One does have to admire Star Trek: Generations and what it tries to do. In short, it is given the difficult task of having to bring closure in two ways: 1. Closure for the character of Kirk, who's been around since the beginning of all Star Trek, and 2. Closure for the TNG series, which had just wrapped, and now had to destroy their Enterprise-D set before moving to further adventures. For the most part, you have a success until the last act.
We start with a prologue with Kirk, Scotty, and Chekov which is well done, plus it's nice too see Alan Ruck show up. Kirk acts a little different than he does in the TOS movies (more on that later). There is then a clever transition to 80 years later, aboard the holodeck. For the next hour and a half, you have a great ST movie. All the TNG cast is there and Riker, Troi, Crusher, and Whoopi Goldberg are all GIVEN SOMETHING TO DO (this became a problem in the later movies, which focused on Picard and Data, and the rest of the gang felt tacked on). The story is solid, there're moments of humor, philosophical ideas behind the Nexus, and Malcolm McDowell plays a nice villain; he doesn't have much screen time, but is still well acted and had a great backstory.
Where the film starts to falter is when Kirk and Picard meet side by side. The scenes fall flat for several reasons: 1. The idea of the two of them meeting sounds great in theory and may excite fans, but the truth is that they're very different characters, don't really have the best chemistry or make all that great a team. 2. The premise of the Nexus starts to seem contrived, just a plausible explanation so both characters can meet, and it raises more questions than anything else. 3. The biggest problem of all is that Shatner never seems to fully get into the character of Kirk. He plays him as just a character making one-liners, winking at the camera; he knows he's just making an extended cameo. This may really be the fault of the script's; Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga had written for TNG and had never written Kirk's character before. That leads into the ending...
MAJOR SPOILER! Others have said so before me: the emotional impact of Kirk's death is somewhat lost because he is a supporting character in this story, and we do not see him grow very much. This is not to say it's all bad; I do very much like the idea that Picard is the only witness to his predecessor's death.
And that's Generations pretty much. Great film right up till the end. One Final Note: it's become a well-known story that Brent Spiner hates cats and when filming the scene when Data is reunited with his cat, he remarked "Does it have to be the cat? Couldn't he find Geordi?" Frankly, I think that would've worked MUCH BETTER, and been a great redemption for Data. Shame they didn't follow his advice.
The result is a good ST film, but not as great as the classics in the series: 2, 4, 6, and 8.
We start with a prologue with Kirk, Scotty, and Chekov which is well done, plus it's nice too see Alan Ruck show up. Kirk acts a little different than he does in the TOS movies (more on that later). There is then a clever transition to 80 years later, aboard the holodeck. For the next hour and a half, you have a great ST movie. All the TNG cast is there and Riker, Troi, Crusher, and Whoopi Goldberg are all GIVEN SOMETHING TO DO (this became a problem in the later movies, which focused on Picard and Data, and the rest of the gang felt tacked on). The story is solid, there're moments of humor, philosophical ideas behind the Nexus, and Malcolm McDowell plays a nice villain; he doesn't have much screen time, but is still well acted and had a great backstory.
Where the film starts to falter is when Kirk and Picard meet side by side. The scenes fall flat for several reasons: 1. The idea of the two of them meeting sounds great in theory and may excite fans, but the truth is that they're very different characters, don't really have the best chemistry or make all that great a team. 2. The premise of the Nexus starts to seem contrived, just a plausible explanation so both characters can meet, and it raises more questions than anything else. 3. The biggest problem of all is that Shatner never seems to fully get into the character of Kirk. He plays him as just a character making one-liners, winking at the camera; he knows he's just making an extended cameo. This may really be the fault of the script's; Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga had written for TNG and had never written Kirk's character before. That leads into the ending...
MAJOR SPOILER! Others have said so before me: the emotional impact of Kirk's death is somewhat lost because he is a supporting character in this story, and we do not see him grow very much. This is not to say it's all bad; I do very much like the idea that Picard is the only witness to his predecessor's death.
And that's Generations pretty much. Great film right up till the end. One Final Note: it's become a well-known story that Brent Spiner hates cats and when filming the scene when Data is reunited with his cat, he remarked "Does it have to be the cat? Couldn't he find Geordi?" Frankly, I think that would've worked MUCH BETTER, and been a great redemption for Data. Shame they didn't follow his advice.
The result is a good ST film, but not as great as the classics in the series: 2, 4, 6, and 8.