No more Captain Picard?

[jdavis]

Well I have not seen Nemisis so I will not comment on it. I will comment on every other Star Trek movie though.

"The Motion Picture": Was good because it was the first one, the plot was odd and it got a little silly at times but it had good links to the past series and flowed good.

"Wrath of Khan" : Great movie, wonderful action and tactical set ups, a pure war movie. The whole thing revolved around a two man grudge match. Rivals the original Star Wars movies for action and suspense.

"Search for Spock": A little goofy but flowed neatly from TWoK and told a good story. Wrapped up the loose ends of last movie and got into the personal side of the characters.

"Voyage Home": Gimmick movie, plain and simple. Part three of series started with TWoK, flowed from last movies well and worked well in it's gimmick. Entertaining but far from anything special.

"Final Frontier": What were they thinking? So very bad. They killed God with a Photon Torpedo and almost killed the property at the same time.

"Undiscovered Country": decent movie with everyone giving it their all but it was no masterpiece. There were some great moments in the movie but it had some real low points too. Entertaining but not really special, not a classic but a decent movie.

"Generations": Did anybody proofread that script? Plotholes galore. Why was Picard so uneffected by the Nexus? how was he able to shrug it off like a silly dream when it was supposed to be such a driving force for the villian? This movie had a real chance at being good but they blew it, Had some good moments but not enough for me to take the tape out of the shrink wrap and watch it again.

"First Contact": I really wanted to like this movie but once again it fell short. They tried really hard with this one but it felt like a two part episode of the series rather than a big budget movie. It was entertaining and Stewart was great but it lacked that special something that makes a movie a great movie.

"Insurrection": I hated this movie, the villains stank the story was crap and it just wasn't very good.

"Nemesis": I avoided this movie based on how the last three movies were a let down, I will probably rent it on video one day but it really only holds a passing interest for me.
__________________________________________________

It seems like the Star Trek property has become a mid-level throw them out and make some money property instead of a Big Blockbuster must see property. It's been a long while since I have felt that a Star Trek movie was a must see event and I think that's what is missing here, these are just glorified episodes of the series instead of "Event" movies. The early movies were event movies that people got excited about, but since the late 80's these movies just felt like they were thrown together to make some money, the Next Generation movies didn't even have a movie feel to them, they felt like episodes of the series. If they want to revive the property then they need to do something to make the property "must see" again.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Startrek Movies were never "event" movies.

Startrek 1 (which i think is very boring) is similar to the TOS Episode with the Robot/Probe/Artificial Intellince "Nomad".
Startrek 2 is once again a TOS episode - maybe two, the one where Khan is introduced and the other where Kirk fights a cloaked Romulan warship (space battle at its best)
Startrek 3 might be a bit more since a character died and now returns, but visiting a strange planet and having problems with some klingons isn`t so unusual for Startrek.
Startrek 4 was just a timetravel episode - all other series did that, sometimes in one, sometimes in 2 episodes.
Startrek 5 - the Enterprise is hijacked in flown to an unknown terretoriy - I remeber the story from an TOS episode. Maybe the "pirates" are guys from Andromeda, but...
Startrek 6 - The Babel Conference comes to mind as a TOS Reference, but it might have been more "event" like than any other movie, because it changed the relationship between the Federation and the Klingon Empire...

Maybe the movies are only "glorifed episodes", but maybe the episodes are "cut down" movies?

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[Orius]

Well I have not seen Nemisis so I will not comment on it. I will comment on every other Star Trek movie though.

"It seems like the Star Trek property has become a mid-level throw them out and make some money property instead of a Big Blockbuster must see property. It's been a long while since I have felt that a Star Trek movie was a must see event and I think that's what is missing here, these are just glorified episodes of the series instead of "Event" movies. The early movies were event movies that people got excited about, but since the late 80's these movies just felt like they were thrown together to make some money, the Next Generation movies didn't even have a movie feel to them, they felt like episodes of the series. If they want to revive the property then they need to do something to make the property "must see" again.

Well, I generally agree with your comments on the various movies. TWoK stands out at the top of the heap, because it's the most watchable of the movies. And even though the movies itself is about 20 years old, it still holds up pretty well. TUC is a pretty good movie too, although not a favorite of mine. FC is another one of my favorites, a solid action movie, which has the added treat of showing the first contact betweeen humans and Vulcans at the end.

At the other end are the horrors known as The Final Frontier, Generations, and Insurrection. TFF is a farcical comedy. It's got to be. There's no other logical explaination for the movie. Still, of the three worst, I find it to be the most watchable.

Generations is hands down my least favorite Trek movie. The storyline stinks, and they kill Kirk off. And he doesn't go out like a hero or something, he dies a pretty pathetic death. Yecchhh.

Insurrection is also pretty much unwatchable. A bunch of runaway kids come back to steal the Planet of Eternal Youth with the help of a rogue Starfleet admiral. That's basically the story in a nutshell. It's just a dumb movie that I find utterly boring.

I think too, that the earlier TOS movies did well because they were the only original Trek material available. Once you get past TVH, you had the modern Trek series airing, so the fans could get their regular fix more easily.

 

[Ranger REG]

Startrek Movies were never "event" movies.

I hope not. To try and make it more like Star Wars would make it less endearing to Roddenberry's vision of the future for earth (rather than a fictional planet we have yet to discover with the Hubble telescope).

 

[jdavis]

I hope not. To try and make it more like Star Wars would make it less endearing to Roddenberry's vision of the future for earth (rather than a fictional planet we have yet to discover with the Hubble telescope).

I meant by "Event Movie" the type of summer blockbusters we get every year around Memorial Day. Movies like Spiderman and LOTR are event movies, Star Trek movies are rather low budget fling 'em out for a quick buck movies, I am suprised some of them didn't go straight to video. They break no new ground they challenge nothing and they are never considered anything special. James Bond movies are event movies, they get people talking and they generate a lot of buzz, people get excited about these movies, the Star Trek franchise just generates average movies not blockbuster major events. If Roddenberry's vision of Star Trek was that it was a boring rehash done on a shoestring budget and thrown out to generate some cash from the diehard fans then that is right what he is getting, but I really thought they were supposed to be something special, the last movies were anything but special or unique. I was around when the first Star Trek movie came out and let me tell you it was definatly a event movie, it was pushed big time and a lot of effort went into getting the word out and creating a buzz about the movie. They spend a lot of time and money in making it and making it look good. "the Motion Picture" had a budget of $35 million in 1979, Empire Strikes Back had a budget of $18 million in 1980. It was a big budget movie that was one of the highest grossing movies of 1979. That's what I meant by event movie, they actually set out to make a top movie of the year not just another movie.

 

[Viking Bastard]

NEM had a huge budget. Of course, it didn't play in their favour since it just meant more loss.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

jdavis - The problem is, I think. Not Startrek Movies became worse, every other movie (at least in the genre) became better.
And there are more of them.

And the TV Series also sets high standards.
(Deep Space Nine, as an example, had a production quality in most its sets and visual effects that could also be used for a movie, at least at that time)

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[Villano]

I haven't seen Nemesis, although I wanted to. There's one local theatre with 4 screens, so I expected that it would play a couple of weeks. Nope. It was only in for 1 week and I missed it.

Truthfully, I've never been a huge Trek fan. As a kid, I watched the original in reruns, but mostly because it came on Sunday morning, and it was that or watching televangelists. I enjoyed ST: NG when it appeared, but, looking back through adult eyes, the reruns don't really hold up very well. I never realized how incredibly cheap those early episodes look.

OTHO, I loved DS9, even though I hated the Dominion. The Cardasians were much better villains, IMO.

And then came Voyager, and we all know how good that series was. I don't get UPN, so no Enterprise for me. And from what I hear, that may be a good thing.

As to the movies, I don't think I liked any Next Gen's I've seen. I agree with that joke website that let you create your own plot. The same thing happens over and over again. And why are they all lit so dark?

Personally, I think they started on the wrong foot by killing off Lursa and B'tor, the Klingon sisters. They were the closest thing to recurring villains Next Gen had apart from Q (not counting races like the Borg).

What should the future of Trek movies hold? I'd like to see some of the DS9 characters return, myself. Or movies which focus on 1 or 2 characters from one of the series but with mostly new casts. Or movies set in the universe but not dealing with Starfleet, like a Klingon movie.

Anything but Voyager movies...unless they want to drive the final nail in the series coffin, that is.

But then again, Final Frontier is my favorite Trek film. But I enjoy it in the same way I enjoy Battlefield: Earth, "cheesey fun".

 

[John Crichton]

On "event" movies:

If you compare any of the Orginal Series movies to the TV shows you'll see that there is a marked difference in feel. I felt that ALL of the TOS flicks felt larger than life and meant something (even if the movie wasn't great). The TNG movies have not had that feel. They should have made the final TNG episode into a movie, it was that good.

 

[jdavis]

NEM had a huge budget. Of course, it didn't play in their favour since it just meant more loss.

$70 million is not a huge budget for a Sci Fi movie these days.

Other movies from last year, Die Another Day had a $142 budget; Spiderman was $139 million; Harry Potter was $100 million; Men in Black 2 $140 million; Attack of the Clones $120 million; Collateral Damage $85 million; Scooby Doo $84 million; Scorpion King $60 million; Red Dragon $90 million; Reign of Fire $95 million; I could go on and on but it seems being between Scorpion King and Scooby Doo budget wise doesn't make for a huge budget and it being a Sci Fi movie makes that even worse. Of course that's no excuse for a poor movie but it doesn't help. That's probably why some of the sets of the series look as good as the sets in the movies.

I agree the last episode of Next Generation was as good if not better than any of the next generation movies (and it only had a budget of a little over $6 million). It's not all about the budget but the budget is a symptom of the problem here, they just aren't wowing the audience anymore.