Somehow I knew redshirts would come up. The difference is, you don't cast Eric Bana to be a redshirt. You don't bill a villain, the main driving force for the plot, as just some expendable nobody.
Why not? They did it with Commander Kruge, General Chang, Doctor Soran, Ruafo, Shinzon (and his viceroy). Do you really think Eric Bana is a better actor than Christopher Lloyd? I sure as hell don't.
I can think of movies where there are small numbers of characters, little time devoted to the 2d villain, and still that villain has more impact than Nero.
So can I. Primarily because most of those movies are "Hero vs. Villain" movies (Wrath of Khan, for example). STXI is not, and has other things it needed to focus on OTHER than the Nero vs. Spock angle.
At any rate, if the problem is that there are too many characters, then they're doing it wrong.
Says you. If you're creating a movie with the intention of establishing an entire cast of characters for future continuity, then this works just fine; the first threat they face is BOUND to be a shallow and undeveloped one and will only get any sort of depth and character in later productions.
Personally, I don't think it was necessary for them to include as many as they did and to try and give them each something meaningful to do. It would be like if X-Men introduced every mutant right away.
X-Men started with five mutants--Cyclops, Beast, Marvel Girl, Ice Man and Angel--and had them square off against Magneto in their very first issue. If they had KILLED magneto in that first encounter, we would never have known anything at all about him, but over time (over a VERY long time), Magneto later evolved into a multi-dimensional, fairly dynamic character, moving away from the "Card carrying villain" he was at first. In that sense, X-Men #1 established a main antagonist at the same time as the main heroes.
Nero could be developed into a more dimensional character with later productions, IF he survived the first movie. He didn't, and wasn't meant to, and we're left with the impression that we're probably not missing much. Disposable characters don't usually have that kind of potential; the single exception, of course, is Khan, who had so much going for him that they wound up bringing him back for a major motion picture. Ask yourself why they chose Khan instead of, say, Kang or Koloth or Kor or the Romulan Commander from the Enterprise Incident or the various other one-off bad guys Kirk had faced over the years. Ask yourself, also, if we know more about Nero than we do about the unnamed Romulan commander from Enterprise Incident, other than the fact that she had the hots for Spock (we don't even know her
first name).
Perhaps they should have done that.
Why? They clearly had no intention of ever bringing Nero back for a second movie, so giving him development potential would be kind of a waste. He's just a glorified "terrorist of the month" for Jack Bauer to vanquish and move on with his life.
Mostly I was referring to Nero. But as far as the others, signing up to be a miner is not at all the same as joining a cult.
Can you really be sure about this, as far as Romulan society is concerned?
Power which was achieved by the genetic engineering.
In TOS, it was selective breeding, NOT genetic engineering. Those are two very different concepts.
So hijacking a ship without provocation and torturing its crew is perfectly sane?
It is according to George W. Bush.
