Why is Star Trek: Nemesis hated so much?

[F. King Daniel]

I really enjoyed Nemesis back when I got the VHS from Woolworths. I remember seeing a commercial for it on TV and thinking, they're still making Next Gen movies?

It, along with season 3 of Enterprise, re-kick-started my Trek fandom.


Then I went online and it turned out I was all wrong to have liked it

Same shit happened a few months ago when I saw The Last Jedi

 

[johnnybear]

Well The Last Jedi didn't make any sense with a villain killing another villain that we knew virtually nothing about and probably never will and the other villain turns good but doesn't and is really a worse villain than the first villain that he's just killed! Phew!
JB

 

[Vger23]

Star Trek Nemesis

Pros:
Looked / felt / played like a major motion picture, not an unremarkable 2-hour episode
Epic space battle
Soundtrack
Riker/Troi wedding
Good TNG-style central theme (nature vs. nurture...making yourself a better man)
Romulans!
Production/Set Design
Any scenes with Stewart and Hardy eye-to-eye
Scimitar design / Valdore design
Better than Generations and Insurrection

Cons:
Data's death was poorly executed...felt hollow (I don't care that he died...I just think that it rang emotionally hollow)
Befuddling motivation of Shinzon (yeah...I get it...he's damaged goods...but man this guy knows less about what he wants than my wife looking for a place to eat dinner)
Kolarus III / Argo Scene awful awful awful
B-4 (although some of his lines are actually funny)
More singing because Brent Spiner likes to sing
Fanwanky stats to Scimitar's arsenal (127 independent phaser banks, 43 1/2 disruptor cannons, eleventy billion plasma bolt distributors, 5 ray guns, 19 wave motion canons, a catapult that launches diseased meat, 15 shields, 99 deflectors, and 2 screens)
Mind Rape-y Stuff
Reman and Romulan costumes are both crap
Plot with derivative elements of TWOK and TUC

This, in my mind makes it very mediocre Trek...but not hateful Trek.

 

[Damian]

I don't hate Nemesis...so count me as #2 on your list of 10.

I don't hate it. I certainly think it is better than Insurrection and Generations. My complaints generally revolve around the stupid jeep scene and Data's death. Other than that, the Remans were interesting enough, and the ship chase inside the Scimitar was pretty cool.

It's good to know I'm not totally alone. I do agree with some of the criticisms of it. The jeep scene and pretty much the entire B-4 plot was garbage and could have been jettisoned.

I actually liked Tom Hardy in his role, but I would have preferred him playing a non Picard clone, or better a Romulan (though that would sacrifice one of the themes of the film). I personally loved the Scimitar, though I know that gets mixed reviews.

And unlike some others, Nemesis and First Contact were the only 2 TNG films that felt like a movie to me. Generations and Insurrection felt like they could have been episodes of the show. Nemesis, no, I can honestly say when I watch it, it feels like it belongs as a movie to me.

I was curious about a few things when I started this thread. One of course, why it has so much vitriol of course. But also are there others like me, that just have a different view of it, and has anyone's opinion softened over time? Has someone who hated it initially watched it more recently and thought, hmm, maybe it's not all THAT bad. But it seems reading the comments here that a lot of people still hate it about the same. Oh, well I guess. I have it and watch it when the mood strikes me, along with any of the other 12 films.

 

[Damian]

Star Trek Nemesis

Pros:
Looked / felt / played like a major motion picture, not an unremarkable 2-hour episode
Epic space battle
Soundtrack
Riker/Troi wedding
Good TNG-style central theme (nature vs. nurture...making yourself a better man)
Romulans!
Production/Set Design
Any scenes with Stewart and Hardy eye-to-eye
Scimitar design / Valdore design
Better than Generations and Insurrection

Cons:
Data's death was poorly executed...felt hollow (I don't care that he died...I just think that it rang emotionally hollow)
Befuddling motivation of Shinzon (yeah...I get it...he's damaged goods...but man this guy knows less about what he wants than my wife looking for a place to eat dinner)
Kolarus III / Argo Scene awful awful awful
B-4 (although some of his lines are actually funny)
More singing because Brent Spiner likes to sing
Fanwanky stats to Scimitar's arsenal (127 independent phaser banks, 43 1/2 disruptor cannons, eleventy billion plasma bolt distributors, 5 ray guns, 19 wave motion canons, a catapult that launches diseased meat, 15 shields, 99 deflectors, and 2 screens)
Mind Rape-y Stuff
Reman and Romulan costumes are both crap
Plot with derivative elements of TWOK and TUC

This, in my mind makes it very mediocre Trek...but not hateful Trek.

Yeah, I tend to agree with your pros and cons. For me it's about middle of the road as far as the movies. I liked all 13 films, with TMP being at the top and TFF being at the bottom. It's my 2nd favorite of TNG films, but adding them all together it probably falls maybe in 8th to 10th place somewhere. The singing scene, ugh--I sympathize with Worf's reaction (though for different reasons). I didn't mind the Remans but the costumes were sub-par (and sadly reused again for the Xindi--though they didn't look quite as bad there). And yes, this was the 1st of 3 straight films to dip from TWOK well. Data's death wasn't quite as bad as Kirks in Generations. But it felt like it was missing something. He gave a sort of wink and nod to Geordi, his best friend. I guess if there had been a bit more there.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

I did however like Donatra and her honourable Romulans assisting the Enterprise during the final battle and the sense that there may be a thawing of relations between the Romulans and Federation at the end of the film - that actually felt very Star Trek to me.

Agreed. Donatra was a great character, and Dina Meyer did a very nice job playing her. If the movie had dealt with a Romulan civil war (perhaps fallout from the Romulans’ involvement in the Dominion War and/or Spock’s political movement), it might have been much more interesting to and well-received by fans. Maybe Donatra could have been a sympathizer in the Romulan military who decided to help Picard fight off hidebound traditionalists who hated the Federation.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Attempting to take a weapon to Earth would've been suicide. Every ship from the fleet would blast it out of the star before the Reman ship was 1 billion kilometers from Pluto. As soon as Clone Picard threaten the plan, Picard should've said, "Oh yeah? Go ahead."

 

[Damian]

Attempting to take a weapon to Earth would've been suicide. Every ship from the fleet would blast it out of the star before the Reman ship was 1 billion kilometers from Pluto. As soon as Clone Picard threaten the plan, Picard should've said, "Oh yeah? Go ahead."

He did have a pretty impressive cloaking device. It think the idea was when Earth finally saw the Scimitar it would have already been too late. Even if they knew he was coming they wouldn't know from where and he apparently could fire weapons cloaked (a la TUC) and I assume the same would have went for the thalaron device.

But I don't think it was that important. It was more or less a Maguffin. He was never going to get to Earth because that wasn't part of the story, so I figured they never really gave that element much thought.

 

[thribs]

I think people didn’t like the story. The battle sequence more than made up for it though.
Sucks that all the Trek stuff that came later have rubbish looking battles.

 

[Damian]

I think people didn’t like the story. The battle sequence more than made up for it though.
Sucks that all the Trek stuff that came later have rubbish looking battles.

Yeah, I know I've heard complaints that prior battles weren't long enough or intense enough. We had a great battle at the end of TUC but it seemed to end just as it got good. In Nemesis it was a sustained and intense battle (ironic in a way because then I heard some complain the battle was too long and intense for Star Trek--I guess there's no pleasing some people ).

 

[thribs]

People also didn’t like the late inclusion of Remus and the Remans but in the Balance if Terror, Kirk does mention Remus so there was a precedent for it.
B4 was another complaint as the addition of another Soong android took away from the uniqueness of Lore and Data but the novels such as Cold Equations and Immortal Coil do try and explain it better.

 

[Damian]

People also didn’t like the late inclusion of Remus and the Remans but in the Balance if Terror, Kirk does mention Remus so there was a precedent for it.
B4 was another complaint as the addition of another Soong android took away from the uniqueness of Lore and Data but the novels such as Cold Equations and Immortal Coil do try and explain it better.

The B4 storyline did seem like a waste to me. I mean, it could fit in. I remember Data's 'mother' noting they had built other androids though she didn't go into much detail, and Nemesis seemed to ignore Lore (except for a brief line by Picard about Soong's penchant for unusual names or something to that effect).

Remus was sort of unexpected, but yes, in canon it was mentioned. I was just expecting it to be a class-M planet, a little more rugged maybe. That's probably because of the novels I read that depicted Remus as a planet like Romulus, just a bit more wild.

 

[Marsden]

I agree that Nemesis was the 2nd best of the TNG movies.

I didn't like anything about the Remans. The planet was mentioned long ago, yes, but no species was. And why hire Ron Perlman and not have him do anything?

And why does the Enterprise E have a bottomless pit?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Attempting to take a weapon to Earth would've been suicide. Every ship from the fleet would blast it out of the star before the Reman ship was 1 billion kilometers from Pluto. As soon as Clone Picard threaten the plan, Picard should've said, "Oh yeah? Go ahead."

Tell me one time Earth was well defended in Star Trek

But besides, Geordi said the thalaron field could expand "almost without limit". They never had to go to Earth, they were going to turn and fire from their current location as soon as they killed everyone on the Enterprise.

 

[Captain Tokyo187]

I liked it.

 

[ItIsGreen]

IAnd why does the Enterprise E have a bottomless pit?

For throwing Remans down, obvs.

 

[Damian]

I agree that Nemesis was the 2nd best of the TNG movies.

I didn't like anything about the Remans. The planet was mentioned long ago, yes, but no species was. And why hire Ron Perlman and not have him do anything?

And why does the Enterprise E have a bottomless pit?

Yeah, one of those inconsistencies. I swear every Star Trek movie has that one face palm moment. TFF had an Enterprise-A with what, over 100 decks (even though p.d. Herman Zimmerman tried to correct them on that, he was ignored).

Maybe it was like that ship on Enterprise that was bigger on the inside then the outside. That's probably why the Suliban and Tholians really wanted it, it was a 'spacesaver' ship.

 

[XCV330]

Tell me one time Earth was well defended in Star Trek.

2nd Xindi attack

 

[PhotoBoy]

Then he rewrote it to change Shinzon into a younger man (due to Stewart not wanting to do both roles)

I’d always wondered why they did it like that that, Stewart not playing both roles was my biggest disappointment with that film. It sounds like Stewart managed to mess this film up with his notes just like he did with Insurrection.

After reading Diane Duane’s Dark Mirror novel I was really excited about getting an “evil Picard” film. I think Tom Hardy is an excellent actor but I just didn’t buy him as a young Picard and seeing that photo of Hardy in an academy uniform with no hair when we’d seen Picard with hair in Violations didn’t help at all. I’m a lot less picky about stuff like that now I’m older but back then “teh cannon violashunz” were often quite distracting to me!

 

[Romulan_spy]

That is pretty much what happened. Logan handed in a first draft in which would have had Patrick Stewart playing both Picard and Shinzon, and the final battle between the Enterprise and Scimitar taking place in orbit of Earth. Then he rewrote it to change Shinzon into a younger man (due to Stewart not wanting to do both roles) and moved the final battle to the Bassen Rift (to make the TWOK parallel more obvious). And that, with a few minor changes that the technical advisers mandated (i.e. not putting the Scimitar's warp core on the bridge), is essentially what got filmed.

As for Baird, he apparently just viewed it as a paycheck until his next directing gig came along. Which, of course, it never did.

I do think that Logan had some good ideas in his script. The debate of what makes us who we are is a good one. Having a clone that is like you in many ways but different in others, is a good way to have this debate. And the attack on the senate scene in the opening of the movie was a great WTF moment. But I would agree that it felt like a first draft. It had a lot of problems from continuity errors to plot holes. And, the whole concept of introducing a human clone to Picard out of the blue and having this clone somehow take over the Romulan Empire is problematic. I would have replaced both Shinzon and B-4 with Lore. Having Lore lead a band of disenfranchised Remans would make sense because it would be reminiscent of what Lore tried to do with the Borg survivors in the ep Descent. And yes, Baird sucked as a director. He had no clue how to direct a Star Trek movie. A lot of the TNG actors even admitted in interviews that Baird did not even know their character names. He clearly did not know anything about TNG. He directly the movie like a generic scifi action movie and it shows. He cut out all the good character moments. The movie lacked the soul of a Trek movie and seems to just skip from one action scene to the next. With a tighter script and a better director, Nemesis could have been a good Trek movie.