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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
 Posted - 02/28/2007 : 8:45:31 PM
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Sorry to start a new thread in the middle of the discussion, but the first thread was getting pretty slow to come up.
This particular post might seem even sloppier than usual. Please bear with me, because this part of the movie is similarly sloppy, and I literally don’t know where to begin in describing everything from one thought to the next.
Picard stares at the Christmas tree. A futuristic Christmas ornament that has a pulsing glow at the center. Picard’s semi-blissful expression falls. Looking out the window, he sees another tree with another similar ornament, and he realizes that “This isn’t real.” Even allowing for the fact that he was already aware of the Nexus and what it does, it’s still comes off as abrupt that he so easily figures out that this isn’t real.
Out of nowhere, Guinan appears. Greeeaaat. Your own private fantasies come to life, and a sanctimonious pest comes barging into it. If I’m ever livin’ it up in the Nexus, and someone did that to me, I’d be like, “G’tha f*k outta here!”
Picard is gracious, though. He asks what this is and what he’s doing here and what’s she doing here. She ever-so-calmly tells him that he is in the Nexus, this is his private fantasy, and that the Guinan who is here is really just an echo of the flesh-and-blood Guinan who just got blown to pieces along with everyone else on the Enterprise.
By the writers’ own admissions (and this is where they start beating themselves up over it), the whole Nexus idea is filled with holes. Echo-of-Guinan is one of them. If she is a residual of the Guinan who entered the Nexus 78 years ago, then how does she recognize Picard now? The only way that’s possible is if people in the Nexus can still monitor events in the real universe. Also, if she’s in the Nexus, shouldn’t she be off living her own fantasies instead of barging into other folks’ fantasies? Unless barging into other folks’ fantasies is her fantasy, and that I can buy.
His mental dick having gone totally limp at the site of Guinan, Picard gives a last look at not-really Rene, and tells Guinan that he wants to leave. This makes Guinan’s earlier claim that once in the Nexus, you’ll never want to leave seem like a bit of an exaggeration. For a place so seductive, Picard sure didn’t take much time to walk away from it. Guinan says that she can’t help, but knows someone who can, “and from his point of view, he just got here, too.”
Hang on a sec. If time has no meaning in the Nexus, like Guinan and Soran say it doesn’t, then how does Guinan know that Kirk just got there? Couldn’t Picard visit Kirk at a point in Kirk-time in which Kirk has been there long enough to have a handle on what’s happened to him?
For that matter…how does Guinan know that Kirk is there at all? She never saw him on Enterprise-B, and unless she was watching the TV station covering the maiden voyage of Enterprise-B, how would she know Kirk was onboard? The only possible answer is that Guinan really does like to pry into other people’s fantasies!
On top of that, and as I noted before, Guinan shouldn't even recognize Picard.
Cut to a log cabin somewhere in the Rockies, where a tree-obscured man chops logs. Picard, having teleported into this fantasy, stops in awe as he recognizes “Kirk! James T. Kirk!” So folks can just wander in and out of other people’s fantasies at will here. No privacy. This Nexus sucks.
But Trekkies must’ve been feeling that they themselves had entered a Nexus, as this is what they’ve been waiting for for years: Captains Kirk and Picard, together!
Initially, Kirk isn’t even paying attention to Picard other than to ask him to set up a small log for Kirk to chop. Picard sets a log on the chopping stump, then stands at the worst possible ankle to stand when someone’s chopping wood: Straight in front of him. When I was 5 or 6, my father gave me a major-league cuss-out for doing that. If the ax should slip out of Kirk’s grip, it’s gonna go straight at Picard.
Kirk goes inside to see what’s burning. He deals with the burnt eggs and invites Picard in. Kirk says that it was his house, but “I sold this house years ago.”
At this point, a yellow flag was thrown at the foot of my TV hutch. A dude in a football ref’s jersey marched into the room and said, “During the movie, we have a personal foul. Unscriptsmanlike conduct. Franchise continuity error. Repeat the movie from the spot of the foul.” Then he swing his right arm in a circular motion, and disappeared in the direction he came.
The ref was correct. Kirk says that he sold the house, but both TOS and TNG had said before that money doesn’t exist anymore and that nobody does anything for profit anymore. So inadvertently or otherwise, the Trek franchise was finally acknowledging the implausibility of money not existing in a society that can span out across the galaxy.
Picard introduces himself as captain of the Enterprise. Kirk looks shocked, but it turns out it’s the clock on the mantle that he had given to Bones that Kirk’s shocked at. Kirk is glad to see his dog Butler, but baffled that Butler is there, as the dog has been dead seven years. Hearing a lady’s voice from upstairs, Kirk realizes that this is the day in his past that he told Antonia that he was going back to Starfleet.
Timeline: With the exception of Treks II-II-IV-V, the Trek movies didn’t bother mentioning the passage of time between films. That’s okay, because they didn’t need to. The novelization of The Undiscovered Country had the story taking place a decade after The Final Frontier. This would put the event that Kirk’s reliving now as not long after The Final Frontier. This is just fine. Still, since we know nothing about Antonia, and our favorite Trek movie was the one with Carol Marcus, it leaves us with no interest in this particular aspect of Kirk’s past.
Kirk, though, seems to like it. As Picard tries to explain what’s happened to him, Kirk makes eggs, asking Picard to get the dillweed, which is on the second shelf on the left, behind the oregano. Kirk remembers the exact placement of the dillweed in relation to the oregano in a house that he sold years ago?
Picard explains the situation, but Kirk just ain’t interested. He doesn’t mind history considering him dead, because he’s gonna live his life the way he now feels he should’ve the first time around. I like the contrast here: Picard’s all ordah and duty, Kirk’s totally yeah-whatever about it. I like it. Picard doesn’t though, because after Kirk tells him off, he turns away to sulk. Kirk says that he was all ordah-and-duty, too, and all it got him was an empty house. Kirk’s verdict: “Not this time.” Props to the movie for letting the audience recognize the similarity between Kirk’s empty-house status and Picard’s own instead of spelling it out for us.
Kirk goes upstairs and into the bedroom. Picard follows, pauses at the bedroom door, then enters. Picard is saved from some severe Kirk-Fu by the bedroom turning out to be actually the stable. Kirk is thrilled, saying that this his uncle’s barn in Idaho and that this is the day he met Antonia. He gleefully saddles up and rides out, intent on “doing things right from day one.” Picard follows.
Uh…..I have a hard time buying Kirk’s continued enthusiasm. For two reasons:
1. This may sound juvenile, but when you were a teenager, did you ever have those dreams in your sleep that the girl you were hot for would give it up for you if you’d go do one thing for her first? And you’d go to do the one thing, only to find one complication after another keeping you from doing it? And just as you were about to finally get it done, you woke up? That’s what this scene reminds me of. He was at the critical point in his life where he was to make his decision for Antonia, and suddenly he’s yanked a couple years earlier.
2. After being thrust from the Enterprise-B into the past, he’s thrust again further back into the past. He’s gotta be wondering if this isn’t a pattern. Maybe he’ll keep going one step further back into the past until infanthood, and what then? The yellow-shirted real-haired James T. Kirk would've figured the whole mystery out by now.
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Edited by - Food on 02/28/2007 9:00:56 PM
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BradH812
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1294 Posts |
Posted - 02/28/2007 : 10:00:26 PM
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quote:
Hearing a lady’s voice from upstairs, Kirk realizes that this is the day in his past that he told Antonia that he was going back to Starfleet.
(snip snip snip)
Still, since we know nothing about Antonia, and our favorite Trek movie was the one with Carol Marcus, it leaves us with no interest in this particular aspect of Kirk’s past.
Sorry to be such a buttinsky, but this was yet another part of this movie that cheesed me off. First off, you're absolutely right about Antonia-the-mystery-love-interest. Second, what a missed opportunity! Can you imagine the smiles on Trekkies' faces if Kirk had said this was the day he told CAROL he was returning to Starfleet? It'd've been nice continuity, it'd be a knowing wink to the fans, it would say — very simply and subtly — that Kirk and Carol did indeed rekindle their relationship (at least for a while). Hell, it'd just be cool.
I kinda enjoyed Generations when it first came out, but I felt unsatisfied at the end of it. Saw parts of it again on TV not too long ago, and I felt myself getting angry, thinking that this Trek outing could have been really special (a la Wrath of Khan), and it wasn't. |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 03/01/2007 : 9:58:59 PM
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Kirk gallops off into the beautiful hills that don’t look a damn bit like Idaho. It really is beautiful in the aerial shot, I could look at it all day. It’s somewhere in Southern California, maybe Shatner’s own ranch, I dunno. But it ain’t Idaho. I wish it was. I did most of my growing up in Spokane, near the Washington-Idaho border, and IMO, it’s the most beautiful scenery on earth.
The horse approaches a small stream gulch and leaps over it in dramatic slo-mo. Kirk brings his steed to a halt, looks in puzzlement at the gulch, and rides back to leap over it again. Picard catches up on his own horse. Kirk says that he’s made that jump 50 times, and it always scared the hell out of him. This time, it didn’t. And just like that, he now understands that this isn’t real.
That’s a pretty sloppy manner of disillusioning him from the Nexus. Finding himself at a house he sold years ago doesn’t do it; being greeted by his long-dead pooch doesn’t do it; teleporting from the bedroom to the stable doesn’t do it; having Picard tell him in plain English doesn’t do it; but not feeling afraid to do something that he’s already done 50 times before does. It just feels like the writers were in a mood and didn’t feel like bothering with it.
A distant shot of Antonia on a horse is met with disappointment. Kirk no longer believes in her illusion. The audience never did for a start.
Kirk’s about-face gets even more extreme (perhaps not coincidentally, his horse does a literal about-face as Kirk speaks). He says that maybe it’s not about an empty house, but an empty captain’s chair on a starship. THAT didn’t take long. Guess Antonia must not’ve been so hot, after all. Kirk finally starts paying full attention to Picard. He lectures Picard about never accepting promotion or transfer (In real life, this is totally implausible), and that as a starship captain, he can make a difference. Picard implores him to “make a difference again.” Kirk is game for it, and without any more discussion, they ride back into the real universe.
“Make a difference.” On The Undiscovered Country commentary track, Nicholas Meyer says that when he watched the original episodes to prep for directing The Wrath of Khan, all he saw was Kirk going to a planet, not liking how things were run, changing everything to be more to his liking, and then leaving. **shrug** That’s about the size of it. Granted, sometimes this was understandable, but other times it wasn’t. The episode where Kirk goes to a planet engaged in simulated world war with declared casualties voluntarily entering disintegration chambers, for example. Did Kirk really make a positive difference by destroying the simulators, thus forcing the people to fight their wars for real, with real architectural and environmental damage, and real involuntary deaths? I don’t think so.
And Picard’s difference-making resume isn’t perfect, either. The episode with Paul Sorvino, where Picard literally lets a planet’s population die just to avoid violating the Prime Directive, and is subsequently furious to find that Sorvino, who was a resident of the planet, took action to prevent Picard’s genocide-by-indifference?
What’s my point of the last two paragraphs? That “make a difference again” is simply too vague and open to interpretation to sufficiently motivate Kirk to go with Picard. Earlier in the scene, Picard says that “millions of lives are at stake” in the Veridian system. That’s all Kirk knows about it. If Kirk is dead-set on leaving the Nexus, why would he want to go to the 24th century with Picard to prevent a future tragedy that he knows and cares nothing about, instead of returning to his own time and making a difference there, where all his friends are?
For that matter, how did Picard talk Kirk into returning to Picard’s time and not Kirk’s?
And I just thought of another franchise continuity error: Remember the TNG episode where Scotty makes a guest appearance? Upon being revived in the 24th century, Scotty says, “I’ll bet Captain Kirk himself came to rescue me.” But in this scene, Picard says that history records Kirk died on the maiden voyage of Enterprise-B. So Kirk was already “dead” when Scotty left on the cruise that eventually took him into the 24th century. He shouldn’t be expecting Kirk to rescue him. A Trek novel that Shatner wrote…I can’t remember the name of it…Legends? Is that it?…about the resurrection of Kirk gives a fairly good explanation of this, but still.
Okay. Enough of that.
After a shot of the Enterprise re-enacting its crash into the planet, Kirk and Picard exit the Nexus. Everybody already knows how silly it is that Picard chose this particular time to enter instead of sometime further in the past, like when they first met Soran, or when Enterprise-B encountered Soran? Because it’s not dramatic enough.
Sandwiched between Kirk and Picard, Soran flees. Picard goes to do the easy part, leaving Kirk to do the manly stuff. The shots of Kirk waddling after the slender and lithe Soran made Malcolm McDowell (or his stunt double, I can’t tell) look pretty impressive. Soran gets Kirk at gunpoint, Picard intervenes, and McDowell flattens his ass and sends him tumbling down the rocks for the third time in this movie. Tea, Earl Grey, Hot.
Kirk and Soran brawl, and Kirk sends him off the cliff face. Soran’s rope saves him, although smashing his back on the rocks couldn’t’ve felt good for the stunt man. Ouch! Soran hits his remote to render the launcher invisible. He drops the remote, and it lands on a bridge. Kirk goes to get it, but Soran blasts the bridge in half, with the remote on the other half. Picard cheesily saves Kirk from plummeting to his death.
Seeing the Nexus up in the sky, Picard says that they’ve got to get the remote. I guess the launcher is set to automatically launch, because otherwise, all they really have to do is keep Soran from getting the remote, and the Nexus will pass harmlessly though the system.
Kirk tells Picard to go do the easy stuff while he gets the remote. He tosses a “Call me Jim” over his shoulder, and Picard gets a look on his face like he’s just received a benediction.
Kirk inches out and down his broken half of the bridge while bolts pop and chain links stretch. Ooo, tension. He gets to the edge of the bridge, which looks to be about six feet from the other half. A dramatic pause, a dramatic lonely trumpet, and a beautiful fanfare as Kirk manages to leap the whole six feet to the other half of the bridge.
I inwardly wince upon seeing this, because making that leap does not seem like a difficult feat for anybody other than a pudgy waddling 60-year-old. So when I watch this, I try to forget his fight with Kruge in The Search For Spock or his swim in The Voyage Home.
He grabs the remote and re-visibles the launcher. The bolts holding the bridge up finally give, and Kirk goes plummeting to his eventual death.
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 03/03/2007 : 4:08:31 PM
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Soran rushes back to the launcher, where Picard has been pushing buttons while Kirk was doing the hard stuff and getting himself killed. Soran shouts at Picard to get away from the launcher. Picard runs for his life. Soran reclaims the launcher, only to find that Picard has engaged the locking clamps. Close-up of Soran’s oh-poopie expression, and the whole thing explodes in a huge fireball. Disproportionately huge. Moore and Braga say it was deliberately disproportionate.
Waitaminit. Picard engaged the locking clamps, so how does that make the missile explode? Did Soran try to launch the thing and the clamps held it in place? Then that’s a pretty lousy mechanism. A modern-day parallel would be a microwave oven that can start with the door open. Was the missile already timed to launch, and the clamps held it in place? Same answer, that’s a lousy mechanism. Does Soran not know how to disengage the locking clamps? Sloppy!
Picard scrambles down the slope to the wrecked bridge and finds Kirk doing the standard Death Mouth-Bleed. His Death Speech:
Kirk: Did we make a difference?
Picard: Oh yes. We made a difference. Thank you.
Kirk: It’s the least I can do…for the captain of the Enterprise….It was….fun…..Oh my…..
His eyes glaze over, and I believe the camera freezes to create the illusion of death.
Moore and Braga state that they didn’t want him to die on the bridge of a starship because that would’ve been cliché, so they got clever and had him die on a literal bridge. They acknowledge that although they didn’t want to follow a predictable pattern and wanted to do something different, they probably should’ve stuck to cliché on this one. I agree with that, but I don’t fault them too much. I submit that there is no way to kill Kirk that Trekkies would generally consider satisfying. Having him die on a collapsed bridge is sufficiently different, and conceptually, it’s not goofy, either.
I see two errors in this manner of killing off Kirk:
1. Pre-death speech. Spock’s packed an emotional punch, partly because Nimoy is a good actor, and partly because his injuries were portrayed more harshly than Death Mouth-Blood and far more harshly than Star Trek has ever portrayed death before or since. Kirk’s speech is pretty standard, the mouth-blood is standard, and most importantly, we never knew or cared anything about the people he was saving. AND NEITHER DID HE.
2. His death means that the only extended dialogue between him and Picard (i.e. the reason this movie was made in the first place) consisted of Picard’s appeals for help being met with Kirk’s disoriented indifference while the two of them fried eggs. Kirk never saw the Enterprise-D, never discussed strategy, didn’t have an reaction at seeing a Klingon on the Enterprise’s senior staff, never swapped sea tales about womanizing with Riker. Hell, Picard never even got to tell him that Scotty was still alive.
The exact words of Kirk’s speech are actually pretty good, though. “It was fun” is totally in character, far more so than the “make a difference” bit from earlier. If Kirk is gonna die while being a thrillseeker and saving everybody, I can’t think of a better line to end it with. “Oh my” is a nice touch, too. He’s….seeing something or experiencing something as he departs this plane of existence. I understand that this isn’t all that uncommon in the real world. Whether what he’s seeing is pleasant or unpleasant, we’ll never know. Rather, we will know, but we won’t be able to share our findings when we do.
So I like the words themselves.
Cut to a few hours later, sunset. Picard has fashioned a tomb of sorts by crushing Kirk’s body under a bunch of rocks. Close up of Picard’s hand laying the Enterprise insignia on top of the pile. This is very nice. Picard stares down at the grave in mournful respect.* A long spiraling aerial shot of Picard and grave (Stewart’s stunt-double, say the writers, because it was a hell of a long climb just to get one aerial shot) is also very sweet. I can imagine Kleenex were being passed around copiously in the theater. This is very well-done.
* - This is a bit tangential, but the TNG’s next movie would call my attention to this. Picard knew of Kirk only by what history taught of him. He had never met Kirk, and regardless of the information-storage capabilities that exist in the 24th Century, history will distort as history has always done; sometimes with deliberation and belligerence, others times by pure accident that can’t be blamed on anything other than unconscious collective human nature. Picard all-too-brief meeting with the actual James T. Kirk didn’t really reveal much about Kirk other than that Kirk really is every bit the swashbuckler that history has made….actually, we don’t know exactly how 24th Century history has made Kirk out, do we? For all we know, Kirk may be remembered by 24th Century historians totally different that how he really was. Given the PC Orthodoxy that runs throughout TNG, I wouldn’t find it unlikely that certain aspects of Kirk have been glossed over and distorted beyond recognition. Why do I mention this? Because that’s a running subplot throughout the Earth scenes in First Contact. The whole point of Zephram Cochrane’s sex-drugs-and-rock’n’roll persona is to demonstrate that history can easily get it wrong. So while having Picard at Kirk’s grave is nice (one Enterprise captain to another, why not?), it’d’ve been far better had someone who actually knew the real Kirk been there. James Doohan is in this movie, and Scotty is still alive in the TNG universe. Missed opportunity, big time!
The next day (because the sun is almost directly overhead, judging by the shadows), a shuttle arrives to pick up Picard. He makes a voice-over log entry as the shuttle arrives the wreckage of Enterprise, as crewpeople scurry like ants over her surface. This is a cool little shot. Picard says that casualties were light, but the ship itself cannot be salvaged.
Anal blood. “Casualties were light?!?” How so? Let’s assume that every person was able to evacuate from the aft section before is exploded. With the saucer section now containing over a thousand people, I don’t see how casualties couldn’t be at least moderate, and more likely severe. The Enterprise skidded for a looooong time on the surface of the planet. We know, because we saw a long shot when it came to rest, and there was a huge trail behind it. The lower decks of the saucer section must’ve been crushed. And given how few deaths constitute heavy losses on the TV series (Remember what Q and Picard had to say to each other about the 19 deaths at the first Borg encounter?), I can’t imagine that “casualties were light.” No way.
Time for a typical TNG epilogue. Data and Troi discuss Data’s emotion chip. He says he controls his emotions now, not vice-versa. As expected, Data proves himself wrong less than a minute later when Spot kitty is found alive amidst the rubble. Data weeps with joy (I was surprised to hear that Brent Spiner actually hates cats and hated doing scenes with Spot).
Picard and Riker rummage through the Ready Room and find Picard’s family photo album. They lament the loss of Enterprise, and Picard waxes philosophical about time being not the hunter that Soran described, but a companion that carries us along life’s way. Riker says that he always wanted a shot at the Enterprise captain’s chair. Picard says he might yet get it, and informs the audience through Riker that if this movie does well enough, there’ll be new Enterprise in the next sequel. The two of them beam up (once again, the beam-up happens literally one second after Picard orders it), leaving us one clear shot of the totally wrecked Enterprise bridge. Cut to outer space. We see three ships, a Grissom from The Search For Spock, a Reliant from Wrath of Khan, and a TNG variation of Reliant drift past us and warp away. Roll credits.
Moore and Braga say that that final shot of the ships was an error, and that it would’ve been better to roll credits once Picard and Riker beam off of the wrecked bridge. I can see how that would’ve been a very nice and neat ending to the movie, but I think having our last shot of the movie be a wrecked Enterprise bridge would’ve been precisely the wrong image to leave us with. “All right! We destroyed the Enterprise!” And given the relative low quality of this movie compared to previous six, the image would’ve led cynics to conclude that yeah, a wrecked bridge really does sum it up, doesn’t it?
That’s about all feel like saying about Star Trek: Generations, except for one bothersome item: Picard’s reaction to the destruction of his ship. Picard doesn’t seem to be the least bit miffed at Riker, when by all rights, he should be red-blooded furious at him. Picard had no idea the Enterprise had been destroyed until he got there, or at the very earliest when he was en route to the ex-Enterprise by shuttle. That means that he left the Enterprise in one piece, and while he was away, a 20-year-old Klingon ship whose firepower Picard was dismissive of blasted its ass end off, Riker let his girlfriend take the wheel, and she promptly crashed it into a planet. I cannot imagine any circumstances under which Picard wouldn’t be screaming red-faced at Riker. Instead, here’s Picard jovially saying that maybe Riker will get a shot at the captain’s chair yet.
NO.
F**KIN’.
WAY.
End of dissection. Thank you.
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twitterpate
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Canada
1026 Posts |
Posted - 03/12/2007 : 10:03:37 PM
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| Food, this was EXCELLENT! Right up with the best of Ken's, this looks at a not horrible, not brilliant movie, and really, as you say, dissects what works and what doesn't work. A more challenging, and sometimes more rewarding job, then picking on some hapless b-movie or fill-in-the-blanks actioner. I think this review really hits some of the points of why so many of us love Trek, and yet are so frustrated by the movie treatment of it. Thanks! |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
Posted - 03/13/2007 : 12:34:15 AM
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Thank you kindly, twitterpate! I had a great time with this and the PotA movie for precisely the reason you said: Not-great/not-horrible movies are a fun challenge, especially sequels to beloved franchises.
Thanks again! |
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zombiewhacker
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1475 Posts |
Posted - 04/06/2007 : 02:09:41 AM
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| I hated the entire concept of this movie top-to-bottom, starting with this whole business of the Nexus. Surely they could have come up with an easier excuse for the two captains to meet up for the first time. And Food, you hit it right on every missed opportunity: no scene where Kirk walks the new Enterprise, meets a Klingon tactical officer, etc. Personally, I would have kept the Klingons alive until the last reel, rather than killing them halfway through. Then I would have had the Enterprise saucer separate. Picard et al would flight the saucer to safety. Then Kirk would stay aboard the battle bridge and have one final standoff with Klingon baddies. Oh, well. (Need I mention the TNG episode "Unification Pt. 1 and 2" was an equally squandered opportunity with Spock?) |
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Star Trek: Generations, part 2
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