Why Is Nemesis Unpopular?

Maybe it would have been better if there had been less input from people who had no experience writing and directing successful movies ... like the actors? That's what I'm thinking.

 

The dune buggy scene was made worse by the fact that they completely ignored the existence and the experiences the crew had with Lore.

Also, in the battle in the Rift with Shinzon...why does everybody on he bridge keep looking up when the Scimitar is firing from above? What would they be looking for? Even that window on the Enterprise-D wouldn't have been of any use to show anything the instruments couldn't. Probably more out of touch direction from Baird.

 

I like Tom Hardy and consider him a more than capable actor, but yes, I think if Stewart would have played the role of Shinzon, it would have been more engaging. For me, the dune buggy scene is the second most "meh" moment in the film, right behind the whole "prepare to deploy the tediously slow super destruction device!" scene with the Scimitar.

There are some very good moments in the movie, but the bad does outweigh the good, just in my opinion of course. I just feel the whole movie was very indulgent, and as much as I love the TNG cast (and I really do), it felt more like they were just futzing around to run out the clock rather than doing any real story building. Again, just my two cents, because I know there are a number of people who really enjoy Nemesis, and I don't want them thinking I'm trying to take that away from them.

 

I agree.

 

I think that NEM and what all the Star Trek movies lack is a sympathetic villain. One badd ass guy/girl who the audience can secretly barrack for.
A good villain makes the hero seem better. By making Shinzon so pathetic it makes Picard look weak when he can't defeat him.
The same applies to the TOS and nuTrek movies as well. There was potential to have sympathy for Khan but it is ruined by all the senseless killing.

In one Star Trek movie I'd like there to be an anti-hero who the hero and the audience regrets their demise. I'm thinking female Romulan Commander or someone like Sran.

 

I disagree. I think the problem with most Trek films is that they focus too much on the villains at the expense of the heroes. The heroes end up being even more two-dimensional than the villain.

 

I think that Sybok(if we consider him a villain), Soran, and Ru'afo were all somewhat sympathetic in different ways. Sybok wasn't violent, he was on a religious quest. Soran had lost his home and family and wanted to return to someplace he was involuntarily taken from. Ru'afo was kicked off his home planet and forced to watch himself and his followers age and decay while the people who kicked them off stayed young and pretty.

YMMV

 

Ru'afo wasn't kicked off his planet, was he? I thought he and the other Son'a left on their own.

 

I want them to be sympathetic, not totally insane and be baddass. None of those guys are.
You know Soran lost his home, family etc. Then why wipe out an entire race to get really none of that back? I have no sympathy for him. Sybok I thought needed something - to be better looking or not so smug. Ru'afo was lame. Shinzon was creepy and lame. The Borg Queen and Khan were close to being bad ass but I had no sympathy for their cause.

I'd never even consider barracking for those guys.

 

The problem with WoK's approach is a rather slow first half. I'd take Undiscovered Country as a better example of balancing pacing with action scenes that serve a purpose.

 

None of the Star Trek movies were as good as the best of the individual series episodes from the TV shows. For either series. This movie was just one more disappointment.

 

Just because a movie doesn't have action scenes during the first half does not mean it's a "slow" first half. No scene in WoK feels pointless because everything fits naturally in getting the characters into the situations that are needed to tell the story. I'd argue that the Dune Buggy scene in Nemesis actually makes the film slower because it doesn't do anything but say "Hey, I'm a pointless action scene!". So what's more important? Non-action scenes that move the story forward, or action scenes that do nothing for the story at all?

 

....why should they be?

 

My dad's reaction to TWOK, back in the 1980s after I'd dragged him to see it in the theater, was that he was bored in the beginning, but he loved it once it started rolling.

Just to nip any notion that criticism of TWOK's pacing might be a generational thing, my dad would have been in his 40s at the time, and he's at best just a casual fan, who tends to like movies made in the 1940s (nothing wrong with that, by the way) and who saw enough Star Trek while I was growing up to keep him satisfied for a lifetime.

 

I've never had a problem with TWOK's pacing at all - it starts with a bang and it's not long before Khan's shoving Ceiti eels in Chekov's ear, before you know it it's the Reliant attack, and the bits inbetween with the Genesis video are great also.

The litmus test for me is my girlfriend - not massively into films and hates sci-fi. I've seen her fall asleep in the middle of Robocop, Star Wars, Die Hard, you name it. I introduced her to trek with TWOK (no way was I going to use TMP, despite my love for it) and you know what? She liked it. This was around 18 months ago, and she's since seen it once more, plus the rest of the TOS movies, seasons 3 & 4 of TNG and Generations plus the JJ films several times. First Contact tomorrow night...

 

I voted average. It's not the worst film ever made, not even the worst Trek film ever made. But it's nothing special. It's just a tired rehash of TWOK. I enjoyed it in the theatre, but the more I rewatched it, I have problems with it. It is typical late-period Berman Trek. Tired, dated, old hat. The series really needed a reboot by this point. ENT seasons three and four tried; but it was too little, too late.

To call Nemesis the Batman and Robin, or Die Another Day (to the Nolan trilogy and Casino Royale , to JJs films) of Star Trek would be a bit harsh, but it's not far off that level

 

Oh I'm not a fan of the dune buggies either. The scene is totally inconsequential, on a world we don't care about. I tend to skip it when rewatching.

I just think WoK takes a while to get up and running (although the payoff is great when we get there, and it's definitely a superior film to Nemesis). So i was bringing up an example I thought overall better addresses the need to keep some momentum to the plot, without pointless digressions.

 

Frankly Ru'afo did not get enough time or character development to be sympathetic, just a back story that was mentioned off hand. He was just an annoying, whiny jerk through out the film.

 

I never understood why people hated Nemesis. While there are things that I would change here and there, the only things that I hated are 1) Data died and 2) they cut out the Wesley scenes (never was a Wesley hater, lol).