Why is Nemesis hated so much?

[Sindatur]

sonak wrote:

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I've had a similar reaction to it. Disliked it when it came out, but after watching it more over the years, I've come to think of it as decent, and certainly better than "Insurrection," which unlike NEM, doesn't get better with repeat viewings.

Yea, I definitely like it better than Insurrection, sure, it could've been much better, but, I sure don't loathe it, and as said, like it more than Insurrection

[C.E. Evans]

sonak wrote:

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I've had a similar reaction to it. Disliked it when it came out, but after watching it more over the years, I've come to think of it as decent, and certainly better than "Insurrection," which unlike NEM, doesn't get better with repeat viewings.

I actually didn't mind Insurrection at all, but I do rank it below Nemesis these days (that wasn't the case ten years ago, though).

[King Daniel]

I can't believe it's been almost ten years since Nemesis! I saw it when it was released on VHS, and loved it. I still do. I'd stopped caring about Trek at the time, and it got me into it again.

I had no idea what it was going to be about other than Romulans and spaceships crashing from the TV commercials, so everything was fresh with no preconceptions.

[R. Star]

BillJ wrote:

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I always laugh at the things people get hung up on. It's quite possible he simply shaved his head at some point while in the Academy. Many people go through multiple hairstyles over a lifetime.

So I don't see it as being contradictory to the TV series.

Picard just went through a neo-Nazi phase? Or was he always balding and just bought progressively thinner toupes as he got older?

But on topic, the whole premise of Nemesis is just a fail. The Remans. This race supposedly "bred for war" Highly xenophobic and thinking themselves superior. So why are they even following Shinzon at all? He's a human slave. Like all xenophobes they should treat him as a second class citizen, no matter how fond of him that Viceroy might be. By all accounts he should have been the one calling the shots and maybe just indulging Shinzon, his favorite pet friend, by bringing Picard in for the transfusion whatever.

For that matter how did a group of slave miners, manage to secretly build a super death ship, complete with a doomsday weapon and a cloaking device more advanced than anything the Romulans had? Did they just have research labortories in those mineshafts that the Romulans missed? Not to mention a fully functional ship yard, material, manpower to build it, and the technical know how. I don't know too many miners and soldiers that can build a functional naval ship nonetheless a spaceship.

Also, the Remans... what axe do they have to grind with the Federation? We overthrew our oppressors, yay! What's the first thing we do? Let's take on our oppressor's enemies! That makes perfect sense. What? Use this doomsday weapon we pulled out of our asses on our oppressors? No, that makes no sense whatsoever.

And really for a race "bred for war" they get shotdown by the dozens. Hell you even have Picard dual wielding phasers against em video game style. You'd think they'd be trained in oh... basic marksmanship since they were shock troops during the Dominion war.

Shinzon himself just makes dumb decisions too. What the heck was up with mind raping Troi beyond just showing anyone in the audience that's too dumb to realize it, that he's the bad guy? Not only that, he does it while he's trying to decieve Picard that he's a nice guy. Wow, if only Picard had realized something was up and raised shields after Troi reported that one. I can get that he's curious about Picard and his human side, so I'll give him a pass on delaying things when he could've acted sooner.

Now during the battle, even there Shinzon's dumb. So.. after taking down the Enterprise's shields, he sends his men over to capture Picard for the technobabbletransfuseitwithmydnapwnedlol whatever thing. Makes sense... until he beams them over 10 decks down from Picard. And if that wasn't dumb enough, the very next scene he swings his ship around and blows a freaking hole in the bridge. The one place Picard is guaranteed to be. Maybe he just knew plot shields would protect Picard?

Now the final big flaw in the movie was Data's death. Not the fact that they killed him, but how they did it. So Picard beams over, kills a dozen more Remans and fights Shinzon to death hand to hand. Yeah Stewart always wants the action hero bit, but never quite filled it. Anyways... then when Shinzon dies he just... freezes. Does nothing. He's apparently so upset about killing his clone that was gonna die anyways, he just doesn't care about his ship getting wiped out by the death ray whatever. So Data has to come in and slap the transporter tag thing on him and kamikazee himself. Yep Picard, live with that one. "Data died because I sat on my ass and did nothing."

You wanna kill Data off in a satisfying way? Have the Remans be competant and capture Picard. Have them strapping him to the DNA sucker machine. Then have Data jump in, phaser Shinzon, slap the transporter thing on Picard and blast that power core thing that was convienently on the bridge. That would have been a meaningful sacrifice and one that wouldn't have left you felt wanting.

Apparently there were all kinds of issues with this movie. Apparently the director was so inept he couldn't even remember people's names for example, and the aging crew just almost seemed burned out on this one. So TNG ended with a fizzle and not a boom.

[Lord Garth]

"Hate" is too strong of a word. I just don't care for NEM.

The trailer left me underwhelmed, the idea that the Romulans were the adversaries (which turned out not to be the case) left me underwhelmed, and Shinzon wasn't as interesting as he should've been as a Picard clone.

There wasn't any follow-up to DS9. I know it's a TNG movie, but excluding some glimpes on VOY, we hadn't seen the Post-War AQ. In 2002, I was interesting in seeing something more about that than we did.

I would've left in the character scenes that were cut and lost some of the boring, numbing action sequences.

B-4 was annoying.

What I did like about Nemesis: The soundtrack is terrific. Chilling in some areas. Credit deserves to be given where it's due.

With NEM, Data was at his best in the TNG movies. I don't care if they pretended he never had the emotion chip. I never liked the emotion chip anyway. I'm glad the whole issue was left alone and kept out of the film.

I don't have a problem with Worf returning to Starfleet either. Even as I was watched the DS9 finale in 1999, I didn't think Ambassadorship would agree with him.

It looked like peace might be achieved the Federation and the Romulan Empire.

KingDaniel wrote:

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I had no idea what it was going to be about other than Romulans and spaceships crashing from the TV commercials, so everything was fresh with no preconceptions.

I knew what FC was about, I even read part of a leaked script. It made me even more excited and interested in the film. I was already picturing the scenes in my head and couldn't wait to see them. Knowing more doesn't always lead to negative expectations. What I knew about NEM simply didn't impress me as much as what I knew about FC.

[ILOVETREK1701]

I think yeah there were errors and poor choices but it is still a good move and above all els it's STAR TREKso you almost have to love it.

[Xhiandra]

I'm not going to go at length about it again (see the "hypotheticals" thread), but I like it as well.
I wouldn't say it's the best TNG movie, that's First Contact, but it's not bad.

I'd rank the Trek movies:

1. First Contact - it had everything, drama, humour, action, character developpment, overall hopeful outlook towards the future,...
2. The Undiscovered Country - best writing quality in the ToS movies.
3. The Wrath of Khan - most rank it first, I know. It's good, but I just can't see what's so special about it.
4. Nemesis - has flaws, but stil enjoyable.
5. The Search for Spock - interesting theme but boring execution.
6. The Motion Picture - so infuriatingly slow-paced. Makes the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey look positively hectic.
7. Generations - can a plot be any more shoe-horned? "we want Kirk to personally hand the torch to Picard, let's get an excuse for that!" It's a fan indulgence, but a completely unnecessary one.
8. The Final Frontier - some good dialogues, but overall a mess. And those special effects... that was Jaws 4 in space, maybe even worse! (not really, the Jaws 4 shark has to be the worst special effect in the last 50 years of Hollywood)
9. Insurrection - I liked Picard's love interest, but everything else about this movie was just silly and the plot made little sense. A huge mess.
10. The Voyage Home - written by some fanfic-writer's feet, this is a movie that lowers your IQ, a crime for a any movie, doubly so for a Trek movie. A couple of chuckles don't make up for the sheer idiocy of the script, sorry.
11. JJ Abrams' Star Wa... Trek - nameless abomination.

[CorporalCaptain]

When I was sitting in the theater on opening night watching Nemesis, I had no doubt that the film would bomb, that the Star Trek movie franchise was over, and that I would be glad to see it go*.

The RLM review posted upthread by MANT! echoes a lot of my thoughts. The film was self-indulgent, uninteresting, pointless, but worst of all unpleasant, and therefore ill-suited even for popcorn escapism.

Contrast this with the other turkey of the film series, STV. Yes, STV was embarrassingly awful, but at least it was sorta fun, and it certainly wasn't viscerally in bad taste. And after watching STV in the theater, I only felt as if the movie franchise were teetering on the edge, rather than getting flushed down the toilet.

To boot, STV was an anomalous low point after a generally well-regarded high point in TVH. NEM on the other hand was just the decisively sudden conclusion of a downward spiral of irrelevancy, begun by INS, and crashing into the ground.

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* - At that time, I hadn't yet considered the possibility that TPTB would boldly go to recast Kirk and Spock, while I could still get around under my own power.

[Trekkie2]

I for one, liked Nemesis, but I did not care for the rape scene.

[JRS]

Trekkie2 wrote:

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I for one, liked Nemesis, but I did not care for the rape scene.

Yes..the rape scene.
The character of Troi was not treated very well in this movie.
She was there just to get married, raped..then later cried about twice, was angry..and crashed a ship.
She does not really come as an strong and independent woman, who's past experiences in the TNG series itself, should have prepared her to shrug of the mind rape stuff rather quickly
( she was possessed by aliens twice, captured by Romulans, helped Picard after the Borg incident, lost her telepathic powers, was mind raped, entered her mothers mind and so on..)

In fact all the characters in NEM seem to forget pretty much all of the stuff that had happened to them over the years, plus most of the crew gets nothing decent to do in the whole movie.Ignoring the past events of the TNG is one of the biggest fails of the film,
And does not help that they indeed edited out almost all of the character based stuff,
that actually was pretty good..and would have made the film better

I do place much of blame towards the director also.
Baird did not know Star Trek, did not care about it..nor he bothered to do much of research at all( He should have watched all of TNG, IMHO).
I wish Jonathan Frakes would have directed this one, he such a did good job on First Contact.

There are other negative points I could make about Nemesis..but I have told them so many times and I do not really feel like repeating them right now.

[Mage]

BillJ wrote:

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I always laugh at the things people get hung up on. It's quite possible he simply shaved his head at some point while in the Academy. Many people go through multiple hairstyles over a lifetime.

So I don't see it as being contradictory to the TV series.

I agree. Some of the people's complaints I can understand, even if I don't agree with them. But others....

Fans can find the weirdest reasons to dislike what they love. So yeah, for some it will be very hard to be pleased by anything.
But you know what I find REALLY FUNNY? How the haters seem to be able to explain in detail the scenes they didn't like. Now, if I hate a movie, I can't remember every little detail. So that must mean that even though they don't like it, they keep on watching it. I don't get that.

[King Daniel]

Starfleet Academy is a four year course, right? We saw Picard with hair after he graduated and was awaiting assignment in "Tapestry". He was in the usual maroon dress uniform of the era.

The pic in Nemesis shows Picard in the cadet jumpsuit, giving up to FOUR YEARS for the guy to grow his hair back after having shaved it off.

In a similar real-life story, I used to shave my head but I don't anymore. This complaint probably is the most pathetic and stupid one in ALL of Star Trek.

Heck, even taken as a simple rewrite, making Picard bald at the age Patrick Stewart was (19), it really doesn't matter. Certainly not worth the fuss made here and in other threads.

[Harvey]

I think the complaints stem, in part, from the fact that a leaked version of the script described young Picard as having hair like he did in "Tapestry." When this was changed in the movie, some people interpreted it as the powers that be assuming their audience would be too stupid to realize that a character who once had hair was now bald.

It's really the least of the film's many problems, though, but something easy to nitpick.

[Mutenroshi]

Xhiandra wrote:

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11. JJ Abrams' Star Wa... Trek - nameless abomination.

Fuck that! Star Trek '09 accomplished the double feat of rejuvenating the franchise AND getting rid of the anal retentive fanbois.

YMMV of course...

[ssosmcin]

I always liked Nemesis. I liked it on opening night and I still do. I think it's a fun flick.

R. Star wrote:

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Picard just went through a neo-Nazi phase?

Seriously? With all of the men who shave their heads, all over the world, you really still think it means "skinhead"? It's a popular stylistic choice. The character could have done it for any number of reasons.