Entertainment value is a highly subjective subject, and Nemesis certainly has a lot that's wrong with it IMO. But to the OP, I have to agree, the visual effects are still stunning.
NEMESIS STILL LOOKS GOOD!
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Yes, the FX do actually hold up quite well. It's still the worst Trek movie by some margin though.
Well, I can't agree with that. To paraphrase Sheldon Cooper: The Final Frontier is orders of magnitude worse than Nemesis.
Nemesis is a deeply flawed movie, but I still find it pretty watchable (much moreso than Insurrection). And yes, I agree, the movie LOOKS great and the effects hold up well, even on Blu-Ray.
TFF is my favorite TOS movie, and Nemesis my most hated TNG movie.
I find a lot in TFF that is horrid, but I chalk it up to its lack of a real budget, and in a way it feels like a good quality B-movie featuring Kirk and crew.
Nemesis does not have those excuses to fall back on when it comes to the horrible way it was implemented. Simply, it was the vision of a couple of lamebrains who thought the story as-is was a great masterpiece.
Rick Berman just before the premiere of each and every TNG movie: "We've got the best villain since Khan."
Better than "We've got Khan. Again."
Better than "We've got Khan. Again."
Ill take Cumberbatch over any of the baddies we got in any of the TNG movies, thats for sure. Granted at this point they could make a movie that personally addresses every grievance you have with NuTrek, and you'd still knock it.
As for the Nemesis visuals, I'm actually friends with the VFX supervisor from Nemesis, and I've talked about it with him, and trust me, if he had his way, things would have been a lot different. They wanted a much more dynamic battle, and a lot of the camera moves and ship movements they had planned out were restrained by the producers who wanted to keep it in line with what had been seen before.
You can/could buy the movies separately, if you wanted to without having to get Nemesis (for my part, I don't know if I even want Nemesis now myself, even though I have a soft spot [two and a half stars out of five] for it.)
May I ask, how did you figure out Marina looks so bad on screen? Were you watching the movie on a HDTV set with a Blu-Ray player and disc?
The key difference being that Nemesis didn't have any style, either.
Oh it had a style.......that was cut and pasted from every other recent action movie in the theatres.
Oh it had a style.......that was cut and pasted from every other recent action movie in the theatres.
I think that one's a criticism more appropriately leveled at AbramsTrek. Nemesis was just plain boring.
As flawed a film that Nemesis is, and as much as I can acknowledge that Star Trek 2009 is a better (marginally, but it is better) film, I STILL find myself preferring to rewatch Nemesis, to either Trek 2009, or the train wreck that is STID. It's hard for me to rewatch Trek 2009, but it is doable, yet whenever I flip channels and Nemesis happens to be on, I somehow find myself stopping and watching the rest of the movie, regardless where I come in. As for STID, saw it once, and probably won't revisit that turd of a film for a long time.
Oh dear!
I even preferred the Duras Sisters! At least I knew why they were there in the first place. I've seem BC in quite a few things and I find this some of his worst work. Maybe that can be blamed on the writing. But I'd also like to take a clever to his make-up artist!At least Nemesis crew looked normal.
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I don't have any animosity to the new films--I think they are flawed--but I agree. I think the Picard/Shinzon relationship is interesting. I think the questions it poses, and not the way it executes them, are good. I think Nemesis is the closest we get to an ensemble cast. There's a moral at the heart of the story and an age-old question about Nature and Nuture. Nemesis has its flaws, but it's still the second-best TNG movie, and one that I am willing to watch.
I think all the movies have good elements.
Generations puts a world in peril that we never see. I think that is a mistake, but at least it's not Earth. The effect of the Borg on a man that seeks to do nothing but live in his fantasy, immortal world, is a good concept. The nexus itself needed a lot of work. It seems like Ronald D. Moore was just playing with his familiar characters (Lursa and B'etor, Worf's promotion, Robert and Rene die, etc). It seemed like they shoe-horned the Captain into a problem to give him something to do in the Nexus. Everything felt contrived, not organic and real. It felt like someone telling a story and I think that's a failure of the material and the actors.
First Contact allows them to state the Federation's mission (Using Star Trek in-universe, explaining how the world changes from our time to the 24th Century), but does it at the expense of the characters on the planet. I think it's a nifty idea to explore the Borg's mission and culture, but again, the Borg queen is a bad concept and ruins the Borg.
Insurrection, my favorite of the movies, is subtle, pure storytelling. It gives us a moral dilemma debated on these boards to this day. It does what few Star Trek movies tried to do--show them as more than soldiers, shooting at the problem, kill-or-be-killed. Even when they pick up a phaser, it's done to rescue Data and to prevent the Bak'u from being beamed off the planet, not killed. It isn't until the end that we see Ru'afo go to extremes others with him are not (Dougherty, Gallatin, etc) that we are treated to the usual Star Trek movie trope. It's original and that endears me to it.
Nemesis, I think I have already covered. These weren't bad movies, just not great movies. They gave us nothing as memorable as WoK or TUC.
There's nothing subtle about "Insurrection." As I said either in this thread or in another, "Insurrection" tells you who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, who's right and who's wrong -- and don't question it, just accept it because Michael Piller says its just so.
Let me name some examples of the subtlety of the movie. In the scene where Data and Worf and Picard are singing "A British Tar," the song is indicating that Data is acting in a moral and patriotic way. The song selection isn't where the subtlety ends. "He can fly a ship. He can anticipate tactical strategies. Clearly his brain is functioning. We've seen how he responds to threats, I wonder how he would respond to..." This is Picard acting as a scientist--changing the stimulus, testing a hypothesis. Data is still acting, this time, with emotions. It's explained in Devil's Due why he acts. Yet, it's nuance is lost on most fans because they think it's just Shtick. It's 3 minutes of the movie and it is incredibly layered.
Data has never learned to be a child. Many call that "wacky Data." That's not the case. It's showing that in the midst of his emotions, Data is still in search of his humanity; there are still questions to be answered.
Again, Picard is acting as an explorer when he discovers that his skin is tightening on his face. The exploration of the Bak'u takes off. He finds out that they have been on the planet for 309 years. He learns that they apprentice for 30-40 years. His wonderment is on display when he's looking out the window at the planet, when he's walking on the bridge before seeing Geordi, and when he says "Apprenticing for 30 years." Again, they are explorers.
Ru'afo is the only thing that is blunt in the whole movie (sans some lines from Will Riker about what he needs from Deanna). Instead of long dialogue that would've ruined the scene, Data says "Commander," touches his chin, and then gets a dissatisfied look on his face. That's not making too big a deal out of it.
You are looking for more balance and this really isn't about the Son'a as much as it is about the Federation acting against its principles, the consequences be damned ("On earth, petroleum once turned "petty thugs" into world leaders). You're taking one character and saying "It's all black-and-white" and it's not.
What is one of the complaints about this film? "It's boring. I don't like it. There's not much drama." Right? "It fails to engage." That's the mark of, not an action-adventure film, but of a film that asks more of the audience than they are used to giving in a Star Trek film. The film literally speaks in whispers. It's not the loud eye candy of the JJ films.
That's a good interpretation, and I think works, but I honestly doubt Piller thought it out that much.
That really was a small part of the film, though, and, honestly, I thought it was pretty weak stuff. The boy wants nothing to do with Data; then he does. That's pretty much the whole story right there.
The one thing I was looking forward to with Piller writing was a really good character story. Piller at his best writes stories in which the setup and payoff are reflected in both the character and the story, with the main character's flaw serving as a barrier to the story's resolution; the story is resolved only when the main character straightens himself out. Think DS9's "Emissary." What Piller did with "Insurrection" was try to force character stories that don't work and achieve payoffs he never earns.
It is all black-and-white. Our heroes are right, and we're not supposed to question it. Admiral Nobody, regardless of his motives, is wrong. The script allows no room for ambiguity. Picard's right because he's the hero and Michael Piller says so.
I completely agree "Insurrection": isn't the eye-candy of the Abrams films (of which I'm not a fan, either). That doesn't mean "Insurrection" is any good.
The problem isn't that the film asks too much of the audience. The problem is that it asks nothing of the audience. Like I said, Picard is always right, even when he's wrong. The story isn't in any way presented as ambiguous.
Do we earn the payoff of Picard risking his career for the alien-of-the-week? Why is he doing it? Because he's a good guy? Because he kinda likes that girl? I'm sorry, but that's not good enough. And yet, as I recall, that's exactly the reason Piller gave in interviews for Picard's actions. He compared the film to "The Magnificent Seven" in which the heroes come in to a place they have no connection with and make things right simply because they're good guys. That would be downright noble in real life, but it doesn't work for the story. The story demands a powerful motivation in proportion to a powerful action.)
Another problem with the movie is the structure. Instead of rising action peaking at plot points at the end of each act and coming to a high at the climax, the movie starts off with a bang and then flat-lines until the end. The rising action needn't be action scenes, armed conflict, or space battles, but simply rising tension and movement. The story just limps along for most of the film. About three-quarters of the way through the film, I remember thinking to myself, "When am I supposed to actually care about what's happening?"
I do agree with most people though that "Insurrection" is the closest in spirit to the TV series, so I understand that appeal. I think Roddenberry probably would have liked the film, too.
"Can anyone remember when we used to be explorers?" There are all kinds of moments in the movie that show them as more than soldiers. I think it's deliberate in the movie.
I disagree. Data saves Artim after his father is taken from him in the first attack on the planet (he's beamed to the ship because of the "gap in the field.") Before that, you're right; he wants nothing to do with Data. But that act bonds them throughout the rest of the film. He is curious about Data, however. "Won't he rust?" "Don't you ever get tired?" "Do machines ever play?" Again, the subtlety of the movie.
I think about "Best of Both Worlds" where the collective mind and Riker's differences from Picard cause him to resolve the crisis in a way Picard never would. So I see the appeal.
Again, the conflict isn't with whether the Bak'u are right to keep the planet. The conflict is over whether Starfleet should be doing this or not. The way the ready-room scene is written, which fleshes out the moral dilemma, equal weight is given to Picard and Dougherty, Picard even saying at one point "Why does it have to be this one planet?" when Dougherty brings up Geordi's eyes. Picard lost that point. Picard is acting in the best interests of the Federation, more noble than the Federation is willing to act. He is risking his career for the chance to keep the soul of the Federation intact.
The moral dilemma about whether the Son'a have a claim to the planet, if the Ba'ku are being selfish, is beside the point. The fact is, most critics are just saying "We want to live to be 300. Please, please let us have the planet. It's just 600 people."
Dougherty is redeemed. He tries to end the mission, and he ends up dead because of it. This is the relationship the Son'a (the dog on a leash) will have with the Federation (who are letting them off the leash). Ru'afo is willing to go further than anyone else in the story.
Why does it have to be ambiguous? Was Jim Kirk right to take the Enterprise and rescue Spock, killing Klingons that got in his way? Yes. No consequences in IV, and yet, we consider that a great movie, and it was a commercial success. Picard is acting in the best interests of the Federation. When is he so wrong that the script looks positively unethical?
His motivation is to save the Federation from itself. I suggest watching the end of the movie when he's talking to Anij about why he's not sticking around. "Slow things down" for the Federation council. "It's an attack upon its very soul." He's preserving what he spent his life defending. His motivation is very clear.
The Federation is about to destroy a culture "To seek out new life and new civilizations." The Bak'u are about to be destroyed in an attempt at parricide. The Son'a killed Admiral Dougherty and are out of control. The people on the planet, we do some actual exploring in this one, I care very deeply about what is going on. When a movie manufacturers drama, I usually roll my eyes. Sticking to the dramatic structure learned in High School and been around since the Greeks, is a starting point. This demands the audience to know the Star Trek universe. It demands that you understand and appreciate the moral dilemma.
