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Reviews
Star Trek: Generations (1994)
'Generations' Revisited
I was for some reason compelled to put this into the old DVD player last night, and was pleasantly surprised. After 2009's big-budget reboot (which I was duly dazzled and entertained by), this comes off as a think piece/art film in comparison, and a time capsule from a period where 'Star Trek' was everything Gene Roddenberry wanted it to be- cerebral, compassionate, and thoughtful- and people were eating it up by the millions.
I recall being thoroughly underwhelmed by this in the late 90's- my younger self, like many others, was expecting a bombastic 'Event' movie- Kirk was meeting Picard, for crying out loud! But instead of a ripping, old-style Star Trek space opera, we got K&P meeting in a log cabin, while Kirk made breakfast, followed by an extended pony ride in which Kirk's character does little but support the story's themes of mortality. And you know what? That's FINE!
I recalled Roger Ebert's review of the second 'X-Files' movie, in which he called it refreshing, adding that it was heartening to see a summer franchise film that "didn't have a villain as big as a building". 'Generations' doesn't have a villain at all- it has an energy ribbon, and a scientist who desperately wants to harness that ribbon's power after a personal tragedy. What it does have are several indelible sci-fi images (the ribbon approaching Dr. Soran on the mountaintop, the Enterprise-D saucer touching down on a planet's surface) and an abundance of class. This is a gem of a film that now seems to hearken from an era when every genre film didn't have to be shown on a three-storey screen and have 3-D shrapnel flying at the audience throughout.
Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
Fine representation of TNG; weak production
"Insurrection" stands as a fine demonstration of the Star Trek storytelling that evolved post Kirk and Spock, with a subject matter that has been sparking discussion ever since its release. The script, often overlooked, is likely the most complex in scope of any of the feature films in this franchise, but lacks the production values of many of the previous films. It falls victim to the curse of the computer generated image- the effects, especially on the small screen, don't differ from anything presented on 'Voyager' or 'Enterprise'. I much prefer the physical models floating around in pursuit of each other in 'The Wrath of Khan' than the generic look of the effects in 'Insurrection'- much in the same way I'd rather see Peter Mayhew in a Wookiee costume than a pixel-generated Jar Jar Binks. In addition, there have been many complaints that this is nothing more than an extended episode, and this is somewhat true. The characters and situations don't expand to fill the big screen in the "space opera" way they did in "First Contact", "Wrath of Khan", or even "Search for Spock". I was thrilled to see this crew upgraded to true movie heroes in "FC"; here they return a bit to their small-screen roots, probably due to the film's different writer. Overall, though, this remains a fine couple of hours of what has become the new classic standard for "Star Trek".