Star Trek Nemesis, NOT so Great

[AndyC]

Wow, somebody dug deep to revive this thread.

I found Nemesis to be a huge disappointment. Seems like after First Contact, they stopped writing movies and started dusting off unused episode ideas and expanding them to feature length. That's the feeling I get from watching them — they'd have made decent episodes, but they just aren't good enough for movies. Insurrection was like that. What was there to really care about in that movie?

The first seven had a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of a great TOS villain, Spock getting killed and resurrected, stealing the Enterprise and blowing it up, snatching whales from the past (present) to save the Earth, making peace with the Klingons, teaming up Kirk and Picard, blowing up another Enterprise, fighting off a Borg invasion while warp drive is invented, with the future of the Federation at stake. Lots of interesting characters, big battles and memorable scenes.

The last two just don't have the grand themes of the others. Even the sucky part 5 at least felt like a movie, not a dressed up episode.



Post Edited (01-13-04 12:34)

[Max Gardner]

On the other hand, it did have Ron Perlman, a great b-movie actor, albeit in a less-than-memorable role (Shinzon's viceroy).

[KINGDINOSAUR]

Max Gardner wrote:> Shinzon

No one has mentioned this, but I know it can't just be me who thought Shinzon looked like Keannu Reeves playing "Dr. Evil".  I couldn't take the guy seriously.  Worse bit of Star Trek villain casting since Christopher Lloyd as a Klingon warrior (Everyone I know who saw that movie in the early 1980s kept flashing to the "Reverend Jim" character from the TV show TAXI).

[Eirik]

The problem with Star Trek is that it's just played out.  You have writers who cannot come up with original ideas because they have a set piece plot foundation (familiar characters in Sterfleet on a starship) and there have been literally hundreds of stories already written.  Of course they're repeating themselves - how many more original plots can there be??

Then you have the actors.  Let's be honest - not a one of them (in any of tar Trek's incarnations) was really much of an actor to begin with.  Then they play these same parts over and over and over again - on TV, at conventions, in movies, probably in their sleep.  They get so set in the roles that with rare exceptions it winds up being the only thing they ever do in their career.  The cast in insurrection reminded me of the surly teenager in the mouse costume at Chucky Cheese at the end of the summer...  they had that "somebody just shoot me" look.

Artistically speaking, there are really just two options for the Star Trek universe:
1) get the hell away from Star Fleet and show us another setting.
2) just bury it, man.

[Cullen]

Grumpy Guy wrote:

> C'mon, guys.  What did you expect?  It's STAR TREK for god's
> sake...

That's not an excuse for a bad movie.

...

God, I am such a hypocrite.

[Velvet Brotha]

I love Star Trek and I was seriously considering the Nemesis chapter as my next pick for rental. However, what you said about it kinda killed my interest now.

[trekgeezer]

Some logic might have helped this movie. Seems they could detect  the 'positronic' signals from  Data  Gump's brain from half way across the galaxy, but the tricorder wouldn't pick them up from three feet away.  The whole dune buggy chase seemed tacked on just so they would have an action sequennce.

I have to say it wasn't as big a snooze as Star Trek: Infarction (or whatever the last one was called).  I just don't care about the TNG crew anymore. I didn't realize how boring they were until DS9's third season.

I'm going to cease now before I get into a rant, Star Trek is favorite of mine and I get a little heated about the way Paramount is milking the money cow without regard to the fans .

[The Burgomaster]

I think they should make one more STAR TREK movie with the original cast.  It could be called ONE FLEW OVER THE CAPTAIN'S NEST.  Here's the plot:

James T. Kirk (William Shatner) is committed to a mental institution where he has hallucinations that he is still in command of the Enterprise.  He also has an imaginary friend with pointy ears who he calls "Spock."

Box office gold!

[Ash]

Naw Brother.....
Ignore them!

Nemesis was very good I thought.
I was drawn into it from the get go and found it very enjoyable!

[Velvet Brotha]

Watch out! Hollywood is desperate for ideas and they just might lift yours because it actually sounds like something they'd do. ; )

[Flangepart]

Hey....there is a series of books about the exploits of the Starship Excaliber....
Who Says the movies have to be about the Enterprise?
New crew....new problims....new monsret fodder, even!
"Red shirt = death, got it, Lt. Lefcowitz?"

[Eirik]

Haha!!  They could have Scotty's funeral.  Bagpipes wail as a piano crate is lowered into a plus-sized grave.

[Prophet Tenebrae]

The grave cannae take it capn'!

Nemesis really was a boreathon of a snoozefest - but as far as I can tell, they were just distilling the essence of tedium and lameness for the purposes of Enterprise. I feel that quite a few people here are embittered ST fans - you have every reason to feel that way, I think. They've really run the franchise into the ground and as a swan song for the TNG cast this was pretty poor.

Apparently Brent Spiner asked them to kill him off not only because he thought he was looking too old etc but also because he just didn't want to get his character roped in later or anything like that and quite frankly who can blame him. TOS fans must have felt the same after ST5 - the journey to some swirley blue stuff.

But there were just so many things wrong with it, from the script, to the pacing, direction, continuity - having Janeway in it (the only possible reason I can think of for promoting someone not only violated the prime directive every week, not to mention the temporal prime directive and kept her not too sharp crew trapped in the Delta quadrant for 7 years is because they wanted her off a ship) to just the sheer boring lack of scope.

I agree that this felt like a few unused episodes dusted off and put together like a cut-and-shut car. Picard clone, Data's brother *and* Romulan WMD? If someone wants to redeem ST from being a tired old hack ridden geek show, the course of action is clear. Take Berman and Braga outside and shoot them. Axe Enterprise. Kill the entire Voyager cast... just in case.

[Conrad]

Actually, Tenebrae old sport, you have a point.  Since the ST film franchise has just about been rendered comatose by "Nemesis", they ought to go the whole hog and have a really, truly, final STNG film, where the whole cast except Picard get killed off.  Have an opening skirmish where one of the second-string characters dies (painfully!!); have a big space battle mid-way where half the remaining cast die (equally painfully!!!); have a final humungous space battle in which everyone except Picard dies, and even he's crippled and has to retire to grow grapes.

Nah, that would be too sensible.  Just take Brannon & Braga outside and mercifully shoot them!

[AndyC]

Wow, that even offers a perfect opportunity to blow up another Enterprise!