Why is Star Trek: Nemesis hated so much?

[Smellmet]

I certainly think an argument can be made that Nemesis had greater similarities to TWOK than both Star Trek (2009) and STID. Jaime had some interesting points (some of which I didn't even pick up on). I think what I saw in all 3 films that was pulled from TWOK is the whole villain has a revenge grudge and wants to destroy Earth with a weapon of mass destruction. It was the major plot point that after I saw STID I thought, I hope in the next film we can at least have a villain with different motivations. Beyond had a little of that too, but Krall's motivations were a bit different, and the rest of the movie was pretty far removed from TWOK (plus, I was just so happy that Earth was not involved at all I probably would have forgiven almost any oversight--even the stupid Sabotage scene).

But yeah, while I don't think the film is above criticisms, it really just comes down to the simple I liked more than I disliked. And yeah, I think there were little bits that had they been developed better this could have been a blockbuster film. There were little nuggets that I wish they had developed further. Like his motivations for destroying Earth--he basically wanted to prove to himself and everyone else that while he appeared human, he was nothing like them--that was poorly developed. And I too thought Hardy made a good villain (I compared him to Luckinbill's Sybok--while I didn't care for Sybok being some never before seen brother of Spock, I couldn't knock Luckinbill's performance--ditto for Tom Hardy).

And I dare to say the final battle was probably the best of the movies. Star Trek (2009) had the Enterprise battling the Narada, but Abrams constantly shaking camera and excessive lens flares pretty much washed everything out (I swear I was getting motion sickness), STID was a little better but was brief and the Enterprise was greatly outgunned by the Vengeance until the torpedoes were used (though I was glad that like Nemesis, they decided to add a debris field between the ships--always amazed they forget that little detail). Beyond's space battles with the swarm were interesting, but not really comparable. But Nemesis had a sustained battle between two somewhat comparable ships (the Scimitar had their cloak but the Enterprise wasn't without it's own teeth, and the ramming scene is one of my favorites of the films).

I see it like I do the Bond films - they've pretty much all got some villain looking for world domination or whatever, but I don't see those being accused of copying what came before, it's just kind of expected from the franchise, Trek films get slated for it because of it's extensive TV history, where Earth-attacking villains were pretty thin on the ground by and large and a multitude of other themes were (rightly) explored. I expect the stakes to be raised considerably when I watch a Trek movie (otherwise what's the point), which is why I generally regard Insurrection and, especially The Final Frontier to be the worst films in the franchise.

Regardless of how you view the objective quality of Nemesis, you can't deny at least it felt like the stakes were high, the crew were at serious risk - there's a major character's death and on first viewing it really felt like they were fucked and had no way of getting out of the situation after the desperate ramming sequence. Bar the Riker fight, I think the third act of Nemesis rocks. It felt very much like the end of The Wrath of Khan to me, which was obviously deliberate. Unoriginal yes, but exciting and entertaining nonetheless.

 

[trekfan39]

Personally I don't hate Nemesis as much as some people seem to but I can see it's problems in fact the first time I watched it I turned to my wife after and said that sucked! which I don't think I had ever done before and I know I haven't felt that way about a Trek film since then.

I feel like the truth of it is that it just had a bad story and that fall on a lot of people including John Logan, Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart as they all had a had in crafting it. Problem two IMO is that Paramount forced a director that didn't know trek on them, even the TNG cast members said this was a problem but I will give Stuart Baird this he did make it feel more theatrical and not like an episode of the next generation like the other films felt.

There's really two things I find tragic about this movie, One that this is how the TNG cast went out and Two they had a golden opportunity to do a great big screen story about the Dominion war- Yes I know a lot of people feel this would be to dark but remember they said they wanted a darker film then insurrection for some reason. They also could have gone back to the reunification story line from TNG and ask Leonard Nimoy back but again they either didn't think of this or for some reason just didn't want to go there.

 

[Damian]

Personally I don't hate Nemesis as much as some people seem to but I can see it's problems in fact the first time I watched it I turned to my wife after and said that sucked! which I don't think I had ever done before and I know I haven't felt that way about a Trek film since then.

I feel like the truth of it is that it just had a bad story and that fall on a lot of people including John Logan, Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart as they all had a had in crafting it. Problem two IMO is that Paramount forced a director that didn't know trek on them, even the TNG cast members said this was a problem but I will give Stuart Baird this he did make it feel more theatrical and not like an episode of the next generation like the other films felt.

There's really two things I find tragic about this movie, One that this is how the TNG cast went out and Two they had a golden opportunity to do a great big screen story about the Dominion war- Yes I know a lot of people feel this would be to dark but remember they said they wanted a darker film then insurrection for some reason. They also could have gone back to the reunification story line from TNG and ask Leonard Nimoy back but again they either didn't think of this or for some reason just didn't want to go there.

I too thought Nemesis felt more like a movie, along with First Contact. Those were the 2 TNG movies that felt like they belonged in a theater. I could not envision either as a TV episode, unlike Generations and Insurrection.

I always thought Insurrection should have been a Dominion War story, esp. since it was made at the same time the war was going on at DS9. Other than a few token mentions, you would never know there was a war going on at the time. I mean, you'd think the flagship of Starfleet would have been involved. And I don't hate Insurrection. Of the 4 TNG it does rank 4th in my book, but it was ok. It didn't really have the scope of a movie, the storyline was a bit simplistic and the humor at times fell flat. But it had it's moments and I always thought Insurrection had beautiful cinematography.

But I thought they could have done a Dominion War story that wouldn't have interfered with DS9, and I'm sure they could have come up with a story that you wouldn't necessarily have to watch or know about DS9 to follow.

 

[thribs]

Has one of the best scores as well. I listen to it all the time. That and the MI2 score.

 

[Damian]

I loved all of Goldsmith's scores. I can't say any were lacking. The man was a master at composing, and not just for Star Trek. He had so many great scores. You could be watching the worse movie ever made, but if he scored the music you know at least it would sound like an Academy Award level movie.

 

[johnnybear]

I think in some of the novels, it was revealed that the Remans started out as the same species as Romulans, but were mutated/altered by some native microscopic life to be able to survive the conditions on Remus better, or something like that.

Kor

Sounds good although I would prefer a storyline where the Vulcan settlers landed on both planets but found Remus uninhabitable by their standards and found a race of primitive creatures that they quickly defeated and used them to mine Dylithium or put them in their armies as shock troops! That sounds more like the Romulan way to me to be honest!
JB

 

[Qonundrum]

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.

Dang. Kudos to Logan, then, as Stewart AS Shinzon would have been something of an improvement - Tom Hardy is a good actor, but he doesn't make for an interesting clone-under-incredible-conditions. No actor would, TBH. It needed Stewart in a dual role, but don't those come with a dual paycheck? Throwing out, of course, how hideously contrived the clone idea was from the get-go...

And for something worth watching that has clones, try this show instead:

(Hint: The clone is on the left. Or on the right. Depends if it's on your left or their left or your right or their right... just never ask either of them if the other is standing nearby.)

 

[johnnybear]

I too thought Nemesis felt more like a movie, along with First Contact. Those were the 2 TNG movies that felt like they belonged in a theater. I could not envision either as a TV episode, unlike Generations and Insurrection.

I always thought Insurrection should have been a Dominion War story, esp. since it was made at the same time the war was going on at DS9. Other than a few token mentions, you would never know there was a war going on at the time. I mean, you'd think the flagship of Starfleet would have been involved. And I don't hate Insurrection. Of the 4 TNG it does rank 4th in my book, but it was ok. It didn't really have the scope of a movie, the storyline was a bit simplistic and the humor at times fell flat. But it had it's moments and I always thought Insurrection had beautiful cinematography.

But I thought they could have done a Dominion War story that wouldn't have interfered with DS9, and I'm sure they could have come up with a story that you wouldn't necessarily have to watch or know about DS9 to follow.

The film was released after DS9 had finished surely? Riker's speech about the Remans being in the Dominion conflict was a thing of the recent past type of comment I thought!
JB

 

[Grendelsbayne]

I hated Nemesis on first sight, without any involvement in fan discussion at all (well, my family discussed it a bit). Probably the biggest reason at the time was that I was very much looking forward to a movie about the Romulans. Not only did I not get that, but instead I got a movie about a boring human villain leading an army of dracula rejects with completely rote characterization who had all the subtlety of a herd of elephants and yet they somehow managed to assassinate the ENTIRE leadership of the most paranoid, security conscious empire in the Trek franchise. It was nonsensical and idiotic and as a fan of the Romulans in general, it pissed me off. But it also wasn't the only thing that was wrong with the movie - Shinzon was a crap character to begin with and I never once bought his connection to Picard, B4 was a travesty at every point, there was the dumb mind-rape, and, generally, there were absolutely no interesting character moments that stood out for me at all. It was just generally a bad movie, even entirely separate from having pissed me off.

I do get the concept of good potentially outweighing the bad (TUC is my second favorite movie), but for me it doesn't even remotely apply to Nemesis because it's almost exclusively bad mixed with who cares. The only thing I remember actually liking are some of the new ship designs and that romulan commander who had 3 seconds of screen time. I always find it funny when people talk about how they like Nemesis because its good looking or it has the best ship battle in the franchise because - while I don't even disagree - I can't for the life of me understand how that kind of window dressing can possibly make up for the utter bs that is the rest of this movie. I don't even watch Star Trek for ship battles, anyway, since even the best battle in Trek history couldn't hold a candle to the battle scenes of other franchises that actually focus on that sort of thing. And with the ongoing advance of technology, a movie looking better than what came before it should be a given, not an accomplishment.

Am I the only one who realized that B-4 was there to allow Data to be resurrected if they decided to make another movie? You always need a way to bring a dead character back. In the next movie they could have B-4 become severely damaged and his memory wiped for some reason. Then Geordi suddenly remembers that he has a backup of Data's memory. Data is then resurrected in the final movie "Star Trek: The Search for Data, in the Computer Trash Bin". Fortunately, the idea was trashed before fruition.

This is exactly why I hated the entire concept of B4. If you're going to kill Data, then commit to it and make it huge. Don't telegraph the fact that you're still keeping your options open by introducing an obvious replacement. And the fact that it never followed through actually makes it even worse, since it comes across as B4 being a literal replacement for Data - it's ok we lost our friend, because we have this other android to take his place, and all those memories and personality and sh!t that's dead and gone, they didn't matter.

 

[Cynthia McNeill]

My usual running joke is that I'm one of the 10 people that actually liked Nemesis. It's not the best Star Trek film, but I never thought it was the worse. Things I liked about it included a movie that finally featured the Romulans in a prominent role, there seemed to me to be more scenes for the rest of the crew (Troi and Geordi in particular had more to do). It had a pretty intense battle scene and I thought the Scimitar had a great design--Picard's description that "she's a predator" was spot on. While I wasn't a big fan of Schinzon being a clone of Picard, Tom Hardy was good in the role--and I can get into the theme and metaphors it presented for Picard, esp. of Schinzon claiming to be a mirror for Picard.

There were a few inconsistencies that bugged me of course. Worf suddenly being in Starfleet again after leaving at the end of DS9, Picard's Academy photo showing him to be bald when we knew he had hair (though I suppose it's possible a young, rebellious Picard shaved his head). The Remans were a bit over the top, but I guess what's a Star Trek film without a creepy looking villain. And B-4 was basically unnecessary.

But of all the films this one always seems to receive the most vitriol, to the point it's almost insinuated anyone who liked it must have a screw lose. TFF is generally considered one of the poorest of the films, but even that doesn't receive the amount of hate I've seen on Nemesis. When I came out of the theater after watching it my first thought was that it was a decent Star Trek film, not the best, but I actually considered it the 2nd best TNG film after First Contact. It was released at the worse possible time, competing with a Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and a James Bond film. Why Paramount chose then to release it is anyone's guess. Even First Contact would have had trouble against that kind of competition.

I've watched it a number of times since it came out and I don't find my opinion changing on it--in fact after reading some of the novels that take place around it (the A Time To...books and Vulcan's Soul in particular) I've liked it even a bit more.

 

[Cynthia McNeill]

i loved nemesis, it's #2 on my list of favorite star trek movies, how can people not like it???

 

[Cynthia McNeill]

When I think of Romulans and a nemesis to Picard, I think of Tomalak from TNG. Tomalak and Picard had some great moments. Star Trek: Nemesis featuring Picard and Tomalak would have made a lot more sense considering their history than making Picard's nemesis some hitherto unknown clone.

 

[Cynthia McNeill]

I can see that, i would have liked to see Tomalak in Nemesis

 

[Smellmet]

i loved nemesis, it's #2 on my list of favorite star trek movies, how can people not like it???

It's my favourite TNG movie.

 

[Butters]

It was just, not that good, really, it had its moments. The wedding was nice, and it was good to see many old faces there, but there were so many wuh moments.

Picard clone rises from the dilithium mines to overthrow the Romulan government. Wuh?

Thalaron radiation? What’s that? Tertiary EM? Won’t the shields just handle that, being electromagnetic and all that? But it it’s range is limitless? It’s all just too wuh.

And they find this positronic android, find of the century if admiral jarrock is to be believed, and they burried it on a dusty rock in the hope that the Enterprise would spot the positronic signature while at warp many light years away, so that they could use B-Plot, sorry, B4, to infiltrate the Enterprise and glean strategic information that they don’t actually need because of their perfect cloak and infinitely self propagating mega weapon. What if another ship found it and couldn’t assemble it?
Shinzon could just as easily collected Picard from the wedding, murdered Earth and been back in the Romulan senate before the biodust settled.

I don’t hate the movie, but I only watch it for the characters, the story is irredeemable.

 

[Philip Guyott]

I am sure everyone would have loved the film had they not killed Data .

I also think that if this had not been the final TNG movie (so far ) we could all live with it. But it was not an appropriate way to say goodbye to characters we had been following for years.

I did like the music, the action, and the overall story. Not the best written Star Trek movie, but certainly not the worst.

When I was younger I was embarrassed to to admit to others that I was a Trekkie. None of my friends liked Star Trek. Yet, we all went to see this film and they all enjoyed it.

 

[Dukhat]

I also think that if this had not been the final TNG movie (so far ) we could all live with it. But it was not an appropriate way to say goodbye to characters we had been following for years.

I don’t quite agree. TFF wasn’t the last movie with the original cast, and it’s still a heaping pile of crap.

But yes, I would have preferred to have a better goodbye to the TNG cast. Oh well. At least their final moments weren’t just some holodeck fantasy of Riker’s...

 

[arch101]

2 movies in a row where the bad guy has a giant ship that unfolds very slowly and suspensefully to unleash some strange kind of deadly radiation. Nothing causes "franchise fatigue" faster than repetitive storylines. It bespeaks a lack of creativity. It says "I'm out of ideas".