Why Is Nemesis Unpopular?

[Richard Baker]

The very first time )IIRC) we ever saw a wheeled vehicle in Trek and it has to be a Dune Buggy? Not only that, but you are racing against generic aliens who just happen to have their own dune buggies to chase you with?
The film almost lost me there.
Having a boring bad guy with misplaced motivation on yet another super-bad-guy ship.
Not having the courage to remove a major character when you decide to and having a convenient identical backup handy, but blank enough so if Data does emerge he you will not feel a loss- Lore is still dismantled and in storage- use his body with a backed up CPU if you want Data to return in the next film.
I liked the big space battle at the end, but then again I love big space battles every time. Having the enemy completely cloaked took a lot out of it- I want to see the ships moving and firing against each other, not a bunch of misses and watching Worf pounding the console in frustration.

For the final film it could have been so much more, I still watch it but with fast forward...

 

[Shaka Zulu]

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.

Those books aren't official canon, though; the movies and TV shows are. And Ms. Duane was never consulted by the writers of the movies and TV shows on how Vulcans and Romulans should be.

RIP 24th Century Star Trek 1987-2002.

Read the novels, the adventures of TNG, DS9 and Voyager continue on to this day (along with TOS and ENT)

And they also continue on somewhat in the game Star Trek Online.

 

[Galileo7]

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.

Agree.

 

[BillJ]

The very first time )IIRC) we ever saw a wheeled vehicle in Trek and it has to be a Dune Buggy?

Kirk and Spock drove a car in "A Piece of the Action".

 

[Greg Cox]

Instead the entire Trek franchise was swept up and tossed in the garbage, the name stripped away by execs with dollar signs in their eyes and re-used for a metrosexual reboot targeted at college kids.

"metrosexual" . . . huh?

And what's wrong with college kids? (Asks this card-carrying member of AARP.) Are the movies supposed to cater only to us aging fans? That sounds like a recipe for obsolescence to me.

(Heck, I was a college kid when TMP and TWOK came out. Didn't stop me from seeing them multiple times with all my college friends.)

And let's be honest here; general audiences do not go to Trek movies because they're hoping for an update on the aftermath of the Dominion War or whatever. That's the stuff of chat room debates, not major motion pictures.

 

[BillJ]

(Heck, I was a college kid when TMP and TWOK came out! Didn't stop me from seeing them multiple times with all my college friends.)

I was in third-grade...

 

[Greg Cox]

(Heck, I was a college kid when TMP and TWOK came out! Didn't stop me from seeing them multiple times with all my college friends.)

I was in third-grade...

You're just trying to make me feel old, aren't you?

Hell, I was well out of college and had been immersed in fandom for years by the time TNG and all the latter-day Trek series came along.

 

[Amaris]

(Heck, I was a college kid when TMP and TWOK came out! Didn't stop me from seeing them multiple times with all my college friends.)

I was in third-grade...

You're just trying to make me feel old, aren't you?

Hell, I was well out of college and had been immersed in fandom for years by the time TNG and all the latter-day Trek series came along.

I was 2 when TWOK premiered. Just, you know, adding some perspective.

 

[Greg Cox]

I was in third-grade...

You're just trying to make me feel old, aren't you?

Hell, I was well out of college and had been immersed in fandom for years by the time TNG and all the latter-day Trek series came along.

I was 2 when TWOK premiered. Just, you know, adding some perspective.

Dare I admit that I've been watching Trek since it first aired on NBC?

But, to get back on-topic, college is when I first really discovered fandom in a big way, started attending conventions, meeting folks like Theodore Sturgeon and Robert Wise, and got serious about writing this stuff. So why wouldn't we want to target the next generation of bright, enthusiastic college kids?

 

[inflatabledalek]

I was only born five minutes ago, so can all you old folks tell me if this Nemesis film of which you speak is any good?

 

[Darkwing]

Nemesis had some good ideas: Riker & Troi marry and leave the Enterprise, cool. They fail to get off at their stop, so they're there for the whole show, not so cool. Gratuitous psychic rape scene, not cool. Was that just in there so we could have Troi hold hands with Worf to get that revenge shot later in the movie?
Detecting a positronic android from parsecs away? So having Data onboard means the Romulans can find the Enterprise from across the galaxy? Finding out later that that the Romulans planted B4 there was still not enough explanation, and clearly the main reason for B4's existence was so an aging actor would have an explanation for why his character started looking old just in case there was ever a new TNG movie. As soon as that tidbit came out, I expected Data to be damaged to the point Geordi would transplant his positronic brain into B4's body at the end of the movie.
So they go to the trap, I mean Kolarus III. Anything like Belarus? It's a desert, with stereotypical ragtag nomadic badguys, and instead of beaming down, we get a cool new shuttle and a kewl new dune-buggy. Hmmmm. The generic ragged thugs chase them, they get away, nobody seriously questions how the android got there, who sicced the aliens on them, or how they detected the android from so far away.
Some Romulan politics - not bad, not great. Then the E-E goes to Romulus - ok, it helps credibility that they are asked for. Shinzon is not a bad idea, but poorly executed. Giving him a critically short time to live was lame. Nor does it make sense that he had to kill Picard to save his life. Now, saying his aging was messed up, and he needed a sample of Picard's blood to replicate to fix his DNA so he stops aging abnormally fast, but has a few years to work with - that i could have bought. What we got was too blatantly, artificially constricting, and robbed the character of any sense of being a dark mirror to Picard.
Nosferatu Remans? Logan should've been shot for that infraction alone. Donatra went from being a toady to a heroine with little explanation. Shinzon's great plan wasn't. Why does he want a war? How did they build this monstrosity with nobody knowing? Why did they use this uber-evil weaponized radiation so heavily? All clumsy, pointless ratcheting up of the threat without making sense. And then Shinzon takes a shine to Troi.
SMDH. One more failure, and bigger than all the others. TNG has never had a good movie, IMO, but Generations came closest to not failing.

 

[Greg Cox]

I was only born five minutes ago, so can all you old folks tell me if this Nemesis film of which you speak is any good?

Don't worry about it. You'll be just the right age for the next reboot.

 

[Amaris]

Dare I admit that I've been watching Trek since it first aired on NBC?

Dare. Dare!

But, to get back on-topic, college is when I first really discovered fandom in a big way, started attending conventions, meeting folks like Theodore Sturgeon and Robert Wise, and got serious about writing this stuff. So why wouldn't we want to target the next generation of bright, enthusiastic college kids?

Exactly. We should want to fire up the minds of high school and college kids, make them want to become engineers, and scientists. Inspire them to want to write new and fantastic stories about worlds we can only imagine. It goes hand in hand, and it's how a society prospers. It's amazing what a good movie with a good story can do.

 

[2takesfrakes]

NEMESIS is very poorly written. It's shocking to me that John Logan continues to pat himself on the back for having written it. The bad outweighs the good in this flick, as its issues are many:

- The convenience of Shinzon - inexplicably - finding yet ANOTHER of Data's "brothers" for use against the good ship ENTERPRISE (aren't there any other androids/android makers in the galaxy?).

- Shinzon's existance explained only enough to service the story, such as it is. How Picard's DNA was obtained, on what mission and by which Romulan(s) is a complete mystery, although Shinzon knows plenty enough about every other aspect of his origins.

- The Romulan chick who was perfectly happy to provide Earth with a dusting of Thaylaron Radiation only turns her cheek when Shinzon (cruelly) rejects her. NOW, she's this open-minded, tolerant Romulan we are meant to be in support of, because she teams up with ENT-E to kick that same Shinzon's ass ... and because she's cute, I guess.

- Worf's being at his post makes no sense ... whatsoever ... considering what we know about his situation from DS9, and like everything else that's just "thrown in," is left a complete mystery.

The CGI nature of most of the effects is obsenely apparent and the sound effects suck - especially for the quantum torpedoes, which "splat" when they hit. And worst of all, the TNG cast - especially Marina and Gates - are allowed to look like they were rode hard and hung up wet. The ladies look like shit. It's inexcusable, considering the youthifying treatments Kirk and company were given in TMP.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Perhaps Nemesis' worst legacy is that its failure drove Tom Hardy into a downward spiral of addiction and depression that nearly killed him.

 

[Tosk]

Hardy was an abuser since age 16.

 

[BillJ]

Perhaps Nemesis' worst legacy is that its failure drove Tom Hardy into a downward spiral of addiction and depression that nearly killed him.

I like Tom Hardy, I think he's a good actor. But I never bought that his addiction/depression was caused by Nemesis.

 

[Timby]

Hardy was an abuser since age 16.

And he had been in trouble with the law since 13.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

NEMESIS is very poorly written. It's shocking to me that John Logan continues to pat himself on the back for having written it. The bad outweighs the good in this flick, as its issues are many:

- The convenience of Shinzon - inexplicably - finding yet ANOTHER of Data's "brothers" for use against the good ship ENTERPRISE (aren't there any other androids/android makers in the galaxy?).

- Shinzon's existance explained only enough to service the story, such as it is. How Picard's DNA was obtained, on what mission and by which Romulan(s) is a complete mystery, although Shinzon knows plenty enough about every other aspect of his origins.

- The Romulan chick who was perfectly happy to provide Earth with a dusting of Thaylaron Radiation only turns her cheek when Shinzon (cruelly) rejects her. NOW, she's this open-minded, tolerant Romulan we are meant to be in support of, because she teams up with ENT-E to kick that same Shinzon's ass ... and because she's cute, I guess.

- Worf's being at his post makes no sense ... whatsoever ... considering what we know about his situation from DS9, and like everything else that's just "thrown in," is left a complete mystery.

The CGI nature of most of the effects is obsenely apparent and the sound effects suck - especially for the quantum torpedoes, which "splat" when they hit. And worst of all, the TNG cast - especially Marina and Gates - are allowed to look like they were rode hard and hung up wet. The ladies look like shit. It's inexcusable, considering the youthifying treatments Kirk and company were given in TMP.

This is almost all just superficial nitpicking. Would a single line of how they got Picard's DNA really have improved the movie? Or changed anything at all? That has nothing to do with the story at all. They have it. They cloned him. Move on, the rest is detail that doesn't change a thing. Or having Worf say "Being a diplomat is not for me so I applied to come back to the Enterprise" suddenly makes Nemesis great?

It's also obvious that people are looking for something just to hate one when they even complain about the effects, which, even if you hate the movie, really are very well done.

Often times, sure, the complaints are justified, but sometimes (and I'm not directing this at you, 2takes) it seems some fans are just saying "This isn't exactly how I like my movies and they should have made it to please only me!" and it comes across as a bit juvenile and selfish. Especially once we talk about how the Romulans were involved and the movie people WANTED with them, which was never shown or intended, which is an incredibly unfair criticism.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Hardy was an abuser since age 16.

And it ultimately turned him into Bane?