February 27, 2013

Star Trek: Generations



Star Trek: Generations, 1994. A desperate man is willing to kill millions in order to return to a magical timeless joy vortex.

Directed by David Carson. Written by Ronald D. Moore & Brannon Braga; story by Rick Berman, Moore & Braga, based on a TV show by Gene Roddenberry. Starring Patrick Stewart.

Concept: 3/4 (Good)
Story: 1/4 (Bad). Some plot holes, and lots of half-assed writing. But at least it's a type of story that hadn't already been done in a Star Trek movie.
Characters: 1/4 (Bad). The biggest problem with this movie (and that's really saying something - there are some huge problems with this movie) is the gross mishandling of the characters. They introduce at least a dozen characters in the movie (not counting the three original series characters), as if it were the pilot to a new TV show. If they had done all of those introductions right, the movie would have been two hours long before it even got started. Even as it is, there's no time left for what might otherwise have been an interesting villain to do anything more than push the occasional Destroy Solar System button. Meanwhile Kirk shows up just for the sake of being in the movie, doing nothing relevant to the story. And then there's Data... In a lot of ways his character is the heart and soul of TNG, but this movie takes seven years of development and wedges it, along with a neat-and-tidy resolution to his entire character arc, into less than 10 minutes of gratuitous comic relief.
Dialog: 2/4 (Indifferent)
Pacing: 2/4 (Indifferent)
Cinematography: 3/4 (Good). There are some valiant attempts (mostly involving turning off all of the Enterprise's interior lights) to make a 1980's TV set not look awful on film.
Special effects/design: 2/4 (Indifferent)
Acting: 2/4 (Indifferent)
Music: 2/4 (Indifferent)
Subjective Rating: 6/10 (Okay, 2/4). It's made of disappointment. The control and writing was in the hands of television producers, and they clearly treated it with the same weight as an episode of one their shows. But if you go in with low expectations, it's still reasonably entertaining. Better than a lot of TNG episodes, worse than the average TOS/TNG cross-over episode.
Objective Rating (Average): 2.0/4 (Indifferent)

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