The highlights of Nemesis

[AllStarEntprise]

captrek wrote:

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I think Shinzon made a lousy substitute for Khan...

Shinzon isn't trying to be Khan. Nero is the "lousy substitute for Khan".
Khan hated Kirk for marooning him on Ceti Alpha 5
Nero hated Spock for saying he would save Romulus and failing.
Khan blamed Kirk for the death of his wife.
Nero blamed Spock for the death of his wife.
Khan stole a machine that could be perverted into a weapon.
Nero stole a ship carrying a machine that he perverted into weapon.
Khan wanted to make Kirk suffer
Nero wanted to and did make Spock suffer
Khan was completely obsessed with killing Kirk
Nero was completely obsessed with killing Spock

Shinzon never focused on Picard like a laser like Khan and Nero did to their respective enemies. Shinzon priority was getting the transfusion and ridding himself of his clone material. For a clone it makes sense, because Shinzon longs to be "authentic", but can't while his original self is still out there living.

captrek wrote:

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One of NEM’s myriad flaws is that it seems to forget Picard’s sobbing in GEN that “There will be no more Picards.” Shouldn’t there have been signs of hope, love, relief, something positive on his discovery that there actually is another Picard? It would have been a satisfying way to wrap up the TNG saga if a redeemed enemy became the vehicle by which the Picard family got new life.

Picard did try to embrace Shinzon, several times. In the Romulan senate, on the Scimitar while he was restrained but Shinzon's doctors, and in Picards ready room.
it's kind of hard to embrace the long lost son, when they show up in a dreagnought ship that has 3x the weapons the Enterprise-E had, having dinner in the place where your clone committed mass murder, and later discovering a biogenics weapon on his ship. At the dinner Picard was reluctant but was visibly warming to the idea of trusting his clone. When Geordie told Picard about the thalaron Picard had decided he couldn't trust Shinzon. Several minutes Picard was beamed off the Enterprise, and Shinzon tried to kill him.

Nemesis was always to be a hit and miss film. Paramount wanted Insurrection to be the last one, but Berman talked them into making a 4th. Had it been successful there would've been a proper send off to the TNG crew in a 5th film.

It is my personal opinion that VOY and ENT used alot of the story and monetary capital the TNG films could've used to keep the films going.

[JarodRussell]

AdmiralScreed wrote:

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Excellent point.

The TNG films really needed something to tie them together as one saga. A character arc for Picard and/or some of the other characters would have benefited the films a lot. Instead, each film just feels like its own stand alone story.

Picard was constantly shagging Anij in the meantime who lived on the fountain of youth planet. He no longer worried about that sort of stuff.

AllStarEntprise wrote:

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Paramount wanted Insurrection to be the last one, but Berman talked them into making a 4th.

LOL. I highly doubt that. Berman has always been on the receiving end of the command chain. Paramount dictates what movies and shows are made and when.

[Caligula]

TenLubak wrote:

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I like the music, the green mutara nebula and LT DATAs suicide. He pretended it was to save the ship but we all know it was for some other reason he killed himself.

Secretly, he was still struggling with the emotion chip while he realized complaining about it to the Captain was only going to result in a stern lecture like the one he got in the Stellar Cartography room on the Ent-D in Generations. If only someone had paid more attention...

[Dr. Crusher]

I agree with a lot of the "best points" listed above--the Romulan Senate scene at the beginning was an insight into Romulan culture entirely left out of the TV series (understandably so) and achieved the precise effect it was after in the viewers. I really admired Data's memorial among the senior officers, and it seemed perfectly natrual for Riker to start the conversation about Data's life. The memory of Data he shared was a great choice, too--I am sure every single TNG TV series fan was yelling "Pop Goes the Weasel"! when Riker said he couldn't remember the song that Data was whistling when he met him in the holodeck. Shinzon wasn't a bad character either--he was played very admirably, but I do agree that an attempt to create a Khan/Kirk rivalry between Picard and Shinzon felt very far-fetched.

I think that maybe this film wouldn't have been judged as harshly, particularly by TNG fans, if it hadn't been the last film in the TNG film series. Because it was billed as their "final adventure," I think all of us had high hopes for it. I am sure that everyone who was/is a TNG TV series fan has their own favorite loose ends, and a film like this would be expected to tie at least a few of them up. I agree that the director's personal distance from anything TNG-related made it impossible to expect that kind of a result in this film, and that was definitely a missed opportunity. However, if this had not been the last TNG film, this may have been one of the best TNG movie adventures.

[CaptainMatt]

Paramount really should have gone with a Trek-established writer or writers and certain characters from TNG's seven-year-run-plus four-movies should have appeared in small cameos ranging from a minute to a supporting part. IMHO.

[Therin of Andor]

CaptainMatt wrote:

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Paramount really should have gone with a Trek-established writer or writers

I don't think the writing was the big failure for "Nemesis". It was Stuart Baird's direction. He did very little homework, the cast complained - and he thought Geordi was an alien.

and certain characters from TNG's seven-year-run-plus four-movies should have appeared in small cameos ranging from a minute to a supporting part.

Such as Wesley. And Guinan. And Janeway.

[ReadyAndWilling]

the scimitar looked unbelievably awesome.

[Lanny77]

CaptainMatt wrote:

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Paramount really should have gone with a Trek-established writer or writers

I disagree. Apparently the original script crafted by Logan, Berman and Spiner was said to have been Warth of Khan-esqe in quality. It was after Stuart Baird that the script was rewritten and we got the the dune buggy stuff thrown in

[sonak]

ReadyAndWilling wrote:

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the scimitar looked unbelievably awesome.

agreed

[Josan]

Highlights would be... uh... the visuals. The ships. That's about it. The acting and the story were pretty cringe worthy. I recently tried re-watching and made it about 20-25 minutes in and turned it off.

And no offense to the OP but the reverse lettering in the opening title felt extremely wrong to me.

[Ian Keldon]

StevenR wrote:

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Picard helping him along and then strolling down the Enterprise passageway.

I've always liked that scene as an homage to an almost identical scene from TOS with Kirk. Musically, the tender "Blue Skies" riff, symbolically suggesting that perhaps Data is in fact not really as gone as we thought transitions hopefully into the end credits march with it's bold Courage fanfare over the shot of Enterprise under reconstruction letting the audience know that indeed, one journey may be over, but the next one is ready to begin.

It's bad luck that Nemesis wound up being the last Trek Prime movie. It's not a great film, but it's a very good film. It leaves me wanting more.

Unfortunately, for good or ill, Trek Prime will likely never be revisited either on the big screen or the small screen.

[Ian Keldon]

StevenR wrote:

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The biggest problem is that words mean things. Nemesis has a definition and it isn't just "evil counterpart". Nemesis is an avenging spirit sent to punish people for the sin of hubris. At no point, even with his pontificiation of all things humanity has become, does Picard actually get so arrogant that the gods, such as they are, decide to slap him down. And Shinzon just doesn't do anything besides say "you had it good while I suffered. I'm going to destroy Earth. That'll show you.

Shinzon wasn't Picard's nemesis so much as he was the Romulans' nemesis. They needed to play up the "overthrow of the Romulan government" angle and downplay the "Picard vs Evil Picard" angle.

Instead of Shinzon being a slave in a mine, (which by the way was incongruous with his also being a great general) who leads a Spartacus-like revolt he needed to be written as a Patton-esque "old warrior" who just couldn't handle the newer, friendlier relationship between the Empire and the Federation.

This could have played out in a story with elements of ST III and VI, both of which had similar plot tropes.

The Overlord wrote:

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Why not do that from the start and forget about destroying the Federation? There also no evidence he was planning that, so this just kinda guess work. That would have been nice to show, because him acting in Romulan Empire's interests didn't make sense.

Anyway you slice it, his motives for destroying the Federation were extremely vague and convoluted. He had motives for hating the Romulans, he even had motives for wanting Picard, but destroying the Federation, that made no sense.

It makes sense from the standpoint of the "nature vs nurture" subtext of the film. Handled correctly, it would have been interesting to see Shinzon played as "more Romulan than the Romulans". Tie that to the idea I mentioned earlier about Shinzon as Patton/the perfect warrior who can't survive the peace and he would have been a powerful "opposite" of Picard the diplomat and peace supporter.

[Captrek]

Josan wrote:

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And no offense to the OP but the reverse lettering in the opening title felt extremely wrong to me.

Agreed. It feels like a cheap entry in the Aliens vs. Predator tradition of SciFi dreck.