Nemesis Flop Made Tom Hardy Alcoholic Crack Addict

[Myasishchev]

Ruafo would be all right if he'd been in a much better movie--I mean, who wouldn't love Captain Salieri? The problem was that in no wise did they even try to present the Son'a case in anything like a fair light--it was a matter of Picard says it's wrong, so it's wrong. Plus, he was dumb, not realizing that he'd been transporting, asking the Feds for help in the first place, and so on. Interestingly, if the prime directive had ever been invoked, both Admiral Dougherty and Picard were in violation of it, but Picard far more so, since the Admiral was operating in accordance with an international agreement between the B'aku-cum-Son'a civilization's interstellarly recognized government, and Picard was seeking to undermine it by providing aid and comfort to a splinter group of anarchist malcontents.

It's a real shame that Ruafo remained essentially carboard, even with a master of the craft behind the stretchy face mask. There was a good movie somewhere inside Insurrection--and the same is true of Nemesis--and I feel bad for any actor who got essentially screwed over by another actor's insane pretensions to action herohood and trans-Shatner egotism.

It occurs to me, the real villain of both Insurrection and Nemesis was actually portrayed by a superb but delusional, actor whose career has not been so far as I can see at all harmed by those box office failures, even when he was a prime factor behind their failure.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Which makes everyone else sound like Polyannas. My experience is that the depressives I've known don't see anything more clearly than others around them, they just tend to focus on the negatives and don't give the positives as much weight. I know that's not scientific, but it's what I've seen from my life experience.

Perhaps--I do know that, unless I'm sunk deep in the plak tow of despair, people find me personable and fun, so I'm perhaps not the textbook case.

Are you overly hard on yourself? I find that's usually the case for me. I have a tendency to focus more on my mistakes and failures than on my successes. As if somewhere deep back into my childhood of yesteryear, there was a moment when I failed. And even though the moment is long forgotten, it continues to define how I view my life, like a lens slightly out of focus. But like you, most people find me fun, personable, and a great hoot.

Michael Chabon's essay "The Loser's Club" in his new book Manhood for Amateurs speaks to this:

In spite of my mother may have offered, that was the moment when I begun to think of myself as a failure. It's a habit I've never lost. Anyone who has received a bad review knows how it outlasts, but decades, the memory of a favorable word.

Similarly, this is what may have happened with Tom Hardy. Well as it is implied by the article.

I've actually learned to ease up on myself a great deal--there's no percentage in fucking yourself over when there are oh so many people who are glad to do it for you. I just recognize that the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong and that some people never get that lucky break. So far, as I head into my fifth decade, I appear--in certain areas of my life, at least (romantic and artistic)--to be one of those people. I don't discount the possibility that my luck can change, I just hold that it is an exceedingly remote possibility.

 

[DarKush]

It's definitely a shame Mr. Hardy had such a rough go of it after Nemesis. He certainly wasn't the problem with the film. As many others have alluded to, I liked Hardy's Shinzon. Now, I think the clone plot didn't quite work and I had my issues with Shinzon's motivation, but overall, I liked his performance. I thought it was better than Nero's. Shinzon was far more sinister.

As for the other Trek villians, I liked Ruafo as well. He wasn't the problem with Insurrection either. The Son'a were intriguing villains. I just thought the story wasn't 'big' enough for a feature film. It would've made one hell of a TNG two-parter though.

Borg Queen was slinky and sexy and totally unexpected; a great villain. Soran was a bit too talky, but McDowell just has this edge that pulled it off. Chang was great. Sybok felt light weight to me and I agree he wasn't really a villian, just misguided. I learned to appreciate Lloyd's Kruge with time and of course Khan remains Trek's greatest movie villain still.

 

[QuasarVM]

I take it back...I did once consider smoking crack -- after paying good money and wasting two hours of my life on Nemesis...

I needed something to remove my secret (or not so secret since my trophy wife was with me...) pain.

I still did not submit to the temptation but rather went into depression knowing that the TNG cast was done for on the silver screen...

 

[Therin of Andor]

Whale Probe is offended by your remarks.

And shall now ionize your atmosphere as punishment.

 

[Myasishchev]

Whale Probe is offended by your remarks.

And shall now ionize your atmosphere as punishment.

And take the humpbacks with me.

 

[Therin of Andor]

And take the humpbacks with me.

Humpbacked... people?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I mean, last I heard, Laurence Luckinbill never become an alcoholic crack addict!

Exactly, which is why it's a mistake to say that a movie's failure "made" Hardy into an addict. His own physiology and psychology led him down that path; if a career roadblock or embarrassment hadn't served as the proximate reason for him to use, another of life's inevitable vagaries and frustrations almost certainly would have.

Or as he himself puts it so directly "The drink is a symptom of a problem, an inability to accept life on its own terms."

 

[Myasishchev]

And take the humpbacks with me.

Humpbacked... people?

We didn't spend 50 years building that cathedral to turn it over to indigents with disfiguring birth defects. I hope he's the first to get ionized.

 

[cooleddie74]

See, this is proof Hardy never sat through and watched the entire movie.

If he HAD? He wouldn't have been a crack addict. He'd have been a gun-in-the-mouth addict.

 

[Bones2]

I like Nemesis. I think it flopped because of franchise fatigue.

Anyway, we all have problems. Hardy still got paid.

 

[Bones2]

Double post. Please delete, Commander Mod.

 

[cooleddie74]

NEMESIS would probably have made more money had it come out in 2000 instead of '02. I have few doubts about that. Franchise fatigue never helped its box office in a competitive fall movie season like the one we saw in 2002. But the story was so haphazard and poorly explained in parts I still think it'd be one of Trekkers' least favorite films in the series even if it had made a lot more money.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Ironically, "Nemesis" cured my Star Trek addiction.

 

[cooleddie74]

^

 

[Pauln6]

The ex-husband of a UK comedian recently committed suicide and it was allegedly his drug-taking that led to the split. It was cited (albeit in a newspaper article) that drugs are freely available at celebrity parties. Well excuse me but does nobody have the balls to call the police on these celebrity dabblers and junkies at these parties? They should suspend their equity cards for a set period and indefinitely until they give the name of the person who gave them the drugs. Punish them by stopping them working in the same way the sports fraternity does with its players.

They don't seem to care that they are funding the child sex trade, terrorists killing our troops in Afganistan, and evil people getting vulnerable children hooked on crack and heroin.

Nobody forced Tom to take crack before he became addicted. Addicts should be helped and supported to get off the stuff but I have limited sympathy for a middle-class luvvie who made a choice to help fund societies evils because he was a bit down. Watch shows like the Wire to see where your sympathies should lie - with poor children surrounded by a culture of indifference that leaves them very few options in life.

Alcohol is more problematic because it's legal.

And scarily - I rather enjoyed Nemesis.

 

[cardinal biggles]

I don't think anyone expected it to be beaten at the US box office on its opening weekend by J-Lo in "Maid in Manhattan". Most assumed it would at least do as well as "Insurrection" or ST V.

I really think that, had Nemesis released in February 2003, that it would have grossed maybe 20 to 25 million more. Paramount released the film at a really bad time; there were too many AAA films -- The Two Towers, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Die Another Day -- in the Christmas release window.

Would it have, though? Moving it to February (traditionally a dumping ground, though more recently we've seen films like 300 and Sin City do well at that time of year) would have been viewed as Paramount having a lack of confidence in Nemesis' ability to compete with Bond, Potter, and Tolkien. And then when people actually saw it, there still would have been the wretched reviews and word-of-mouth putting a stake in it.

Ironically, "Nemesis" cured my Star Trek addiction.

Too true. In my case, Nemesis made me rethink it, and Enterprise cured it.

 

[JarodRussell]

Ironically, "Nemesis" cured my Star Trek addiction.

Too true. In my case, Nemesis made me rethink it, and Enterprise cured it.

Me too, including all the throwing up, shivers and seizures.

 

[Kegg]

Would it have, though? Moving it to February (traditionally a dumping ground, though more recently we've seen films like 300 and Sin City do well at that time of year) would have been viewed as Paramount having a lack of confidence in Nemesis' ability to compete with Bond, Potter, and Tolkien.

Nemesis was beaten by Maid in Manhattan, a Julia Roberts vehicle. And, honestly, with the sickly state the film franchise had been post-INS, going toe to toe with Potter and Tolkein - two recent cinematic heavyweights - may have simply been expecting too much.

I mean, the new Trek movie may have been one of the crown jewels of last summer but it was still topped by Michael Bay's robots 'splodin fest.

But yeah, it doesn't matter - regardless of when it was released, Nemesis wasn't going to do well.

Ironically, "Nemesis" cured my Star Trek addiction.

Too true. In my case, Nemesis made me rethink it, and Enterprise cured it.

This would be my feeling. I can't believe I left Nemesis feeling completely unmoved. They killed Data. I didn't know going in Data was going to die. He was a character I'd grown up with and had been a big selling point for me as a Trekkie and even now "The Measure of a Man" is one of my favourite TNG episodes.

I didn't even blink. I got a heck of a lot of more emotion out of the opening sequence for the new Trek movie with George Kirk then I got out of the death of one of my favourite characters.

 

[cardinal biggles]

^Maid in Manhattan starred Jennifer Lopez, not Julia Roberts. If it had been a Julia Roberts film, Nemesis wouldn't have even come as close as it did. Hell, I probably would have skipped it for the Julia Roberts film.

Otherwise, everything you said is spot-on.