Nemesis is better than Insurrection: Convince me otherwise.

[Jeyl]

it hit a spot for me, continued some things set up in DS9 (closer ties with the Romulans) and added to it (telling us that Remans were used as cannon fodder - wonder what the Federation thought about that eh....)

They'd probably be more concerned about how, despite being enslaved to mine in caves and be used as cannon fodder, the Remans...

A. Managed to build a ship with more firepower than the Ent-E, more advanced cloaking technology than the BoP prototype and house a planet annihilating weapon BEFORE the Romulans did.
B. Find the time, resources and technological know how to build a secret base to build said ship.
C. Discover Thalaron and weaponize it to such a degree that they can selectively kill everyone in a single room to destroying a planet's entire population.
D. Gain the medical expertise to not only pick up the 'abandoned' Picard Clone project, but also gain the knowledge to see the medical procedure through.
E. Decide to wage a genocidal war against the Federation.
F. Gain control over the entire Romulan Empire.
F. Follow a Human clone as their leader who will kill his fellow Reman officers who failed to notice something that he himself also failed to notice.

This is why I like Khan. He only had a handful of his people to help him gain control of the Reliant and had to steal the Genesis Device in order to gain the upper hand on those who would oppose him. But even with that, he didn't know fully how the Reliant worked and lacked the experience that would have given him the edge he thought he had over Kirk.

Shinzon just gets a super duper ship with a bunch of "i win" buttons and only fails because he's so incompetent at everything.

 

[TheAdmiralty]

Agree with a number of comments here that Nemesis is better because there's a good movie hiding in there somewhere, whereas Insurrection is just all around misguided.

Nemesis should have dropped the "this time it's personal angle" with cloning and just had it be about the Remans doing a coup and then trying to genocide the Romulans. As a user towards the middle of the thread noted could have been an Undiscovered Country type situation having to overcome their bigotry towards Romulans. Picard made some uncharacteristic comments about Romulans on the show, essentially implying no Romulan could ever be trusted, and of course there's Worf. Would have also been interesting to do if they'd made Romulans the villains in Insurrection as was originally planned, then the prior film was Picard rebelling against a Federation alliance with the Romulans and then he has to decide to take their side in the next one. That also drops the awkward situation with the Son'a, where they were also from the planet and were expelled which makes the morality of the whole thing a lot more grey when the movie isn't going for it being grey at all.

Nemesis was also the first Trek movie since TMP to really feel like a "major motion picture" in terms of production values and not like a two part TV episode. Still has major issues of course that have been discussed extensively.

What is it with Trek films and mind rape? TUC had one too. And, perhaps, made even worse by the fact that it's one of the good guys doing it. Even Nicholas Meyer says he looks back on that scene with regret today.

That's not a "mind rape" in the vein of what Shinizon was doing. Spock was taking information out of her mind to save lives, he wasn't forcing her to think sexual thoughts about him. But yes, Berman did seem to revisit the mind rape concept several times (Violations on TNG, Nemesis, and an Enterprise episode) which makes me side eye him a little.

 

[suarezguy]

Personally I found the conclusion to INS wanted to appear heartwarming but in reality left a lot of unanswered questions and potential problems for the future.

"They won't accept reconciliation, there's too much bitterness on both sides," "Ask them," shows one case where it does/already has, sure hamfisted but I thought still at least fairly believable/effective.

Insurrection, aside from Shaw's jab (which doesn't match up with Admiral Dougherty himself saying the Prime Directive doesn't apply despite Shaw's claim of Picard disregarding it) is completely ignored in subsequent Trek material.

The setting of the big Scimitar fight did look a bit like the Briar Patch, it would have been very weird but a little cool if that had actually been it, they had returned one film later.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

They are both shit.

End of.

 

[Ssosmcin]

They are both shit.

End of.

LOL There's no such thing as a "shit" Star Trek movie. For good or bad, there's always care, passion and thought behind them. Some just turn out less successfully than others.

 

[jaime]

LOL There's no such thing as a "shit" Star Trek movie. For good or bad, there's always care, passion and thought behind them. Some just turn out less successfully than others.

Nemesis gets *awfully* close. For the exact things you mention not being as present, particularly in the Final Cut.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Nah, it's a solid action film and competently made. The edits just pull out the "Star Trek" bits which makes it a lesser "Star Trek" movie.

The care and passion is in the script, the score, the acting. The sound design is the best of any film until the 2009 reboot. I devoured that script when it was leaked online and loved it. I was upset some of my favorite bits were missing. Stuart Baird is a good, journeyman action director (Executive Decision is still a great 90's actioner) and a proven editor but he failed in making a good Star Trek movie because he didn't care about making it "Star Trek." And that I can see people being upset over. But it's not a "shit" movie and still works with the edits. They don't impact the story as much as the characters.

Compare it to Superman IV, for example. Good intentions but the incompetent producers and screenwriters, all of the cuts and budget slashing utterly destroyed it. There is no version of that film that's any good. I enjoy it like I enjoy an Ed Wood movie, as an unintentionally funny trainwreck, but it's a bad film. The only real care in that film are the performances and the score. Everything else is substandard. Effects, sets, pacing, story, etc.

Nemesis is nowhere near that.

 

[Phoenix219]

It could have stopped after V to be honest. VI is overrated, partially because it *looked* better than V. But V had the better story and performances, and the open ending of everyone back on the Enterprise and a potential peace with the Klingon Empire.

It would fit the name, too (FINAL Frontier) and close the series with the same anthem that it started with. I wouldn't have minded.

 

[Phoenix219]

Thing is, more of TUC depends on people acting out of character (including to an extent the technology of the enterprise — but that is Meyer’s battleships-in-space thing, same as in TWOK) for many bits of the plot to work. It also has fairly little for any of the crew to do as individual characters.
TFF, once you get past the shonky effects and some of — but not all of — the forced post TVH humour, is quite the opposite. Everyone has a scene or two to do something, usually pretty tailored to either the character or the actors strengths.
I also think Shatner is at least *as good* as Meyer when it comes to direction and purely visual storytelling, and may actually be better than Nimoy was on TVH in that regard. It’s close run, but Shatner definitely leans towards the cinematic more often.

Both stories also have elements that make less sense now we aren’t in that era any more — whether it’s the televangelist elements of TFF or the Soviet fall stuff in TUC. But the TUC stuff is easier to have a kind of collective memory for. Look at another film from that year — License To Kill — and you can see there is something in the air being reflected around that Evangelistic corruption stuff.

TFF is definitively more interested in bringing *new* things to the table, and does so pretty well — Nimbus III was ahead of its time in Trek, foreshadowing the “darker” side of things like DS9 and more modern Treks, and Sybok does actually work (much better when they tried a similar trick with Burnham in DSC as well) because they spend enough time to make sure it makes sense.
TUC is more about bringing things to an end. Hopeful for the universe perhaps, but not so much for the crew who are instead separated and retired. Still an approach, but maybe not the best in how it was decided to bring them there.
The performances are just better all around in TFF. Scotty and therefore Doohan are somewhat shortchanged in both, but more so TUC — he should have been modifying that Torpedo. Even Sulu and Chekov get better stuff to do in V as well.
I think in an odd way, TFF gives more to the future of Trek (be it in props alone) than TUC ultimately does. Klingon Peace? TNG was on air, and TFF already showed a glimmer of how that can be brought about. Just not on the galactic scale TUC reached for perhaps, but just as valid.

TFF is a spiritual successor to Who Mourns for Adonais and similar TOS fare, and TUC is more like the same for Journey to Babel or maybe even Conscience of a King and similar. I guess I prefer the first of those too. And much like the second pair, TUC is much more about it’s guest stars and their characters than the Enterprise crew.

(Edit, because I left it off.)

Which is ultimately the same reason why Nemesis doesn’t work in a way. Not only are the Enterprise crew mostly sidelined *again* (esp Crusher) but we spend so long with Shinzon. Then the story closes so many things off, with our heroes sent off. The only new thing we are given is something which ironically was done *better* in V, a brother for lead science guy. Nemesis left a bad taste in the mouth whilst trying to be a TUc-meets-TWOK. Insurrection is like V — better for the characters, for the actors, more cinematic, and maybe just a little too much like the TV show for some people.

I unapologetic ally love TFF. Its a giant love letter to TOS. Shatner understood the original show better than most, and it showed. Starting with a cold open/teaser, jumping into the story, centering on the Trio, but giving everyone something to do. Understanding Kirk (All of the I need my Pain stuff, the burden of being The Captain) was fantastic. It was like Adonais, Children Shall Lead, The Way to Eden, and more all rolled into one - maybe not the best episodes to crib from, but it was absolutely pure TOS. Maybe even a little bit of Space Seed tbh. If he had been able to fully fund his vision and the finale we might not be having this conversation. I could see worse ways to end it than an open-ended love letter to where it started.

 

[Phoenix219]

That just ends up taking it full circle though. Kirk and Co saved Spock for Spock. In fact they didn’t even know they were saving him as such when they went into it. (In fact it’s not really super clear *what* they thought they were doing if you think about it too hard — it’s clear Sarek just wanted Spocks Katra, which was in McCoy, and the only reason to go back to Genesis was because that’s what the Katra was trying to do — no one really knew *why* the way events were laid out. It really needed Grissom to have reported in having found ‘empty’ Spock before any of the other events play out. Who wasn’t so empty that he didn’t manage to get Vulcan J’Gy with it with Saavik…)

Its an interesting thought - Spock's empty shell, if it had been taken from genesis as a baby - with no katra - could it have learned as it grew up, could it be educated - would it have developed a new, different persona, and as such, a new and different katra?

 

[jaime]

Its an interesting thought - Spock's empty shell, if it had been taken from genesis as a baby - with no katra - could it have learned as it grew up, could it be educated - would it have developed a new, different persona, and as such, a new and different katra?

I think it’s decently implied it would have, and to an extent did so. His body was capable of understanding communication, and a… lot, happened with Saavik. I think there’s enough in the performances to suggest the reborn Spock is a combined entity of the speed-run Spock from Genesis and his pre-existing Katra.

 

[Tosk]

If he had been able to fully fund his vision and the finale we might not be having this conversation. I could see worse ways to end it than an open-ended love letter to where it started.

I like ST5 quite a bit, but not all of the problems with that movie come from the budget.

 

[Lord Garth]

I still like Insurrection better than Nemesis. Insurrection is okay. Nemesis is cold, dreary, by the numbers, and has way too many mind-numbing action scenes. I see nothing of Picard in Shinzon. Lastly, Data's death is no Spock's death.

The wedding scenes are fine, some of the jokes in the film land, and the soundtrack is great. That's all I've got to say that's good.

The worst I can say about Insurrection is that I have to look away when Dougherty is killed, the boobs joke is horrible, and there's too much blue-screen (even though it's not a blue screen) begging to be filled in during the fight between Picard and Ru'afo.

 

[CoveTom]

The sound design is the best of any film until the 2009 reboot.

Ugh, I *hate* the sound design in Nemesis. To each his own, I suppose.

But you're right. Superman IV makes Nemesis look like a masterpiece by comparison.

One thing Insurrection does have going for it, BTW, is the guest cast. Donna Murphy, F. Murray Abraham, and Anthony Zerbe are all top notch.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

The use of

there's too much blue-screen (even though it's not a blue screen) begging to be filled in during the fight between Picard and Ru'afo.

The blue screen at the end of Insurrection really is a strange choice, especially as they used a green screen to digitally extend the set and add even more blue screen. Someone must have realised that it was going to look like an unfinished effect, but they didn't change it and it's been confusing viewers ever since.