Interesting Star Trek: Generations Review that talks about good storytelling vs. canon nitpicking

I really enjoyed Generations. My only complaint was that it was too short and a bit thin in terms of texture. I felt that didn’t distinguish it enough as a movie in the contrast of the show. That being said, I really liked the character interplay- a nice simple movie.

As far as canon goes, there’s never any continuity with such things, no matter the franchise. It doesn’t bother me.

 

I do think it is a pretty petty complaint that Picard just now suddenly cared a lot about his family line. The artifact is pretty insignificant but it didn't have to be presumably abandoned and I don't think it's a big part of the criticism regardless.

I think the movie is OK but only just OK. There's some good acting, some good story elements, but also some excesses (mostly Data comedy, though I don't think it's that bad) and also underwhelming elements, mostly the overall plot feeling contrived and the Nexus being underwhelming.

 

I have to agree on the Nexus point. The contrast between saturation of joy and Kirk making breakfast, bemused is a bit of a stretch.

 

Guinan: "It's like being wrapped in joy." Cut to: Kirk chopping wood, cooking eggs, and riding horses.

That wasn't Kirk's fantasy. It was William Shatner's.

 

Exactly. As was shown quite clearly in the film itself, Kirk's fantasy was to be back on the bridge of his ship.

 

Which they couldn't really do since, realistically, Kirk's fantasy of him being back in command of the Enterprise would require that Spock and McCoy also be there as well. But since Nimoy and Kelley turned down the film, there's no way they could do that without calling attention to their absence.

 

What would have been fantastic is instead of blowing most of the budget on that sea ship Enterprise for Worf’s pointless promotion, that they reconstructed the TOS Enterprise bridge for Kirk’s Nexus fantasy. They could have had younger background actors play the TOS crew’s parts, but Shatner would be the same, since it’s his fantasy.

 

That's a neat idea. I have trouble imagining them actually doing it, though, since they'd already done a recreation of the TOS bridge just a few years before in "Relics." They probably would've considered it to be too repetitive.

But yeah, one of the big problems with GEN is that it spent most of its money in the wrong places. The sea ship Enterprise and the stellar cartography set being the main offenders.

Another big problem is that while we're TOLD that Kirk loves Antonia, we're never told, or better yet, shown anything about her to make us understand WHY Kirk loves her so much that he chose her over every other woman in his life. Imagine if it was one of Kirk's love interests that the audience already knew & had affection for, like Bibi Besch as Carol Marcus, or Joan Collins making a surprise cameo as an Edith Keeler that Kirk got to have a happily ever after with? Watching Kirk leave one of them behind for the greater good could've been heart wrenching.

 

They could also have had Kirk in command of the Enterprise-B instead of Harriman for his fantasy.

 

We need a fan edit where there is at least one scene of old Kirk commanding the TOS bridge with all the original cast.

 

Do we, though? Why do we have to try to "fix" every single flawed Trek movie with a fan edit? Why can't we just acknowledge where some of the films went wrong and move on with our lives?

 

Moving on with my life IS fixing things that they got wrong dammit! Actually the Prometheus fan edit didn't suck anywhere near as hard.

 

^^this


Canon can be a good thing, it strengthens the franchise as a whole.

Canon can also, as said by many in the industry and rightly so, canon can quash creativity and lore expansion. (The Borg Queen is a great example of this, who was done with enough verve to not just buy into but even like.) But while canon is impossible to make 100% tight, taking 0% time certainly doesn't help any better.

Canon is being scapegoated inaccurately and arguably unfairly.

Yes, the glorified fern planter curlyglastnost thing Picard was ape-bleep about in that season 6 TV episode where he got the archaeological affect and now he's just moving it aside... that's probably due to a prop person putting in the wrong bric-a-brac. Or they were doing it in hopes the audience would notice as a silly in-joke (many didn't at the time, nor did Stewart.) Remember in-jokes, like when Data did a contraction after Lore was dispatched in "Datalore" and nobody noticed?

Yes, Data's emotion chip is larger - because it's a movie on a 60 foot screen, and using a pac-man shaped washer isn't as exciting -- I'm also ashamed to admit I whined about this one back in the day., especially given everything in the movie that's a bit off and I focused on that.. But I didn't care about the Kurlyglasscock thing...

But one silly chamber pot given the name of Kurlan Naiskos pales compared to the rest of the movie, where canon has less to deal with it than, say, in-movie continuity. Continuity is never 100% either but if there's a big slip-up in the very same episode or movie where they're setting something up... and I'll bring up an example of that in a moment, but first - a distraction:

The story had some potential and a robust theme in amongst the mess... but given they wanted to kill Kirk, that alone would mean nobody would like it (and the first ending felt more authentic than the one they replaced it with.)

Guinan's candle fetish where the automatic suppression system would have blown it all out like what in that second season episode, unless she used the special override passcode that Picard gave her like how he didn't switching between "it's impossible to get there so we accepted it" to "once you go in you won't want to leave" in the span of 15 minutes (if not the same scene, I'll have to rewatch this) does more to hamper the movie than nitpicking any aspect of canon. (I obviously crossed out that candle fetish bit since no other review site complains about it, even when mentioning the Klutzy Nekros thing for the umpteenth millionth time... and not because a genuinely proper and bad plot point that dampens the movie without the need for canon/continuity nitpicking...)

The forced comedy hurt the movie as well. Some of it started okay but went so far over the top... Data's potty mouth works only in that it's a joke aimed at the audience (4th wall-breaking rubbish, which is lower than puns in terms of being the lowest form of comedy.)

Given how great ATG was and Q's promise, it's sad that GEN was TNG's only real attempt to go down the route Q was saying would follow...

 

I'm of one mind about it, and my one mind agrees with this. I mean, just look how easily Picard moves the supposed artifact around with one hand. It's clearly not actual stone, so, by in-universe logic, it must be a copy!

Sigh... The Last Jedi isn't a bad movie because Luke's behavior is inconsistent with every other on-screen depiction of him - though that happens to be true. The Last Jedi is a bad movie because it's tonally incoherent, nonsensically plotted, filled with completely unbelievable character actions, and way too long.

In short: not enough Generations discussion in that Generations video, though some decent points were made.

 

I'm one of those people who feels like Edith Keeler is "the love of Kirk's life" because fans decided it. She was a poorly written character and they no real chemistry. Only her death makes her character as memorable as she is. Miramanee made a bigger impression.

What I would have liked was to see two silhouettes at the top of the hill (and to make Shatner happy, put them on horses absolutely).

Picard: "Who are they?"
Kirk: "Carol...(pause)...and David."
Let the expression on Kirk's face and the emotion in his voice piece it together for the audience who has no idea who these people are. They made a much larger impact on Kirk's life than Edith Keeler ever did and were seen more recently in theaters.

 

I personally thought that Shatner and Collins had terrific chemistry together (enough to overcome the at times dodgy writing of TCOTEOF), but YMMV, of course.

Mmmm... okay. I never thought of that episode as especially notable, and all the Caucasian actors dressing up as Hollywood Indians gives it a rather high goof factor. It's certainly not an episode that's aged terribly well.

Sure, I could see that working well.

 

I think a lot of fans take the idea of the Nexus as being a rationally constructed paradise, or embodiment of one's autobiographical deepest desire, way too literally. There's no explanation for what it really is - Guinan isn't its creator, nor an infallible authority on it - but she herself doesn't even describe it that way. She says the Nexus "was like being inside joy. As if joy was something tangible ...and you could wrap yourself in it like a blanket." Now, I understand why some fans might want to use this opportunity to play connect-the-dots, and argue that Kirk should have conjured up Edith Keeler or Carol Marcus or whoever, but both those relationships ended in tragedy, i.e., not a clear and unambiguous association with joy. The core story purpose of the Nexus is to provide two emotional sequences in the context of this new adventure, not pay off earlier movies or stories, Avengers: Endgame style.

Moreover, I think it pretty close to inarguable that having Kirk tearfully reunite with visions of David and Carol, and then just as tearfully bid them adieu, would have been an error of filmmaking. This is fundamentally Picard's story, not Kirk's, and thus to conjure up an image of Kirk's actual dead son would have thrown off the balance of the sequence by totally overshadowing Picard's old-fashioned Christmastime vision. Who knows why Picard has an easier time dissociating himself from the Nexus - the recency of his arrival, the fact he was warned about it beforehand, him being less emotion-driven than Kirk in general - but he does, because he's the story's protagonist. Kirk is a valuable supporting player, but he's a supporting player nonetheless.

 

Nothing’s “inarguable”

Once Kirk realized Carol and David are not real, why would he “tearfully” say goodbye? It would play out exactly as it did on the screen, only with people that the audience has some familiarity with. Not some phantom woman that nobody even has an idea what she looks like.

The only thing that ended in tragedy re: Carol was David. The original intention of Star Trek 6 was to start off with a prologue that had Kirk and Carol back together, so it's never been out of the realm of possibility that they worked past it. And even if it did end in tragedy, so did Renee's life. Picard still conjured him up. Tragic loss leads to want. Getting David back would be a "joy" for Kirk like Renee was for Picard. Picard didn't collapse in tears when he realized it wasn't real. Why would Kirk?

So, nah, nothing "inarguable" about it. It would have worked, possibly quite well. Kirk may have been a “supporting player” as you call him, but it wouldn’t have taken up any more screen time than before. What it would have done was give it more emotional resonance. And that is never a bad thing.

 

funny you mention Endgame as that's what could've been done for Kirks nexus.. a journey through previous Trek episodes & films (with Picard) via clever partial sets/blue screen backdrops (a'la Relics) ..e.g. City on the Edge (including a 1994 Joan Collins cameo showing the life they could've had), the classic movie Ent bridge (redressed Ent B bridge), Kirks Trek II/III apartment, David's death on genesis,