I don't know why there's such a stigma to a plot that involves keeping the crew on a space ship. And in TMP's case, it's an all new ship with all new sets to present to the audience. But really, Star Trek a sci-fi story about space exploration. It makes sense to spend a lot of time in a ship flying around. Insurrection spends so much time on location that it doesn't feel very sci-fi. It feels like hanging out at a country-club.
Do the Next Gen Films Feel like motion pictures or TV.
- Thread starter ConRefit79
- Start date
I don't know why there's such a stigma to a plot that involves keeping the crew on a space ship. And in TMP's case, it's an all new ship with all new sets to present to the audience. But really, Star Trek a sci-fi story about space exploration. It makes sense to spend a lot of time in a ship flying around. Insurrection spends so much time on location that it doesn't feel very sci-fi. It feels like hanging out at a country-club.
I, for one, loved Star Trek The Motion Picture. I doubt that the movie series would've lasted with all of them having the slower paced feel of TMP, but it did have that feeling of quiet adventure and exploration, even if most of it was conducted from inside a starship. 
In terms of cinematic feel, all six TOS movies had a cinematic scale to them.
In terms of TNG movies, I felt Nemesis had the most big screen effect...followed by First Contact, then Generations.
Personal opinions only.
In terms of TNG movies, I felt Nemesis had the most big screen effect...followed by First Contact, then Generations.
Personal opinions only.
Insurrection is by far the worst offender in this respect, even though there's cheap looking parts to all four movies, Generations had great looking cinematography and excellent visual effects on it's side - the saucer crash for example, First Contact had some big standout sequences - the fleet battle and hull walk to name just two, but parts of that movie look very small in scale in terms of effects and sets sometimes. Nemesis was the most cinematic for me, mainly because it's visual FX were just so much better than the other three films on account of it being the newest.
Insurrection just had no stand out sequences, and I found the visual effects to be barely adequate, and no better than the series.
Insurrection just had no stand out sequences, and I found the visual effects to be barely adequate, and no better than the series.
The plot was rather flimsy.
All four feel like TV to me -- Generations the most (you can even "feel" where the commercial breaks go), and Nemesis the least.
There were more than a few reviews that noted that during some of the most climactic, eventful events of the movie, it was primarily the audience watching the crew watching the viewscreen (the attack on the space station, the wormhole, traveling down V'Ger, for example). No matter what's going on outside in space, sustained shots like that drastically reduce the urgency.
Every Trek movie after TMP has had interesting things going on outside the ship, but it was either full of the bridge crew working against the clock trying to save the ship, or it had a sizable amount focused away from the bridge to balance it, like away missions or action in other parts of the ship; in either case, it was the crew doing more than watching TV.
Ironically, Joss Whedon had done interviews at the time of Serenity's release about wanting to avoid exactly this scenario, and although he didn't 'name' his examples, he did mention past TV-to-movie translations that he felt dropped the ball by failing to suitably change out of TV mode. I've always felt he was making a veiled comment about Star Trek when he said that...
...which is funny, as I think of all of the Marvel movies, The Avengers is the least cinematic in feel, and it was made for the big screen.
Interesting take on the two sides of ST film.
Ironically, Joss Whedon had done interviews at the time of Serenity's release about wanting to avoid exactly this scenario, and although he didn't 'name' his examples, he did mention past TV-to-movie translations that he felt dropped the ball by failing to suitably change out of TV mode. I've always felt he was making a veiled comment about Star Trek when he said that...
...which is funny, as I think of all of the Marvel movies, The Avengers is the least cinematic in feel, and it was made for the big screen.
One thing I took away from the DVD release of Serenity is that I think, while Joss was clearly thinking 'bigger' than TV in terms of the story, he was evidently having a lot of trouble putting his mind into movie mode as opposed to television. Many of the deleted scenes from the movie are either talky exposition scenes or 'character moments' between Mal and Inara that would have been like cream in a TV show where there was time to explore the character dynamics better, but which was dead weight in a movie where everything had to keep moving to sustain the drama.
This is fascinating, because there are probably parallels there with, for example, Generations, where Moore and Braga were probably still pitching a movie length television episode, and a lot of the adjustments to make it more 'cinematic' came from outside influences (like the cinematographer lighting the sets differently, or other things like that). First Contact was shot by Frakes in a very television manner, nailing the schedule down and shooting a lot of things very fast, but the script was much more tailored towards movie storytelling to begin with. One can actually imagine Generations and Insurrection being filmed as these kinds of extended length TV episodes and not being very different from what we actually got, but First Contact and Nemesis have got an inherent 'movie-ness' to them from the very core of their stories to begin with. They think 'bigger' and act 'bigger' from the outset.
"Beautiful" is overstating it, I think. "Nice" would be more accurate.
Whatever their other qualities, all the TNG films except INS feels like movies to me. They have drama, peril and scale.
GEN had great lighting in the Ent-D and spectacular location work. FC had a "full" feel thanks to the subplots, with Earth scenes serving as relief from fighting the Borg. NEM had a great rich, dark look, and I liked the vast spooky interiors of Shinzon's ship (obviously these last points are more controversial, but then some people just love to hate).
INS OTOH has crummy space effects, a phoney-looking alien settlement, a complacent-looking cast (is this a life-or-death struggle or a holiday camp?), and a lot of flat, undramatic lighting and photography. Add to that, it's a story about space peasants, which is the second most awful kind of Trek story (the worst kind is "comedy alien of the week").
Looks like many respondents agree that TNG did not make the transition from TV to Cinema very well. So that begs the question why?
With the exception of TMP, the other TOS films were done by TV directors and producers. If memory serves,
Both Bennett and Meyer were from a TV background. Yet they managed to create films that felt like they belonged on the big screen. Personally I think they would hold up well on the big screen today. Sure the don't have as much eye candy as today's scifi films. But that forced them to tell good stories and not rely on eye candy to keep people's interest.
For some reason B&B couldn't make that leap.
With the exception of TMP, the other TOS films were done by TV directors and producers. If memory serves,
Both Bennett and Meyer were from a TV background. Yet they managed to create films that felt like they belonged on the big screen. Personally I think they would hold up well on the big screen today. Sure the don't have as much eye candy as today's scifi films. But that forced them to tell good stories and not rely on eye candy to keep people's interest.
For some reason B&B couldn't make that leap.
I think the question is: did they and Paramount want to make that leap? They probably figured they could just keep making TNG the way they always did and the masses would pay for the privilege to watch it.
I think the biggest differences were dealing with bigger themes and being greater willingness to take risks. TWoK and TUC showed some of Kirk's flaws and the idea of change to new generations, TSfS involved people risking their careers and the destruction of the Enterprise (even though the story was basically undoing one of the big changes from the previous films) and TVH embraced a comedic tone on film against a grim backdrop. Even TFF involved Kirk losing control of the ship and partial betrayals even though it didn't explain them much.
FC compellingly showed Picard and Cochrane's flaws and temptation for Data and risked the whole of Federation history but otherwise the TNG film events felt either not very significant or already done before (risking careers sort of, making peace with an old enemy-not, destroying the ship, using a comedic tone again).
Last edited:
For whatever reason, TNG seemed hard to make the transition to the big screen as well as TOS and I'm not sure why. I think that the characters in TOS, especially Kirk, had a certain credibility as an action hero and daredevil whereas Picard was more the diplomatic explorer. Except for First Contact, I never bought Picard as the action-hero type, which is what they tried to make him into in the movies, especially the last three- to the extent that it didn't seem all that credible. Plus, it was sort of inconsistent how they handled Data. First, he had emotions he had to learn how to control, then he could shut them on/off at will, then he can take it out (didn't it get fused to his neural net), and did it even get mentioned in Nemesis? Most of the other characters didn't get much to do in the movies and they kept inventing excuses to bring Worf back to the Enterprise even though he was supposed to be on DS9 post-Generations.
Similar threads
