Star Trek: Generations

We're finally drawing to the end of my planned exploration of the Star Trek franchise. Before it's over though, I have to get through the last four films, which range in fan opinion from pretty good to downright awful. I've seen all of them, and while I didn't hate any, I didn't think any were particularly great either. We start things off in thoroughly mediocre fashion with Generations, the only film to feature both James Kirk (and the only original cast members willing to slum it with him) and Jean-Luc Picard. Unfortunately, they don't do a whole lot with the opportunity, with Kirk relegated to an ignominious death scene at the beginning and a shoehorned role in the plot's climactic (by default) moment. Most of the film is just an average TNG episode stretched out to feature length without a whole lot justifying it. It wasn't too bad really, as I spent most of the time mildly bored instead of really bothered by anything. "Not terrible" isn't really the best endorsement, though.

There were a few things I enjoyed. Data's experiment with an emotions chip was pretty funny for a while, until the plot really got going and it had shockingly little importance to any of the significant events. That was just sort of weird. Malcolm McDowell is a fun actor, and he does a solid job as the movie's villain at the same time that Picard and his crew fail miserably to counter him in a well reasoned way. To be honest, I'm struggling with finding good things about the movie... as I said, it's not egregiously poor, but there's so little about it that was memorable or interesting that it's hard to be even neutral on it after the fact. At least Picard acted like Picard the whole time, which becomes a huge issue in the sequels. They destroy the Enterprise to add some drama in an overly long crash scene and also to give an excuse for a rebuilt ship in future films that accommodates the wider aspect ratio, at the same time Picard is entering a strange alternate reality where the two captains finally meet. As I said though, it's not the most exciting result ever, as the big action finale is a few old dudes beating each other up. They pretty much dropped the ball, which honestly describes all these movies pretty well. Well, no matter. It's hard to be too disappointed by it when the last Trek film was so awesome.