Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Star Trek: The Next Generation Movies (Part 2)

My bullet point perspective look at the Next Generation movies concludes with the last two.




If you missed it, read Part 1 HERE

STAR TREK INSURRECTION

-I remember absolutely nothing about this movie, so it's all new to me. I'm starting to wonder if I ever even saw it. I thought that I had seen all of the Star Trek movies a long time ago, but perhaps not.


-Picard: "This is my officer, counsellor Troi"

Guy: "I see! Perhaps you would like to join my hot wife and I for dinner and a menage et trois. She's a bit freaky, you see."


-That woman has great lips.
   
-Well, this is more like Star Trek: The Next Generation than the previous movies. Slower pace, less action, more cerebral stuff. Feels like your average two-parter in the show, really. Course, it still kicks into Movie-Mode halfway through with Data being all "Lock and load" while Picard opens boxes of assault rifles. Yeah. Great. Hollywood!, etc.

-I like how these movies basically have Worf drop in on everybody at the beginning like "yo! I was just in the area, not doing anything, let me join you". Then they carry on like Worf never left. In a way it sorta pimps DS9. At the same time, it feels like these movies are holding down DS9 and Voyager. Like "this is the real main event", or something like that. Maybe it's because the Sovereign class Enterprise-E is so much bigger and badder looking than the ships in those shows.

-The planet this movie transpires on is basically the Garden of Eden. Everyone on the planet is immortal due to the planet's regenerative properties, and everything there is perfect. Wow.

-Well, we can add Star Trek Insurrection to the list of movies that Avatar ripped off, inadvertently or not. Har.

-This movie is dark. And by that I mean it's literally very dark and hard to see a lot of the time. Huge parts of it take place at night or inside of a cave, and it's very hard to see during those parts.

-Troi to Beverly: "Have you noticed that your boobs have started to firm up?" I never thought I'd hear those words on anything TNG. Hollywood!

-Data to Worf: "Have you noticed that your boobs have started to firm up?" HAHAHAHAHA

-Data has a good conversation with the little kid midway through the movie. He'd gladly accept the restrictions of being a child in exchange for being a child. Yeah, this is more like TNG.

-Alright, now I see what the deal with Riker/Troi/Worf is... sort of. Riker and Troi finally get together in this epis... er... movie. But what about Worf? How did he and Troi just peter out? Did that happen off-camera between TNG and Worf's arrival in DS9 a couple years later? That's probably it.

-The TNG crew are all expert marksmen with battle rifles, as it turns out. Even Doctor Crusher. Movie-verse! Hollywood! Slan Quince!

-The good guys using the bad guys' holodeck trick against them at the end was great.

-I don't understand why the bad guys didn't just peacefully land somewhere on the Garden of Eden planet and spend their time there getting all regenerated. They could have done it easily enough since only 600 people lived on the whole thing. Well, who knows.

-Only real bad thing about this movie? The bad guy screeching when he realizes his plan is foiled. I'll never understand why movie-makers feel the need to have characters, particularly bad guys, howl when they're foiled or something happens that they're upset about. (Darth Vader in Revenge of the Sith, etc). Kirk going "KHAAAAAN" is the only time I can think of where a sudden howl in a movie wasn't awful. And that is debatable, even if it has become a cultural icon. I wonder if we'll have Kirk going "JOHHHHHHHN!" at some point in the new movie when John Harrison does something nefarious. (Editor's Note: Having now seen Into Darkness, all I can say is...heh)

-Liked this movie. Probably wouldn't watch it again, while I would watch First Contact again. That means First Contact is better, right? Well, it'd be more interesting on repeat viewings. Insurrection was more interesting in a single viewing because I had no idea what would happen and it felt more like TNG. So I liked it even if it wasn't the most replayable.


STAR TREK NEMESIS

-Here we are. The last one.

-Riker, once again, gets ignored on the cover/posters!

-Some of the letters in the title, as it is displayed in the movie, are backwards! Why? I don't know. Probably because someone thought it was badass.

-Riker and Troi are getting married. Well, that wraps up everything. I was expecting this to happen slowly over time during TNG, not all at once in the last two movies. I guess Whedon shows spoiled me with long-term developments over the course of a series.

-Wow, Janeway has a scene. She's an Admiral (and...is back in the quadrant) so this is clearly post-Voyager.

-It's about time the Romulans took center villain stage. Seems like they've been absent for a while, aside from whatever they did in DS9 which I haven't seen much of yet.


-Shinzon has a highly punchable face. NOTE: This little guy is Tom Hardy... the badass who would later play Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Whoaaaaa. Wait, seriously? Am I being trolled?

-This is the first time any TNG movie has the words "Tea, Earl Grey, hot". There wasn't much time in the others, what with all the laser rifle shootouts.

-Since I didn't see this when it was current, it's hard for me to differentiate between Shinzon and Nero (the bad guy in 2009's Star Trek). They're both bald guys with huge Romulan ships.

-This movie has great DVD art. I like the way Shinzon is in a sort of victory pose with a dagger held high. It's borderline iconic. Too bad the movie, and especially the character, don't live up to the promise of that image.


-Shinzon's suit is very Xenomorph-like in the torso, shoulders, and arms.

-While it was largely panned, I like this movie. As a villain-thusiast, I like the villain as well, but I do think he could have been a lot more interesting. He lacked depth. One thing that particularly hurts Shinzon is that he's a Picard clone. I'd have prefer he just be a Romulan. I don't mind that he's a bit over the top; so are most Trek bad guys.

-The only particularly bad thing about this movie, halfway through, is that the dialogue isn't very intelligent. Which might be attributable to Hollywood. This movie has some of the worst dialogue of any Trek movie.

-With all the action and shooting, this is reminding me of Mass Effect. Except Mass Effect doesn't have that many laser beams. One of the few things I dislike about Mass Effect is the inexplicable lack of lasers. We can warp thousands of light years but we still use bullets that run out? It's weird.

-If The Big Valbowski were the main character of Mass Effect, it'd be called... heh heh... Massive Effect.

-The Scimitar is a badass ship. It's basically a Super Bird of Prey.


-Enterprise-E Vs. Scimitar is probably the biggest ship-to-ship battle in the TNG canon, and just for that this movie is worth watching. It's a good way for the series to go out with a bang.

-Wrestling Reference 2: Shinzon reminds me of Randy Orton.

-Picard's conflict with Shinzon is interesting because he's essentially seeing a warped, dark version of himself.

  
-Picard on Data: "He evolved. He embraced change, because he always wanted to be better than he was." Good policy.

-Data's sacrifice at the end was a good note to go out on, and meant something. Clone Data still being around took away from things a little bit, but it gave us the humming scene at the end.

-Good movie. I liked all of these movies, though I can't say any of them are in the running for "best Star Trek" movie. Generations has a few really good scenes but is generally not what I'd consider a particularly good movie. First Contact has a very interesting premise and might be the most rewatchable of the group. Insurrection is imminently forgettable, but when treated as an episode of the show, it's a pretty decent one. Nemesis wins on action, with one of the best battles in the Star Trek canon. I don't get why Nemesis is so despised. Yeah, it has some major problems, but if you relax about it, it's a decent watch.


On a final note...

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