Would Nemesis have been a better movie if it focused solely on the Romulans and cut out the Remans?

Star Trek Nemesis was the film where the Romulans were supposedly billed as the main villains, but they were hardly in it, being upstaged by a race we never saw before (and have not seen since, giving us little reason to care about them) the Remans. Really throughout the TNG era, the Romulans were one of the most reoccurring villains and there was no real pay off regarding the Federation/Romulan tensions and conflicts throughout the TNG era, I feel like most of the other civilizations, the Klingons, the Cardassians, the Ferengi, the Dominion, and even the Borg got better send off and story arc. Meanwhile, the Romulans got nothing of the kind, with their premiere movie being hijacked by the Remans.

Would Nemesis have been a better movie if it focused solely on the Romulans and cut out the Remans? Not only did a lot of the build-up with the Romulans throughout the TNG and even the DS9 era seem wasted, I saw no reason to care about the Remans, a race that came out of the blue and had no direction, what were they supposed to be? Villains, who we sympathize with because they were enslaved by the Romulans or villains that we hate because they are Chaotic Evil Space Orcs who wanted to destroy the Federation for no good reason?

 

I think it would have been better, yes. There was no need for the remans to feature in my view.

 

I think the movie would have been better, especially if Tomalak and maybe Sela were in it

 

I thought the Remans looked cool and had a lot of potential, which perhaps could've been better used on Enterprise. I wish the Romulans had been the main villains in Nemesis. I was happy that Star Trek 2009 finally decided to have a Romulan protagonist but I'm a little sad that we never got to see the Romulans get their due in a TNG film. I wish we had gotten to see those TNG warbirds on the big screen.

 

I don't feel like '09 really counts either, given that Nero could just as easily have been a rogue Klingon (or any other race) with little change to the overall plot of the film.

I was curious to know more about the Remans, but in Nemesis they just got in the way of giving us a film that would have given us more actual insight into the Romulans. As did Shinzon.

 

I don't think it would have mattered.

 

No, because the Remans weren’t the problem. They were just a symptom of the greater problem of Picard having a clone whose very existence makes no sense and his motivations even less so.

Now with that said, the Remans were just a bad idea all around. They were a slave race that the audience had no sympathy for whatsoever because of the way they were presented. I have it on good authority that John Logan was high as a kite when he came up with the idea for them.

 

Agree. I thought there was no need to add the Remans. The Romulans would have made fine villains. Shinzon as a Picard clone was dumb. Not a fan of that movie.

 

Having a clone of Picard would have been great if the concept was used for good. Or even used, period.

The obvious twist (especially from Logan, who had just gained global fame by touchingly having a Romu... Roman hero win by dying) would have been for the Evil Twin who originally wasn't Patrick Stewart finally grow up to be Patrick Stewart and assume the role of Picard - exactly as intended by his Makers. Two Picards go in and fight it out over whether Earth dies horribly or not. One comes out, sits down in the center chair, and says "Engage". Earth is saved for now...

Remans are fine as a thing, and the execution was okay, too. A slave race that elicits no sympathy whatsoever is a nice twist. And the movie would need its filler no matter what. And action at Romulus certainly has an opening for Remans, indeed a story demand for more than just a mention. But the Shinzon/Reman connection needed work. Shinzon gives his big teatime talk about caring for Remans, and then demonstrates he does not. Where's the payoff? Why don't we see Viceroy backstab him for his betrayal of the Cause, say?

Timo Saloniemi

 

This movie had bigger issues then a bunch of minions that looked like Bat Boy.

 

I'm pretty sure that was not the intention.

Because they were just cardboard villains with no characterization whatsoever. They might as well have been robots. Ron Perlman was completely wasted in that role.

 

The movie I thought was playing it safe; it kinda borrowed the things I knew about TWOK and TUC and combined them in the worst of ways. Although the film was advertised as the final TNG movie; the movie never appeared that way there were a lot of get of jail free cards spread through out the thing and I suspected the entire staff and crew really didn't want it to be it's last. As for your topic for this thread, I strongly feel it wouldn't have been better if the focus was on Romulans because the producers I felt never had much interest in that species. Romulans require an interesting backstory which hasn't been written yet and open the doors to them having more story related episodes. I would've preferred the Remans were attempting to destroy Romulus while the 1701 - E tried preventing it; this would've been a nice way to promote peace between the Romulans.

 

Nemesis would be a good movie, if it had a plot... And if it had a villain who's motivations made sense.

The issues with Nemesis have nothing to do with the Romulan/Reman dynamic, if anything that was one of the more interesting aspects to learn about.

 

I don't think the Remans were a problem in and of themselves, as having one of Shinzon's motives be to improve the plight of what for all intents and purposes was a slave caste is something that could have given him more depth. The problem was more that Shinzon was written basically as a cartoon villain, so the Remans just end up being generic henchmen.

 

Remove the Remans, Shinzon and B-4, and fashion a story around building upon the wartime alliance between the Federation, Klingons and Romulans, with the E-E crew already having gone their separate ways:

• Picard on the E-E contemplating an offer to become a Federation Ambassador. The E-E is playing a pivotal role in the talks, with Picard heavily involved in the historic negotiations, making him seriously consider the job offer for all the good he could do to foster peace.
• Riker and Troi have married and transferred to the Titan. They are patrolling the border, on high alert hunting down rogue factions that want to put a stop to the talks.
• Data is now First Officer of the E-E. He and La Forge are working on making him more human (in appearance at least), building on what the Borg did to him and grafting on skin. But in the process, Geordi discovers something left over from the Borg.
• Crusher is heading up an investigative division of Starfleet Medical. She is on a ship sent out to investigate what happened onboard a ship, where all the crew were killed with no clear cause.
• Worf serving as Federation diplomat to the Klingon Empire. He has a place at the negotiations, advising both Picard and the Klingon Ambassador.

They are all brought together by their separate plot elements, to stop an event that would plunge the quadrant into the most devastating war in history. I'd love to see Sela return, a red herring possibly about who the big bad is, as well as a cameo from Wesley who appears to Beverly with a key piece of information (yep, Wesley saves the day again ).

 

I would pay to watch that movie

 

Yes, removing them would make the movie better. No, it wouldn't make the movie good without a whole lot of other changes added on.

 

The Remans were completely unnecessary to the plot. However, they shouldn't have done ANY Romulan story without Spock and his unification movement. Nimoy should have been part of that film.

 

...and then the movie should have ended with Spock about to embark on a joint expedition with the Romulans to prevent the destruction of their sun.

Kor

 

Even though I'm one of the 10 people, well you know....

Yes, I do wish the Romulans played a more prominent role. I would have done away with the whole Kolarus scenes and probably the B-4 scenes (or at least retooled B4 a bit). I didn't mind Schinzon, I actually liked Hardy in the role. But I would have developed some of the themes they were going for a bit better. I got the gist of what they were trying to do there, the idea, or question, would Picard do what Schinzon did in that situation, or are they truly different people. But that could have been better developed.

But to the question, yes, I would have preferred more Romulans. In fact maybe replacing the Remans with Romulans. It'd make sense that there are castes of Romulans (we saw some hint of that in Unification), and Romulans that lived on Remus could be a low caste of Romulan slaves. The Remans just seemed to come out of nowhere.

Though I did enjoy the Vulcan's Soul trilogy, which presented an explanation for the Remans, including that they were a mutated offshoot of Romulans, and not actually a separate species (which makes more sense to me).