"So apparently Guinan who is some centuries old extremely wise being finds the Nexus this perfect den of pleasure a place she labours to forget, and Soran finds it a place he cannot forget, while 2 humans with a life of regrets just shrug it off in about 15 minutes apiece. Not particularly compelling because it makes the whole notion of the Nexus contradictory. "
Almost perfectly said, some grammar failures aside (missing commas and using numbers instead of words for numbers, when the numbers are small). The word "apiece" is not really needed, because time is the same for everyone.
But this is the exact same thing I always wondered, and found extremely weak in the movie.
It's like so many other movies and TV shows that first EXPLAIN something to be "like this", but when they actually SHOW it, it turns out to be NOTHING "like this".
The amazing sharpshooting of the Stormtroopers in Star Wars is another example of this.
Look, if you can't come up with a kind of 'normal life' that would bring 'happiness' to Picard and Kirk (and forget the feminized 'relationship and family' crap that hollyweird loves so much), at least you can make it some kind of hazy euphoria that doesn't need to be spelled out in detail (like taking some drug that brings you extremely good feelings and experiences).
Just show some kind of hazy figures in euphoric, psychedelic, colorful and nebulalike lightshow, for example. And show their facial expressions that look like they are in extreme euphoria constantly, or something.
Don't show an old man riding horses or going to bedrooms (that aren't there after all - what a tease the Nexus is!), or making tea or cutting wood or talking to his 'family' or whatever.
Just show EUPHORIA, and it solves the problem.
Your point about Kirk and Picard not having been affected by it afterwards AT ALL is also very good. They should at least lust for it, miss it, and yearn for it, like an alcoholic craves for a drink, or like a thirsty man craves water, or an RC Heli addict yearns for a transmitter. Whatever, just make them yearn for it deeply and passionately, even disturbingly, if you like. Don't just show them like NOTHING AT ALL HAPPENED, just because they figured out "it wasn't real".
Who cares if it's 'real' or not, as long as you get the EUPHORIA, the incredibly GOOD FEELING that comes in so many flavors that you wouldn't, in reality, ever want to leave?
This is a crappy movie that doesn't make any sense, but especially this whole core point of the Nexus - the way it's described versus the way it's shown to us - TOTALLY destroys it and prevents it from being even a passable piece of entertainment. It completely obliterates any immersion the viewer might have had otherwise.
In other words, it sucks.
reply
share
detroit-velvet-smooth
10 years ago
Your point about Kirk and Picard not having been affected by it afterwards AT ALL is also very good. They should at least lust for it, miss it, and yearn for it, like an alcoholic craves for a drink, or like a thirsty man craves water, or an RC Heli addict yearns for a transmitter. Whatever, just make them yearn for it deeply and passionately, even disturbingly, if you like. Don't just show them like NOTHING AT ALL HAPPENED, just because they figured out "it wasn't real".
This is where this film fails compared to TNG. You could argue that TOS films had greater character impact than the TOS series, but with TNG its clearly the opposite. Where in the show when something this enormous would occur it would affect Picard, and there were instances where events greatly changed him in fact, the films instead lose this trait of the show because they apparently decide every film has to be a one off.
The TNG films will never be what the TOS films were because they form no coherent whole next to what at the very least Star Trek II and III represent together. Whats more you find even in Star Trek IV that where the last film left off we begin again, and then again in Star Trek VI Kirk's animosity towards the Klingons is exacerbated by the death of his son in a previous film.
Nothing in the TNG films had any lasting consequence except in passing. Data's emotion chip is about the only bit of continuity that affected character. For Picard in Generations he lost his familial security blanket, the get out of being a father free card. In First Contact we see no shred of this effect, instead we get a vulgar revenge story where they try to stuff Picard's character into a poorly fitted Ahab costume. In Insurrection we get perhaps a hint again that he has some romantic inclination, but this interplay is really not essential to the story and is again completely lost in the final film.
TNG films... truly disposable.
reply
share
bjlevine
10 years ago
I'm going to go to my grave believing that Picard never left the Nexus and that everything that happened at the end of this film and beyond is just part of Picard's Nexus fantasy.
"Lovey-dovey. Bonk bonk on the head!"
reply
share