#which i then would see as hominoid creatures that go into it are being so overpowered by the q-ness and are basically hallucinating

[universalcaffination]

My brain just clicked on this with something new, I barely remember generations' full plot but ooh well

Word vomit on mobile time yay 🖖

Sorren the antagonist of generations, is only so because he's trying to return to the nexus. The same nexus he was pulled out of the same day kirk fell into and was legally declared dead. His "I will do anything I can to reach this goal I dont care what damage I might leave in my wake" in his desperation to return makes him the antagonist that must be subdued.

He's not the leader of some planet or far off place place trying to destroy a different planet that would cause a war, or any of the extreme movie villan types. He's a dude that's ego and selfishness are hurting others, for no other reason than to return

And why?

He is a widower. A wife who died during childbirth along with the child if I remember correctly?

The nexus gives the people that go inside it anything they could ever dream of

And so the nexus gives him his wife

Not literally of course, it's all in the mind, but it's so vivid it might as well be. This is how he copes, and when he's torn away from that in the prolog in generations, it's like he's been torn away from his love all over again. No wonder he has to return, it might be the only part of her he has left

What does this have to do with the original post? Well...

Does "my partner has died and i must find a way to get her back no matter the cost" ring a bell?

That's why it would have been far more cinematocally engaging because the villains entire goal not only is similar to Kirk's past pursuits. Tng characters remarking something like "sorren stole a shuttle to get to the asteroid? Kirk stole the whole enterprise to run to genesis". but the end that they're reaching out for is the same, even if it was unintentional for kirk.

My partner has died (several times technically) and in my grief i try and find them (kirk is successful sorren doesnt). I fall into the nexus, which recognizes the fear of being torn away from my love like before, and gives me my dream life of a warm home, energetic pets, quiet peace, and my partner by my side for the rest of my days (which is actually quite a long time, since the nexus prevents or slows down aging iirc.

And technically this does happen, kirk is in his Will shatner cabin making breakfast, for a lady we don't see,, and only hear a few sentences about,,, specifically making her favorite meal so it cushions the news that he's going back to starfleet,,,,,,,, this is the memory he is reliving when picard meets him, and it's like.. . Even they both recognize how sad that is, that his history of having to choose between work and a love life and choosing the enterprise every time, is the memory that he is experiencing

I know mr nimoy didn't want to be in the movie (good on him), but I really feel like the scenes with kirk in the nexus are so out of character it's basically shatner acting as himself with the things he likes, but something related to starfleet or the enterprise or fuck, even just being with his friends and his son is alive and loves him or fucking anything that could have been a very emotionally compelling (and revealing) moment, if what Kirk's dream life was wasn't just shat being narcissistic

On the enterprise again with the crew, on the family farm in Iowa, his fucking brother and son and dead family are alive... or nestled in a log cabin making breakfast for your partner... who comes down stairs and greets you... with a sleepy rub to his eye and a delicate touch of two fingertips... moving to the kettle to make two cups of tea... who is your bonded th'ya'la and you've loved since you first met all those years ago

Picard easing kirk out of the nexus, able to make him recognize this wasn't real, but it could be, is what manages to pull him away from the siren song he fell prey to so long ago. Unlike sorren, who was ripped out of the nexus and told he wasn't allowed back into eden, who had no wife to be with in reality. Comparing the two and their similarities/differences could have made for a very cool plot, told from the picard/tng perspective so it's learning about both side by side

Or something along those lines

Thinking about if kirk actually was to fall into the nexus and picard found him and brought him back into reality 80 years later...

Picard seeing kirk's dream existence as living in a cosy home with his favorite dog while making breakfast while picard tries to talk to him, only for spock to come down the stairs in a cosy bedrobe like he just woke up, much to picards immense confusion. It's only then while kirk looks up with so much affection while spock makes a comment about them not expecting any visitors so far in the country - while greeting his jim with a little morning finger kiss - that picard notices the blend of vulcan and terran aesthetic decorating the house. Realizing then that Kirks dream life to live with spock in quiet peace...

Using that to his advantage to tell kirk this isn't real and that's not actually spock (to which he receives a raised vulcan brow), but if kirk comes back to reality with him to stop sorren he can be reunited with spock, the real spock, who has refused to believe kirk is dead and has been searching for him for 80 long years, and that leaving the nexus means they could find each other again and share in this vision in reality and together. That makes kirk pause and after some time finally agree to come back (even the nexus' version of spock informs him of the logic of returning to reality, because of course he would)

Kirk not actually fucking dying at the end of generations because I still refuse to believe they did something so dumb. Reuniting with his t'hy'la who is so overcome with emotion a tear actually escapes his eye as he cradles kirks head, which kirk gently wipes away with a finger before they kiss and embrace like on genesis when they found each other before.

Kirk not having aged for 80 years which actually lines up with the vulcan's longer lifespan so they're pretty close to the same page now and can grow old together in a way that would have been impossible otherwise

Spock telling picard he owes the man a life debt for discovering the half of his soul the universe had told him was extinguished

I just want these boys to find a happy ending okay...

[mst3kproject]

Yeti: Giant of the Twentieth Century

Now for an actual Bigfoot movie.  This one is...uh... well, they sure don't make 'em like this anymore, do they?  I'm rather fond of it because it’s set in Canada for some reason, possibly because that's the only country the film-makers could think of that has both glaciers and big cities?  No matter, I never turn down an opportunity to make fun of my native land.  Nobody in this movie was ever involved in MST3K as far as I can tell, but all of them were in plenty of cheap and terrible Italian films that would make prime fodder for the SoL.

So, like, global warming and shit, right, the glaciers are melting.  This is probably connected with millionaire Morgan Hunnicutt finding a giant hominoid trapped in ice like the Deadly Mantis. Hunnicutt ropes an old friend, crusty paleontologist Professor Henry Waterman, into helping him thaw the thing out for study, and naturally it turns out to still be alive.  The Yeti smashes its way out of its cage and carries off Hunnicutt's grandchildren, Herbie and Jane.  Luckily, Herbie's dog Indio is able to lead the adults to the Yeti's hiding place, and by the time they arrive, captor and captives have bonded.  Could the children be the key to controlling the Yeti during Hunnicutt's planned publicity campaign?  Not if his rivals at Maple Leaf Factors Ltd have anything to say about it!

If you like terrible movies (and you're reading my blog, so I'm gonna assume you do), this one is a gem.  Yeti: Giant of the Twentieth Century is engaging and watchable, but it's also absolutely misconceived on every possible level, from the script to the acting to the special effects.  It is unfortunately a little long at an hour and three quarters, but other than that it's just about perfect.  Anything you could do to make it technically 'better' or 'worse' would only render it less enjoyable.

The opening scene plays out like something from a cartoon, or maybe a skit from Royal Canadian Air Farce: Waterman is trying to enjoy a nice fishing trip when Hunnicutt drops in on him from a helicopter, smokes a huge cigar, helps himself to Waterman's lunch, and generally bothers the poor man until Waterman gives up and agrees to help him with his Yeti.  Fat, jolly Hunnicutt and jowly old Waterman even kind of look like cartoon characters, and the dialogue doesn't give them any more dimension than 'jovial millionaire' and 'grumpy scientist'.  It doesn't really matter, though, because the whole movie is so silly that this actually sets the tone perfectly.

The major source of giggles in the ninety minutes ahead is, of course, the Yeti himself.  The costume is terrible in the best sort of way, being just a fur hood and a foam muscle suit with a little hair on top of it.  There's also a giant fake hand that captive humans can sit in, and a pair of giant fake legs that are unavoidably and hilariously reminiscent of the giant fake Beau Brummel legs from Village of the Giant. Nor can we forget the huge hairy toes that are the first part of the creature we see, sticking out of the block of ice (to melt this, Hunnicutt's employees use flamethrowers, which would not have occurred to me but is certainly efficient.  From now on I will believe that this is also how they got Captain America out of the iceberg and you cannot tell me otherwise).  Forced perspective and greenscreen, both terrible, are used to try to make the Yeti look gigantic.

That's funny enough in itself, but what makes it all even better is the fact that Mimmo Crao, the guy in the Yeti suit, is absolutely giving it his hundred and ten percent!  He has no lines, so his only tools are his facial expressions and the occasional grunt or scream, but I'm damned if he doesn't pour his entire heart and soul into every moment.  Good for him, honestly, because the marriage of the shitty costume and effects with his total dedication is a thing of beauty.

A second fountain of hilarity appears in the shape of scenes in which people go nuts over things like yeti-branded gasoline and breakfast cereal.  We see crowds running down hallways and across parking lots to buy the stuff, jumping in the air and whooping in excitement as they go.  I'm sorry, director Gianfranco Parolini, but the only thing Canadians get that excited over is hockey.

Third, there's the music. I don't talk about music very much on this blog because film is primarily a visual medium, and because music in old movies is rarely noticeably bad – at worst it's kind of mediocre, but that rarely takes too much away.  The music in Yeti: Giant of the Twentieth Century is amazing. The main theme is an off-brand version of Carl Orff's O Fortuna, which probably tells you enough about why it's humorous – we've got this self-consciously dramatic music laid over this unbelievably shitty yeti, trying its hardest to convince us that we should be on the edge of our seats.  Incredibly, they manage to make this even sillier, too, when they do a disco cover with lyrics. As the toy helicopter lowers the yeti cage onto the roof of a Hunnicutt Hotel in Toronto, a chorus of voices sings lines like, “he is so big!  He is so strong!  He is the yeti!”

Between that and the women wearing the Kiss Me Yeti t-shirts, I have some questions for the film-makers.  Humans being what we are, if somebody proved the existence of the abominable snowman tomorrow the Himalayas would be flooded with hopeful monsterfuckers, but this yeti would be a worthy opponent for Glenn Manning.  His little bigfoot must be the size of a human being all by itself, and I can't imagine...

You know what?  Forget it.  I don't want to imagine it.

Also in that rooftop scene are a couple of people waving the flag of Ontario, and at least one of those flags is upside-down.  I rewound it a couple of times to be sure it wasn’t just that the flag was hanging funny, and it wasn’t.  This is particularly amusing because you don't need to be thoroughly familiar with Canadian heraldry to recognize it.  Ontario's flag has a shield on it with an obvious top and bottom.

I haven't even really gone into the plot yet, have I?  Well, don't worry, that is also terrible in all the best ways.  You don't get far into Yeti: Giant of the Twentieth Century before you realize that it's a version of King Kong, with the serial numbers only very gently filed off.  If it seems weird that anybody would make a King Kong ripoff in 1977, I'm afraid I have to remind you that Dino De Laurentiis had remade the movie the previous year.  I guess nobody in Italy foresaw that De Laurentiis' version was going to be an epic bomb, so they made Yeti in order to ride that film's potential coat-tails.  With this as its pedigree, I quite reasonably expected Yeti to end with the giant plummeting from the CN Tower to land with a splat in the middle of the Skydome, and then Hunnicutt could deliver some pithy closing line.

But no, Jane persuades the Yeti to return to the wilderness from whence he came, and he just wanders off into the woods somewhere in southern Ontario.  Um.  Okay.  That sounds like a terrible idea.  At the zoo in my city we have a grizzly bear who had to be kept in captivity after he learned that humans have food and wouldn't stop trying to take it away from us.  This is a common problem with bears around here and is one of the main reasons I don't actually believe in bigfoot – if this creature existed it would be a huge pain in the ass to campers and parks employees.  Imagine how much worse it would be if the hungry wildlife were a fifty foot tall caveman.

Besides the origin of its monster, the other way Yeti: Giant of the Twentieth Century tries to differentiate itself from its model is through the relationship the beast has with its captives.  Whereas every official version of King Kong very unfortunately treats the ape's interest in Ann Darrow (or her equivalent) as romantic, the Yeti's fascination with Jane and Herbie is explicitly paternal.  They're far too small to actually be young of his own species, but the impression we get, later confirmed by Waterman, is that their winter coats make them look like tiny yetis. When he has them alone, he is never violent towards them.  He brings them fish to eat, and tries to comb Jane's hair with the bones.  It's honestly kind of sweet, as if he's playing with a very fragile little doll.

Of course, this is a monster movie, so the Yeti also has to kill some dudes.  The main villain, Maple Leaf vice-president Cliff (everything in Canada is called Maple Leaf this or Canada Goose that or Shaved Beaver the other thing.  I'm not even joking.  One of our most popular clothing brands in the 80s was called Beaver Canoe) gets stepped on, but my favourite is the guy who is strangled by the Yeti's toes. I could not make this shit up.

As far as truly enjoyable bad movies go, I would rate this one nearly as high as things like Starcrash and Teenagers from Outer Space. It is inexcusably terrible and yet everybody's hearts were in it, and the result is downright sublime in its ridiculousness.  Yeti: Giant of the Twentieth Century can be hard to find but if you get an opportunity, definitely check this one out.