Motivation and Bad Guys

Okay, but then why should I care about Shinzon? How is his madness even remotely interesting, even its so random and it just contradicts everything we saw up to that point.

How is his madness interesting or compelling in the slightest and what it does it say about him? I am supposed to sympathize with him because of his back story or am I supposed hate him because he wants to kill billions of people, who did nothing to him. I can't sympathize with him because his back story does nothing to justify his desire to kill everyone on Earth and I don't hate him, because his plan to kill everyone Earth is so out of left field.

And for someone who is crazy, he seems to engage in a lot of premeditated planning, he doesn't seem to have voices in his head and I am not sure he cannot tell the difference between right and wrong.

Again, I am going to repeat the same point I just made repsonding to another poster: 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.

Shinzon's supposed insanity does nothing to make compelling and really does come off as excuse for him to be a cliched bad guy, he is not some interesting look into the horrors and afflictions mental illness has on people, he is a dime store James Bond villain.

Compare Shinzon to Khan, who had a valid reason for hating Kirk and wanted revenge for that reason, he never just decided to blow up the Klingon home world for no good reason and no one wrote him as cliched bad guy who was just "crazy", there was a method to Khan's madness. There is no method with Shinzon, so he comes across as badly written Joker knock off, who does random evil things for no good reason.

The way you describing it, I think write the most clcihed, one dimensional bad guy ever, say he is crazy and that will be seen as valid characterization.

 

@The Overlord You don't have to care about him at all if you don't want to. He doesn't need to be your favorite villian. But you're talking about things I don't think you've had personal experience with, and can't really understand. You keep saying crazy, and that he can't be crazy and yet also plan ahead. You keep saying cheap version of the Joker. Mostly, I get that you don't really know what mental illness is and how it works.

I suffer from anxiety disorder, that has led to OCD. According to your definitions, I am crazy. On a good normal day, I am a well functioning member of society. On a bad day, like today, I can drive a car, get take-out and do laundry. I plan and schedule. I am also afraid that everyone around me is highly critical of what I do, and my loved ones judge me. On a very bad day, on my worst day, I was half way over a balcony, because my every reasonable thought let me to believe that that was exactly what my girlfriend wanted and that it was in her best interest to be rid of me.

Please stop. Just stop. You're trying to devine something you don't understand. For Shinzon to actually think that destroying the Federation, something that is the very cornerstone of everything his original self stands for and is based on, is a reasonable and justifiable way of becoming his own person and proving his selfworth..... Hell yeah, for 'crazy' people that makes perfect sense.

And FYI... as a 'crazy' person.... Khan was well acted. But one of the most cliched villians Star Trek has ever seen. Boasting about his higher intelligence, quoting Shapespeare every three words..... Yeah, no.

 

Anxiety Disorder is tough to live with. I have to take a fancy chemical cocktail daily to deal with mine.

 

You know nothing about me and my mental health, so frankly you should back off. I am not going to respond to insults and emotional charged arguments, debate me on the merits of my arguments and leave your emotional baggage at home or don't debate me at all. I am willing to be respectful if you are.

Also I did not say Shinzon was crazy or mentally ill, you said that, I just don't see it, I think you are projecting things on to the character that are not there. I do not think he is mentally ill and if he was, the writers should have fleshed it out, because is not a good motivation for this character at all.

Frankly saying Shinzon is crazy feeds into this negative stereotype that mebtally ill people are all destructive maniacs, it does not help anyone. Do you think Shinzon is a good representation of a mentally ill villain, if so that sets the bar low. If Shinzon is supposed to be mentally ill, then guess what, he is badly wriiten mentally ill villain.

Also most fans and critics agree that Khan is better then Shinzon, Shinzon is just a Khan knock off.

 

I don't think saying Shinzon is mentally ill feeds in to mental illness stereotypes. I think that evaluating what he comes from and the experiences he describes having indicates the great possibility that there are several mental health disorders, and instead of dealing with it, he is pushed in to a place where he has no power, no control and honestly, should have died except for narrative need.

Does it make him a more interesting character or the story better? Well, I think the story is poor and the character is thin, but there is at least a dynamic that the mental health history gives more interesting insight, at least for me. Yes, it could have been more fleshed out, but looking at his history, I would be hard pressed to not see some sort of mental health disorder in Shinzon.

 

I just personally think people are projecting things on to the character that I do not think are on the screen.

I also think its a bad Hollywood cliche to make a villain "crazy" just so they can cause random choas. There is no deep analysis of the character's mental state, the villain just becomes a plot device.

That is what Shinzon becomes, a plot device, they set up an potenially intresting villain, but half through the film, he became a plot device. He could replaced by any random threat to Earth and it wouldn't matter, he is a nothing character at the end.

I don't care if Shinzon is mentally ill or not, I think he is a crap villain. If they meant to Shinzon as mentally ill and explored that in depth, I would give more credence to arguments about him being mentally ill, but I do not think that is what the writers intented anf if it was, it was just an excuse to make him a plot device.

 

Agree to disagree? Those of us who have lived with or around such behaviours see more than enough familiar stuff.

This is true.

That's fair enough. I liked him, but I've always had a soft spot for messed-up characters - particularly when they're in Next Gen's squeaky-clean world.

 

Not saying he is a a good villain. I'm just saying I see signs of mental illness due to his history and presentation.

 

A lot of your post talk about crazy people. What's respectful about that? I was trying to be respectful to you in all my previous posts. But I for one, and many people with mental issues/illness do not like the term crazy. If you want to be treated with respect, be respectful. And to me, personally, all this talk of crazy people does not show respect.

 

I have considered this aswell. It was brought up during my therapy, and I did think about it, but my therapist and I both agreed that I was doing welll enough without. However, the last few weeks have been so stressfull because we are moving house, the anxiety is getting pretty rough again, and I'm falling back into my old patterns when it comes to the OCD. So, if I can't get my self back together in two months after we moved, with the techniques I learned during therapy, I'm considering going back for more talks and perhaps try the meds.

Have they influenced your life in any way, except for helping with the anxiety?

 

I think people are forgetting some things about the character based on things that were shown on screen. Let us not forget the Romulans were goading him to attack the Federation in the movie, on more than one occasion. They were even displaying frustration in his delaying the attack - 'we supported you because you promised action' etc.

Now I'm not going to say Shinzon was a good villain or anything - he's not, though I enjoy Hardy's performance as I always do in any of his films, but his motivations for attacking the Federation were clear enough for me. He already had the Romulans on side, just, and potentially had their fleet at his disposal. Defeating the Federation would have cemented the Romulan support whilst simultaneously making him the major power of the quadrant. Works for me.

My only problem with the character is the convoluted method used to lure Picard in, and the ludicrous way he hangs around, cloaked, for seventeen hours, no less when he's basically dying and the cure is on the ship right in front of him.

Nemesis has many, many problems, no question, but I never had a problems with Shinzon's motivations, whether it's argued that he's mentally ill in some way or not (which he probably is).

 

That is not a good reason to bring your personal baggage to a light pop culture trivia debate, if you can't debate with trying to bring up your personal baggage, don't debate me at all, its not appropriate. I don't bring up my personal baggage in a forum like this, so don't bring up yours with me, its makes the trivial into the personal for no good reason and is not a good way to debate on this forum.

And I am using the term "crazy" not as an insult towards the mentally till, but describing as a cheap narrative device used by Hollywood writers to give their villains a simple motive to cause chaos, it is done a lot in Hollywood and if Shinzon is supposed to be mentally ill, I don't think it is well explored and it renders him a plot device. Let's not turn Shinzon is some well defined example of a character dealing with mental illness, he is a stock villain who becomes a plot device and mental illness is not brought up in any real meaningful way during the story.

If he was a well defined character dealing with mental illness I would like him better, instead he is a the Hollywood version of someone with mental illness, a generic "mad man" (Hollywood's term, not mine) who just causes random chaos for no good reason.

Except I don't think mental illness is brought up in any meaningful during the movie and I have seen several critics say they don't understand Shinzon's motives.

If mental illness was supposed to be Shinzon's motive, it should have been done better. Its not presented in any sort of meaningful way and frankly Shinzon's thematic thrust was him being a dark reflection of Picard, not a exploration of affects of mental illness.

If Shinzon was supposed to be character study on the affects on mental illness on someone, that should have be handled way better, because as it stands now, he is just a stock bad guy and the mental illness motive is not developed enough in the movie to be meaningful.

 

You guys are debating Shinzon's motivations more than the writers before working on the script. Besides, I thought this was about the Kelvin Universe, not the Prime Universe. He is, by definition, a generic crazy man. Although he had more characterization than Nero (too bad they didn't follow Orci's full screenplay, where there were many scenes that deepened into Nero's character and motivation, also present in the novelized version), he still falls into the same category.

 

I think its fair to discuss all Star Trek villains here, where else could we discuss all the movie villains that have appeared in Star Trek films?

And I thought Nero was kinda lame, but I still thought his motives were better defined then Shinzon's.

 

I'm sorry your interpretation of this is me making it personal. I was using a real life example that I know of myself, to make clear how something works. I have no problem talking about my problems. If you feel I made it personal that way, that's up to you, not me. Appropriate has nothing to do with this. Good debating uses examples, not just commenting. That's what I was doing, nothing more, nothing less. Make of that what you will, think of that what you will. I know my motivations, my reasoning. As for 'debating you'.... I don't debate people. I debate subjects. Saying I shouldn't debate you at all makes it sounds as if you think this is a fight to be won, as if it's about you.

I've said what I needed to say here, and I'm going to leave it at that. Again, if you want to consider that you winning this, go right ahead.

 

I don't think Shinzon was meant to be a mental health patient. I just see that based upon his history. His motivations are all over the map, which makes him being mentally ill more, um, reasonable.

I agree that he isn't a well done villain, at all, and is one of the worst aspects of Nemesis. I also think that Nero is a far better villain, as is Krall, and Harrison/Khan than most of the TNG film villains, and some of the TOS films villains.

 

I don't know if it's been brought up in this thread because there are a lot of long posts, but in my opinion insanity is not a good motive for a movie villain. I'm well aware that there are evil people in real life so insane that we can't understand them, but rarely does that make for a compelling movie character. Compare STID and STB. Khan's goal at the beginning was revenge on Marcus for apparently killing his crew. This changed when he realized his crew was still alive. He then comes up with a plan to steal the Vengeance and presumably go start his Khan empire somewhere. This is entirely in character for Khan as we've seen him steal weapons and ships before as well as become obsessed with revenge when he loses people close to him.

Krall on the other hand is marooned on a distant planet and decides that the Federation abandoned him, even though he's fully aware that it's taken a century for the Federation to even reach this part of space. And they only go through the nebula to answer a call for help, the very thing he says that the Federation wouldn't do for him. And this entire time he had a vast army he could have used for anything. He could have tried returning to Earth, or gone out and conquered some random planet, but instead he decides to wait a hundred years for a not-so-superweapon (when I first saw the movie I thought it was going to be something that would suck the life out of an entire population and make Krall immortal, instead it was just a random cloud of meltiness) so he can kill some innocent people and show the Federation that war is better. Now at this point you might say that he was driven mad by the vampire machines that probably wouldn't work right on humans, but "He's mad, deal with it." just doesn't make for good drama. Never mind the fact that all three of them went mad in the exact same way.

Another thing that bugged me is that the ending of STID requires them to keep Khan alive, whereas STB was "I want confirmation that Krall is dead". Then in the life support chamber Krall gets his moment of reflection and decides to kill Kirk any way, and gets kicked into oblivion while screaming "NOOOOO!". It's a rather depressing ending as it's apparently saying that people emotionally scarred by war will never get over it and it will eventually destroy them.

This is why in my opinion Krall is the weakest villain in any Trek movie, beating Shinzon and Ru'afo.

 

Krall was in possession of a superweapon and still a very immediate danger to millions at the time. Khan was simply on the run.

And Kirk gave Krall a chance to surrender in the life support room. I don't think he was written off as too damaged, and thought his near-turn was very effective. I really thought he was going to help Kirk until he saw his alien reflection in a shard of glass.

 

But that's kind of my point. Krall sees what he's become, which is the very thing he'd sworn to fight, and he's okay with it. It just didn't feel like a very optimistic way to end Star Trek's 50th anniversary movie.

 

And Kirk was about to give up on exploring and settle for a desk job. At the end, he is excited to get back out there.

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