Well we have our first spy leak about the new Star Trek trailer, but we still must wait until next Friday to see for ourselves. Until then we count down the days with our retrospective of past theatrical trailers, and today we look to the first TNG film, Star Trek Generations from 1994.
The torch of adventure is about to be passed
Theatrical trailer for Star Trek: Generations.
Commentary:
Although the trailer does contain some mysteries like ‘why is Data laughing?’ it continues the tradition of the previous trailers and gives away much of the movie, including showing the Enterprise D being destroyed. Pushing the mad scientist angle of Soren and his Nexus (with a sprinkling of evil Klingons), the trailer portrays Generations as a another action romp in the Trek series. The trailer also makes it seem like there is going to be a great deal of tension between Kirk and Picard, although in the actual film they mostly make breakfast together. "Dillweed" cries Kirk! All in all, a pretty good trailer that entices the audience to want to watch the film.
Teaser: Two generations will meet…
The earlier teaser trailer has a surprising amount of footage from the film and even introduced the notion of the ‘nexus.’
The DVD features no trailers or commercials. In fact, the release of the DVD was delayed to correct the text on the packaging which had promised the inclusion of trailers.
“It was fun.”
The problem with Generations are many and varied… but the basic one that always bothered me was… this wasn’t Kirk’s “paradise” fantasy… this wasn’t what he would spend eternity doing. This is Bill Shatner’s fantasy… riding horses, chopping wood, making breakfast in a log cabin. Shatner’s paradise was commanding a starship. On the bridge of the Enterprise. That’s where we should have found him… that’s where he should have died. At the conn. it was he who should have commanded the “D” and had to make the choice to crash the Saucer section… and he should have died saving the crew. But instead, he died stupidly… and out of character.
Well, it wasn’t that great.
I always thought that the Trailer promised more than what we got. When you see the Enterprise D get fired on you see Kirk fall back against the wall as if he were on the ship himself when it’s been attacked. I always thought it disappointing that he wasn’t on the bridge with the crew while they fought the Klingons. Whoever made the trailer must have thought the same.
Sound cuts out of the trailer halfway through. FAIL
where did the reliant come from
Sound’s trailing off a bit at the end for me; could be local trouble on my machine, though? Not sure. Interesting trivia about the DVD delay!
One of the things I like most about this trailer is that it establishes the Trekkishness of the “villain” – that Soren isn’t there just to chew the scenery and be bad-for-bad’s sake. I remember being encouraged by that, because I wasn’t 100% sure I wanted to see this film. This is one where the trailer sold me.
I have few strong feelings about the film at all, though … it passed the time. Didn’t feel the ticket price was wasted. I’ve only seen it since when work required me to, though … I’ve never re-watched it for “… fun.”
TNG was, in my very unpopular opinion, always the weakest series, and the movies did nothing to change that view. “Generations” and “First Contact” were tolerable at best. Thing is, the trailer…and the film itself…accomplished what they needed to with me. They got me in the theatre because of the inclusion of the TOS characters. Otherwise, I wouldn’t ahve bothered. The TNG characters have always seemed very bland to me compared to the other series.
#6
That was the Bozeman, not the Reliant.
Technically, the title should read “Generations'” not “Generation’s” Trailer.
But the movie had enough misplaced issues, so it’s rather appropriate to misplace the apostrophe!
#2 I think you meant to say that *Kirk’s* fantasy would have been his being back on the bridge of one of the Enterprises… perhaps constantly rerunning the Kobayashi Maru… or the Genesis incident…
However, a young Kirk (as we’ll soon see) might well have enjoyed camping in a cabin and riding horses. I think the interpretation was that his new “paradise” was partly the result of the woman he was involved with. But again, I think that just proves your Shatnerian paradise point. Meh!
Ah, if only boborci had paid attention and had young JT Kirk swiping a Mustang instead of a Corvette! ;)
Say all you want about TMP, ST:V, Insurrection, Nemesis. This film as we say in Scotland, is a jobbie (poo). The worst Trek in my opinion.
Great atmospheric lighting and an ok villain but not much else. As daren doc says, this is not the end kirk deserved or wanted.
The nexus is a terrible sugar-coated clunker of a macguffin, total nonsense. Nobody has a good story arc in this film, even Picard’s bereveance is flat and Data’s emotion chip is cliched and rushed.
Rick Berman has a lot to answer for, i hope he’s cleaning toilets in KFC.
I wished Shatner had passed on this, i mean he slips off a bridge!!!!!!!!!!!
Roll on ST:XI ! We love you Captain Kirk!
#8: For me it was similar but from a different angle: I always liked [most of] the TNG characters well enough, but felt let down by the TNG *stories* … I always felt the characters were under-used. TNG usually felt very timid to me, more timid than the characters might let it be if they were allowed to grow freely and not just mouthpiece for the series’ ethos.
A few select episodes were, of course, brilliant and memorable exceptions. I just wish there’d been more of those.
And yeah, both of our opinions are bound to be unpopular ;) Ah well.
The movie just lost steam with the crash of the enterprise and they never successfully got it back up and going again. the first half of generations is pretty darn good, in my opinion, although i can see why so many didn’t like it.
Bill Shatner needs money. Bill Shatner has final script approval. Bill Shatner does crappy movie. Bill Shatner kills Captain Kirk. Bill Shatner learning to live with regret at this very moment while his good buddy Leonard Nimoy is about to release what could be the best Star Trek movie in the history of the world. Bill is sad. Sorry, Bill.
#2
mad agreement over your alternate Generations plot. It might have made the movie worth seeing more than once
Oh, yeah… almost forgot. This movie sucks so bad, it’s the reason why I actually watch Star Trek V. LOL!
…and from this point on, I never felt the same way about Trek.
Completely hated this movie, Sorry.
That freeze frame of Riker in the “Voyager era uniform” reminds me how much I disliked those uniforms. Glad they changed them for First Contact.
#2 – very well said. That death is like a still-rotting gangrenous wound, perhaps the only thing in Trek that seems like it NEVER can or will be rectified. I don’t know about you peeps, but my love affair with ST ended right there. I’m a total geek of course, and have seen every subsequent ST episode of all the new series (multiple times) and the crap-ass movies, but I’ve been checked out during all of them. None of them do anything for me. And it’s all mostly because of this total bullshit death.
#8 – right on.
Someone tell JJ to write in a scene where the ribbon is found again, and someone uses the residual Kirk presence (like Guinan’s in Generations) to resurrect the dude. Heal this sore, JJ.
I always felt ripped off by my DVD copy. I have one of the copies that says it has the trailers on it. Doh’l! LOL
Strange, the teaser trailer begins with music from the The Motion Picture.
I thought Generations had a lot of potential, but never quite captured it. I guess it’s because they tried to graft TOS action onto TNG, which tended to be more thoughtful than action packed.
I don’t think we should have to take Kirk’s settings as his ultimate choice in life. People are complex and want different things at different times. Kirk had just retired and found himself in a common place of questioning life’s decisions. Had he stayed in the nexus I’m sure he would have visited the bridge often.
Generations isn’t all that bad, it’s handling of Kirk is awful and deeply flawed which mars the film horribly, but it’s still got a lot of positives.
*It has by far the best cinematography of all the films ( with the exception of possibly TMP, but that’s an aesthetic that can leave many wanting).
*It showcased its cast quite well, Crusher was the only one that didn’t really get a moment to shine.
*I think this is the only TNG film that felt like TNG, undoubtedly a by-product of filming directly after the shows run, but none the less. In each subsequent film the crew was increasingly out of character.
*SFX work, though frugal, was great. The nexus looked terrific and the Ent-D has never looked better. Incidentally, while everyone knows they reused the BOP explosion shot from STVI, not many know that one of the close-up flyby shots of the -D was an original stock shot ILM did of the ship from 1987, used on the show numerous times.
#21
That was the problem with all the TNG movies.
I think it was a bad idea to bring the TOS characters into the TNG universe. Don’t you have enough faith in TNG to let them stand alone? And of course, to kill Kirk is the single worst thing in all of Star Trek. Worse than that stupid Sybok character in V. Bad, bad, bad.
Compound that with the destruction of the D and you have a REALLY bad start to your little movie franchise. Perhaps I am alone. but after the Connies, I love the D. This movie did have one thing going for it as she was beautifully shot. Her FX (REAL model ships, BTW) were gorgeous and she never looked better. Then you friggin’ destroyed her and replaced her with that cartoony EE.
Blechh.
One of my favorites. Don’t care what anyones says.
A tip of the hat to Moore and Braga for admiting on their DVD commentary that they screwed up. Its just too bad they didn’t make that realization while they were writing the script.
I actually have the DVD which says it has trailers, I knew about the error but went ahead and got it before it was pulled. Wish they had put the trailers on the SE/DE’s I know the first releases (at least some) had them but not sure about Gen? Will have to look again sometime… This trailer countdown made me think about watching the movies themselves again counting down but allmost there now.
#14: In fairness to Shatner, though, the movie he signed on to could _also_ have been “the best Star Trek movie in the history of the world.” Just about any movie has that potential at the point when the actors sign on (or don’t), since so very little is set in stone at that point … the script can be heavily revised or replaced, the director can change, other casting can change, what once was a musical can become something that isn’t, etc. :)
If actors could leap forward in time and choose their jobs based on the finished product, we’d live in a very different world (admittedly, it would probably be a world with fewer Star Trek movies …)
This was my first Trek movie at the Big Screen, and maybe that makes me bias, but I love Generations. I think the action sequences are some of the best in FILM. I was freaking out when the Klingons attacked, the E blew up, and THEN they had to crash. Just Awesome!
Although, it REALLY pissed me off to see the Enterprise blow up in the trailer!!!!!!!!!
While being one gigantic plothole, the movie’s atmosphere was quite interesting…second best NG movie after FC but too close to the series’ look to impress. They should have given it more thought before making and releasing it!
Yeah…it was my first Trek on the big screen, to…
too
If we credit any of the dialogue in Star Trek V, Kirk has a moment where he says “I’ve always known… I’ll die alone.” I think paying tribute to that line would have been a more appropriate way to approach Kirks ‘death scene’ if we really needed to have that much closure to the character.. which apparently paramount thought it was necessary to have. My only hope, which nobody seems to consider, is that they don’t kill older Spock, Nimoy in this new movie in order to make even more ‘closure’ on the rest of the original cast.
And Please JJ… Make the enterprise as close to the TMP model as possible!
I have very mixed feelings about this one.
It COULD have been among the best of Trek films, with a cool plot idea.
But this is perhaps the missed opportunity of heroic end of a legendary character… instead we get an uneven and useless ending to one of the most heroic men in all of fiction along with a plot that is hard to follow.
I give this a C+
Generations has it’s faults (some of which a major, to be sure), but I’ve always liked the cinematography in this film. The lighting was also excellently done and I found myself wishing the TNG series had that kind of atmosphere to it.
I also liked the redesign of the bridge. It’s a shame they destroyed the Ent-D because the bridge finally looked like a place where people actually did some work. I addition of workstations to either side really helped make it look like a functional nerve center for the ship. On the series, it always looked like it was just too big for the small number of people who were there.
Lastly, I always enjoy watching Malcolm McDowell chew the scenery. The way he delivers the line “Time is the fire in which we burn…” to Picard in Ten Forward is absolutely chilling.
23. THX-1138: “Compound that with the destruction of the D and you have a REALLY bad start to your little movie franchise. Perhaps I am alone. but after the Connies, I love the D. This movie did have one thing going for it as she was beautifully shot. Her FX (REAL model ships, BTW) were gorgeous and she never looked better. Then you friggin’ destroyed her and replaced her with that cartoony EE.”
The Enterprise-E in “First Contact” was a model, built and shot by ILM, just as they had for “Generations”. So were the Borg ships (cube + sphere). The rest were CGI, including the Defiant, which looked just as real as its DS9 model counterpart.. ILM knows how to make CG look every bit as “real” as models do…several shots of the Enterprise-B, the D going to warp, the El-Aurian ships: they were all CG.
I agree with #22, “Generations” may be flawed but it’s far from the worst film TREK. Watch it after watching V and you’ll see.
SHIT FILM! SORRY, HAD TO BE SAID!
Does anyone know why the trailers are not included on the DVD when that is standard fare today? I heard somewhere that it was a rights issue but how can that be when Paramount owns the material?
I love what happens in the teaser when riker fires his phaser, yeah, NOTHING lol
This film wasn’t awful, just very misguided.
I’ll be honest, I grew up in the TNG era, and I tend to not care about TOS as much, but I agree with everyone else that the handling of Kirk’s death was sloppy.
On a serious note, please don’t call this film shit. Malcom McDowell was an absolutely awesome villain in this film.
Undiscovered Country is the film that Kirk should have died in. Heroically saving the Federation president and taking the phaser blast as he flies to push the president out of the way. Then we would not be having the discussion today of Shatner being in the film or not. It would have been a classy ending for the character and would have been foreshadowed neatly by Spocks comments in TNG’s “Unification” about what happened to Kirk being the reason for going alone to Romulus.
Generations could have been done w/oShatner(w a different name). There is a Kirkless Generations available on the internet and it holds up fairly well as a TNG only film
The Nexus…. What horse poop! Very poor S.F. And the unforgivable way Kirk dies… Horrible, horrible waste of a major cultural icon. His death lacked both dramatic gravitas and sadness. The only sadness the fans felt was how a crap film like this could have been green lit into production. It is tragic…
I’m gonna get roasted for this, but: I like Kirk’s death.
So many fans seem him as a god, a hero, someone who can save the world every week. We instantly tell ourselves that none of us could never be Kirk. Well, that’s not the message Star Trek has about humanity, not TNG anyway. In the end, Kirk is a man, dying a mortal’s death. His death takes him out of the clouds and makes him truly human for the first time ever. If I fell off a bridge, I know I’d probably die and so would everyone on this chat board.
Sorry, let me try that again. Typos.
I’m gonna get roasted for this, but: I like Kirk’s death.
So many fans see him as a god, a hero, someone who can save the world every week without risking a hair on his head. We instantly tell ourselves that none of us could ever be Kirk or do what Kirk does. Well, that’s not the message Star Trek has about humanity, not TNG anyway.
In the end, Kirk is a man, dying a mortal’s death. The way he dies takes him out of the clouds and makes him truly human for the first time ever. If I fell off a bridge, I know I’d probably die and so would everyone on this chat board. He was in my reach at that moment… and suddenly Star Trek was possible in my eyes…
Man, that was an unexciting trailer. GEN almost killed off any interest I had in Star Trek at the time because both VOY and DS9 were sucking royally at that time.
By far the absolutely worst Star Trek film and also one of the worst science fiction films I have seen, including many B clunkers of the 1950s. The Nexus story could have been written by a 12 year old.
One of the least satisfactory film experiences I have ever had. Star Trek is total self-parody by now, from the opening moments of the champagne bottle and the cartoonish paparazzi on Enterprise B through to the incoherent plot centred around the Nexus.
The only good things in this film are the acting of Patrick Stewart, Malcolm McDowell and Whoopi Goldberg. I also found the Dickensian Victorian Christmas scene in the Nexus very touching – close to my own idea of eternal paradise – but other than that, this film has nothing of value to recommend it. Worse than that, it utterly grates on the nerves of this viewer.
I saw GEN a day before it opened at a special screening, and the theater was barely half full. A really bad sgn. GEN was kinda fun, but Kirk and Picard’s meeting should have been during an action sequence, not them being all sissy and riding horses. God.
The torch of adventure that was passed should have been thrown onto the final cut of Generations. That would have been the single best idea since Han Solo firing on Greedo first.
#45. The nexus story WAS written by a 12 year old. Braga’s son wrote it for his English class and got a D. Technically, Braga’s a plagiarizer.
#34. “Time is the fire in which we burn”. The negative for Generations should have burned in that fire too.
The ghost of Trek-mess past is haunting Shatner now. He should never have taken that role.
It would have been so cool to have them both.
Still it WILL be great.