Kirk's final log/monologue after the Enterprise and Excelsior part ways is easily the best writing in the first six movies. In general TUC has some of the best dialog and scenes in it
Yes, a better director that cared just a wee bit about Star Trek would have helped. I've often thought they should have had Frakes direct again. Oh, and a few more re-writes would have done wonders, even with the same director.
Not getting into the "Oh Em Gee it's Picards clone" part would also have been useful and not just a shameless coattail ride on SW.
I still think that Nemesis was made into a weaker movie during the editing phase. There are few quite good character moments in the deleted scenes, that would have improved the movie if left in( Extended cut would be nice but unlikely to happen).
Yeah, he's edited a number of popular movies. And John Logan has written some good films. I'm a big James Bond fan and both of them worked on at least 2 or 3 Bond films as editor and writer respectively. And another little bit of useless information. I'm a big horror movie fan and Stuart Baird was the editor for "The Omen", a film that Jerry Goldsmith also scored.
One can be good, but for every movie and in every genre and style? (Never mind external factors that impinge their progress...) "The Omen" rocked! IMHO Logan's "Skyfall" script is the best he's made (from what movies of his I've seen), but I always got the vibe he was for more gratuitous action-packed flings with less cohesiveness. Like how directors use lens flares for eye candy to distract from plot points*. Gladiator was nothing without its gore but people liked it. Time Machine was generic. Nemesis was an overstuffed mess. Skyfall hung together rather nicely, but Spectre was a letdown (for me, YMMV). But I've not seen everything in every genre he's written (he's done a lot of scripts!) * inevitable, but a fine craft vs fast food burger, or even a fast food photo vs what's plopped onto the plate unwrapped
Someone above said it feels "off." Yup. INS feels TNG writ large, for good and bad. NEM . . . it feels off. Never mind Shinzon hates Earth . . . why? And yeah, Data's sacrifice was a retread and unlike TWOK, the gravitas is sort of undone in the very same movie (like STID) . . . Data will live on, it is implied: carry on, all. I know, B4 isn't the same, but Data's not really gone. To me it's a weak flick.
Data most certainly is gone. People who don't understand this: 1. Completely ignored his scene with Picard in astrometrics and 2. Ignore that he's still dead in Picard (not a spoiler... he died in Nemesis 18 years ago) #1 was always obvious to me since the first viewing in the theatre and I'm shocked we needed #2 to hammer that in.
Nah, there's a being, looks just like him who might? have his engrams transferred into him, right? The Data is dead long live next Data. If Spock had been cloned in WOK and his katra transferred over or kept on hold . . . I'd think the same thing. It's a cheat. Gone but not . . . totally. (cough, Spiner can come back for a sequel cough). It's a cheat and diminishes the loss of Data. Cuz he's not totally gone. Lookalike. With his memories possibly.
The reality is that B4 failed to assimilate Data's memories and programming and only has mere small fragments. Data is very much dead in Picard, there is no "next Data" (as of right now) and the weight of what happened in Nemesis still very much haunts Picard.
I don't think he was the editor on Nemesis, and Berman likely had say on what the final cut of the movie looked like. Because he was brought up by Romulans, who hate Earth. Sometimes it is just that simple.
and Picard is better? Ha! The score is one of the best easily. Plus I like the battle scene at the end. Still looks damn impressive 18 years on.