Motivation and Bad Guys

A better rationale for the Yorktown location than the "neutral ground" one Spock gives, certainly. Perhaps Spock meant that the nebula bordered on dozens of star systems and setting up the Federation's very own dedicated nebula exploitation starbase in any of those would have meant political problems?

Timo Saloniemi

 

We also have no reason to think Spock may have been privy to all the factors leading into the choice of location.

 

Yes, it's well past time for a rational antagonist.

 

There is such a thing, anymore?

Sure, one might be thought up but would likely be a retread anyway.

 

Rational is it's own brand of crazy.

 

The role of the antagonist is to oppose the protagonist. The antagonist does not necessarily have to be evil in character. But of late, movies and television have evil antagonist whose goals the protagonist opposes.

 

There's the common variant of "sympathetic evil", though. Khan is a wronged individual who takes it out specifically on those who wronged him - it just happens that in the process he sort of happens to get wronged a lot more.

Khan is also extremely rational about it, despite the two Spocks' mysterious accusations of genocidal motivations and whatnot. OTOH, he works for another villain who, while also rational by his own standards, is the exact opposite of Khan: Marcus loves random casualties, does not feel wronged in the slightest, and carefully preempts all sympathies (or at least outsources them to Pike).

The mixture of the two is actually rather refreshing... But finally giving the stage completely to a thoroughly rational and thoroughly sympathetic villain would be even more so.

Timo Saloniemi

 

I almost feel like they might have gotten away with a sympathetic villain in Ru'afo if they'd kept him limited to "I want the Son'a to live" and away from "Oh, and if I could kill all the Baku in the process, one way or another, that'd be pretty nice too."

God knows F. Murray Abraham knows how to play a sympathetic villain. The script failed him.

 

It's like the writers only know how to increase conflict and tension by using destruction. After a while it gets tiring to watch.

 

Or that they didn't want to offer any particularly significant moral dilemmas...though I'd argue with INS they unintentionally(?) ended up doing so, because lord knows I'm not thrilled with how Our Heroes handle this one.

 

Shinzon is not mentally ill, he is badly written villain.

Why does he want to destroy the Federation? What did they do to him? What does he gain by its destruction? Frankly if you wanted a plot that made sense, he be trying to destroy Romulus, he actually has reason to hate the Romulans. Shinzon is also written like he's an idiot.

Krall and Nero are okay villains, but underdeveloped, but i understood their motives better then Shinzon's.

I was annoyed when they reused Khan, he was fine, but not as good as he was in Wrath of Khan.

I think the next villain needs a motive besides revenge.

I tend to like villains who are either very sympathetic or very evil.

Have a story where a villain wants to restore the natural beauty of industrialized planet, at the cost of the lives of millions of people or have them fight a genocidal maniac who wants to commit mass murder due to hatred, anything is better then another revenge plot against the Federation.

 

Mental and physical abuse. Finding out that your whole existence was to be in service of others. You aren't even an original person, but a copy of another. Those are grounds for becoming mentally ill.
As for his reasons to destroy the Federation, that could go two ways. One could argue he has a warped sense of needing approvel, to prove to his creators that, despite him being nothing more than a copy of greatness he is still capable of something like this.
Another could be, that it's to prove to Picard that he is nothing like him. That he can even be more, do something Picard never could, and that's to destroy the Federation.
And it's so easy to say that that's bad writing. But people with mental illnes have done extreme things, that 'normal' people see as simply crazy and insane, while it's perfectly reasonable for someone with a mental illnes, who's sense of logic and reason is more askew.
Just because a normal person doesn't get it, doesn't make it less real for them.
Can we say for certain Shinzon was? I'm not a shrink, so I can't say, but there is plenty reason to believe that he was, and lost sense of perspective with what he was doing and trying to accomplish, thinking that (according to his reasoning) it all made sense.

 

Do you really believe someone can be dumped on a desolate rock and abused by guards for years and come out of it okay?

To have wiped out all the lucky pampered humans who lived their perfect lives while he was abused for years.

It doesn't make perfect rational sense, as you say he should be mad at the Romulans more for creating him and treating him as they did, but again I've seen people react in similarly obtuse ways to things.

 

I would say that Shinzon was mentally ill, probably has Reactive Attachment Disorder, with an inability to make healthy attachments to people.

That I said, I think your comments are fairly close to what is presented on scene. Similarly, I think that Nero is experiencing a psychotic break, as well as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, to a degree. Which is why I find him a more compelling villain than he gets given credit for.

 

The Federation did not know Shinzon existed and how were the Romulans not pampered, how was the Federation supposed to help him? The Romulans directly benefited from his labor, exactly what did the Federation do to him? The Ferengi did not help him either and they are pretty pampered, why not blow up them, that makes about as much sense.

That movie would have so much better if Shinzon tried to destroy Romulus, it would have been twist on the usual cliched "destroy Earth" plot, Picard would have to risk his life to save the Federation's enemies and when succeeds, it makes for a better basis for a peace between the Romulans and the Federation. That would have been a better story, because I think his motives for attacking Earth are BS.

If just saying he is crazy is a valid motive, why even bother with this BS Romulan slave back story. You could have just made a cosmic version of the Joker and have him blow up planets for fun, Earth is just the next planet on the list, at least you would at least have consistent character and his motives would be just as valid as Shinzon's were in the movie. The writers couldn't decide whether Shinzon was sympathetic or pure evil, so the character just came off as inconsistent, I have no investment in him because the writers kept on changing him.

Shinzon is a crappy villain and just saying he is "crazy" doesn't make him a better villain. Most people, aside from a few hardcore fanboys who defend it, consider Nemesis a bad movie and Shinzon being a crappy villain is a big reason why this movie sucks.

 

Let's see...
-Nero sought revenge against Spock and the Federation for what happened to Romulus.
-Khan sought revenge against Marcus and the Federation for what they did to his augmented comrades.
-Krall sought revenge against the Federation for having abandoned him and his crew.

I think we may have a pattern here...

 

You want reasoning from a character who is no longer capable of thinking reasonably, rationally. That's what we've been trying to explain. Several people on this forum, with experience with mental issues/illnes (either having it themselves or knowing people that do) have tried to explain it. If you keep insisting that someone who is no longer capable of thinking straight, should still act like one that can, you've missed the entire point. His Romulan slave backstory IS the reason he's mentally unstable, one of several reasons. That's why they've bothered with it.

And honestly, there's plenty of people who consider Nemesis a good movie, albeit flawed. They're not so obsessed they need to hate it passionatly because of those flaws, they just accept them and enjoy the good bits.

 

Romulans aren't humans. Shinzon was the only human on Remus. If that's not a plausible reason for him having a preoccupation/obsession with humans (and Picard, who he's a clone of) I don't know what is.

 

That should not matter as much as the fact that the Romulans are ones who enslaved him and ruined his life. The Romulans ruined his life, not the Federation, it would have been a better motive if his plan as to destroy Romulus, not Earth.

This would be like someone finding out their wife is cheating on them and instead killing the guy who was having sex with his wife, he kills some random person instead and I am supposed to believe the cheating is the reason for this random killing, its sloppy story telling.

Most critics and many fans do not think Nemesis is a good movie and frankly it isn't, its a bad Wrath of Khan knock off with a way worse villain.

Okay, so when he mind raped Troi, was that because he was crazy, because that seems more evil then crazy to me. It seems he did for power and a sexual thrill, rather mental illness, that scene presented him as evil, not crazy.

When he killed everyone in the Romulan Senate, was that crazy or was motivated by his desire for revenge?

The problem is the only reason people say he is crazy, is because he tries to destroy Earth for no good reason, before that, everything he did followed a similar path and set him up as wanting revenge against the Romulans.

And really saying villain is crazy is starting to come off as "get out of jail free" card for lazy and badly written villains, a villain doesn't have to be well written, because he's crazy.

I am sorry, but there are several better written villains who explore mental illness better then Shinzon ever did, he is not some well realized, in depth psyhological character, he is a badly written cliched villain, where fans and the writters have decided that "being crazy" is the only motive he needs, even though his back story gives him a valid reason to kill all the Romulans

Shinzon is supposed to be Picard's dark reflection, a Picard who went down a different path. I could see a Picard who was tortured by Romulans all his life wanting to kill them and it calls back to Picard's confrontations with the Borg, where twice he allowed desire for revenge override his morality. But a Picard who just wants to blow up Earth for no reason, no, that makes no thematic sense.

We should stop using "insanity" as a excuse for poorly written, cliched bad guys, Shinzon could have been a great villain, but he needed a better plan and motive then "I am going to blow up Earth, because I am crazy", that was really lame.

 

Again, you're insisting on a rational explanation from a guy with serious physiological problems.

Do you insist on rational explanations from people who go on killing sprees in real life?