Why is Nemesis hated so much?

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies I-X' started by Kuro Pit, Jun 26, 2012.

  1. Green Lantern

    Green Lantern Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I enjoyed it too, wouldn't say it was the best TNG film though.
     
  2. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

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    The best TNG film is still First Contact in my opinion. It was fresh, different from the usual episode formula, editing was tight, and the film was state of the art compared to other films being released at the same time. They should have kept that pace of shaking things up.

    Generations, Insurrection and Nemesis are all alike. There is a prologue introducing the threat, then we have the Enterprise crew at a totally random and totally unrelated event, and then it involves Data and Picard contemplating about some human thing, and eventually Picard has to stop a doomsday device personally. In the end, these three films feel like big budget TV episodes. Ironically, the budget looks to be getting smaller with each installment even though it got higher every time.

    Generations is kinda ruined by forcing Kirk into the story, and then only using him for a fist fight in the end. I wonder what the film would have been like had it just been the TNG crew vs. Soran.
     
  3. CommanderRaytas

    CommanderRaytas DISCO QUEEEEEEN Rear Admiral

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    I was eleven when I saw Generations at the cinema, and I must say I thought it was great. Probably my lingering fondness of the film still stems from that first experience.
     
  4. lurok

    lurok Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    But now we're older and wiser and put away such childish thoughts ;)
     
  5. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Generations is fabulous!!

    It's Star Trek's Christmas Special.

    [​IMG]
     
  6. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I wonder what your comment would have been like had it not been Christmas but some other occasion where families celebrate together.
     
  7. LOKAI of CHERON

    LOKAI of CHERON Commodore Commodore

    Well, I was 26 at my first viewing - and thought it was great too! I'm now 43; and, I still think it's great! Generations remains my favourite TNG movie despite the continued derision it receives here and in wider fandom.
     
  8. lurok

    lurok Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    :lol: But it's like someone stuck the Star Wars Holiday Special in the middle of The Phantom Menace. ;)
     
  9. LOKAI of CHERON

    LOKAI of CHERON Commodore Commodore

    Certainly, I understand your thinking vis-a-vis a humorous allegory between The Star Wars Christmas Special and the Nexus sequence in Generations - but honestly - other than the word Christmas the "joke" just doesn't work. I've always found the sequence to be quite compelling, and an insight into Picard's sometimes lonely life. Dennis McCarthy's woefully underappreciated score is absolutely beautiful to boot.
     
  10. Plain Simple

    Plain Simple Commodore Commodore

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    How can you possibly suggest that anyone can just "shrug off" rape? And how could "it has happened often before" possibly make it better, instead of worse? :confused:


    Of course, "skinhead" is also not synonymous with "neo-Nazi".


    Are you kidding me? Do you have anything to back that up? Personally I don't "hate" any movie, that's just a ridiculous concept to me, but liking or not liking a movie has nothing at all to do with how much money it made. For the vast majority of movies I see, I don't even know (or care) how much they made. As for Transformers, I consider TF2 one of the worst movies I've seen in recent memory. Part of it (but not the only thing by far) is the disappointment that something I liked (Transformers), wasn't done justice in my opinion. A similar sentiment plays when thinking about Nemesis: it's such a sadly wasted opportunity to have a decent send off for TNG.

    It's been a while since I saw the movie (I can't remember if I ever saw it for a second time, after the first viewing in the theatre; I might have seen it one more time afterwards on vhs), and most if not all I could possibly say about it, has been said by others in this thread, but what I mostly remember is that I thought it was a wasted opportunity. Wasted Romulan potential and a wasted TNG farewell opportunity.
     
  11. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I am still :eek: over Picard's fantasy life. It works fine with what we've seen of him, but it's very interesting to me that his ideal wife is at home with the children cooking and setting nice tables for dinner.

    That said yes I am joking. I actually love Generations. I didn't find the Kirk stuff forced, I loved seeing him again though I do find there is oddly not much chemistry between him and Picard. I like how we learn more about the El-Aurians and I found Soran to be a believable and interesting villain. Plus we get that great quote about time from him which is a bonus.

    Generations is jam packed with stories and people unlike Insurrection which IMO is quite drab. Generations is colorful. I mean.. the DURAS sisters!? How fabulous was that?? And crashing the Enterprise? The film is a candy store of events.
     
  12. M.A.C.O.

    M.A.C.O. Commodore Commodore

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    It's my opinion. IMO fans are harder on NEM because of it's box office gross. The Transformers analogy was there to show that a movie can be garbage, with it's characters, execution, story and plot but still be considered as success because of it's box office performance. Don't believe me, look at the Twilight films. No one would consider these films good in any measurable sense. The dialogue is atrocious, the acting wooden, the screenplays are a mess, the execution is bad. DESPITE all that each film has gone one to make hundreds of millions at the BO. The last 3 films making $700 million a piece, and the upcoming one projected to do about the same or more.

    My point was that even if people hate a film for the mistakes they think it makes, BO performance is the silver lining that can save it's reputation. At the end of the day that's all studios care about. Can the make money off it?

    What I said was that even if fans didn't like NEM it wouldn't receive the bashing it does if it had doubled or tripled it's budget. Nothing succeeds like success and had NEM been a financial success it would not be perceived as the train wreck most claim it is.
     
  13. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    pfft.. I'm oblivious to the box office. NEM was average. Very, very average.
     
  14. Plain Simple

    Plain Simple Commodore Commodore

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    The question is: considered a success by whom? By the studios? Sure. After all they're in the business of making money. But by the fans? I can't claim there are no fans out there who care about the box office numbers, but I doubt most fans even know these numbers, let alone let them play an important role in their appraisal of the movie. At most, they use them to show that other people share their opinion about the movie (as in "I didn't like the movie and looking at how little it made no one else did either"), but I don't think I've ever heard a fan claim "I don't like this movie, because it made no money for the studio". Of course, I have no data to back this up, it's only anecdotal, so I asked if you have anything more than your opinion.


    Do I have to? I have successfully avoided that up until now.

    Okay, I think I might be getting what you're after here (or perhaps not, correct me if I'm wrong). Are you saying that many people will just go see a movie because it's popular, even if it is panned by the critics? I believe that. Peer pressure, herd behavior, etc. And as a result the movie makes a lot of money. But is making a lot of money the cause of people going to see it?

    Do you think that, if the next Twilight movie does not deliver on whatever it is that Twilight fans expect from their movies, it will not be criticized by the fans because it has made/will made a lot of money? Note, I say criticized by the fans. To be a fan, you must already like most of what came before. I'm not talking about people who never liked Twilight to begin with. But let's say the movie deviates considerably from the book and kills of a popular character or something. Why would the box office numbers have any impact on how fans react to that?

    I'm suddenly reminded of Sherlock Holmes (the original books). If I remember the story correctly, the books were very popular, but Doyle got tired of writing them, so he killed off Holmes. Fans got angry enough, despite the series being popular, that he continued writing and brought Holmes back.

    Perhaps not a perfect analogy, but showing that fans can still criticize decisions of a franchise, even when it's making money.



    BO stinks. ;)

    Perhaps, but I doubt it. To use your example, people still criticize the Transformers movies, despite the money they made. If you see a difference between criticizing NEM and criticizing TF (besides arbitrarily calling one "bashing" and the other "criticizing"), then please explain.
     
  15. CommanderRaytas

    CommanderRaytas DISCO QUEEEEEEN Rear Admiral

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    Oh, I wasn't claiming that only kids can like it....only that my own perspective is warped, since I was still a child at that time. I have no idea how well I would like it, should I watch it for the first time now, at 29.

    And the Christmas bit was one of my favourites! :)
     
  16. NrobbieC

    NrobbieC Commander Red Shirt

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    Nemesis isn't as bad as it's made out to be imo. It was the first Trek film I saw in the cinema (I was 11 I think). Looking back now, I find Shinzon boring. But I liked the idea of the Remans, I love Romulans (real ridged Romulans mind you) though they deserve much better representation in a movie. And of course, it had Admiral Janeway. I wouldn't change too much about it, though I'd make the antagonist Sela, maybe have a fleet battle, throw in one of those D'deridex beauties.
     
  17. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I was not a fan of the Sela storyline but this would have been a huge improvement and much more interesting.
     
  18. Lord Garth

    Lord Garth Admiral Admiral

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    If the action scenes were cut in half and the cut character scenes were restored then there still would've been stupid things about Nemesis but it would've made for a much better film and, in turn, I would've been more willing to overlook plot threads with silly execution like B-4 and Shinzon irrationally going after Earth.

    I'm willing to look the other way with a lot of things if the overall quality is high enough. Such as with ST XI.
     
  19. M.A.C.O.

    M.A.C.O. Commodore Commodore

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    Shinzon didn't irrationally go after Earth. The first scene in the movie establishes that's what Shinzon's motive was. Destroy Earth = Crippling the Federation. It's repeated throughout the film. Shinzon says this to Picard, Picard and Riker both deduce the reason why Shinzon would attack Earth.

    I know it seems more logical to attack Romulus because he hates them, but Shinzon has intergalactic aspirations and he can't do that without support from the Romulans.

    Star Trek XI's saving grace is the spectacle of the film. The film's big budget makes the world JJ created look incredible. XI is 80% style and 20% substance, the bulk of that substance comes from copying and pasting successful ideas from the previous Trek media.
     
  20. Lord Garth

    Lord Garth Admiral Admiral

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    I've only seen the movie twice, and not recently, so I'll defer to you about Shinzon's motives.

    But, while we're talking about it, wouldn't it be more in keeping with Romulan philosophy to wait for the Federation to up the ante to a certain level before going balls-to-the-wall after Earth?

    It would make more sense, from a Romulan point of view, for the Federation to fear them than to be destroyed. The resources used to destroy the Federation in an all-out war would bankrupt the Romulans militarily by the end of it. The Federation would be destroyed but at what cost to the Romulans?

    Isn't "mutually assured destruction" what's kept the Federation, Klingon, and Romulan situation the way it's been throughout Star Trek? Shifting alliances aside.