Shinzon's motives

[The Old Mixer]

Proof positive that you can make a genre film that has nothing to do with Earth and take the box office by storm? Star Wars.

And yet I recall discussion at the time that Alderaan was deliberately made a blue planet to remind us that it could have just as easily been Earth.

We still associate ourselves with the 'humans' in Star Wars.

We only really cared about the Ewok planet because our heroes were there.

I care about Romulus and Vulcan being destroyed because I'm involved in the mythos but my non-Star Trek husband couldn't care less about them.
I also didn't care about the people on Veridian 3.

When we hear about an overseas disaster it sometimes only makes the news here if our fellow countrymen were involved.
I hate to be mean but the massacre in Kenya recently only became of 'real interest' on the news because citizens from our country were killed.

My point was about the general fallacious reasoning of thinking that Earth had to be in danger for Joe Sixpack to care about the film.

Star Wars: Joe Sixpacks came out in droves to see a movie that took place "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away"...no mention of Earth, and nobody cared.

Nemesis: Earth was in danger, and Joe Sixpacks stayed away in droves.

I don't see where there's much room for dispute here.

 

[Commishsleer]

And yet I recall discussion at the time that Alderaan was deliberately made a blue planet to remind us that it could have just as easily been Earth.

We still associate ourselves with the 'humans' in Star Wars.

We only really cared about the Ewok planet because our heroes were there.

I care about Romulus and Vulcan being destroyed because I'm involved in the mythos but my non-Star Trek husband couldn't care less about them.
I also didn't care about the people on Veridian 3.

When we hear about an overseas disaster it sometimes only makes the news here if our fellow countrymen were involved.
I hate to be mean but the massacre in Kenya recently only became of 'real interest' on the news because citizens from our country were killed.

My point was about the general fallacious reasoning of thinking that Earth had to be in danger for Joe Sixpack to care about the film.

Star Wars: Joe Sixpacks came out in droves to see a movie that took place "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away"...no mention of Earth, and nobody cared.

Nemesis: Earth was in danger, and Joe Sixpacks stayed away in droves.

I don't see where there's much room for dispute here.

I think there were other reasons Joe Sixpack stayed away from Nemesis. Earth being in danger wasn't enough

In Firefly, Star Wars, Farscape there was little or no mention of Earth yet the leads were as American as Apple pie. They were our Earth correlation.

Even in Avatar where Earth was the bad guy I still didn't want to see Earth destroyed. In Avatar most of the movie was set up for us to be sympathetic for the natives and if they spend hours setting that up in a movie you don't have to have Earth in danger.

Actually I don't think that you need to have Earth in danger for a science fiction movie to be successful but you have to have something big like our way of life, our sovereignty, our freedom or or care enough about our heroes that we are invested in their freedom, their safety, their way of life.

If they had spent an hour of GEN making us sympathetic for the natives of Veridian 3 then I'd probably have been happy for Kirk to die. But you have to do it right the spent time in INS getting us to know the Baku and I still didn't like them LOL

 

[The Old Mixer]

So what it comes down to is that you have to give the audience something to invest in, something that they care about it. Shoehorning in "threat to Earth" doesn't necessarily cut it.

And before you can give the audience something to care about, first you have to get their butts in the seats. NEM failed miserably on that level.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

A plot where Picard had to defend Romulus, the UFP's long-time enemy, from a clone of himself created by the Romulans, would be a far more interesting plot rather than yet another threat to Earth--really if everyone is gunning for it why do people still live there?!?!?!

The Federation/Romulan backstory could be summed up in a voice over before the credits (a job for the wonderful speaking voice of Sir Patrick), which could be over a CGI snippet of the Romulan Wars (where they could've slipped in the NX-01 if they must).