Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemesis?

[Vasquez Rocks]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

Opening weekend for Maid in Manhattan and Nemesis was very close.

From IMDB:
$18,711,407 (USA) (15 December 2002) (2838 Screens)

$18,513,305 (USA) (15 December 2002) (2711 Screens)

I'm more surprised that a Jlo movie got on more screens than a Star Trek film opening week. That must have been around the time of the whole Bennifer fiasco.

 

[cardinal biggles]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

Getting back to the subject of John Logan himself (rather than regurgitating decade-old arguments about the plot and characters), I don't think the success of Skyfall means Logan has proven himself. As jeyl mentioned a couple pages ago, Skyfall was just as full of plot holes and characters acting stupidly as Nemesis.

The only thing Logan has proven in the decade since Nemesis is his uncanny ability to bounce from one high-profile project to the next, glomming onto that film's success even though that success was in spite of, not due to, his screenwriting prowess.

 

[Zeppster]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

There's a lot of elements in Nemesis that could have worked. The conflict between Picard and a supposed younger clone of him was interesting if they actually went full out and made it about those 2. Instead Shinzon ends up being a typical villain that wants to destroy take over/destroy everything with no real good reasoning behind it. They really could have made it about Picard vs his younger self and had that as the only conflict of the film and made it much more interesting. Instead as a villain he Shinzon doesn't seem all that interesting after he starts mind raping Deana. They really could have done much more with the Picard vs Younger Picard route and made the motivations for Shinzon much less cloudy and had a solid villain. Instead you could have put any Romulan as that character and changed none of the movie.

They really could have also done something interesting with Data teaching his younger self about the roots of being what he is instead of having that character as a spy for Shinzon. So that plot point went no where in reality. This could have easily gone with the Picard vs Picards younger self and made it an interesting film overall.

I think the death of Data was handled mostly right. Doing it on his own decision without an emotion chip or any software deciding it for him was brilliant. In fact the emotion chip not being involved in the film at all is a good thing in this film and it kinda hurt the first 3 TNG films IMO. But it would have been better if they could have had a closing death scene like they had in the TWOK. Even though it would be copying too much from that movie. Having a closing scene with arguably the most popular character from the TNG era is needed and the biggest part missing from the movie. The deleted scenes of going through his quarters is decent but it still doesn't work overall. You need that final goodbye to the character for the audience.

Nemesis had good plot elements that really could have made a great film. But they didn't quite follow through on those elements. That's really what it comes down to. Think about the ideas that I just came up with and how it could have really made a great movie. TWOK as an example used pretty much everything to make a great overall plot with even subtle parts that worked with the overall plot.

 

[plynch]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

I've watched a few times and it is still not clear to me: What is Shinzon so mad at Picard and the Enterprise for?

 

[Bishop76]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

It failed because it sucked balls and not even Trekkies wanted to see it after the first weekend.

Quoted for truth. It's an abysmal movie and Skyfall's success (and in my opinion, quality) does NOTHING to make past failures acceptable. Just like his success with a previous movie like Gladiator didn't make Emesis's awfulness acceptable. It's a soulless piece of trash that makes little to no sense from start to finish. I could go into detail myself, or I could just toss up this link to Plinkett's review of Emesis. He pretty much hits on all the low points of it.

http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-trek/star-trek-nemesis/

 

[jayrath]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

Ever think that the failure of NEM made Skyfall better? Maybe he learned from his mistakes. People do that.

 

[T'Girl]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

I'm more surprised that a Jlo movie got on more screens than a Star Trek film opening week.

it was only released against "Maid in Manhattan" in its opening week and it still lost to it.

Star Trek: Nemesis and Maid in Manhattan cost about the same amount to produce. Nemesis received poor reviews and starred a bunch of people the general public never heard of. It made $67 million.

Maid in Manhattan was a excellently made romantic story. It received fantastic reviews and starred Jenifer Lopez at the height of her movie popularity, her movie made $155 million.

They might have made the same on their opening weekends, but once the word of mouth got out, Nemesis just couldn't compete.

 

[sonak]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

I'm more surprised that a Jlo movie got on more screens than a Star Trek film opening week.

it was only released against "Maid in Manhattan" in its opening week and it still lost to it.

Star Trek: Nemesis and Maid in Manhattan cost about the same amount to produce. Nemesis received poor reviews and starred a bunch of people the general public never heard of. It made $67 million.

Maid in Manhattan was a excellently made romantic story. It received fantastic reviews and starred Jenifer Lopez at the height of her movie popularity, her movie made $155 million.

They might have made the same on their opening weekends, but once the word of mouth got out, Nemesis just couldn't compete.

I'm not sure how this is a response to my post. I was only making the point that there was no blockbuster or genre competition against Nemesis when it opened, so you can't blame its box office performance on that. I have no idea about the merits of "maid in manhattan," as I've never seen it, but I don't think it was stealing the normal audience for a Star Trek movie.

 

[T'Girl]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

I'm not sure how this is a response to my post.

It was a response to you use of "only" when you posted "it was only released against "Maid in Manhattan." The Lopez movie stole away the general audience that every movie needs to succeed. If Nemesis opened in movie isolation (it happens) and was the only game in town , it would have done much better. If it had to compete only against "The Hot Chick" for audience share, it would have done better than it did against "Maid in Manhattan." Most people don't go to every movie that comes out, they pick and choose.

as I've never seen it

NetFlix it sometime, kind a chick-flick, but it's well made.

 

[sonak]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

I'm not sure how this is a response to my post.

It was a response to you use of "only" when you posted "it was only released against "Maid in Manhattan." The Lopez movie stole away the general audience that every movie needs to succeed. If Nemesis opened in movie isolation (it happens) and was the only game in town , it would have done much better. If it had to compete only against "The Hot Chick" for audience share, it would have done better than it did against "Maid in Manhattan." Most people don't go to every movie that comes out, they pick and choose.

as I've never seen it

NetFlix it sometime, kind a chick-flick, but it's well made.

I guess we disagree on that. I don't think it was the competition from "maid in manhattan" that caused Nemesis' week 1 box office performance. I think those are mostly different crowds, and they weren't "picking" one movie over the other. Even in raw numbers, the Nemesis first weekend box office was way down from the previous Next Gen films.

 

[Bishop76]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

^ That's key - it's a totally different demographic both films are chasing. The effect that Maid had on Emesis was probably non-existent. It failed entirely because it was a giant turd of a film.

 

[Phily B]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

TPTB started taking trek for granted long before Nemesis and were phoning it in, the studios were to blame giving some no name director the chair for the movie and giving the actors way too much control.

 

[Bishop76]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

Yeah, Spiner and Stewart should never have had any control and Stuart Baird is awful.

 

[anh165]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

When I was a young fool and watched this at the cinema, I enjoyed the space battle between the Enterprise and the Schimtar.

Later on I had it on DVD, and realised how cheesy the whole cast has become and how the movie was made purely to tick all the boxes to get trekkies to watch it in the most lazy and un-imaginative of ways.

 

[jhouston6]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

I'd say oversaturation of star trek did in nemesis.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

TPTB started taking trek for granted long before Nemesis and were phoning it in, the studios were to blame giving some no name director the chair for the movie and giving the actors way too much control.

Baird is hardly a "no name," quite the contrary in fact. He just sucks as a director. But that was the whole point. TPTB didn't actually care about his aptitude as a director, they just wanted to be able to say "Directed by Academy Award nominee Stuart Baird and written by Academy Award nominee John Logan" on the trailer.

 

[Jeyl]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

I'd say oversaturation of star trek did in nemesis.

First Contact was released when we had Deep Space Nine AND Voyager running at the same time, and it came out two years after Generations. Did audiences or fans complain that there was too much Star Trek? No. First Contact went on to be the most successful of all the TNG films both critically and financially. Nemesis on the other hand was released four years after Insurrection (At the time the longest gap between movies) when there was only one Star Trek show (ENTERPRISE) and was a failure to both audiences and fans.

In conclusion, not only did over saturation NOT kill Nemesis, there was no over saturation period. The film was just bad, and John Logan played a very important part in that regard.

 

[jayrath]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

^ Agreed.

 

[JarodRussell]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

I don't think Logan has ever proven himself. Nemesis was his and Spiner's script, but all the other films that were successful were only cowritten by him, or rewritten by others, or something.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Re: Now That John Logan Has Proven Himself, What Went Wrong With Nemes

^
Not to mention Skyfall is hardly proof. It may be a good film, but that credit is due the director. The script was mediocre at best.