Why Is Nemesis Unpopular?

[Mr Light]

I've been doing a bit of a Trek marathon lately and I just finished watching Nemesis. As like I remembered, this is a solid movie and I don't understand why it's so reviled!

It's got a great story with amazing action scenes in it. The opening dirt jeep chase is a nice bit of rare on-location Trek action that looks great. The space battle between the Ent-E and the Scimitar is absolutely amazing. I had forgotten two Romulan Warbirds joined the fight at one point. And when the Ent-E rams the ship like that? Or how about Picard flying a shuttle INSIDE the enemy ship? It's great stuff!

Shinzon is a good idea for a villain. An evil clone of Picard from the Romulans. And he's played by Tom Hardy! It's nice to finally use the Romulans as the main villain in a movie, though it is unfortunate that they decided to invent the Remen race to do it.

My only complaints about this film:
--Worf has nothing to do, like every other movie. This always confuses me as I thought Worf was a very popular character. Why are the movies the Picard and Data Show?
--The middle section of the movie is pretty slow. But the last hour is non-stop action so I guess that makes up for it.
--I could have done without the B4 blatant character backup of Data introduced in the same movie as his death.

But this was a good movie with a good sense of closure to the franchise. You have Riker and Troi marrying and leaving the ship and Data dying... it felt like an ending.

Obviously it bombed hard at the box office because it came out in the same period as Harry Potter 2, Die Another Day, and Two Towers.

 

[BillJ]

While I think it's the best of the TNG outings, there's still way too many problems to consider it a good movie. Including that the cast looked lethargic.

 

[Amaris]

As a straight up space type action movie, Nemesis is pretty good. I've warmed up to it over the years, but as a TNG Star Trek movie, it just feels off. With the way the characters behave in the film, they just seemed like different people entirely.

Just my two bits.

 

[Pondwater]

It was craptacularly put together. And then Data is blown to bits.

 

[Lance]

Shinzon is a good idea for a villain. An evil clone of Picard from the Romulans.

Um... no.

Early in the movie there's a sense of mystery about Shinzon. The crew have a chin-wag in the obs lounge about the apparent political upheaval on Romulus and who this new guy in charge is. "He's a Reman" and "He fought in the Dominion war" is all they know about him, but there's this tangible sense of, gosh darn, we don't know what could happen. Is Shinzon going to be open to peace? Is it a trap? What's up with this guy? So much potential there.

And then it turns out he's a very cartoony villain. A clone of Picard who wants REVENGE. His credibility was flushed down the pan.

I was actually working in a movie theater at the time NEMESIS was out. And I can tell you that people in the theater were actually laughing at the reveal of Shinzon. There were friends of mine who were expecting to hear the Dr. Evil music from Austen Powers: "Duh-Duh-Dun! Duh-duh-Dun!" That's never a good sign that your villain is hitting the dramatic chord that you want them to hit.

 

[Harvey]

The movie criminally wastes Ron Perlman and Tom Hardy as the heavies. The whole cast looks tired and disengaged (then again, they read the script, had to deal with Stuart Baird, and knew this was probably the end of the road). The budget was far beneath the ambitions of the script, preventing the movie from realizing action of any scale, which makes it feel cheap, compromised, and unexciting (and the fact that some of the budget went to a silly car chase doesn't help matters).

Most of all, though, the script is terrible, in plotting, characterization, and (especially) in terms of dialogue. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock also looked cheap and had clumsy plotting, but it nailed the characters and the dialogue. I don't have to tell you which one I'm more likely to revisit; if it didn't come in the four movie box set I bought on Blu-Ray for $1, I wouldn't have Star Trek: Nemesis in my collection.

It's not a total failure (I like the Goldsmith score, and Dina Meyer is good in her role), but being bad rather than terrible is hardly an achievement worth putting on your resume.

 

[Mr Light]

I think the movie looks really good, and the FX holds up to modern day standards. The space battle was gorgeous and very realistic looking. Especially all the shots of the hero fire hitting and briefly exposing the enemy before it resettles into cloak.

And the money shot of the Enterprise-E ramming into the Scimitar? Looks amazing. I'm assuming the Ent-E is made of firmer material than the Scimitar was since it mostly holds up its structure while the Scimitar completely crumbles in. Maybe it was a rush job with shoddy materials Would make sense given how ridiculously huge it is.

And what's wrong with the Shinzon idea? Picard is facing his age and mortality and loosing his family, so his enemy is a mirror of his younger self. Or is it just too on the nose? And it makes sense for the Romulans to make a secret clone of their enemy to replace him.

 

[Armored Saint]

Shinzon is a good idea for a villain. An evil clone of Picard from the Romulans. And he's played by Tom Hardy! It's nice to finally use the Romulans as the main villain in a movie, though it is unfortunate that they decided to invent the Remen race to do it.

Cloning was already an overused theme at this time and the result is ulgy: a bald cybergoth version of Hayden Christensen.

The Remans are the main villain, not the Romulans. They are this stupid character who provokes the curse by this dumb Coup d'État. Shinzon had all the reasons of the world to be insane and absolutely not on their side.

 

[GalaxyX]

a bald cybergoth version of Hayden Christensen.

YES! This was the worst part about Shinzon!

The movie had so many things wrong with it. It regurgitated a lot of the same worn out TNG tropes, like the not funny at all "comedic moments", and the cringe inducing conversations like "Romulan Ale should be illegal" "It IS illegal!". Yuck! All to try to milk comedy out of mocking the characters.

Also it promises us Romulans, and instead we get these vampire creatures right out of an Ed Wood movie.

Also it has a dune buggy scene that has absolutely nothing to do with the movie, and is there simply so Patrick Stewart can go dune bugging. What an asshole, ruins a movie just so he can show his geriatric ass driving a dune buggy on screen.

Then the whole movie is dark (literally and figuratively). I wanted to scream "Damn it! turn on the goddamn lights!". The whole movie was depressing, particularly watching all the characters looks so worn out, tired and looking like they could give 2 fucks.

Then they kill off Data. You do not. kill. Data. You just don't do it!

So yeah, the movie goes from bad to worse, and leaves you feeling like you got sucker punched right in the gut, and while you're wheezing for air on the floor, it kicks you 3 times in the balls and your teeth.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I enjoyed Nemesis a great deal. Shinzon was a believable damaged Picard clone, the Remans were cool (a big step up from the bowl cut brigade Romulans). Picard was feeling his age and the situation, the crew were feeling the gravitas of what was going on. What others here see as "out of character" I see as very appropriate. The action was fun. Even the dune buggy made sense IMO - were they expected to just walk miles between android parts? A vehicle for away missions is long overdue (although understandably absent in the TV series' due to budget constraints)

The bad was the wedding at the start, which was painful, much of the attempted humour sucked and Picard asking Troi to endure more of Shinzon's attacks was disgusting.

Picard running around the Scimitar with two phaser rifles, blasting away like an ancient John McClaine never fails to raise a smile. I'd pick that over watching him play the flute, play Dixon Hill, talk about archeology, have breakfast with Beverly, ponder the implications of the Prime Directive on a planet-of-the-week or walk around in his night robe any day.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

And what's wrong with the Shinzon idea? Picard is facing his age and mortality and loosing his family, so his enemy is a mirror of his younger self. Or is it just too on the nose? And it makes sense for the Romulans to make a secret clone of their enemy to replace him.

It's not just that it's "on the nose" but the whole "replaced by secret clone" idea .... it just doesn't work. How would they have transferred all of Picard's knowledge, mannerisms, attitudes, inflections, etc. into a younger Shinzon to pass him off as Picard? If that works ... then the Romulans have just discovered the Fountain of Youth.

The fact that the plan is canceled because of a change of Romulan administration - and not simply because it was a far-fetched plan - is amusing. But when Shinzon is cast out with the Remans, why does he turn all his ire against the Federation, Earth and Picard? It makes no sense. Picard, Earth and the Federation had nothing to do with his creation and subsequent hardships. Furthermore, while we get some inner conflict from Picard - where was the mirrored inner conflict with Shinzon? If Shinzon is, indeed, Picard, why is he so single-mindedly villainous? Is the film trying to say hero-Picard's personality is all nurture, no nature? Otherwise, Shinzon ought to have has some redeeming qualities - other than having his super-duper space fortress serve him tea.

And the less said about the shoulder pads, the better.

 

[USS Triumphant]

The movie had so many things wrong with it. It regurgitated a lot of the same worn out TNG tropes, like the not funny at all "comedic moments", and the cringe inducing conversations like "Romulan Ale should be illegal" "It IS illegal!". Yuck! All to try to milk comedy out of mocking the characters.

Also it promises us Romulans, and instead we get these vampire creatures right out of an Ed Wood movie.

[snip]

Then the whole movie is dark (literally and figuratively). I wanted to scream "Damn it! turn on the goddamn lights!". The whole movie was depressing, particularly watching all the characters looks so worn out, tired and looking like they could give 2 fucks.

Then they kill off Data. You do not. kill. Data. You just don't do it!

It hadn't occurred to me before, but I think that maybe with the darker sets, the bit about the Romulan ale, and so on, they might have been trying to call back to Star Trek VI, since they had a pretty good idea it would be the last outing for this crew (self-fulfilling prophecy, that, but, yeah). The HUGE thing they missed is that VI still ended with some hope - we all already knew there was someone to continue the Enterprise's legacy. We had no such promise with Nemesis, so it felt more like an actual END than a hand-off. Especially with killing Data. None of the crew got killed off in VI, thankfully.

Nemesis had some really good stuff, though, particularly in the space combat scenes. And I even think Shinzon was a decent villain, if he had been handled a little better. But what KILLS this movie for me is B4 coming out of nowhere (Data *could* have been trying to create an offspring again, would have made more sense than some additional random prototype and sensors being able to detect it several systems away) and even more so, the entire Reman species coming out of nowhere! Seems like something we'd have come across before in the history of Trek - novels, screen, etc - doncha think?!

 

[F. King Daniel]

^The Remans did briefly appear in Enterprise's fourth season, and that was 200 years before Nemesis

 

[RoJoHen]

It felt like a rough draft to a potentially good movie, but nobody bothered to edit it.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

B4 was completely pointless, and his presence cheapened whatever pathos could have been earned from Data's (pointless) sacrifice.

Shinzon's existence makes no sense at all. Once the Romulans decided not to go through with their (stupid) plan to replace Picard, they simply... shuttle him off to Remus? Huh?? It occurred to no one that the existence of a clone of the flagship's captain might cause some kind of diplomatic incident later? As if the Romulans are above summarily killing people! The second the plan was scrapped, Shinzon should have been put through an incinerator, or dematerialized and then scattered into space.

Shinzon could have been an interesting villain without any connection to Picard, but then they would have had to think through his motivations instead of giving him a cheap "revenge" shtick. There was potential in the situation: the Romulan government suddenly in shambles, Reman rebels running amok. Federation leaders, after what they'd been through with the Dominion, would likely want to turn the situation to their advantage. Picard would be driven to do what's right, regardless of politics. The question is, would freed Remans be a greater threat to the Federation than the Romulans themselves? Should the Federation stand by while a Reman uprising exacts vengeance against their Romulan masters? Can the Federation afford to have that kind of chaos in their backyard? There was the potential for a lot of moral ambiguity here with no easy answers, and instead they shied away and went for the cheap and simple. I had high hopes for a Romulan-centric movie, though I was always very lukewarm to the whole clone concept.

The space battles are pretty exciting. That's the only part I could say I really enjoyed, but then you can get a good space battle in lots of places, and it's no excuse for having a shitty story.

 

[USS Triumphant]

^The Remans did briefly appear in Enterprise's fourth season, and that was 200 years before Nemesis

Retconning them in after the fact doesn't count.

I think the thing that pisses me off the most about Nemesis is that it contradicts some of Diane Duane's completely excellent books on Vulcans and Romulans. It's the same thing that irritated me about the way Vulcans were portrayed on Enterprise. Feh.

 

[Mr Light]

It makes sense to me that they would keep Shinzon alive in case they ever needed him for something again.

 

[Kronos]

It's unpopular because it's bad, the action seems are more funny then intense, the story is awful and the villain would be fine on an episode of Scooby-Doo.

It's bad.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

It makes sense to me that they would keep Shinzon alive in case they ever needed him for something again.

Like what? There is no credible reason for keeping him alive once the notion of having him replace Picard was scrapped. If they just needed Picard's DNA, well, that's much easier to keep around than an actual human being.

 

[Lance]

Shinzon could have been an interesting villain without any connection to Picard, but then they would have had to think through his motivations instead of giving him a cheap "revenge" shtick. There was potential in the situation: the Romulan government suddenly in shambles, Reman rebels running amok. Federation leaders, after what they'd been through with the Dominion, would likely want to turn the situation to their advantage. Picard would be driven to do what's right, regardless of politics. The question is, would freed Remans be a greater threat to the Federation than the Romulans themselves? Should the Federation stand by while a Reman uprising exacts vengeance against their Romulan masters? Can the Federation afford to have that kind of chaos in their backyard? There was the potential for a lot of moral ambiguity here with no easy answers, and instead they shied away and went for the cheap and simple. I had high hopes for a Romulan-centric movie, though I was always very lukewarm to the whole clone concept.

This. It's what I was trying to say earlier. For about five minutes in NEMESIS, Shinzon is a genuinely interesting character, a mysterious new player on the galactic scene... sadly, that five minutes happens before his 'reveal'. It's all downhill from there.

Fundamentally, for Shinzon to reach his full potential, A) he needed to not be Picard's (or anybody else's) clone; and B) the movie needed to be a straight-laced political thriller, or at least more motivated in actually exploring character motivation beyond "Uh, he does it because he WANTS to".