I neither really liked or disliked Nemesis. I felt that it had some good things going for it, and a lot of really bad things going for it. Baird never should have directed it, John Logan should never have been the screenwriter, and Spiner and Stewart should never have had as much script input as they did. I liked Tom Hardy a great deal, however.
The movie had a very good opening scene. Starting with the distant overhead view of the city and then zooming onto and then into the Senate chamber, all the while with the foreboding music playing. The scene inside the chamber was fascinating. I find the Romulans one of the most intriguing species in the Trek universe, so I was happy that the movie gave us a glimpse of Romulan society. I saw some parallels between NEM and TWOK. Shinzon's preoccupation with Picard was somewhat similar to Khan's obsession with Kirk. Khan had Genesis as his weapon of mass destruction, Shinzon had the Scimitar. Data sacrificed himself at the end as Spock did in TWOK. Shinzon was one of the better Trek movie villains. I never heard of Tom Hardy before NEM. I didn't know that the actor who played Shinzon was the same one who starred in Mad Max: Fury Road. He put in a good performance for both movies. It took a while before I realized that the two characters were played by the same actor, the same Tom Hardy. It must have been the hair or lack of.
I didn't see those similarities until just now The opening scene was great - it was nice to see the Romulan senate. Aren't they related to the Vulcans? Kind of like unhappy relatives of Vulcans, or some such? ST explored the h* out of the Klingons and even the Cardassians - not sure why they did not do that with the Romulans. There's certainly enough intrigue there to last an entire new show.
I am sorry, Shinzon is a good premise for a villain, with a crappy execution. And wasn't a movie about the Romulans, they got sidelined by the Remans. At first, they try to make him some sympathetic villain who wants to liberate his people, but then make him into some evil scum bag who wants to destroy Earth for no good reason and mind rapes Troi. Shinzon is a villain who changes his mind every 5 minutes and thus is not compelling, either make him sympathetic or a scum bag, this half measure stuff does not work, Either make Shinzon a Romulan who is an extremist who wants to destroy Earth and he is just an evil scum bag or keep Shinzon the same more or less (but lose the mind rape), but have him try to destroy Romulus and Picard has to stop him. Pick a direction and stick with it, rather than making Shinzon inconsistent like he was in the film.
I rewatched it last night brpecause of this thread. Still like it. It has a great visual style. Slick.