Thats exactly where the scene should have ended-after they found the head. The 5 mintues they saved could have beenreplaced with anynumber of better scenes.
Let's have a Nemesis appreciation thread. You know you want to...
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Thats exactly where the scene should have ended-after they found the head. The 5 mintues they saved could have beenreplaced with anynumber of better scenes.
NEM has one of my favorite space battles of all the movies.
Everytime I see that clip, I'm mystified that everyone (both the Enterprise and the Scimitar) forgot that you can move in 3 dimensions in space. Either Shinzon moves the ship along the z-axis, or Picard orders Worf to blindly fire ventral and dorsal, too.
Though to be fair, Picard and Shinzon are supposed to be of the same mind anyway. So if one makes a mistake, the other would make the same mistake!
I'm not questioning the order to retreat, although there were far better ways to run than the Enterprise did that I've talked about earlier.
I'm saying why fire once and decide it's pointless to continue.
As we've seen on many occasions shields are not these invincible barrier that cannot be overcome. They are basically an armor of energy and like armor it can be overcome if you hit it enough times with powerful enough weapons.
The Enterprise was a Galaxy class ship, supposedly one of if not THE most heavily armed ships in the fleet. The BOP was a 20 year old model, so chances are its shields are not in prime condition to begin with.
The Enterprise has phaser strips to fire from any position, it also has rear photon torpedo launchers. Why not keep firing with everything you've got while you're trying to retreat there is a chance their shields may collapse, the shaking of the hits to the shields may shake the BOP enough that things fail and it makes targeting more difficult.
In short there you have absolutely nothing to lose, and may possibly stop the BOP sooner than it took and not lose the Enterprise. It was totally indefensible to not continue firing with everything available while trying to get away.
In TWOK Kirk knew enough to ask Scott if they had phaser power to try and knock down Reliant's shields. They didn't have enough to do so, but Kirk knew to at least give it a try.
NEM has one of my favorite space battles of all the movies.
Everytime I see that clip, I'm mystified that everyone (both the Enterprise and the Scimitar) forgot that you can move in 3 dimensions in space. Either Shinzon moves the ship along the z-axis, or Picard orders Worf to blindly fire ventral and dorsal, too.
Though to be fair, Picard and Shinzon are supposed to be of the same mind anyway. So if one makes a mistake, the other would make the same mistake!
I wouldn't be too hard on them it seems like during most battles, regardless of the series, everyone seems to forget space battles can be fought in 3 dimensions.
Hell in TWOK even Kirk, one of the most brilliant starship captains of all time didn't realize Khan was fighting in a 2-D way and realize the Enterprise could gain a huge advantage by using a 3-D approach, until Spock gave him kind of a gentle prod to try that strategy.
Which, frankly, was a tactic Trek writers learned way back in 1982. At least in TWOK it was an intentional turning point for the tide of battle, whereas that scene above (and to be fair, much of Trek anyway) fight on the same plane because they're used to it. So it seems that Shinzon and Picard learned from the Khan School of Space Combat.
Even Chang got in a few good hits on the E-A and Excelsior from different planes.
I'll stand by you with the feeling that I feel First Contact is considerable overrated.
It's better than Generations, but when you really stop to look at it there are a ton of holes in it or things that just don't make any sense.
Plus I didn't think it was terribly original. Generations was a dud so they immediately thought "What was the most popular enemy in TNG......the Borg! What's a common theme ST has used in the past that people seem to like? TIME TRAVEL!!!!....Let's combine the two and we got a sure fire winner."
Yeah it did well and is considered by many to be the best of TNG films, but it pales in comparison to TBOBW and was basically just Berman deciding to play it safe and reuse past successful elements. Maybe they didn't have the luxury of trying something new after Generations, but FC was just a remix of successful elements from earlier TNG episodes.
Yes it is a convention to show ships oriented exactly the same way. I think it's because anything else can be visually disorienting. If a ship looks "askew" (or heaven forbid, "upside down") compared to another ship, then that typically is a visual cue that it's drifting, disabled, whatever. But picky viewers like us realize there shouldn't be any reason why ships in the vacuum of space have to be on the exact same plane!
Kor
Kor
Nemesis, my favorite TNG movie, although not the best.
Why do I love Nemesis?
-Big screen director+big screen writer=big screen looking movie
-Shinzon: "Well, I had always hoped I'd hit two meters."
-Space battle takes up practically entire last half of film
-Enterprise ramming the Scimitar...entire sequence worth price of admission.
Why do I love Nemesis?
-Big screen director+big screen writer=big screen looking movie
-Shinzon: "Well, I had always hoped I'd hit two meters."
-Space battle takes up practically entire last half of film
-Enterprise ramming the Scimitar...entire sequence worth price of admission.
Chang was a better captain than Kruge in that respect. If you're cloaked why would you approach a ship that hadn't spotted you yet head on so that 1. You increase you chance of being spotted by your distortion, which happened. 2. When you decloak you're lined up right in front of the Enterprise's main weapons making for a much easier target...which of course also happened.
Wow, Han is so cool.
After my own personal disappointment with Insurrection just looking so half arsed with a limp wristed plot, Nemesis at least looked like some effort had gone into it, and it resulted in some memorable scenes like the battle and the ramming. The previous film had no stand out sequences whatsoever.
I always feel when I watch Nemesis that it was a shame in a way that it was the last TNG movie, as this one just looked so much more polished than INS, and even FC and was a rare glimpse of the TNG crew in action with the kind of FX more toward what we'd expect to see today.
Your unhappiness and pissy sarcastic attitude towards me making a Star Wars reference has been noted and saved for future reference. I hope you feel better and are more at peace now that you've snapped me back like a first year cadet.
I too would've loved to see Nemesis as the extended version.
I would like to amend my first point by saying it as:
Big screen director + Big screen writer = Big screen vision.
See...all the directors and writers for the first three movies wrote with still quite a bit of TV aspect in mind....as in 4:3 aspect. Their vision really didn't translate so well, at least to me, on the big screen. They looked much better by the time they hit home video, at a time when 4:3 was still the rule for home video, not the exception.
With Stuart Baird's direction (even though many would say he's a much better editor than a director), and John Logan's (Gladiator) pen, they thought in far more epic and wide screen terms. The action fills the 2.35:1 aspect ratio much more capably than Gen, FC, and Ins. They take full advantage of the widescreen aspect.
At least, if anything, in terms of the lengthy (and much more satisfying) space battle and other visuals in Nemesis, the FX budget really paid off in spectacle, if not profitability. It was great seeing more space battle footage to match the internal dialogue shots.
I would've been very disappointed with that battle if it had been 45 minutes of damage report/evasive action/return fire/camera shake the crew ten ways to hell interior dialogue shots, with only two or three average looking exterior FX shots.
That was how "episodes" played out. All dialogue with only a couple of FX shots. Understandable....budget constraints. (Although the more self-righteous Trekkie might excuse it/be self-appointedly apologistic by saying something inane like "Well, we prefer to use our imaginations!".
). Unfortunately, that seemed to be about the way that the first three TNG movies played out as well.
Even First Contact's "major space battle" looked, felt, and played out like a space battle on a tv episode rather than a big screen spectacle. I'd even heard that that battle was supposed to be something on the order of 20 minutes. Upon release, it was over in two. But I was glad it was so short, because 19 and a half minutes of interior dialogue/shake the set with the camera shots with only thirty seconds of exterior, television episode quality FX shots would have had me walking right out of the theater, with no desire to see another TNG era film again.
Also, in terms of story, FC blew its wad right in the first 10-15 minutes.
With Insurrection, the movie trailers played up the action with footage from First Contact's arbitrarily short space battle. The result on release was extremely disappointing.
Nemesis, at least, delivered on it's "more bang for the buck" when it came to the film's climactic and epic space battle.
My big problem with the writing was that it was essentially written by a "fanboy". John Logan is a Trek fan, and he wrote it in a very fanboyish fashion. I had no problems with the Argo scenes....I thought they were refreshing. However, Riker and Troi's wedding looked and felt more like a 'shipper's squeeing wet dream, rather than an emotionally uplifting moment. And Data's death (moreso the writing of Brent Spiner rather than Logan) did feel rather arbitrary and lacked the emotional impact of Spock's death in TWOK. Even Kirk's death in Generations felt more self-indulgent, rather than emotional. My problems lay also within technical areas. (The Enterprise somehow mysteriously gained two or three more decks.).
Personal opinions of a self-avowed non-fan only. Your inner-Trekkie may vary.
I would like to amend my first point by saying it as:
Big screen director + Big screen writer = Big screen vision.
See...all the directors and writers for the first three movies wrote with still quite a bit of TV aspect in mind....as in 4:3 aspect. Their vision really didn't translate so well, at least to me, on the big screen. They looked much better by the time they hit home video, at a time when 4:3 was still the rule for home video, not the exception.
With Stuart Baird's direction (even though many would say he's a much better editor than a director), and John Logan's (Gladiator) pen, they thought in far more epic and wide screen terms. The action fills the 2.35:1 aspect ratio much more capably than Gen, FC, and Ins. They take full advantage of the widescreen aspect.
At least, if anything, in terms of the lengthy (and much more satisfying) space battle and other visuals in Nemesis, the FX budget really paid off in spectacle, if not profitability. It was great seeing more space battle footage to match the internal dialogue shots.
I would've been very disappointed with that battle if it had been 45 minutes of damage report/evasive action/return fire/camera shake the crew ten ways to hell interior dialogue shots, with only two or three average looking exterior FX shots.
That was how "episodes" played out. All dialogue with only a couple of FX shots. Understandable....budget constraints. (Although the more self-righteous Trekkie might excuse it/be self-appointedly apologistic by saying something inane like "Well, we prefer to use our imaginations!".
). Unfortunately, that seemed to be about the way that the first three TNG movies played out as well. Even First Contact's "major space battle" looked, felt, and played out like a space battle on a tv episode rather than a big screen spectacle. I'd even heard that that battle was supposed to be something on the order of 20 minutes. Upon release, it was over in two. But I was glad it was so short, because 19 and a half minutes of interior dialogue/shake the set with the camera shots with only thirty seconds of exterior, television episode quality FX shots would have had me walking right out of the theater, with no desire to see another TNG era film again.
Also, in terms of story, FC blew its wad right in the first 10-15 minutes.
With Insurrection, the movie trailers played up the action with footage from First Contact's arbitrarily short space battle. The result on release was extremely disappointing.
Nemesis, at least, delivered on it's "more bang for the buck" when it came to the film's climactic and epic space battle.
My big problem with the writing was that it was essentially written by a "fanboy". John Logan is a Trek fan, and he wrote it in a very fanboyish fashion. I had no problems with the Argo scenes....I thought they were refreshing. However, Riker and Troi's wedding looked and felt more like a 'shipper's squeeing wet dream, rather than an emotionally uplifting moment. And Data's death (moreso the writing of Brent Spiner rather than Logan) did feel rather arbitrary and lacked the emotional impact of Spock's death in TWOK. Even Kirk's death in Generations felt more self-indulgent, rather than emotional. My problems lay also within technical areas. (The Enterprise somehow mysteriously gained two or three more decks.).
Personal opinions of a self-avowed non-fan only. Your inner-Trekkie may vary.
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