Nero: Worst villain in a Star Trek movie yet?

[Peter the Younger]

Worse than Shinzon: "I'm a big evil human clone of Picard. I'm going to destroy Earth. Just because."

That was actually the worst part of Shinzon. They tied his justifications into knots, just so he could threaten Earth, becaus eyou know, it's always gotta be Earth. I've often thought Nemesis would have been a halfway decent movie if Shinzon and the Remans were fighting for their freedom from the Romulans, but using despicable tactics. Instead of a petulant little Napoleon who resents Picard, he could have been like an idolizing younger brother, not understanding why Picard would stand between him and "justice."

 

[Sector 7]

How can anyone say "worst yet", when there's freaking Sybok?

Ditto!

 

[Rusty0918]

No. He's better than Soren, Shinzon, Ru'afo, and Sybok, he's by no means rivaling people like Khan, General Chang, the Borg Queen, Gul Dukat, etc.

 

[dave_R_treker]

I really didn't care for Nero that much. He really didn't have substance. Though I really did enjoy the movie.

 

[Bad Atom]

I was disappointed - I was really hoping Nero's character would have been fleshed out a little more. The movie did such a good job with the main cast and even created some memorable supporting characters, so what went wrong with Nero? Biggest missed opportunity in the movie and a near-waste of a great actor.

The only praise I can offer is that Nero and his motives (however ill-defined) were established in only two minutes of screentime, unlike another bald nemesis who took up half the movie...

 

[Sabataage]

After eleven movies, it seems odd and kind of sad just how strongly Khan stands out from the rest of the Trek villains. Unlike Khan who was an evil genius with a genuine grievance, Nero was a plot device. He was basically a terrorist. The opening Kelvin sequence, and the (spoiler) destruction of Vulcan could both easily be viewed as allegories for 9/11 (in the emotion and imagery). Both attacks are motivated solely by Nero's ludicrous and unjustified hatred of a person whose crime was arriving late to the party. That's like blaming the Firefighters because your house burned down before they could get there. While people do that all the time, you never condone these unfortuante victims murdering the people who were trying to help them, or their families. So he's not likable or sympathetic at any level. Nor should he be.
Anyway, the original crew had Khan in their second movie. And the next generation also had their defining villains, The Borg in their second movie as well. Pretty much Nero is just a seat filler the next guy, or group of guys XII. I'm looking forward to the Big Bad JJ Abrams dreams up next then. He seems to create cold cerebral evil masterminds in his TV shows very well (Benjamin Linus on Lost is basically an evil Vulcan). That would be perfect for Star Trek.

 

[Ryan S]

Like most (though not all) of the characters in Star Trek there was not enough depth to Nero. However, I think the character was effective and far more intense and believeable than any of the "good guys". Now that I'm thinking about it there is such an incredible contrast between the two sides. Another example as to why this film seems to lack balance.

 

[Jeri]

... Both attacks are motivated solely by Nero's ludicrous and unjustified hatred of a person whose crime was arriving late to the party. That's like blaming the Firefighters because your house burned down before they could get there. While people do that all the time, you never condone these unfortuante victims murdering the people who were trying to help them, or their families. So he's not likable or sympathetic at any level. Nor should he be...

Nero blames Spock and the Federation, because he thinks they purposely let Romulus be destroyed.

He thinks Spock arrived too late on purpose, that the Federation never intended to save Romulus.

Romulans don't trust Vulcans; Spock lived underground there for years because they don't trust Vulcans.

 

[JacksonArcher]

A lot of back story that shouldn't be required to find a character interesting, regardless.

 

[Jeri]

A lot of back story that shouldn't be required to find a character interesting, regardless.

Not back story. Nero's motivation for blowing up Earth is that the Federation sat back and did nothing to save Romulus.

 

[Jeyl]

As Confused Matthew stated in his review for the film, Nero's motivation goes something like this. A man sees his Mom standing on the side of the street when a piece of the building breaks off and is about to crush her. Another person sees this happening and tries to rush in and save the Mom. Unfortunately he's too late, but this event somehow manages to transport this mother's son back in time. Instead of doing anything to save his Mom from the building wreck, he decides to kill the person who tried to SAVE HER.

That is exactly Nero's motivation in this movie. I didn't buy it for a second. I also loved how cliché they made Nero's suffering.

1. Nero watched his home planet be destroyed.
- Not much punch
2. Nero watched his home planet be destroyed while his wife was on it.
- Hmm. Getting closer.
3. Nero watched his home planet be destroyed while his pregnant wife was on it.
- Perfect! Oh, be sure in the prequel comic that the unborn child will be a son who will follow in his father's footsteps to become a miner. Mother's be danged! We must have constant father/son elements!

 

[Peter the Younger]

As Confused Matthew stated in his review for the film, Nero's motivation goes something like this. A man sees his Mom standing on the side of the street when a piece of the building breaks off and is about to crush her. Another person sees this happening and tries to rush in and save the Mom. Unfortunately he's too late, but this event somehow manages to transport this mother's son back in time. Instead of doing anything to save his Mom from the building wreck, he decides to kill the person who tried to SAVE HER.

First of all, he was going to save Romulus, er, his mother. Don't know why that conversation between Nero and Pike slipped by so many people, but I saw it again this weekend, and his intention to save Romulus is pretty clear.

Settign that aside, you're missing a key ingredient: politics. These aren't two people on the street, these are two people from nation states that have been hostile for generations. In fact, the guy whose mother died is from a state that likely spews hateful and paranoid propaganda to its citizens on a daily basis. Oh, and much of the population of said repressive state is also highly emotional and more than a little paranoid.

Not rational. But he isn't rational, that's the whole frigging point.

 

[Jeri]

...Nero's motivation goes something like this. A man sees his Mom standing on the side of the street when a piece of the building breaks off and is about to crush her. Another person sees this happening and tries to rush in and save the Mom. Unfortunately he's too late, but this event somehow manages to transport this mother's son back in time. Instead of doing anything to save his Mom from the building wreck, he decides to kill the person who tried to SAVE HER.

Not a parallel analogy. Parallel would be:

A man sees his mom standing on the side of the street when a piece of the building breaks off and is about to crush her.

The man sees another person watching this happening and letting the building crush her.

Then this person stabilizes the building so it won't crush his own mother, who is coming up the street next.

The person whose mother was let to be crushed is damned hurt and furious.

An important distinction is that Nero did not get a mind meld from Spock -- Kirk did, and we saw it.

Nero did not. He just saw Spock stabilizing the super duper nova with Vulcan's fastest and most advanced ship after Spock let it destroy Romulus first.

 

[Holodoc]

As Confused Matthew stated in his review for the film, Nero's motivation goes something like this. A man sees his Mom standing on the side of the street when a piece of the building breaks off and is about to crush her. Another person sees this happening and tries to rush in and save the Mom. Unfortunately he's too late, but this event somehow manages to transport this mother's son back in time. Instead of doing anything to save his Mom from the building wreck, he decides to kill the person who tried to SAVE HER.

Because, hey, all the cool kids are reinterpreting your analogy.

This is how I see Nero. A doctor promises he'll do everything he can to save Nero's pregnant wife and unborn son; through no fault of his own, he fails. Nero then seethes for twenty-five years without in any way changing or moving on, kidnaps the doctor, drops him off on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, goes off to kill the doctor's family and then, just because hey why not, he decides to burn down the medical school from which the doctor got his certification.

Nero's revenge is nonsensical even by the standards of crazy people seeking revenge. He drops Spock off before blowing up Vulcan? What the heck? What, this man he hates, who he's waited a quarter century to torture, he doesn't even want to be able to look at his face as he watches Vulcan collapse in on itself?

 

[MichaelDornFan]

I liked Nero, even though we didn't see a lot of him.

But yeah, the whole "Crazy miners from the Romulan Star Empire trying to destroy Earth for no good reason with a big super weapon before being thwarted by the Enterprise" plot line seemed quite familiar. :P

I mean, why did he want to destroy the Federation again? Spock tried to help so he wants to make him suffer?

And didn't the television shows show us that there are temporal agents out there fixing this kind of stuff?

 

[Jeri]

This is how I see Nero. A doctor promises he'll do everything he can to save Nero's pregnant wife and unborn son; through no fault of his own, he fails. Nero then seethes for twenty-five years without in any way changing or moving on, kidnaps the doctor, drops him off on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, goes off to kill the doctor's family and then, just because hey why not, he decides to burn down the medical school from which the doctor got his certification.

Nero's revenge is nonsensical even by the standards of crazy people seeking revenge. He drops Spock off before blowing up Vulcan? What the heck? What, this man he hates, who he's waited a quarter century to torture, he doesn't even want to be able to look at his face as he watches Vulcan collapse in on itself?

Your analogy isn't parallel either. Parallel would be:

Your wife is sick, and the doctor's wife is sick. You need the doctor for your wife, but the doctor lets your wife die and tends to his own. This makes you very angry and you seek revenge.

Nero's revenge makes good sense from his viewpoint. He has no reason to believe it didn't happen this way.

Spock wasn't there when Nero witnessed Romulus's disentigration. Making Spock view Vulcan's destruction from a similar vantage point is also parallel.

 

[Shim]

I don't think Nero was a let down.

Sometimes in the world, you encounter men/women who just seem to be unstoppable works of evil - people like Hitler and Robert Mugabe. These people often have unclear motives, and fuzzy rationales for their hatred, vitriol and malevolence towards certain groups of people, in the same way that Nero's hatred of Vulcans and the Federation seems fuzzy and misguided.

This was a man totally consumed by grief and the desire for revenge - that is all we need to know about him, that is exactly what the writers portrayed, and Bana did an impressive job of portraying it. He was psychotic - and you don't need to explain how he got there - all we have to know is that our heroes have to deal with that psychosis.

Regardless of Nero's motives - I have to agree with those who have said that it doesn't matter how well fleshed-out his character was. Nero was a plot device to bring Kirk and Spock together; a seemingly unstoppable force for chaos and destruction that caused two men with a hitherto adversarial relationship together in a momentous way.

 

[Holodoc]

I don't think Nero was a let down.

Sometimes in the world, you encounter men/women who just seem to be unstoppable works of evil - people like Hitler and Robert Mugabe. These people often have unclear motives, and fuzzy rationales for their hatred, vitriol and malevolence towards certain groups of people, in the same way that Nero's hatred of Vulcans and the Federation seems fuzzy and misguided.

On the contrary, men such as Hitler and Mugabe always have some sort of coherent explanation for their motives, although understanding them requires that your starting point is that 'Jews in fact are evil and run the world' or 'it's morally better to have black farmers running farms into the ground than white farmers being successful'. And their hatred itself is never 'fuzzy' or 'misguided'; it's focused like a laser on the people they have identified as a target. It may not make actual sense to anyone outside their madness-as-first-principle worldview, but their actions from there on out can be predicted more or less successfully once you understand their initial starting point.

Nero, on the other hand, behaves in a way that is both bizarre and counter-productive. He blames Spock and wishes to make him suffer, but appears to have no personal interest in seeing his suffering. He wants to make Romulus strong, but despite how easy it would be he never so much as sends a crewman on a shuttle with a copy of his ship's schematics to Romulus. According to the comic he blames the government of Romulus for letting the planet be destroyed, but he doesn't overthrow the Empire and take over. None of Nero's actions can be predicted, even taking as given the warped basis from which he percieves reality.

Spock wasn't there when Nero witnessed Romulus's disentigration. Making Spock view Vulcan's destruction from a similar vantage point is also parallel.

But Spock isn't viewing Vulcan's destruction from a similar vantage point; he appears to have been dropped off on Delta Vega before Vulcan was crushed, whereas Nero, presumably, was on his ship, watching it happen on his viewscreen. There's no parallel nature to the way these two men have borne witness to the ending of their worlds.

 

[Shim]

Nero, on the other hand, behaves in a way that is both bizarre and counter-productive. He blames Spock and wishes to make him suffer, but appears to have no personal interest in seeing his suffering. He wants to make Romulus strong, but despite how easy it would be he never so much as sends a crewman on a shuttle with a copy of his ship's schematics to Romulus. According to the comic he blames the government of Romulus for letting the planet be destroyed, but he doesn't overthrow the Empire and take over. None of Nero's actions can be predicted, even taking as given the warped basis from which he percieves reality.

Precisely because he is dangerous and psychotic. Why does the villain have to be predictable? Why does the villain have to behave in a logical manner? The experiences Nero underwent in Countdown were inexplicably horrific and the effects of said experiences would have unpredictable consequences on even the most mentally disciplined individuals.

The universe has not been kind to and no longer makes sense to this man, and so there is no reason why we should expect him to behave in a manner that makes sense to us. His irrationality and illogicality are precisely was makes him a dangerous, scary and believable villain.

 

[Jeri]

Spock wasn't there when Nero witnessed Romulus's disentigration. Making Spock view Vulcan's destruction from a similar vantage point is also parallel.

But Spock isn't viewing Vulcan's destruction from a similar vantage point; he appears to have been dropped off on Delta Vega before Vulcan was crushed, whereas Nero, presumably, was on his ship, watching it happen on his viewscreen. There's no parallel nature to the way these two men have borne witness to the ending of their worlds.

Both watched and could do nothing while their loved ones perished and they lived. That's the parallel. A feeling of futility. It's not to do with where their feet were planted.

I find Nero's actions angry but logical from his viewpoint. Romulans don't trust Vulcans, and he just believed his own eyes. It makes sense.