Poor guy. He got turned into a King Cobra snake in "Sssssss" (1973), too.
Do you like the *NEW* NCC-1701? Simple Yes or No.
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Poor guy. He got turned into a King Cobra snake in "Sssssss" (1973), too.
To be fair, though, after the stunningly bad box office for NEMESIS a lot of rumors circulated in the fan community that Trekkers themselves abandoned the movie after the first couple of weekends and that's why the film tanked so badly and so rapidly. That colored a lot of opinions about the makeup of recent Trek film audiences, even mine.
The vast bulk of the fanbase abandoned Nemesis before it even opened (thus, why it got it's butt kicked opening weekend by "Maid in Manhattan"). The fact that it was a lousy movie only made things worse, by reinforcing the fan's original decision to not turn out opening day. If it was a good movie, it would've recovered and made that $45 million within a couple of weeks instead of having to stay out in theatres for close to a year.
It closed in my area in barely one month. No kidding. It was gone from all Roanoke area cinemas by the end of January 2003. The fastest a TREK movie faded in history around here. Even TFF stuck around until the end of the summer of '89 and went on to spend a little while in our two 99-cent and dollar theaters when they were still in operation.
No significant percentage of the Trek fanbase did not see "Nemesis" in the theaters, and most saw it opening weekend. The box office gross demonstrates that.
It's simply that no one other than the hard core bothered with it - not because of bad things said by fans, but because most people were just about five years past caring about anything "Star Trek" when the film opened.
Some folks have an exaggerated notion of how extensive the hard core fanbase is, and so have imagined that many didn't see the movie. That's mistaken.
It's simply that no one other than the hard core bothered with it - not because of bad things said by fans, but because most people were just about five years past caring about anything "Star Trek" when the film opened.
Some folks have an exaggerated notion of how extensive the hard core fanbase is, and so have imagined that many didn't see the movie. That's mistaken.
It all comes down to "what do you change?"
Nobody would say that if he did a really fresh, new, interesting story told within the existing Trek universe (without "redefinitions" of things that don't really even affect the storytelling).
What's "cowardly and unoriginal" isn't "keeping the sets looking very much like the original sets" or so forth... it's "keeping the formulaic storytelling style that's been so overused in Trek-dom."
I was really, REALLY, hoping that there wouldn't be a "mustache-twirling villain" in this film. But there is. I was really, REALLY hoping that they wouldn't do "time travel." But they are. I was really, REALLY hoping that they wouldn't insist on having "the whole gang" present and instead just keep the key, central figures while allowing for a new supporting cast (in some cases including characters only seen or heard from once, and thus being open-book characters open to LOTS of "non-canon-violating" expansion and development).
Instead... they kept (at least in name) the entire Original Series cast of characters. To me, that's an example of "cowardly and unoriginal." They fell back on the most hackeyed and overused bad-sci-fi storytelling cliche'... the "villain who wants to blow up the world" (with only the minor twist of "which world" this time around). To me, that's an example of "cowardly and unoriginal."
Changing the "window-dressing" shows no "courage," only egotism. Doing a more creative, original STORY would show courage and originality.
3D Master
Rear Admiral
That entirely depends on what you define as "fans" and "hardcore fans".
The people who will watch anything with the name "Star Trek" stamped on it, no matter what, no matter how bad, no matter how hackneyed, no matter how boring, lame, or stagnant it became, almost certainly all went to watch that first opening day.
However, THOSE people, are NOT the people that Captain April is talking about. THOSE people, are but a tiny insignificant fraction of the total amount of genuine, even hardcore fans out there. Fans who know just about everything there is to know about Star Trek, who are every bit as hardcore as the fans above... with one difference.
Unlike the fans above, they are critical, they have standards. They QUIT watching a long time ago, because Star Trek fell below a standard, and then continued getting worse, and worse, and worse, and worse. And so, they stopped watching.
And if they even went to watch Nemesis, unlike previous movies where they went again and again, they'd only watched it once, then no more.
And those people haven't gone away. They're still out there. Still fans of Star Trek, and still very critical.
Nope, the definition of hard-core fans is pretty straightforward and obvious. They number about four to five million in the United States, if you're interested, and they took "Nemesis" to about forty million dollars domestic.
I don't know... I got the impression that a huge number of people went to see the movie on opening weekend, then left the theatres angry and reported to all their friends that it sucked so nobody else went to see it. I remember that I went to see it the day after opening and the theatre was packed.
Then my dad went to see it three days later and reported that he was one of exactly five people in the entire theatre, then reported, "You're right. It was bad."
What usually happens is that everyone goes to see the movie once and then goes and tells their friends the movie is awesome, the fans go see it a second and third time and everyone else's workaholic brother/sister/cousin/girlfriend goes to see it later. This didn't happen with Nemesis because, frankly, nobody wanted to see it after opening weekend, and the people who did see it didn't want to see it again.
I wasn't on the internet at the time when NEM came out, so I was pumped to see it. I never did get to see it in theaters though because it wasn't playing in the theaters around me! I would've probably searched harder, but I asked the one person I knew who had seen it and he said "that movie pissed [him] off".
So I got it on VHS (wow, that seems so old-timey now). I thought it was pretty meh, with good effects. I actually got it again on DVD to see the deleted scenes, in vain hope they would 'save' the movie in my mind, but they were pretty crap for the most part too. What a damn disappointment. It's the only movie I own two versions of. That's kind of annoying.
Oh yeah, the thread.
I'm still on the fence. I don't really hate the new Enterprise, but I'm not exactly jumping for joy at the sight of it either. It's just 'Ok'.
So I got it on VHS (wow, that seems so old-timey now). I thought it was pretty meh, with good effects. I actually got it again on DVD to see the deleted scenes, in vain hope they would 'save' the movie in my mind, but they were pretty crap for the most part too. What a damn disappointment. It's the only movie I own two versions of. That's kind of annoying.
Oh yeah, the thread.
I'm still on the fence. I don't really hate the new Enterprise, but I'm not exactly jumping for joy at the sight of it either. It's just 'Ok'.
Oh come on - how many Trekkies ever went to see a Trek movie, told all of their friends and family that it was "awesome," and were met with anything but modest approval or long-suffering and understanding shrugs?
Generally followed, upon insistence, with remarks like "yes, dear, okay. I'll go see it with you next weekend if you help with the errands so that we have time to do that and have dinner with my parents on Friday."
Polaris, he's saying that nobody did. Do you work for Paramount, by the way? The reason that Nemesis failed is because the story sucked. People have been thrown out of Star Trek offices for better sories. I mean a Picard Clone ? What were they thinking. I originally thought it had to be disinformation, but that's why I call Braga, Brutis, and Berman, Barrabas. What I'm gonna call JJ is another matter. I think so far he's creating an epic alternate version of Trek. I think it is a mistake not to tie into TOS, but the story is gonna make or break it from me.
Why are you assuming JJ is copying old ST formulae? If anything, I'd be expecting the timeline-jumping storytelling style to more resemble "Lost".
How do we know Nero is like that?
"Nemesis" was the only ST movie not to win its first US weekend of opening. It was sorely beaten by "Maid in Manhattan", a J-Lo movie.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Dennis_Russell_Bailey
that's a yes.... want some salt for your foot?
I wouldn't necessarily argue with that. It's a different assertion than that hard-core Trekkies didn't line up and push the turkey to 40-million-plus, domestically. It's real hard for an awful movie to make that kind of money absent a dedicated audience.
Not really. Worse have been filmed.
No, it's not. It means that I did some free-lance work for TNG for a brief period before some posters were born.
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As far as I know, twelve (all the Trekkies that I personally know).
Is that the "General" experience? Don't know how to tell you this, but I've never been able to tell my parents (or anyone else who would possibly have a reason to address me as "dear") about a Star Trek movie because, usually, they've either seen it or bought the bootleg. With anyone else it's "I'll go see it... if it's good," and then--in the case of Nemesis and Insurrection--I wind up grimacing and saying "Eh... never mind."Generally followed, upon insistence, with remarks like "yes, dear, okay. I'll go see it with you next weekend if you help with the errands so that we have time to do that and have dinner with my parents on Friday."
Again, it must be the neighborhood. Chicago in general and predominately black neighborhoods in particular are infested with fair-weather Trekkies.
Ouch.
I don't know, I still think buzz and review has a lot of weight in a movie's success, but other than that the only explanation I can think of is that Insurrection poisoned the well and most viewers stayed home, waiting for the first round of reviews.
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