This, the tenth overall Star Trek film and fourth involving the Next Generation cast, is the worst of them all. To be sure, the Next generation films were nothing more than ploys to capitalize on a popular TV series and struggled to maintain both legitimacy and respectability amongst an aging and ailing franchise, but Star Trek: Nemesis is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
To top it all off, this Star Trek film did something that I thought would happen more frequently throughout the series- it put me to sleep. That’s right, parts of this film are so trite, tedious and boring that it may put you to sleep.
The plot doesn’t make much sense, and in the end you wonder what all the commotion was about. All this over one guy? That’s it? Sure, there were ramifications for the rest of the known galaxy had the central villain prevailed, but if you didn’t expect the good guys to come out on top in the end then you’re either cynical or stupid.
Once again, too much time is spent on trying to make Data seem as interesting as Spock was in the original series. And once again, it didn’t work. Data is corny and probably the most annoying crew member of the Next Generation series. The filmmakers did throw us a surprise by ‘killing’ Data at the end of the film, but his memories we conveniently downloaded into an identical model before he sacrificed himself for his Captain.
Lots of boringness and silliness abounds in this movie, a clear indication that the franchise had run out of steam. Fortunately, this was marketed as the last Star Trek film for the Next generation cast, essentially ending the series altogether. (Did anyone really expect them to make a Deep Space Nine movie?) It should be interesting to see what JJ Abrams has in store with his upcoming Star Trek reboot.
After two Next Generations movies I thought the Star Trek series would fall apart. I was actually surprised when I found myself enjoying the ninth installment of the franchise, Star Trek: Insurrection.
While nothing spectacular, the film plays out like a good episode of the Next Generation TV series. The story is focused enough that there are few plot holes, and there is a level of believability to what’s going on. Granted, the answers don’t come out until the very end of the film and some of the answers come out of left field, but just about everything is ties up at the end.
The visual effects were actually pretty good for a change. The Star Trek series has a history in underachievement in the visual effects department, but they did okay this time.
One thing that I have to comment upon though, is that the cyborg Data is annoying. The writers still seem to think he is every bit as cool as Spock from the original series, but he’s not. Far too much is done to include Data and his musings on human activity. Elimination of all future Data subplots will result in better Star Trek movies. I’m serious.
All in all, it’s pretty decent. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say I’d watch it again, but it’s fairly enjoyable and avoids many of the pitfalls of previous Star Trek films.
With Captain Picard’s Enterprise-D being destroyed at the end of Star Trek: Generations, it was little surprise to see him piloting the new (and much bigger) Enterprise-E. (Seriously, the Federation must be loaded if it can afford a replacement Enterprise every couple of years) Picard and company are out and about when the Borg attacks Earth. For you non-Trek savvy folk out there, the Borg is a colony of cyborgs that capture living subjects and turn them into cyborgs with no individuality whatsoever and also adding the individual’s knowledge into their collective brain.
Instead of helping Earth, Star Fleet orders the Enterprise to stay in the neutral zone and make sure the Romulans don’t get frisky with all the hub-bub going on. Really, Star Fleet doesn’t trust Picard to fight the Borg. He was once assimilated by them but escaped and holds quite a grudge. In other words, it’s kind of a rehash of Kirk vs. the Klingons from the original series.
Picard defies orders and helps save the day. But, the Borg shoots a probe into the past in order to prevent humans from ever discovering warp speed travel. The Enterprise follows in hot pursuit and ends up orbiting a mid-21st Century Earth. The crew goes down to investigate any damage the Borg did and realize that the Borg has nearly altered human history. The crew then makes it their mission to make sure a loony scientist does in fact discover warp travel and makes first contact with extraterrestrial life. Meanwhile, those still on the Enterprise must face off against a faction of the Borg that beamed itself on board and are now assimilating the crew and taking over the ship.
While a standalone Picard vs. the Borg plot would have made for a boring movie (again, think Kirk vs. Klingons) the sub-plot of help ensure Earth’s first contact with extraterrestrials makes Star Trek: First Contact one of the most original films in the Star Trek series.
Sure, we’ve already done the whole ‘time travel with the fate of the Earth in our hands’ thing before, but the way they do it gets brownie points from me. And the fact that the two plots tie in well with each other makes it rather good. Instead of a flimsy deus ex machina kind of tie in, the fates of one group directly affect the fates of the other.
The visuals are actually pretty good, up until the end, where a level of the Enterprise fills up with a very poorly constructed cloud of CGI gas, resulting in some lousy blue screen work. The biggest fault of this film involves the cast. The crew of The Next Generation just aren’t as engaging as the original series bunch. I even grew up watching a few episodes of The Next Generation, but there just wasn’t as much chemistry. This was also fairly apparent in Star Trek: Generations, but I feel more strongly about commenting on it here.
Captain Picard is a joy to watch- he’s well read and very intelligent. Data is pretty much an annoying android version of Spock, except that instead of pondering the illogical behavior of humans as Spock did, Data actually strives to become more human. Sometimes it works but it usually comes off as being a little trite. Worf is kind of like Gimli from Lord of the Rings. He’s there to add that dash of extreme culture clash (being Klingon), but he never really manages to grow on you during the course of the film. The rest of the crew are just kind of there on the periphery and barely do anything memorable. It’s almost as if you’d need to watch the entire Next Generation series to understand where everybody is coming from.
Despite whatever shortcomings exist among the cast, the story makes up for it pretty well. There are some very cool literary allusions and some fine acting on Patrick Stewart’s part. The Borg actually do make for a good opponent as their bland features and emotionless state effectively creeps you out each time they’re on screen. A better cast dynamic and some better visual effects in certain places would put First Contact on even footing with the best films in the series (Star Trek II and III).
I still can’t quite figure this one out. Much in the same way that Star Trek IV straddled the line between clever and stupid, Star Trek: Generations wanders along the fine line between being endearing and just plain silly.
It starts off with Kirk, Scotty and Chekov being on hand for the maiden voyage of the Enterprise-B Federation Starship. They are in their twilight years in service to the Federation and are merely on the bridge as a matter of ceremony. Along the virgin trip, a distress signal comes in and Kirk urges the new captain to spring into action. During the attempted rescue of two ships from a bizarre energy field, the Enterprise-B is damaged and Kirk lost into space. Among the survivors is Malcolm McDowell, a long-living scientist who plots to return to the energy field he had been stuck in.
Flash forward nearly 80 years and we’re smack-dab in the middle of Star Trek: The Next Generation territory. The Enterprise-D, under the leadership of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, receives a distress call from a science outpost. Sure enough, McDowell is the lone survivor of what appears to be an attack by the Romulans. But, McDowell is actually working with a rogue group of Klingons seeking his star system-destroying technology (seems old habits die hard with the Klingons).
McDowell is destroying star systems to lure this traveling energy field he was pulled from (called the Nexus) to a location where he can re-enter it. Picard tries to stop and ends up inside the Nexus as well. There he finds bliss and joy as he is able to live out everything he ever dreamed of. But he realizes this is all a lie and recalls that one Captain Kirk also happens to be caught up in the Nexus as well. They meet, team up and cross time and space to save the day. An interesting homage to the original series films is played out regarding Captain Kirk. That’ll make sense if you paid attention during the other films. Otherwise, enjoy the cheekiness this movie is full of.
The scenes with Shatner are juts odd. He certainly seems to be having fun with the part one last time, but some of the lines he delivers and actions he does (the horse scene anyone?) are just a bit too campy for their own good. There is a subtle theme of sacrifice throughout the movie, but it never really grabs hold and makes its presence felt enough to list it as an asset. The effects are more or less caught up with the times, but the whole package is still dumbed down to the level of aw-shucks-who-cares-if-it-looks-silly that has pervaded the Star Trek series from day one. Hardcore Trekkies will be able to overlook this stuff, but I’m a movie guy- it’s either there or it’s not. This time it’s not.
I wouldn’t say this film is much better than the last few Trek offerings, because it certainly isn’t much of an improvement on anything, but it does have a few redeeming qualities and enough feel-good fun to make it a perfect example of a sci-fi guilty pleasure movie.
After years of success together, Disney and Pixar had a little squabble over whether they needed each other. Pixar was a computer animation powerhouse that possessed some of the best CGI technology, and Disney tried to prove they didn’t need Pixar by creating their own CGI technology. It sure seems like somewhere along the line to prove that they had the technology to equal Pixar, Disney forget to make sure their story was any good.
Chicken Little takes a classic fable about misconceptions and miscommunication and distorts it into a flashy piece of eye candy filled with sight gags, self-aware post-90s sensibilities, and pop culture references for the adults. Lest I forget, it’s dripping with smarmy psychobabble focused on parent-child relationships. Instead of one great big misunderstanding that is the original fable (which is covered in the first 5 minutes), it turns out the sky really is falling...and it’s because of aliens!
Honestly, I was fairly insulted by this film. While there is enough humor and silliness to keep the kids at bay for an hour twenty, the real message of the film is aimed at parents. Are we that hopeless as a society that we need to trick parents into seeing a public service announcement by disguising it as a kid’s movie? And ever since Shrek came along, “kids” movies seem to be required to contain humor for mom and dad to pick up on, and that’s annoying. Either make an adult-oriented animated film or be true to your core audience- the kids.
While there were parts that I laughed at (despite being inappropriate and unnecessary for a “kids” movie) and the computer animation was rather good, the story still sucks. I couldn’t decide which pun was more fitting for Chicken Little- I was torn between “This egg is a dud” and “This bird’s flown the coop” because they are both so apt.
This movie has guts, plain and simple. Ordinarily, I would have been outraged at some of the decisions that were made in this film. To see certain X-Men characters killed was unthinkable when I entered the theater, and had these deaths not occurred in just the way they did, I probably would have hated this movie. But they killed unthinkable characters in simply mind-blowing ways and never looked back. I repeat: this movie has guts.
Unfortunately, Bryan Singer (who directed the previous two installments of the series) chose to walk away from The Last Stand to direct Superman Returns. The joke would be on him, however, as X-Men would out-earn Superman and also got more love from fans. In Singer’s absence, we have Brett Ratner, of Rush Hour fame, who could have ruined this film, but does a surprisingly good job.
The story is a little all over the place, throwing in shout outs to fanboy favorite mutants just for the sake of including fanboy favorite mutants. The inclusion of more mutants comes at the sacrifice of character and story depth, which the first two films were chock full of. While it’s neat to see mutants like Juggernaut, Beast and Angel, it’s a shame that the story was more or less as deep as the Saturday morning cartoon version from the 90s. An alleged cure for the mutant gene is found, causing the humans of the world to demand mutants all “cure” themselves and rejoin “normal society.”
There are some substantially silly-looking special effects and the series wraps itself up almost too neatly in the end. The best part about X-Men stories is that things are always left a little bit open. There are two “shockers” at the end (one before and one after the credits) that keep potential sequels on the board, but some course correction is never a bad thing.
The little things add up to be a minor nuisance, but the boldness of the film helps you forget about it. X-Men: The Last Stand is a good way to end the series without closing the book on the characters.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
After two Next Generations movies I thought the Star Trek series would fall apart. I was actually surprised when I found myself enjoying the ninth installment of the franchise, Star Trek: Insurrection.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
After years of success together, Disney and Pixar had a little squabble over whether they needed each other. Pixar was a computer animation powerhouse that possessed some of the best CGI technology, and Disney tried to prove they didn’t need Pixar by creating their own CGI technology. It sure seems like somewhere along the line to prove that they had the technology to equal Pixar, Disney forget to make sure their story was any good.
This movie has guts, plain and simple. Ordinarily, I would have been outraged at some of the decisions that were made in this film. To see certain X-Men characters killed was unthinkable when I entered the theater, and had these deaths not occurred in just the way they did, I probably would have hated this movie. But they killed unthinkable characters in simply mind-blowing ways and never looked back. I repeat: this movie has guts.
