To the points made by
GalaxyX and
J. Allen: ok, see, now it makes sense. Again, the issue of "which death scene was more depressing" is largely individual "feel" anyway, but I get what you're saying about the presentation SURROUNDING each scene in each movie, and how that
would change the feel. Spock's death was pretty contrived, but I agree that Data's was more telegraphed. I do still like certain aspects of it, mainly the ready room scene with Picard and B4 at the very end (which I thought was well done partly because I got the impression from the scene that B4 WASN'T just going to suddenly become Data, but that some small part of Data would live on in him).
I would have loved to see a follow up of "Time's Arrow", or "Relics" on the big screen.
I'm not sure about the former, personally... there's been enough time travel in Trek as it is, and I didn't think it was all that great of a story. "Relics", though, could be pretty interesting (not the Scotty story, since I don't think you could make a movie out of that, but the Dyson Sphere).
Even a follow up to "Contagion" would have made some epic story that would write itself.
"Even"?! Hell, I think that's the one with the most movie potential out of the three you mentioned. Bring the Iconian tech back but with a movie budget for the concepts and effects, and actually make the "TNG Romulan movie" about, you know... ROMULANS. Coulda been amazing.
Even as Nemesis stands though, I would forgive it all if they just hadn't killed Data.
I'm ok with the idea - in and of itself - of Data dying, as long as it's done well and doesn't feel too contrived. It was done... ok... and felt moderately contrived in Nemesis, so they didn't exactly hit it out of the park on that one. However, I think Data's death (and the scenes surrounding it) were among the
least of the movie's problems. Making it so he doesn't die but keeping everything else in the entire film exactly the same really wouldn't do much for it.
I remember promoters talking about Shinzon being the next "Khan" for Picard, and that the movie would be "just as action packed" as TWOK. To me it felt like what party leaders do when they're trying to make a candidate look good by association with a great historical leader. "Governor Bob here is just like [associate him with the good works of] Ronald Reagan!" and so on.
You know what's really hilarious about that?
Ok, so they are going to try to ape TWOK to some degree for this last TNG movie. I don't think that's a great idea, but ok, fine.
Then you LEAVE OUT what was one of the key components of TWOK's formula - that Khan wasn't just a random dude, but was someone that both Kirk and the viewer had seen before.
As for the action: it was good at times... certainly the effects themselves were excellent. But it seemed like every potentially good action scene had something to ruin it.

When Picard and Data escape the Scimitar... sure, the fighter bit was cool, but the Scimitar crew was really THAT incompetent that all they could think of to do was shoot at the door? They couldn't get some kind of explosive or special equipment to force the door open? And Picard - badass though he may be - is not THAT badass; he held off like thirty of them while Data was trying to open said door. The space battle, of course, was deflated by the idiocy of the Scimitar, and the boarding party fight scene on the Ent-E was deflated by just being... boring. They encounter each other in the hall, and shoot at each other a lot, and Worf dives on the floor. It was just very straightforward and almost
mundane, if a combat scene can be that. Riker's drawn out fight against the Viceroy was actually kind of cool... until it ended with him kicking the dude into a huge Star Wars style bottomless chasm. This chasm apparently had artificial gravity running within it, and despite the fact that they were on deck 29 (of a ship that had 24 decks in a previous movie), appeared to extend down for QUITE a long way.
Worn out definitely, but older? The original cast felt older to me even by the time they even started the movies imo. The TNG cast were still looking alright overall by NEM.
I actually think they look older and less energetic in
Nemesis than the TOS gang did in
The Undiscovered Country. It was one of the first things I noticed sitting in the theater watching
Nemesis.
I definitely agree on less energetic. The TOS crew really felt like they were into pretty much every TOS movie, and gave them a lot of life. But to me they always
looked old. That decade between TOS and TMP made a huge difference.
Meh. To each their own, but I still don't see this. The performances by the main cast, and the level of energy in those performances, are not one of NEM's (myriad) problems if you ask me.
Original cast looked like they were still having a blast even up to the last movie.
TNG cast looked tired and worn out. Picard and Data looked depressed the entire frickin' movie. Everyone did. They must have hated Stuart Baird's direction. They probably hated the stinker of a script also.
I've heard mixed things from the cast on both Baird and the script. I certainly didn't think much of either myself, but it doesn't seem like they all just hated every minute of it. Didn't get a "depressed" vibe from anyone, either.