I agree with this. Have always thought it unlikely any casual fan subjected to INS (a TV episode, and a very, very poor one at that) would ever willingly part with their money to see another Next Gen film.
Well, I was no casual fan back then, and I skipped "Nemesis" simply because it sounded freaking stupid.
I may be alone in this, but one aspect of NEMESIS that I enjoyed was how it was essentially a big budget "bottle show". There was only location shooting for the Argo sequence, but for most of the film the cast remains on the Enterprise. As a fan of the ship, I really liked that all of the crew spent so much time there, especially with Picard fully in command. I appreciate the location shooting on the previous movies and Picard's in those environments, but having much of NEMESIS occur on the Enterprise made it resemble those "bottle shows" from the series.
I enjoyed Nemesis. I enjoyed the villain. He is a sympathetic character, even if his ultimate objective of destroying Earth is too cartoonish to be taken seriously. I find it vaguely amusing that many of the people who deride Nemesis for what they see as its weak story are the same people who praise J.J. Abrams' movies though both have far weaker (and ultimately nonsensical) stories.
Not so much weak story, as the non-sensical parts of the story. A movie can have a weak story and still be popular, and well made. It all comes down to the story elements, and I think there were far more negative elements than positive ones, but those are just my two bits on it. I don't dislike Nemesis. There are elements I enjoyed: I love the Riker/Troi wedding, the visuals have never looked better, the opening scene was a nice change of pace, it was cool to see Romulans and Remans as the focus of a movie, and the wake held for Data, between old friends, was sweet. It's just, as a whole, it didn't do it for me. People who like Nemesis, but dislike the Abrams films don't bother me, or amuse me, though I do scratch my head in confusion when said people insist the Abrams films aren't real Trek. They're just as real as the other movies. It's all Trek. It really comes down to personal taste, and I always find something to like about every movie (loved the cinematography for INS, for example).
Well then I suppose I'm lumped into that camp, because to me, there differences between Nemesis and Star Trek '09 were like night and day.
While Nemesis is a flawed movie...it is still better than Insurrection and Generations. It's really not that far short of First Contact in terms of overall quality and enjoyability. Still, INS and GEN are really weak movies (and FC is not nearly as good as many like to pretend)...so I'm not sure what that's saying. I voted "good." I enjoyed it when I first watched it, and I still enjoy it from time to time.
Honestly all Nemesis needed to be a decent movie was not to be so damn dark and depressing. By the end of the movie I always feel like I've been sucker punched in the kidneys (hence only having seen it a couple of times) J.J. Abrams' Trek OTOH is bright and cheerful, even if some of the stuff happening to the characters isn't (destruction of Vulcan for example was going way too far). So while I don't go actively watching the nuTrek, I'd watch it if it came up on TV or something. Nemesis I will avoid like the plague.
Noticed that upon comparison of Nemesis as TNG finale and The Undiscovered Country as TOS finally. The tone and feel of TUC is much more optimistic and enjoyable, despite the dark subject matter. Nemesis just drags you down. And that is even intentionally. I think it was stated in the DVD commentary that Stuart Baird asked Jerry Goldsmith to make a "sad" or "melancholic" soundtrack, instead of something upbeat. The entire film feels sad and tired. Performances, soundtrack, editing, direction, everything.
While I didn't like Nemesis at first and was pretty much on the basher bandwagon for a couple of years afterward, I've actually grown to like it after repeated viewings. I guess I was able to ignore some of the inconsistencies with previous stuff that used to bother me as well as have a bit more fun with the Picard & Data clones. I do consider Shinzon now a top villain in Trek these days--not quite up there with the original Khan, but better than most Trek villains, IMO.
I've found that for myself it helps if I make a mental note to take into account the deleted scenes as I'm watching the movie. It helps add context to certain scenes, which helps sell them a little better than the way they're actually presented in the movie, although obviously that does indicate the movie itself has got problems in certain places.
It really isn't Final frontier bad (and I love the character moments in that), but it's a much more balls-out movie than Insurrection. At least it attempts to raise the stakes over and above the fate of some pretentious country-dwellers no-one gives a flying fuck about
Exactly-trying something significant and falling short is preferable to saying "screw it, we're not going to aim so high this time around." Bad premise aside, INS just has a "WHO CARES?!?!?" element to the whole thing.