Star Trek: Generations | | Cast : | Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, Malcolm McDowell, William Shatner | | Director : | David Carson | | Studio : | Paramount Home Video | | Format : | Widescreen, Special Edition, Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound | | Released Date : | November 18, 1994 | | DVD Released Date : | September 28, 2004 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Original Language), French (Original Language), English (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 29, 2005 | | Summary | Star Trek Generations (Special Collector's Edition) | Content
 | I just finished a marathon of Star Trek with the purchases I just got from Amazon. I enjoyed it so much. I also purchased the following DVD's with this purchase:
Star Trek - The Original Crew Movie Collection (Special Edition)
Star Trek - First Contact (Special Collector's Edition)
Star Trek Generations (Special Collector's Edition)
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| Rating | | | Date | July 08, 2005 | | Summary | I thought it would be cooler | Content
| I thought this movie would blend the old with the new a little better. Mostly it just focuses on the new. Sure it has Kirk mingling with Picard a little bit, but that's not enough.
Still, it was worth seeing once. And only once. I think the problem with the Next Generation movies is the villians. You know the protagonists by heart, but the villians are always brand new, so you don't really care about them. It leaves the movies unbalanced.
This movie has a villian you don't care about. He's no reason to watch the movie. In fact, the only reason to watch the movie is to catch up on a few plot points to get from one movie to the next. Well, the Picard and Kirk thing is okay too I guess, but not really great.
Anyway, Picard is the man. Better than Kirk. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 29, 2005 | | Summary | Mr. Tricorder | Content
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The 7th movie of the Star Trek films is perhaps the worst movie of all. Now, some people might say that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is the worst movie of the Trek movies. But, they're wrong.
The Enterprise-B is carrying three members of the aging "classic Trek" characters; Capt. Kirk, Scotty and Chekov. The Enterprise-B does a rescue on ships trapped in The Nexus. The Enterprise-B is badly damaged, and Kirk is presumed dead. But, Kirk is just living happily back at his house on Earth within the Nexus.
The story is the worst of the movies. The only thing that saved the moive--for me--is the subplot about Data's emotion chip. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 13, 2005 | | Summary | Poor movie, but excellent DVD edition | Content
| One of the things that I find mystifying and annoying is the degree to which DVD commentary tracks can completely fail to reflect reality. Listen to the commentary track on a movie like Aliens vs. Predator (a truly awful film) and you would think that they were discussing a classic, like 2001. What is on the screen is crud, but what you hear is self-delusion.
That is why the commentary track on this Star Trek movie is so refreshing. The two writers, Ron Moore (now the executive producer on Battlestar Galactica) and Brannon Braga, talk about this movie and are surprisingly self-critical. So much of the movie simply does not work, and they admit it. And they blame themselves (although they probably resisted blaming others as well).
In particular, they are critical of several key aspects of the movie. They think that the entire Nexus plotline did not work very well and had way too many internal contradictions ("You can't think about it too much," one of them says at one point, "or it falls apart."). They really disliked the sequence where Picard goes into the Nexus and experiences a Victorian Christmas scene that is so treacly and mawkish that you want to gag (at one point one of them says something like "Whenever you have five little kids all showing 'yea!' at the same time you know you're in trouble."). (An aside: I was surprised that nobody considered using Picard's "family" from the outstanding Next Generation episode "The Inner Light" for his Nexus sequence. That would have added a powerful emotional depth to the story.) And they thought that they made a mistake by not having Picard and Kirk clash with each other. (According to Moore and Braga, both men got along extremely well on set, however.)
They also completely disliked the ending, where Captain Kirk dies. This ending was re-filmed because the original had Kirk getting shot in the back and dying unceremoniously. But the final version that they ended up with is similarly unsatisfying. A friend of mine, who ended up working on Star Trek Enterprise, once said to me that he too thought it was lame: "Kirk dies reaching for the remote," he said. Moore and Braga said that they wanted an ending that was not cliched, that did not have what everybody expected, which was Kirk dying on the bridge of a starship. But watching the movie again, they realized that that is EXACTLY what they should have done--they should have gone for the heroic ending of a hero. Instead, we're all left unfulfilled. If they had used "The Inner Light" for Picard's Nexus sequence, and had a more heroic death for Captain Kirk, this would have been a much better film. Otherwise, it is largely forgettable.
One surprise for me was their casual way of destroying the Enterprise. They resurrected this idea from a rejected TV episode after getting the idea out of a Trek technical manual. They just thought that it would be "neat." The fact that it served no real purpose in the story, and had no emotional resonance, is a major disappointment. It proves that Moore and Braga lacked the reverence for the Trek universe that was needed.
Both men note--and they are exactly right--that William Shatner nearly stole every scene he shared with Patrick Stewart. He demonstrated an enthusiasm for the role that really shone through. It proves that for all the criticism of his abilities, Shatner can certainly act.
The overall technical quality of this 2-disk set is excellent. The extras are also pretty good. The deleted scenes are fascinating for the simple fact that they are all so bad. Groan-inducingly bad. I've already mentioned the original ending (brave Captain Kirk gets shot in the back). But the original opening, with Kirk skydiving from orbit, was also badly fimed, edited, acted and written, and we are lucky it did not make it into the movie.
The tribute to Matt Jeffries, who designed the original series ship and sets, was nice, but is the kind of thing that belongs on a different DVD (such as the TV series collections). The graphic designers who worked on the later shows comment about Jeffries' work and some of them explain why it was so good--Jeffries strove for a bold, distinctive look using relatively simple lines. As one person notes, Jeffries knew that the ship had to be recognizeable as it zoomed across the screen, so he gave it large, distinctive elements.
The short on filming the special effects was also interesting, although it left me wanting more. One surprising revelation was that the cameras often damage the models during close passes, requiring constant touch-up. Unfortunately, nobody mentioned that the visual designers felt that the TV series ship was the wrong shape for the more rectangular movie screen, and whether or not this influenced the writers' decision to destroy the ship. (It does explain the fact that the later Enterprise is much longer than the TV series version--so it fills up more of the movie screen.) I wished there had been more footage of the modified Enterprise 1701-B and the spacedock.
Star Trek Generations was not a good movie, but this is a pretty good DVD collection that can be enjoyed for what it is. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 09, 2005 | | Summary | Entertaining Film With Flaws | Content
| I recently went back and watched Star Trek Generations on this special collector's edition. The film was a lot more entertaining that I had remembered but it is not without its flaws.
The movie was made to bring together the two captains and to kill off our beloved Captain Kirk. It opens with a fast paced and action packed sequence where Kirk is killed saving the newest Enterprise while on a short cruise. We are then introduced to the Next Generation through a fun but somewhat contrived holodeck scene. Picard receives disturbing news and makes him reflect on his life, Data experiments with an emotion chip and a madman is destroying stars for a selfish purpose.
When you add all of this together, we have a very entertaining and at times a visually stunning movie. The movie moves along at a brisk pace and we are never once bored. The special effects, especially the crash scene, are very good and the theme of time is very well done.
Despite being entertained, I found the movie to be very uneven. While I was amused at Data's trials of experiencing emotions, the subplot felt very out of place. The "echo" of Guinan seemed a little too convenient and when we get the two captains together, we just get a long fist fight. It made the entire "two captains, one destiny" concept feel a little empty.
The DVD transfer is very good. The colors were crisp and the picture quality was superior. The extras while plentiful were kind of bland. Most of the extras deal with the location of the planet where a 1/4 of the movie takes place and it just isn't very interesting. The crash segment was covered but it was much too limited to one part of the filming and not the entire sequence itself. And the deleted scenes are not interesting at all, mainly due to being VERY rough cuts.
I have actually increased my rating for Generations because it is entertaining and rates way above Star Trek V and the abysmal continuity killing Nemesis. It is a film that is more about time and how it stalks us and reminds us to seize the moment and on that level is succeeds.
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