MovieChat Forums > Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) Discussion > Insurrection more watchable as the years...

Insurrection more watchable as the years go on?

posted 11 years ago by Observer_2020
12 replies | jump to latest

At least for me, it is. I didn't like it when I first saw it. I had the same complaint as others, that it felt too much like an ordinary episode from a TV series. There wasn't much special about it to justify big-screen movie treatment.

But as I see it on TV every couple years or so, I'm finding it more entertaining and engaging than I did in the past. Not sure why, but it just works better for me than it once did. The obvious references to the Trail of Tears and slavery have been done before, on various ST series and in non-ST shows and movies. So no new ground broken there.

Maybe it's just that I know Insurrection is not a grand epic tale and I'm not expecting that type of a movie. As a smaller-scale movie, it works OK. I can sit through it without being tempted to change the channel. That's not the case for The Final Frontier and for many non-ST shows and movies. Would I go out of my way to watch the DVD of Insurrection. Maybe not. But when it's showing on TV and there isn't anything particularly special on any other channel at the time, it's a decent movie to watch.

I first rated this movie a 6/10. Now I'm bumping it up to 7/10. I don't think it's a spectacular movie, ST or non-ST. But I think it's a good, entertaining movie with some thoughtful themes. Not my favorite ST movie or sci-fi movie, but I now think it's a good movie.

[–] Blackjack254 11 years ago

I've always enjoyed Insurrection right from the start.

I distinctly remember the whole audience laughing at several points throughout the film, the same spots I laughed at and still find funny to this day.

I've never understood the criticism about it being a "Long TV episode", especially since people like Voyage Home and First Contact.

(In Voyage Home, The only signifigant thing that happens is that Kirk gets demoted to his favorite rank and gets a new Enterprise, and First Contact uses a villain already featured numerous times in the TV show)

Also, This film features Jerry Goldsmith's best Star Trek score.

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[–] patbuddha 11 years ago

There are several reasons it gets the long episode criticism. First off in television because they have to turn out an episode every week, there isn't a lot of attention to detail. Certain shortcuts are made week in week out that the audience just kind of accepts because it's not unusual for the medium. With Star Trek this means "alien" beings who look like people and just so happen to speak English with American accents as is the case with this movie in particular.

Theatrical release movies are expected to have linear plots. Conflicts are set up in one scene. The main character attempts to resolve them in the next. The attempt fails or leads to more complications. And so on until the main character ultimately succeeds. Television shows with multiple characters tend to be less tightly plotted, featuring subplots that are not necessarily related to the main plot. This movie has a number of scenes that are completely unrelated to the main narrative throughline: Riker/Troi stuff, Worf sleeping, Picard mamboing, etc.

There's also an expectation that the conflicts be emotionally/intellectually relateable. Star Trek the TV show tends to get deep in the weeds with made up technobabble as the solutions to problems and executes them by having characters say they can do x, y, and z, pressing a button, and then saying the problem has been solved. It's radio drama for television that certainly has no place in film, but yet it exists in this movie.

In film, the problem facing the main character has to directly affect the characters in a way that the audience feels on a visceral level. Television stories often feature the main characters acting as surrogates for someone else's problems. If Perry Mason loses a case, it's not his ass on the line. In this movie, the main conflict is irrelevant to the main characters. If the boring villagers get moved to some other planet, it it no way affects Picard.

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[–] Blackjack254 11 years ago

"This movie has a number of scenes that are completely unrelated to the main narrative throughline: Riker/Troi stuff, Worf sleeping, Picard mamboing, etc."

actually, those scenes have a BIG part in the film: these scenes happen when the ship is inside the briar patch, not outside. The radiation is already affecting them, even though they're 2 days away from the supposed only source of the rejuvenating radiation on the Ba'ku homeworld.

It's also tied into the film's ultimate moral message, hinting that if Dougherty had simply been patient, he would have found a peaceful way to harness the radiation (as he was ordered to by the Federation) without destroying the Ba'ku Homeworld.

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[–] patbuddha 11 years ago

actually, those scenes have a BIG part in the film

And while I don't doubt that, they're inherently uncinematic. In (what is considered) good filmic storytelling, each scene either creates a conflict or resolves a conflict. Riker shaving his beard off does neither. The most interesting from a fan perspective is the restoration of Geordi's eyesight. However the reason it's weak storytelling is because we've not been given a reason to think his lack of natural eyesight is an immediately major problem.

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[–] domester82 11 years ago

This movie felt like it was made for television. The story was OK, but nothing we hadn't seen in the TV series before. The production values for this one felt quite low budget.

[–] shoobe01-1 7 years ago

This. Production values are TV like. Photography is lame. The sets all look brand new, without a piece of dust or a scrape on anything; who has ever seen such a clean blacksmith shop? Blocking and editing is pedestrian.

I also agree the storytelling is Just Another Episode. Too much stuff that was effectively fanservice, requiring knowing about the characters. I knew, but didn't care enough, so the many B plots were just effectively fluff as they didn't drive the main story enough and didn't resolve themselves. The Troi-Riker thing went nowhere, for no reason, like they forgot about it.

But... I also like it more now than I did 10 years ago, and I barely remember seeing it originally, though I am sure I saw it in a theater. The main plot works better all the time, I have no real issues with any actions taken by anyone, think the acting is solid (in those bits) and don't even mind most of the comic relief.

[–] !!!deleted!!! (12526472) 9 years ago

I was mostly disappointed by the four TNG movies when they came out, although I definitely thought First Contact was the best at the time. On re-watching them recently, I can appreciate all of them more (except maybe Nemesis). There may be many reasons for this; increase in nostalgia value, my more mature and less action-craving attitude to plots, or maybe the complete lack of anything of equal quality in populist sci-fi cinema these days.

[–] kjguhl 8 years ago

I appreciate Star Trek: Insurrection much more now than I did when I first saw it in 1998. At the time, it did seem inconsequential, like it was just an extended episode of the TV series. But I think that's exactly what I like about it now. At the time Insurrection was released, we didn't know there would be only one more movie with The Next Generation crew, and that Nemesis would tear down and conclusively end the adventures of the characters we had come to love.

Insurrection gave us one more "normal" adventure with the Next Gen crew, and a peek into their life aboard the Enterprise E. It has fun characters moments and is a sold (if unremarkable) story overall. One thing it got right was presenting the crew as a family, similar to the bonds TOS crew further developed in their films. Sitting here years later, I'm pleased we have more Next Gen than less, and a pretty decent movie in Insurrection.

[–] 8 years ago

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[–] residentevil6901 7 years ago

I do like it more now then I did when it came out but I still think it's the worst of the 13 Star Trek movies they've made so far.

[–] 7 years ago

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[–] 7 years ago

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