I just finished watching the Next Generation films, and really the only film that holds up particularly well in terms of story is First Contact. Generations as a concept is a great story, but when you realize that the entire premise of Generations and Kirk's return are predicated on Picard's inability to win a fist fight with a crazed scientist you begin to realize how silly the whole thing is. Insurrection to me is the worst Trek movie ever because it is insufferably boring. It's really nothing more than a glorified 1 hour episode of TNG artificially inflated into a feature film... and it feels like it. Finally Nemesis... ahhhh Nemesis, how much I love and loathe you. A lot of potential. Like a previous poster commented, it was like a potentially great movie which just needed a rewite. Lots of great ideas, but lots of missed opportunities as well. My biggest beef was the introduction of B4; as soon as he appeared I turned to my wife in the theater and said, "I'll bet Data dies at the end." So any potential emotion I may have felt at the end of the film was diminished because I knew Data really wasn't "dead," B4 just needed to get his act together. Yancy
I rewatched Nemesis recently, and found it was better than I remembered, but it still has huge problems. For me the biggest one of all is Shinzon. He's boring, his motives are ill-defined (even after seeing the movie four or five times I still have no clear idea of what he was trying to accomplish) and the "clone of Picard" plot goes nowhere. Really, does the fact that Shinzon is Picard's clone ever effect the plot in any meaningful way? I did enjoy the wedding, and I really liked the Data story, mainly because I love Data. But his story would have worked so, SO much better if they had used Lore.
Well, I just started my long-delayed second viewing of NEM...12 years in the waiting. I'm a little over a half-hour in, having paused after the Shinzon reveal scene. Putting aside the odd little continuity quibbles that hung me up the first time because they're so plentiful, it's not an unenjoyable film up to that point...but the reveal scene is even more cringeworthy than I'd remembered. Watching the clock this time, Shinzon stands in the shadows holding a conversation with the crew, some of it within reach of them, for 2-1/2 minutes...and if that isn't implausibly melodramatic enough, then comes the big "reveal" when they turn the lights on. The movie spends another 2-1/2 minutes on innuendo and reaction shots before clueing in the unspoiled audience that bald-guy-played-by-another-actor is Picard's clone...(Oh, so that's what the fuss is about). Awkward, clumsy, amateurish storytelling, and it all would have worked so much better if not for the single biggest missed opportunity in the film...casting someone other than Stewart as Picard's clone. The next worst thing in this part of the film...would it have killed them to at least name-drop Lore? They seem to be going out their way to ignore his existence.
Yep. The movie's biggest mistake that cancelled out all the other mistakes. If Brent Spiner never wants to play Data again, that's fine, but THIS should never have happened. Spiner should have just said, "okay, one last time, but that's it.", and then just quit. I would have been fine with that. I hate character deaths as closure.
I just had ANOTHER idea! Use... Shinzon... Lore... and Sela! Sela could have been Shinzon's lover (he has a thing for human women!). And she was already a Romulan villain who wasn't Romulan. And she's yet another evil clone of a crew member!
It'll be interesting to see if Data's death has any effect on me whatsoever this go-round. It did nothing for me the first time, undermined as it was by three factors: 1) The predictably blatant TWOK-wannabe nature of it; 2) B4--If Spiner's reason for wanting to kill Data was that he was getting too old to play an ageless android, then why establish a lookalike replacement? 3) The likelihood that this was going to be the last appearance of this cast, and thus that particular character, anyway.
This sounds right to me as well. There are things I really like about Nemesis, and there are things I strongly dislike about it. I have the same general conflict about ST:V. There are things that I dislike in that movie, but there are just enough things I strongly like (Kirk/Spock/McCoy scenes) that hold it together enough to make it a positive experience for me. YMMV, of course.
I could have gotten behind the idea of Lore in B4's place much more. It would have been intriguing if he'd been moved by Data's death to try to reform and take Data's place on the Enterprise. Thinking of how that might have worked out would genuinely have fired my imagination, and it would have provided better contrast to the Picard/Shinzon relationship.
Yeah killing Data in the same story as introducing his replacement was a really bad idea. If you use Lore instead, you keep the evil twin theme without doing that.
It gives Patrick Stewart a chance to emote in self-pity as a depressed and lonely version of Jen-Luc Picard, and it's supposed to give us empathy for Shinzon's plight... but in reality, neither proposition is all that attractive to the viewers. All it does in practical terms is make our hero character look incredibly weak, and make the villain look even weaker.
Impressions from the next half-hour: I'm wavering on upgrading my opinion of this film from "unwatchable crap" to "Meh, this was the best they could come up with?" It carries a little more weight now that it has proven to be the last outing for the TNG crew...something that wasn't quite real yet in 2002, when Trek fatigue was in full force and TPTB weren't yet done with running the franchise into the ground. The "nature vs. nurture" angle falls completely flat. Part of this is because we see nothing recognizably Picard in Shinzon. They rely completely on telling us, but the only "showing us" is ludicrously superficial. The other part of the angle falling flat is that it's so "Well, duh." And I had to laugh when, following the dinner with Picard, the Viceroy chastised Shinzon for wasting time and not getting on with his plan. What's the next thing they do? Mind-rape Troi. Was that supposed to be an integral part of the plan...?
Lets see here: 1. It was the Picard and Data show once again. 2. The pointless, stupid, and gratuitous mind rape scene. 3. The villains being a race that we've never heard of before, as opposed to the Romulans, who were NEVER the main villains in a ST film prior to ST 09. 4. Plot holes big enough to fly the Narada through. 5. Shinzon being the stupidest villain in ST movie history BY FAR, and his wanting to destroy Earth makes no freaking sense whatsoever. 6. Data's pointless and anticlimactic death. 7. Action hero Picard (it doesn't work). 8. Etc. It was just a mess of a movie all around.
What makes the most sense is that a Lore story was considered but then dropped in favor of "B-4" because Lore had been written originally by others, and the producers of Nemesis didn't want to share credit and/or didn't want to pay whatever amount may have been demanded for the rights to the character. (The whole idea of a Soong android being detectable from such a distance is just weak. It makes about as much sense as the locals in "The Mark of Gideon" being able to construct a convincing 1:1 Enterprise scale model despite not even being Federation members, and despite the planet obviously being too crowded to build such a thing.)
Can anyone imagine anyone connected with the TOS movies ever thinking this was a good idea? You'd be crazy to go to Nick Meyer and say, "Okay, I got a great idea. Kirk has an evil twin! Mwahaha! And for a b-story, Spock also gets a twin!"
The version of the script floating around online did name-drop him. Possibly the scene was even one of those that was filmed then cut, although obviously I don't know about that for certain.
I think that what he meant was that they mention Lore, not that he actually appear. They find another copy of Data, and are way too quick to trust him. They could have mentioned Lore as a justification for being suspicious of B-4. What was really stupid is that Shinzon, who has only days to live and needs Picard's blood, decides to put B-4 on a barren planet near the neutral zone and just kind of assumes that a. he'll be detected by Stafleet, and b. that the Enterprise will be the one to find him. Not only that, but the planet is full of hostile aliens with guns and Shinzon decides to scatter B-4 in pieces all over the place so that Picard has to spend most of the day driving around picking up the pieces while being shot at. So Shinzon wastes time that he doesn't have for no good reason and puts Picard in a situation where he could easily have been killed, at which point Shinzon would have been completely screwed. Like I said, Shinzon is the most idiotic movie villain in ST history.
Finished the rewatch...the film is just a mess. As others have stated, so many missed opportunities. Was B4 necessary to the plot at all? Seems like he easily could have been written out. Spiner is so busy playing B4 in this one that I feel like we're not getting enough of Data is his final appearance. Also, it seems like the whole story could have been tighter. There are two separate parts of the film where Picard is on the Scimitar and Data goes after him. They could have tightened those beats into a single sequence. Have Data sacrifice himself saving Picard instead of stopping a contrived McGuffin. I also wasn't fond of how the Enterprise and its allies flailed about helplessly fighting an overpowered uber-ship. If they wanted to ape TWOK, they should have paid more attention to the battle, which was more about matching wits with evenly-matched ships.
B-4 is a concept that could have been justice... as an episode of The Next Generation. A whole episode of Data finding another "brother", one who is clearly not malevolent like Lore, but is rather a simpleton. I can see lots of potential there, with Data spending his time trying to help the B-4 reach beyond it's apparent, basic nature. Lots of material for a single 44 minute television episode to explore. The deleted scene on the DVD of Data and B-4 in the mess hall is an indication of that potential. But as a subplot is an already overcooked movie? No.
^ FOUND IT I found many of the deleted scenes to have nice character moments with the TNG cast. [yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUOPCsIm2rY[/yt] Also I find the alternate ending far superior to the one in the film. [yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b8jsrDl89M[/yt]