NEMESIS: the good, and not so bad.

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies I-X' started by ChowdaHead, Oct 16, 2013.

  1. ChowdaHead

    ChowdaHead Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Last night was the first time Ive viewed Nemesis. it was overall a pretty dull and bad film. but, I weighed the bad with the good. some parts were enjoyable, such as shots of Romulus and Remus. what parts, if any, did you enjoy?
     
  2. Smoked Salmon

    Smoked Salmon Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I really don't think it's that bad. Its worst aspects are the fact that Tom Hardy was too young at the time to carry off the villain well, the plot was a TWOK rehash and Stuart Baird was simply no good for Trek because he didn't get it and didn't care to learn about what made the TNG crew a close knit family. Indeed, if you watch the deleted scenes on the Special Edition DVD this becomes all too evident, particualry in his choice to cut the Picard/Data wine scene, which would've added so much more depth and meaning to both Data's demise and also the wine toast given by the crew. afterwards. You can see it here.

    Otherwise I think it's quite good. It has decent pace, the special effects are far superior to those in Isurrection (which looked like cartoons) and the score is great.
     
  3. Tosk

    Tosk Admiral Admiral

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    Nemesis is definitely a victim of the final edit. It would still be a problematic film, but if they went back and did a new edit from scratch, you could easily have a film 25% better than what we got.
     
  4. ChowdaHead

    ChowdaHead Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    its biggest flaw is its director. I agree his vision was so far off.
     
  5. MakeshiftPython

    MakeshiftPython Commodore Commodore

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    I thought Tom Hardy was fine and giving it his all. His performance isn't an issue, it's the script he had to work with. No good actor could have ever tried saving the character the way Shinzon was written.
     
  6. ChowdaHead

    ChowdaHead Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    I agree. tom hardy was fine. I can only imagine what he could have done with a powerful script.
     
  7. Commishsleer

    Commishsleer Commodore Commodore

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    I thought the lighting was the worst I've seen in a Trek movie. Picard, Riker and Data looked really old. Stewart looks younger in more recent films.

    I thought they could have gotten rid of the dune buggy scenes. What was that all about anyway?

    I didn't believe for one second that Shinzon was Picard's clone just as I never believed Sybok was Spock's brother. nuKirks portayal of PrimeKirk is more believable.
    Shinzon just needed to be a lot less creepy. Just a little bit like Picard in anyway.

    That all being said its not all bad. The space battle was OK. Data was heroic. Stewart gave a fine thoughful performance as usual. The wedding was good. The Romulans supporting Picard was great.
    The mechanism for wiping out the Romulan senate was cool.
     
  8. Smoked Salmon

    Smoked Salmon Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I don't even think he had a vision. I think he figured that he'd just shoot the script as is, but not let it grow and adapt as the film was being made. I know the cast hated him because he wasn't interested in their input at all, and, although this has not been confirmed, I suspect the same is probably true of his relationship with John Logan. I think Logan's CV speaks for itself outside of Nemesis and I can't imagine him producing a script of what we ultimately saw on screen.
     
  9. Lance

    Lance Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    ^ This. :techman: While I don't think Nemesis was ever necessarily a good movie, the deleted scenes clearly show that there were plenty of genuine TNG character moments that ended up on the cutting room floor. And there are reportedly even more of them which haven't as yet surfaced to the public.

    While it obviously wouldn't be a "director's edition", I'd love to see somebody (Frakes?) given permission to go through the dailies and reconstruct it. I honestly think there's a better version of Nemesis out there that we haven't seen.
     
  10. Smellmet

    Smellmet Commodore Commodore

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    I've always enjoyed Nemesis, and rank it alongside First Contact out of the TNG movies, apart from the odd scene I didn't like (dune buggy - just looked cheap and poorly executed) I think it's decent entertainment, I love the wedding scene, and the battle with the Scimitar is for me the best space battle in all 12 movies. I've never understood the hate it's received down the years. Tom Hardy did what he could with the material he had to work with, no real complaints from me there. Would I have changed anything about the film? Sure, but if I'm reaching for my 1-10 box set, Nemesis is usually one of the ones I re-watch the most.
     
  11. Amaris

    Amaris Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Let's see:

    Good Things
    Romulus/Remus flyby
    The Opening Senate Scene
    Riker/Troi Wedding
    Picard's Meeting with Shinzon


    Bad Things
    Discovering B4
    Dune Buggies
    Purposely killing members of a primitive, pre-warp culture
    Viceroy/Troi Rape Scene
    Picard Taking On an Entire Ship and Winning
    The Incredible, Yet Slowly Powering Doomsday Weapon
    Smashing the Enterprise into the Scimitar
    Convoluted And Unnecessary Way In Which Data Dies

    Those are the big ones. The movie, for me, is fair to middling. It's not terrible, but it's not something I'll watch very often.
     
  12. Stoo

    Stoo Commodore Commodore

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    Every time I watch I enjoy Picard and Shinzon's dinner scene. I find myself wishing that Shinzon was genuine, and pursuing good relations with the Federation. And it makes me wonder what, more complex, directions the story could have gone in instead of an angry rampage of revenge on earth\Picard.

    The battle scene at the end is probably the best of the TNG movies, also.
     
  13. GameOn

    GameOn Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    It's a poor movie and a crappy way to end TNG but I think it gets more hate than it deserves. I think Generations and Insurrection are worse and the movie was doomed from the start no matter how it turned out due to the over saturation of Star Trek on TV.
     
  14. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Other than the terrible wedding stuff at the start, I loved Nemesis. I thought Shinzon was believable as a damaged younger version of Picard, the action sequences were fun and it was great to see the TNG crew one last time.

    It was Nemesis and the Xindi story in Enterprise that got me back into Trek.
     
  15. Makarov

    Makarov Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    As much as I like Tom Hardy it would have been a much more fun movie if Patrick Stewart played Shinzon as well as Picard. I agree that the plot could have been much more interesting if Shinzon/Picard actually worked together. It's a problem for me that Shinzon neither looks nor acts like Picard.

    Now take a look at Looper for a movie with two different actors's playing the same person, I find it much better - even with Joseph Gordon Levitt's strange face. Imagine if they just shaved JGL's head and said, it's young bruce willis! That would suck, and that's what they did here.

    The line that's like "our hearts are the same" bugs me. You've got an artificial heart Picard.

    I like it better than Generations but less than the rest of the movies. I find Insurrection far better.
     
    Last edited: Oct 16, 2013
  16. BillJ

    BillJ The King of Kings Premium Member

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    Nemesis isn't the best Trek film and it isn't the worst. I actually rank it as the best of the Next Gen films.
     
  17. jpv2000

    jpv2000 Captain Captain

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    Same here. As a matter of fact it is the only Next Gen movie DVD that I own and re-watch fairly often.

    Great points for me are:

    Riker and Troi's wedding.

    Riker finally becoming a Captain.

    The fight with the Reman boarding party and Riker's fight with the Viceroy.

    And Nemesis led to my favorite lit series ever; Titan. :techman::bolian::techman:
     
  18. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    B4 worked for me, and made sense from an in-universe perspective(rather than Soong going straight to Lore)

    I liked the wedding scene

    the movie looks and feels very cinematic

    Tom Hardy's performance is good
     
  19. Hober Mallow

    Hober Mallow Commodore Commodore

    I agree, except that I don't think any director could have salvaged that script.
    I think he did the best he could, but never once during the film did I buy into the character being Picard.
     
  20. ChowdaHead

    ChowdaHead Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    for some idiotic reason, the script was written so that shinzon was really in no way like picard. minus enjoying tea. and I get why. they had different lives. different childhoods. but if they really wanted to bring in the viewers and make us care, some true similarities should have been established.