Nero: "It happened! I saw it happen..."

[foxmulder710]

"...I watched it happen! Don't tell me it didn't happen!"

The overuse of the word "happen" in this sequence of dialogue makes me laugh like nothing else.

A friend of mine suggested that this was a pattern in the film, things being repeated in different ways for emphasis for the slow and stupid among the viewers...(cf. the sequence about the "alternate universe" between nuSpock etc. later).

I mean four times? Yes we get it, Nero's upset that Romulus was destroyed...but do you really have to repeat it to Pike that many times?

Also, Nero's accent sounded to me closer to a Southerner than a Romulan.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Also, Nero's accent sounded to me closer to a Southerner than a Romulan.

How would you suggest a Romulan sound? There is no such thing as an "authentic" Romulan voice.

FWIW, I don't know why they didn't simply have Eric Bana use his real (Australian) accent.

 

[foxmulder710]

True, that (about the accent, both that I'd prefer Australian and we don't know what a "real" one would sound like).

I've always had trouble with the convention of hearing aliens speak English on screen even though we "know" they're "really" speaking their own language.

 

[Devon]

A friend of mine suggested that this was a pattern in the film, things being repeated in different ways for emphasis for the slow and stupid among the viewers...(cf. the sequence about the "alternate universe" between nuSpock etc. later).

The fact there are only two examples of this is pretty good for a Star Trek film, which usually lays and spells everything out for people, then beats them over the head with it.

 

[Wally]

Clearly Nero had some obsessive tendencies (waiting for Spock for 20 years for example), not surprising it should creep into his speech patterns.

 

[rahullak]

^

Not unlike Fox Mulder, the character not the poster.

 

[M'Sharak]

Also, Nero's accent sounded to me closer to a Southerner than a Romulan.

And Romulus doesn't have a South? What if most of the Romulan miners actually come from a southern province?

Or did you mean an American Southern (southeastern US) accent? If so, Nero's speech didn't strike me as sounding particularly southern-accented at all.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Also, Nero's accent sounded to me closer to a Southerner than a Romulan.

And Romulus doesn't have a South? What if most of the Romulan miners actually come from a southern province?

"Lots of planets have a North!" - 9th Doctor

 

[Green Shirt]

"...I watched it happen! Don't tell me it didn't happen!"

The overuse of the word "happen" in this sequence of dialogue makes me laugh like nothing else.

My 15 year old son made the same comment to me on our 3rd viewing. He even added the line "Don't tell me how many times I happened to say happen" to Nero's rant. He also got a laugh out of Nero's repeated cry of "Spock!!!, Spock!!!" when Spock escaped with the jellyfish.

I also thought the "emotionally compromised" idea being repeated by both Spocks was strange. Even though they were both discussing the regulation about command fitness, the exact duplication of wording seemed awkward.

 

[M'Sharak]

"...I watched it happen! Don't tell me it didn't happen!"

The overuse of the word "happen" in this sequence of dialogue makes me laugh like nothing else.

My 15 year old son made the same comment to me on our 3rd viewing. He even added the line "Don't tell me how many times I happened to say happen" to Nero's rant. He also got a laugh out of Nero's repeated cry of "Spock!!!, Spock!!!" when Spock escaped with the jellyfish.

I also thought the "emotionally compromised" idea being repeated by both Spocks was strange. Even though they were both discussing the regulation about command fitness, the exact duplication of wording seemed awkward.

There was actually quite a bit of mirroring going on throughout the movie, both in dialogue and in visuals (think how many times you saw Kirk clinging by his fingertips to the edge of a precipitous drop, to name one example.) I strongly suspect that the repetitions of "happen" and "that's weird" and "emotionally compromised" were deliberate devices to emphasize or connect story elements (though I think not, as the OP suggests, that this was because any part of the audience was thought to be slow and stupid.)

 

[Kpnuts]

"...I watched it happen! Don't tell me it didn't happen!"

The overuse of the word "happen" in this sequence of dialogue makes me laugh like nothing else.

A friend of mine suggested that this was a pattern in the film, things being repeated in different ways for emphasis for the slow and stupid among the viewers...(cf. the sequence about the "alternate universe" between nuSpock etc. later).

I mean four times? Yes we get it, Nero's upset that Romulus was destroyed...but do you really have to repeat it to Pike that many times?

Also, Nero's accent sounded to me closer to a Southerner than a Romulan.

You're reading way too much into it.

Nero says happen 4 times for the stupid people in the film?

 

[pookha]

i thought it was supposed to be both to show that nero wasnt some eloquent high ranking romulan officer but rather what he said..
a simple miner who got caught up in things far more deadly then he ever could imagine.
and thus driven to obsessive madness.

 

[DEWLine]

Worked for me. It was as useful to that specific end as "Hi, Christoper. I'm Nero."

As for the accent issue? I'm with the 9th Doctor.

 

[Nardpuncher]

I'm going with the OP and I did hear a little bit of a southern twang in that sentence.


The worst movie for repeating a word would be Attack of the Clones (which I still like a lot) when Anakin says "I wish I could just wish my feelings away!"

 

[USS Triumphant]

I also thought the "emotionally compromised" idea being repeated by both Spocks was strange. Even though they were both discussing the regulation about command fitness, the exact duplication of wording seemed awkward.

They weren't just discussing the regulation, they were quoting and paraphrasing from it. Use of the same wording makes perfect sense.

As for Nero's "happen"s, well, have none of you ever been upset enough to lose the use of your internal thesaurus? And Nero doesn't strike me as a particularly well-educated guy in the first place - his thesaurus might not have a lot in it in the first place. So while it could have been a device to make sure the audience got it, it could have just been good in-character writing. Or BOTH, since it was Nero's emotional intention that Pike most emphatically got it.

 

[Green Shirt]

Sorry. Just having a little fun. You know, like Wang Chung.


*sigh*


(picks up ball and goes home to mom's basement)

 

[USS Triumphant]

Sorry. Just having a little fun. You know, like Wang Chung.

Wang Chung said to have fun tonight. I don't know where you're at, but it's a little after 11 AM here. Sorry, no fun allowed.

 

[Green Shirt]

Sorry. Just having a little fun. You know, like Wang Chung.

Wang Chung said to have fun tonight. I don't know where you're at, but it's a little after 11 AM here. Sorry, no fun allowed.

I work nights, so this IS my night, don't tell me when its night, I know its not night.

(internal thesaurus malfunctioning)

As far as where I am, that's my zipcode in the "location" area.


HERBERT!!!

 

[M'Sharak]

You rang?

 

[Ceridwen]

It's funny to me that people don't like the line. For me, this is the line that sold me on Nero. We've seen the crazy madman wants revenge plenty of times in Trek's past, but with this line, Bana convinced me that he was playing someone who was hurt, not just insane. It was something we'd never seen in a Trek film before, it humanized the villain in a really subtle way (that sadly, I don't think is in the screenplay, just the performance) and I thought it was great.