a detailed study of why said joke failed" is really possible. Is that your point? If you thought those moments were funny, I can't argue with that. Personally, they didn't work for me because I just thought they were too broad, slapstick, and unnatural. It was just the characters acting like idiots and it was supposed to be funny just because you're used to them being more serious, but that's not enough for me.
Compare that to
"First Contact", where they also have silly behaviour at times, but it's more natural and organic to the story. Cochrane being a drunk is funny because it defies expectations of what we (and the crew) would expect the genius who invented Warp Drive and ushered in an era of peace and prosperity to be like. Troi getting drunk was funny because she was goaded into it by Cochrane, instead of the writers just deciding it would be hilarious to see the usually serious counselor act goofy. Geordi and Barclay's hero worship of Cochrane was great because it was very endearing humour, as opposed to humour that goes for laughs by humiliating the characters.
I prefer the kind that shows affection for the characters, rather than turning them into parodies of themselves. The humour felt forced in all the other movies. Just because Data got emotions in
"Generations" doesn't mean he had to act so annoying. Him using an action movie one-liner in
"Insurrection" was a terrible moment, completely out-of-character, not to mention cliched. There was no subtlety to the humour in the TNG movies before and after
"First Contact", so I was disappointed by it.
And please, a link to the cast & director admissions, if you please.
If you read
Roger Ebert's review of "Insurrection", you'll see that the reviewer found the central premise of the movie flawed, and has discovered that some of the cast agrees. Here are the actual lines that reveal this, if you'd rather not skim through the review to find them:
"A funny thing happened to me on the way to writing this review of "Star Trek: Insurrection"--I discovered that several of the key filmmakers disagree with the film's plot premise. Maybe that's why this ninth "Star Trek" saga seems inert and unconvincing."
"Since this Eden-like planet has only 600 inhabitants, why couldn't they use the planet as a spa, circling inside those metaphasic rings and bathing in the radiation, which is probably faster-acting in space than down on the surface? After all, we're not talking magic here, are we? Above these practical questions looms a larger philosophical one. Wouldn't it be right to sacrifice the lifestyles of 600 Ba'ku in order to save billions? "I think maybe I would," said Jonathan Frakes, the film's director and co-star, when I asked him that question after the movie's press screening.
"You've got to be flexible," Stewart said. "If it had been left in the hands of Picard, some solution could have been found." "Absolutely!" Spiner said. "I think I raised that question more than once." "I had to be very narrowminded to serve the character," Murphy confessed.
Ebert was pretty game for any Star Trek movies when this one came out. He loved
"First Contact", which is why he was willing to give this movie's premise some serious thought, rather than simply dismissing it as convoluted, poorly conceived crap. But the mediocrity of this movie and the even worse
"Nemesis" which followed seems to have killed all enthusiasm he once had for the franchise, and I don't blame him. He hasn't reviewed a Star Trek movie favorably since. He even gave a thumbs down review to the new one.
More subjectivisim; I could say that Khan was boring & weak in STII without presenting evidence as well, but he wasn't.
Again, I don't know what evidence you need that the S'ona are boring villains, but consider the fact that first of all, the flaw of the premise makes their motivation unconvincing and second of all, like I said, what did they ever do or say that was interesting or memorable? How often do people quote lines from them or discuss their actions enthusiastically?
I honestly cannot remember a thing about them except their bad make-up, the part when the leader screamed, and the part when he got mad and blood came out of his head. Compare that to Khan, who is approximately a million times more charismatic and dynamic. He had his juicy dialog, the conviction he brought towards expressing his bitterness towards Kirk, his brilliantly vicious surprise attack using one of the Federation's own ships against them without warning, and of course, his infamous torture method.
You must be young- the love interest of which I speak is not a romantic one, but a spiritual one. Picard is destined to be with Beverly, yet that does not preclude Platonic lessons learned along the way.
Yes, I am young (20s), but that doesn't mean I haven't seen a plethora of love stories, platonic, spiritual, and romantic on film from the 1920s to the present which were all rendered better than this one. My counterpoint here is similar to what I said about the villain - I just didn't think there was any depth or intrigue to this one.
The woman never felt like anything more than a stock love interest shoehorned into the story for the sake of having a love interest, and I can't think of anything said and done between Picard and her that convincingly suggested there was a powerful connection between them that he learned something significant from. Of all the relationships I've seen Picard involved in, the one in
"Insurrection" is the most hollow and forgettable one of all.
