It kind of makes a slight inference that Star Trek fans tend to be nerds and geeks, no??
I'll say it out loud: I'm a NERD and I'm proud!
It has been a horrible period for our society when being *smart* was a reason to be tormented and ostracized. I believe I see it fading away with my daughter's generation, and I thank Zarquon for it.
Honestly, a good HALF of both Nemesis and TWOK are dreadfully dull - the former because of writing, the latter because of pacing (which, to be fair, was typical for the time the movie was made). For me, comparing the two comes down to this:
TWOK:
Villain - silly, over the top, excellent actor sold it.
Spock's death - touching, well-written, well acted.
Space combat - fairly dull for most of it.
Command codes - too dumbed down, and I thought so even then when I was 7.
Nemesis:
Villain - needed lessons from Monteban. Played a ridiculous role *straight*, which may have been on the actor or on direction. But BAD.
Data's death - failed to move due to introducing an obvious out in the form of B4.
Space combat - Nemesis wins this one. Picard RAMMED a ship.
Remans - Can die in a fire. Let's just flatly contradict Diane Duane's excellent novels - not for a good reason, but for SPACE VAMPIRES!!!!1!!one!!
So overall, I give TWOK the win between the two. And even if TWOK had never existed (ignoring the butterfly effect that would have had), I'd feel the same way about Nemesis that I do now, only I'd be comparing Shinzon to Kruge (and still finding him wanting).
Well I respect your feelings but I have to say I STRONGLY disagree about the space battles.
I think that the battles in TWOK were extremely well and intense despite the fact there was not actually a whole lot of firing going on.
First was the tension.....I think it's awesome how they build up the initial approach between the Enterprise and Reliant. Kirk realized something is not quite right, but Reliant is still a sister starfleet vessel so he's hesitant to take any drastic action.....Not raising the shields as a precaution though was pretty inexcusable.
Khan on the other hand is all cocky and confident and brimming with joy with the fact that the Enterprise doesn't apparently know what to do and he's soon going to unleash his fury.
So the Reliant attacks with devastating results. Khan gloats and thinks he's about to win until Kirk uses his experience and superior knowledge of starships to confuse Reliant into lowering her shields (BTW the prefix code and computers of the same fleet being able to issue conflicting orders was a BRILLIANT piece of writing....despite the fact the code was only 5 numbers) and allowing the Enterprise to retaliate enough to drive Reliant away.
Then when they meet up again Khan realizes he's been tricked and the Enterprise is in better shape then he thought, but is almost excited at that prospect because he can prolong the agony. The Enterprise heads into the nebula because by doing so they'll negate most of the advantages the less damages Reliant has over her.
Jochaim realizes what they're up to and tells Khan it would be a terrible idea to follow them in. But when Khan hears Kirk's voice openly taunting him his emotions overrule his intellect and he takes the bait. So many of the computer and electronic elements are now out of play and it's man vs. man and skill vs. skill.
So they're in the nebula searching for each other. Enterprise gets in good firing position but misses, the two ships almost collide and exchange fire. Reliant's destroying one or the Enterprise's photon launchers and reopening earlier damage in the engine room and Enterprise's shot hitting Reliant square in the bridge killing Jochaim and many of the bridge crew.
Then when Kirk is trying to plan his next move Spock points out that Khan's attack seem to be based like he's fighting on land and not using the up and down element. Kirk drops the Enterprise below where he anticipates Reliant will fly over and raises up behind her.
And the shot where you see the Reliant's roll bar and the Enterprise start to slowly rise is AWESOME!!!!! It's almost like Jaws sneaking up on its prey and then when they show the Enterprise fully risen it's such a heroic looking shot, and you can almost hear the Enterprise say "Surprise Motherfucker!!!!!" and you know what's about to happen and then of course the Enterprise polishes the Reliant off blowing a warp nacelle to hell...all of course which leads up to the Genesis countdown.
But in Nemesis there was no real build up. The Scimitar just decloaks and Picard is like "Holy Shit" but they don't fight. Even when they do fight there is no real tension, because of faulty communications in a nebula Picard some deduces the Scimitar is about to attack seconds before it does. Then the ships fly around like fighter jets firing dozens and dozens of shots at each other for what seems like 30 minutes, but not really causing any major damage (except to the romulan ships) until they run out of ammo and are at a standoff. The ramming is pretty cool but it doesn't win the battle like the Enterprise's last shots at the Reliant did.
Remember these are large starships that are supposed to move at a slower rate. It's not the Millennium Falcon being chased by TIE Fighters firing endlessly and the Falcon doing fast and nimble manuvers to try and escape.
TWOK showed the ships like they are. They weren't chasing each other like a couple of fighter jets, they were like battleships exchanging gunfire. And though the actual amount of shots fired was far less than Nemesis, each hit actually caused significant damage and changed the nature of the battle.
In Nemesis they just flew around fast and aimlessly and, despite the much greater degree of gunfire exchanges, didn't really seem to damage the other very much except for the bridge shaking and sparks coming down from the ceiling.
To me this falls into the "Less is more" category. It's not so much about the amount of fire exchanged, but the tension and drama around the fight and what the fire that is exchanged does.
It's the exact same reason why the lightsaber battle in The Empire Strikes Back creams any one in the prequels. Because light saber fights are not about how many times you swing at each other and how fancy the moves are....it's about the drama surrounding the fight. In ESB there was intense drama...in the prequels it was just clearly choreographed swings done as quickly and fancy as possible.....It didn't really matter who was fighting.
Sorry Nemesis loses big in the space battle category IMHO, despite the superior SFX. Because it lacked so much of what made the battles in TWOK intense even they weren't shooting at each other every 5 seconds.
