Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemesis?

[timtonruben359]

I didn't actually hate Nemesis it was an OK movie, it was certainly bigger scale than Insurrection or Generations but it felt as though the script needed one more tight draft. Now, I learned something interesting a few years ago I was at a panel with Brent Spiner and Marina Sirtis and they mentioned that there was something like 4 drafts of Nemesis written by Logan. Spiner, Stewart and Logan liked the 4th draft because it was the tightest and more epic and worked out a lot of the kinks from earlier drafts, however, for whatever reason Rick Berman decided to go with an earlier draft of the script. Spiner mentioned the 4th draft didn't have the B4 element and the ending of the movie was more complex and Data's death bigger. It was likely costs related that Berman decided to go with the smaller version.

Nemesis tanked at the box office for a number of reasons. It had a bad release date pitted against two of the biggest movies of the year. Also at the time I think a lot of fans were upset with the franchise as a whole. Quality of Trek had been on the decline for the last few seasons of Voyager and Enterprise and I think there was burn out and hostile attitude towards Berman. I remember negative fan reaction to the movie online months before it even came out!

I've always been sad that this is the way TNG went out. I felt as though there was one last TNG story to be told. The Undiscovered Country of TNG if you will.

[Midas]

Nemesis had lots of problems, agreed, though I did like the Donatra character.

[sonak]

timtonruben359 wrote:

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I didn't actually hate Nemesis it was an OK movie, it was certainly bigger scale than Insurrection or Generations but it felt as though the script needed one more tight draft. Now, I learned something interesting a few years ago I was at a panel with Brent Spiner and Marina Sirtis and they mentioned that there was something like 4 drafts of Nemesis written by Logan. Spiner, Stewart and Logan liked the 4th draft because it was the tightest and more epic and worked out a lot of the kinks from earlier drafts, however, for whatever reason Rick Berman decided to go with an earlier draft of the script. Spiner mentioned the 4th draft didn't have the B4 element and the ending of the movie was more complex and Data's death bigger. It was likely costs related that Berman decided to go with the smaller version.

Nemesis tanked at the box office for a number of reasons. It had a bad release date pitted against two of the biggest movies of the year. Also at the time I think a lot of fans were upset with the franchise as a whole. Quality of Trek had been on the decline for the last few seasons of Voyager and Enterprise and I think there was burn out and hostile attitude towards Berman. I remember negative fan reaction to the movie online months before it even came out!

I've always been sad that this is the way TNG went out. I felt as though there was one last TNG story to be told. The Undiscovered Country of TNG if you will.

I think the state of the franchise and the lack of effective marketing had more to do with the box-office performance than the release date. After all, it was only released against "Maid in Manhattan" in its opening week and it still lost to it.

[SchwEnt]

^^^ I'll always remember that, the first time a ST movie didn't open #1 at the box office. And then losing that spot to "Maid in Manhattan"?? Jennifer Lopez trumps Star Trek.

[cardinal biggles]

timtonruben359 wrote:

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Nemesis tanked at the box office for a number of reasons. It had a bad release date pitted against two of the biggest movies of the year.

That doesn't really hold water when you consider that earlier Trek films held their own against juggernaut competition (Wrath of Khan opened a week before E.T. in 1982; Search for Spock was sandwiched between the releases of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Ghostbusters in 1984). Blaming the failure of Nemesis on Harry Potter and LOTR (plus there was a James Bond film, too!) is weak tea. It failed because it sucked balls and not even Trekkies wanted to see it after the first weekend.

[Vasquez Rocks]

Opening weekend for Maid in Manhattan and Nemesis was very close.

From IMDB:
$18,711,407 (USA) (15 December 2002) (2838 Screens)

$18,513,305 (USA) (15 December 2002) (2711 Screens)

I'm more surprised that a Jlo movie got on more screens than a Star Trek film opening week. That must have been around the time of the whole Bennifer fiasco.

[cardinal biggles]

Getting back to the subject of John Logan himself (rather than regurgitating decade-old arguments about the plot and characters), I don't think the success of Skyfall means Logan has proven himself. As jeyl mentioned a couple pages ago, Skyfall was just as full of plot holes and characters acting stupidly as Nemesis.

The only thing Logan has proven in the decade since Nemesis is his uncanny ability to bounce from one high-profile project to the next, glomming onto that film's success even though that success was in spite of, not due to, his screenwriting prowess.

[Zeppster]

There's a lot of elements in Nemesis that could have worked. The conflict between Picard and a supposed younger clone of him was interesting if they actually went full out and made it about those 2. Instead Shinzon ends up being a typical villain that wants to destroy take over/destroy everything with no real good reasoning behind it. They really could have made it about Picard vs his younger self and had that as the only conflict of the film and made it much more interesting. Instead as a villain he Shinzon doesn't seem all that interesting after he starts mind raping Deana. They really could have done much more with the Picard vs Younger Picard route and made the motivations for Shinzon much less cloudy and had a solid villain. Instead you could have put any Romulan as that character and changed none of the movie.

They really could have also done something interesting with Data teaching his younger self about the roots of being what he is instead of having that character as a spy for Shinzon. So that plot point went no where in reality. This could have easily gone with the Picard vs Picards younger self and made it an interesting film overall.

I think the death of Data was handled mostly right. Doing it on his own decision without an emotion chip or any software deciding it for him was brilliant. In fact the emotion chip not being involved in the film at all is a good thing in this film and it kinda hurt the first 3 TNG films IMO. But it would have been better if they could have had a closing death scene like they had in the TWOK. Even though it would be copying too much from that movie. Having a closing scene with arguably the most popular character from the TNG era is needed and the biggest part missing from the movie. The deleted scenes of going through his quarters is decent but it still doesn't work overall. You need that final goodbye to the character for the audience.

Nemesis had good plot elements that really could have made a great film. But they didn't quite follow through on those elements. That's really what it comes down to. Think about the ideas that I just came up with and how it could have really made a great movie. TWOK as an example used pretty much everything to make a great overall plot with even subtle parts that worked with the overall plot.

[plynch]

I've watched a few times and it is still not clear to me: What is Shinzon so mad at Picard and the Enterprise for?

[Bishop76]

santa biggles wrote:

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It failed because it sucked balls and not even Trekkies wanted to see it after the first weekend.

Quoted for truth. It's an abysmal movie and Skyfall's success (and in my opinion, quality) does NOTHING to make past failures acceptable. Just like his success with a previous movie like Gladiator didn't make Emesis's awfulness acceptable. It's a soulless piece of trash that makes little to no sense from start to finish. I could go into detail myself, or I could just toss up this link to Plinkett's review of Emesis. He pretty much hits on all the low points of it.

http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/s...-trek-nemesis/

[jayrath]

Ever think that the failure of NEM made Skyfall better? Maybe he learned from his mistakes. People do that.

[T'Girl]

Vasquez Rocks wrote:

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I'm more surprised that a Jlo movie got on more screens than a Star Trek film opening week.

sonak wrote:

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it was only released against "Maid in Manhattan" in its opening week and it still lost to it.

Star Trek: Nemesis and Maid in Manhattan cost about the same amount to produce. Nemesis received poor reviews and starred a bunch of people the general public never heard of. It made $67 million.

Maid in Manhattan was a excellently made romantic story. It received fantastic reviews and starred Jenifer Lopez at the height of her movie popularity, her movie made $155 million.

They might have made the same on their opening weekends, but once the word of mouth got out, Nemesis just couldn't compete.

[sonak]

Merry Christmas wrote:

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Star Trek: Nemesis and Maid in Manhattan cost about the same amount to produce. Nemesis received poor reviews and starred a bunch of people the general public never heard of. It made $67 million.

Maid in Manhattan was a excellently made romantic story. It received fantastic reviews and starred Jenifer Lopez at the height of her movie popularity, her movie made $155 million.

They might have made the same on their opening weekends, but once the word of mouth got out, Nemesis just couldn't compete.

I'm not sure how this is a response to my post. I was only making the point that there was no blockbuster or genre competition against Nemesis when it opened, so you can't blame its box office performance on that. I have no idea about the merits of "maid in manhattan," as I've never seen it, but I don't think it was stealing the normal audience for a Star Trek movie.

[T'Girl]

sonak wrote:

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I'm not sure how this is a response to my post.

It was a response to you use of "only" when you posted "it was only released against "Maid in Manhattan." The Lopez movie stole away the general audience that every movie needs to succeed. If Nemesis opened in movie isolation (it happens) and was the only game in town , it would have done much better. If it had to compete only against "The Hot Chick" for audience share, it would have done better than it did against "Maid in Manhattan." Most people don't go to every movie that comes out, they pick and choose.

as I've never seen it

NetFlix it sometime, kind a chick-flick, but it's well made.

[sonak]

Merry Christmas wrote:

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It was a response to you use of "only" when you posted "it was only released against "Maid in Manhattan." The Lopez movie stole away the general audience that every movie needs to succeed. If Nemesis opened in movie isolation (it happens) and was the only game in town , it would have done much better. If it had to compete only against "The Hot Chick" for audience share, it would have done better than it did against "Maid in Manhattan." Most people don't go to every movie that comes out, they pick and choose.

NetFlix it sometime, kind a chick-flick, but it's well made.

I guess we disagree on that. I don't think it was the competition from "maid in manhattan" that caused Nemesis' week 1 box office performance. I think those are mostly different crowds, and they weren't "picking" one movie over the other. Even in raw numbers, the Nemesis first weekend box office was way down from the previous Next Gen films.