Star Trek Generations at 20 (November 18, 1994)

[EnriqueH]

I remember when some fans thought Kirk would indeed be killed in Star Trek VI based on the alternate clip used in an early trailer of Martia-Kirk being hit and vaporized by the disruptor beam.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=638S8n2_Ab8[/yt]

OMG, I remember that trailer well and seeing it for the first time during the televised 25th Anniversary special.

What a badass trailer, but I can remember my heart FREEZING at the sight of Kirk being vaporized.

I also remember misunderstanding Christopher Plummer during this trailer.

Instead of "CRY HAVOC!", I thought he had said, "I HAVE HIM!" making me suspect that he killed Kirk.

I felt a sense of relief that the Enterprise 7 all lived to the end...and then GEN ruined everything.

It was an exciting trailer and my only hope was that last, classic "FIRE!!!" by Kirk. I was also sorry we didn't see Kirk say, "Battlestations." in the final version. Shatner always did a great, "FIRE!" but I always liked the way he said "Battlestations".

 

[cooleddie74]

Star Trek VI has, in my opinion, the best of all the Trek movie trailers. The very first teaser remains to this day one of my all-time favorite movie trailers of any kind from any age or genre, and is just plain beautiful and a gesture of love to both the original cast and crew and the fans. They haven't topped it since.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RERAc0ipha0[/yt]

 

[Tomalak]

It was kind of nice seeing Picard in action before the Beebs and the studio wanted him to become Rambo with a phaser rifle.

Wasn't it Stewart who pressed for "Action Picard" most of all? The first draft of First Contact has him almost entirely on Earth; I don't think he even sees a Borg drone. Riker was doing all of the Aliens rip-off stuff with Worf on the ship. Stewart was also executive producer on Insurrection, and wanted a lighter film with a romance and yet more action for Picard. And it seems the whole point of the execrable Argo sequence in Nemesis was to let him rip up the Arizona desert on a dune buggy.

 

[EnriqueH]

I have to say that the action hero bit worked well for Picard *in FC* because it seemed to come organically from Picard's vendetta against the Borg and his single-mindedness in that situation.

But when I saw him smiling and hauling ass in a dune buggy in Nemesis, I remember thinking to myself, "Who is this character?" Doesn't seem like the Picard we know from before.

I have no problem with "action Picard", since it obviously worked very well in FC, but they didn't seem to know how to make it work again.

 

[Tomalak]

I have to say that the action hero bit worked well for Picard *in FC* because it seemed to come organically from Picard's vendetta against the Borg and his single-mindedness in that situation.

But when I saw him smiling and hauling ass in a dune buggy in Nemesis, I remember thinking to myself, "Who is this character?" Doesn't seem like the Picard we know from before.

I have no problem with "action Picard", since it obviously worked very well in FC, but they didn't seem to know how to make it work again.

Yeah, First Contact worked, more or less, because it was the exception. It was unique, and made sense given his personal history with the Borg. We'd never really seen Picard like this, but it felt real.

Insurrection tried the "youthful rebellion" thing, but I think Picard here feels very much like the guy in the series. Maybe it's having Michael Piller write it?

Nemesis was just a mess. They tried to give it a personal dynamic with Shinzon, but it just didn't work. Shinzon was all over the place in terms of motivation, and Picard seemed weirdly out of character for most of the film.

 

[cooleddie74]

Picard in Insurrection felt largely like the TNG Picard, and one of the best things about that film was Stewart's interactions and dialogue with Donna Murphy and specifically the long sequence they share walking and talking about the Ba'ku, age, mortality and other things. Insurrection is a very flawed movie but it has some great redeeming qualities and Picard is one of them.

 

[EnriqueH]

I have to say that the action hero bit worked well for Picard *in FC* because it seemed to come organically from Picard's vendetta against the Borg and his single-mindedness in that situation.

But when I saw him smiling and hauling ass in a dune buggy in Nemesis, I remember thinking to myself, "Who is this character?" Doesn't seem like the Picard we know from before.

I have no problem with "action Picard", since it obviously worked very well in FC, but they didn't seem to know how to make it work again.

Yeah, First Contact worked, more or less, because it was the exception. It was unique, and made sense given his personal history with the Borg. We'd never really seen Picard like this, but it felt real.

Insurrection tried the "youthful rebellion" thing, but I think Picard here feels very much like the guy in the series. Maybe it's having Michael Piller write it?

Nemesis was just a mess. They tried to give it a personal dynamic with Shinzon, but it just didn't work. Shinzon was all over the place in terms of motivation, and Picard seemed weirdly out of character for most of the film.

Man, don't even get me started on Shinzon. Every time I try to give Nemesis another chance---EVERY TIME---Shinzon just kills the viewing for me.

At no point do I feel like Tom Hardy is a young Patrick Stewart. I cringe everytime I think of that "young Picard" photograph.

Picard in Insurrection felt largely like the TNG Picard, and one of the best things about that film was Stewart's interactions and dialogue with Donna Murphy and specifically the long sequence they share walking and talking about the Ba'ku, age, mortality and other things. Insurrection is a very flawed movie but it has some great redeeming qualities and Picard is one of them.

Insurrection is the only Trek film that I've only seen once. I saw it in theaters back in 1998 and that was the last time I saw it.

Here's what stands out in my memory of the film:

1) It starts well with Data shooting up the damn place. That caught my attention. But the movie starts to unravel at about the halfway point.

2) Too many clichés: Data in the haystack and children in danger is what I remember.

3) "Lock n load" another Data one-liner that falls flat.

4) The second---yes, the SECOND--- I saw Anthony Zerbe as Admiral whats-his-name, I knew he was a bad guy. He's one of those character actors that always seems to play a bad guy in everything he does, so as soon as I saw him, I knew he would wind being a bad guy. And he was.

5) As I left the theater, the "character moments" seemed much, much stronger than the overall movie. I remember enjoying the Riker-Troi scenes more than the actual plot of the film.

I'm actually looking forward to seeing this movie again as I am in the middle of TNG Season 3 and I'm in the process of watching the whole franchise.

 

[eyeresist]

The death of Robert and Rene Picard. OK, I know WHY this is done, as in later on in the movie, we have to have a reason for Picard not wanting to leave the Nexus. But burning alive in a barn in the 24th century?

Most of your points are things that don't bother me, but I agree this was bungled. It's too obviously just done to motivate Picard, and yes, two people dying in a house fire at that time is unbelievable. Fire alarms? Sprinklers and extinguishers? Fireproof clothing? Futuristic fire-fighting tech like CO2 bombs?
The Moore/Braga commentary is very forthright about the script's problems, but this is one they didn't mention.

Accordingly, the prologue on the Enterprise-B stays as it is, with Kirk saving the ship and losing his life. A great heroic end, but he doesn't survive inside the Nexus, and crucially, he doesn't reappear later in the film.

If they'd done that, the fan outcry would've been even louder! Having a major beloved character killed in the first 5 minutes without being crucial to the plot resolution would rightly have been regarded as a terrible waste.

BTW, did anyone find Soran's outpost on Veridian III strikingly reminiscent of the Myst games?


I had no problem with the dune buggy in Nemesis. It seemed obvious to me that a shuttlepod should contain some sort of land rover - as opposed to conventional Trek where everything they need to encounter is right next to their beaming or landing location.
Anyway, the worst bit of Nemesis was better than the best bit of Insurrection

 

[Smellmet]

Anyway, the worst bit of Nemesis was better than the best bit of Insurrection

That's one thing I will agree with you on. Give me Nemesis over Insurrection any day of the week.

 

[Lance]

Accordingly, the prologue on the Enterprise-B stays as it is, with Kirk saving the ship and losing his life. A great heroic end, but he doesn't survive inside the Nexus, and crucially, he doesn't reappear later in the film.

If they'd done that, the fan outcry would've been even louder! Having a major beloved character killed in the first 5 minutes without being crucial to the plot resolution would rightly have been regarded as a terrible waste.

To be fair, the 1701-B segment is more like a full half hour of the movie rather than 5 minutes. But I do see your point. On the other hand, I can't help feeling that the movie as it stands is unbalanced by Kirk's presence later in it... the need to incorporate Kirk into the finale more or less sucks all the volume out of the last third of the movie.

I also doubt Shatner himself would've signed up for such a glorified cameo as the scenario I described, but I was really talking hypotheticals.

Another alternative would be to somehow connect the two segments together better than they are. Something like a "Yesterday's Enterprise" type scenario, with the Ent-B and the Ent-D meeting each other in the threshold of the Nexus? Something more dramatic than "The Two Captains Make An Omelette Together In A Log Cabin", anyway.

( I realise we're effectively talking about rewriting the entire movie, here. But maybe that's what it needed, another rewrite. )

Anyway, the worst bit of Nemesis was better than the best bit of Insurrection

That's one thing I will agree with you on. Give me Nemesis over Insurrection any day of the week.

I'll third that notion. I expect the debate about which is "worse" is one that could run and run, but I'd certainly put my support behind Nemesis over Insurrection if I had to cast my vote one way or the other.

 

[EnriqueH]

Ha, the two captains making an omelet together!!!

That never occurred to me.

You know it's TNG writers when a Kirk storyline features the mighty Kirk...nursing eggs tenderly to "soften the blow".

Pansies.

 

[Lance]

The two segments do feel forced together in the finished product.

I think that's what disappoints me the most, that it feels so forced.

Seperately, we've got a very strong first twenty minutes with Kirk nobly sacrificing his life to save the Enterprise-B, and also an equally strong TNG story that builds mystery and intrigue about Soran and his murky machinations aboard the observatory.

Maybe it's not perfect, maybe certain things could have been done better, but it builds the tension nicely and at least gives the TNG storyline a sense of increasing build-up to something great.

I actually like both segments, independently of each other.

It's the marriage of the two, at the moment when Picard enters the Nexus, where the movie just completely falls apart. It's like they've reached an impasse in the plot, so they just rush through the last third of the movie hitting all the plot beats but not really helping to build on what we've been watching for the previous hour and a half.

The wind-back of time and the second death of Kirk both feel like the audience has been cheated somewhere along the way.

One can't help wondering if there must have been some better way they could have implemented the grand meeting of the generations...?

 

[EnriqueH]

I actually liked the Picard Nexus scenes. Patrick Stewart does some nice acting here. It's when Picard goes to Kirk's Nexus that it all really starts to fall apart.

Part of the problem, IMO, is that these are TNG writers who have never written Kirk before and are now writing him for the first time at a very critical juncture for the character as he enters the twilight of his life.

I see and hear Kirk say things that I never heard him say before. And it doesn't ring true.

The movie had some definite plot holes and shoddy writing before, but the themes, acting and action kept it going. But it totally fell apart in the climax and the shoddy writing completely imploded the film.

 

[DWF]

I actually liked the Picard Nexus scenes. Patrick Stewart does some nice acting here. It's when Picard goes to Kirk's Nexus that it all really starts to fall apart.

Part of the problem, IMO, is that these are TNG writers who have never written Kirk before and are now writing him for the first time at a very critical juncture for the character as he enters the twilight of his life.

I see and hear Kirk say things that I never heard him say before. And it doesn't ring true.

The movie had some definite plot holes and shoddy writing before, but the themes, acting and action kept it going. But it totally fell apart in the climax and the shoddy writing completely imploded the film.

Most of the movie writers hadn't written for Kirk and that kind of includes William Shatner himself. Jack Sowards had Krik saying in TWOK that he's never faced death before, which is rather odd in it's own way, but then that movie also had Khan knowing Checkov.

 

[EnriqueH]

Shatner hadn't officially written for Kirk, but he was undeniably part of the creative process during the making of TOS and the movies.

According to Shatner's Trek Movie Memories, Kirk's death was an arbitrary plot device and he had to ask for the writers to flesh out his character a bit more since Kirk was there basically to die and that's it. (Which makes Kirk's death sound like a gimmick to get people in the theater rather than a natural fabric of the story the way Spock's death felt.)

I also credit the success of the movies, particularly II-IV, mainly to the guiding hand of Harve Bennett, who had clearly done his homework prior to filming TWOK, and who knew how to take artistic contributions and used it to form the films. I like how Bennett was wise enough to convince Takei to do the "Tiny" scene in III. Takei objected to it, but he relented and it gave Sulu possibly his best moment in the entire 6-film series.

 

[DWF]

Shatner hadn't officially written for Kirk, but he was undeniably part of the creative process during the making of TOS and the movies.

According to Shatner's Trek Movie Memories, Kirk's death was an arbitrary plot device and he had to ask for the writers to flesh out his character a bit more since Kirk was there basically to die and that's it. (Which makes Kirk's death sound like a gimmick to get people in the theater rather than a natural fabric of the story the way Spock's death felt.)

Shatner was also asked if he wanted Kirk to die in Gernerations and he agreed to it. And it wasn't general knowledge that Kirk was going to die in the movie so it was't a gimmick no matter how it felt.

 

[EnriqueH]

Not sure what your point is, but actually, Shatner said the writing team threw out Kirk dying and that Kirk dying became a plot point of the film before it was fleshed out into a story. Not sure if that's accurate, but the writing team was not successful in making it a worthwhile end for the character. It felt arbitrary and tacked on, unlike Spock's death which flowed naturally from the story and its thematic elements. I think you'll find that's the consensus opinion.

 

[eyeresist]

Another alternative would be to somehow connect the two segments together better than they are. Something like a "Yesterday's Enterprise" type scenario, with the Ent-B and the Ent-D meeting each other in the threshold of the Nexus? Something more dramatic than "The Two Captains Make An Omelette Together In A Log Cabin", anyway.

Y'know, listening to the writers commentary for GEN will really answer a lot of your issues on this. They point to the Nexus as being the crucial bit of the script that they never got to grips with, and they said they really wanted Kirk Vs. Picard on the bridges of their respective ships, but couldn't figure a way to do it. You'll be glad to hear they also mock the egg-making scene

That's one thing I will agree with you on. Give me Nemesis over Insurrection any day of the week.

I'll third that notion. I expect the debate about which is "worse" is one that could run and run, but I'd certainly put my support behind Nemesis over Insurrection if I had to cast my vote one way or the other.

I wonder if part of the problem for Nemesis is that people tend to watch it after going through all the movies, i.e. they just had to sit through INS, which would put anyone in a sour mood.

I also credit the success of the movies, particularly II-IV, mainly to the guiding hand of Harve Bennett, who had clearly done his homework prior to filming TWOK, and who knew how to take artistic contributions and used it to form the films.

I agree - there's a lot of talk about various writer/producers who worked from TNG on, but Bennett did such solid work on II-IV. I'd fault him on a couple of plot directions, but overall his writing was really solid and responsible for much of what we love about that period. It's a shame he seemed to be a bit worn out after that initial burst, and wasn't quite so firm on the tiller for V-VI.

 

[johnjm22]

After reading through this thread, I went back and decided to re-watch Generations. (I hadn't seen it in many years, and forgot much of it. It was almost like watching it again for the first time). My initial reactions:

-When the movie is winding down to a close, you get this feeling like "That's it!?" The whole thing just feels sort of pointless. You don't get any real sense of meaning or closure out of it.

-There's a lot of generic aspects to the film. The score. The explosions on the bridge. The action sequences intercut with cliche imagery of bolts loosening and chains breaking.

-Soran's motivation is weak and uninteresting. For all the talk about how great and seductive the Nexus is, it seems pretty underwhelming when Picard and Kirk are in it.

-Data has always been one of, if not the most popular and interesting characters in TNG. The emotion chip robs us of this character, and in doing so, weakens the entire cast and the film. I'm sure Data experiencing emotions could have been written in a more intriguing way, but here it's rushed, and Data's character feels extremely forced and uneven through out.

TNG had been on for 7 seasons before the films were made, and by that time I think it was already running low on gas. There wasn't much left in the tank for the films.

 

[Smellmet]

I wonder if part of the problem for Nemesis is that people tend to watch it after going through all the movies, i.e. they just had to sit through INS, which would put anyone in a sour mood.

No I just think it's a vastly more exciting and entertaining movie in just about every respect but that's a debate for another thread.