Star Trek: Nemesis

I just rewatched Star Trek: Nemesis. Yes, I know that’s probably unwise, but I was bored, and wanted to see if it was as bad as I remembered.

It was!

The tenth Star Trek movie, Nemesis, is quite possibly the worst movie in the series. In fact, it’s worse than a lot of the episodes, and its lack of quality stings far more than a bad episode, as we only get a movie every couple of years, and coupled with a movie’s increased budget and freedom, a bad one is far more galling. There’s an increased annoyance at the opportunities squandered, and the knowledge that each movie may be the last you see for a while. On TV, at least you can tune in next week to see if it gets better. With a bad movie, it’s far longer to wait.

Longer than anyone thought, actually. Nemesis came out in December 2002. The next movie is scheduled to come out Summer 2009. A six and a half year gap is a pretty big sign that something really needed to be rethought.

In fact, we have not had ANY new Star Trek since May 2005, when Star Trek: Enterprise became the first Trek since the original to be cancelled, rather than coming to an end. Clearly, people just didn’t like what they were seeing.

But the bigger problems of the Star Trek franchise are not my concern (I’m rambling!). I’m here to talk about Nemesis, and what a train wreck it is. Instead of writing a review, per se, I’m just going to talk about what went through my mind while I was watching it.

1 - The first thing that springs to mind is how cheap the movie looks. It had a fairly sizable budget ($60m I think), but that doesn’t seem to make its way onto the screen. Right from the credit sequence, cost cutting seems evident. The sets are tiny, sparse, and badly lit. The effects are passable, but not much better than TV quality. Some of the exterior scenes really look fake (the Alaska scenes at the start are really bad).

2 - I have to point out that the dress uniforms from Insurrection are back. And looking more like waiter’s uniforms than ever before. When I was watching this, my friend asked why the waiters were sitting down at the wedding. I explained they were actually Starfleet officers. She was doubtful.

3 - A lot of the character stuff seems really…off. I mean, I didn’t know Picard was the type to enjoy careening around in his sweet new dune buggy at high speeds. Apparently it’s a secret passion.

4 - That bit with the dune buggy on the weirdly filtered planet? Clearly the producers had just seen Pitch Black. And had forgotten about the Prime Directive. I’m pretty sure that getting into car chases and firing phasers at the inhabitants of a planet counts as interference. But I’m not an expert.

5 - B4. So…if Dr Soong created an android prior to Data, how come it looks 15 years older than Data did when we first saw him? Did Soong just decide to skew lower with the next one? And does he have to be childlike and annoying? I known Brent Spiner wants to show off his range, but you couldn’t have just given him another musical number?

6 - Actually, the B4 thing makes me ask some questions about the plot. So, Shinzon sticks B4 on a planet, that is on the route between Earth and Betazed, knowing that the Enterprise will be near there, go to investigate, and be in the right spot to be the nearest ship to Romulus, thus ensuring Picard comes to Romulus, and that he’ll have a spy. So, does that mean Shinzon’s plans are entirely contingent on the Enterprise being on their way to Betazed? Do Troi and Riker publicize their wedding that much? Are they popular with the 24th century version of Hello! Magazine? If they’d put the wedding back, would Shinzon’s plans have been scuppered? How did he know that no other ships would be passing that planet at that time? Am I missing something?

7 - Shinzon. Now, Tom Hardy is a good actor, and he’s kind of cute. And he sort of looks like a young Patrick Stewart if you squint a bit. But he’s wildly out of his depth here. He doesn’t have the presence to pull of a villain in the style of Khan or Chang. He comes across more of an upset teenage rather than a world conquering villain. It doesn’t help that his motivations are all over the place. He wants to destroy Earth! No, he wants to get revenge on the Romulans. No, he wants to kidnap Picard to steal his blood. No, he wants to destroy Picard, because he’s jealous. No, he wants to lead Romulus in conquering the Galaxy. No, he wants to destroy Picard again. Now, wait, he doesn’t want Picard anymore. It’s all over the place.

8 - The Viceroy. Ron Perlman is a great actor, and able to act incredibly well in full prosthetics. But he’s completely wasted in the role of a generic flunky. In fact, if you didn’t know it was him, you may not pay attention to the Viceroy at all. He’s a completely flat character, seemingly only there to violate Troi and give Riker some action moments.

9 - Speaking of which, the incredibly distasteful rape plot. The Viceroy uses his psychic powers invade Troi’s mind at Shinzon’s request and sexually abuse her. It’s played as rape, with Troi even describing it as a ‘violation’. However, Picard completely blows it off when she tells him, even asking if she can ‘endure any more assaults’ in case he needs her. Does that seem right - cause it seems kind of horrible to me.
Then, at the end, as mentioned, Riker leads an assault team to attack a boarding party lead by the Viceroy, hoping to seek revenge. So…we seem to have rape used as a plot device, used to spur a main male character into his big action moment. Is this Star Trek, or Death Wish?
Also, the film hits us over the head with Shinzon = Picard. Does that mean Picard secretly wants to abuse Troi? Ugh - the whole subplot leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

10 - Not that any of the action moments are that good. The dune buggy chase is boring as hell, and over in two minutes. We get a lot of badly shot chases in dimly lit corridors. We get a ‘big’ space battle, but it’s shot in a darkly lit area of space, making it hard to see anything. All the action moments are cut way too tightly. We never get to see anything, it always cuts away too soon. Even the big ship crash at the end seems oddly truncated.
One moment that particularly stands out is the end of the movie. Shinzon has been impaled and tries to kill Picard before he dies. He fails, and dies. Picard stands there while the ship and the doomsday weapon are about to blow up, doing nothing, until Data gets there and saves him. I think the intent was to show him stunned by what has happened, shocked by the fact he has just killed another part of himself. However, the way it’s shot makes it look like he’s just hanging around, waiting for Data to come save his ass.

11 - In fact, the entire pace of the movie is off. It alternately seems sluggish, and rushed. There was a lot of footage cut out (about 50 minutes) to bring it down to just under two hours, but that leaves a lot of holes where it looks like scenes SHOULD go, but don’t. That said, what we’re left with moves so slowly, it doesn’t exactly make one yearn for a longer version. It’s almost an hour before we get to Romulus, and even after we do, it’s a lot of talking and plotting in dimly lit rooms, padded out with endless scenes that go nowhere. After that, all we get is a some rushed space battles and a hurried ending.

12 - Large bits of the plot are lifted from other Trek movies. We get a ship that can fire while cloaked. We get a reprise of the ‘remember’ scene from Wrath of Khan. We get Picard musing over growing old. We get Earth in peril. We get a fight in a nebula. We get a second Genesis countdown. It all feels very-warmed over.

13 - Jerry Goldsmith’s music is typically excellent. It was one of the last projects he worked on, and while not up to the standard of his earlier works, it’s good. However, he seems to be scoring a different movie. The score is tender, wistful, and grand when nothing of that type is happening on the screen. The final battle music is apocalyptic, giving the air that something truly earth-shattering is happening, when we get the aforementioned boring battle. It seems to be scoring the film he wanted to see, not what’s on the screen, and it makes a lot of the film seem unintentionally comic. Works great on CD though.

14 - Data’s sacrifice. Again, it’s a rehash of Wrath of Khan. It doesn’t seem necessary - how come Picard didn’t take one of those emergency transporter things with him? If he hadn’t been standing around uselessly, he could have done it himself. And how come the doomsday weapon blowing up doesn’t kill anyone, when it firing is supposed to kill EVERYONE? Also, that explosion seems fairly huge, but it doesn’t affect the Enterprise at all, which is right next to it, and has no shields left (and a big hole in the bridge).

15 - The ending. I mentioned the cut footage before, and nowhere is this felt more than the ending. It is supposed to feature the TNG crew mostly going their separate ways - Riker and Troi going to the Titan, Data dead, Crusher going to Starfleet Medical, and a new crew joining the others on the Enterprise, showing that the human adventure continues, etc. However, due to the snips, we see barely any of that. We do get Riker leaving, and we do see that Data’s memories were probably uploaded to B4, and then…it stops. We don’t get to see any of the other crew members. We’re not even sure what’s happening to them, or the Enterprise. We know it’s being repaired, but who’s still on it? Are they going on another mission? Will it still have the same crew? Are they going to do anything about Data’s memories? Or, like us, are they secretly glad he’s dead, and are just going to ignore the whole memory thing? This is one section of the movie that would great benefit from expansion. As it is, it leaves everyone feeling very unsatisfied.

Of course, Nemesis as a whole leaves most people feeling unsatisfied. In terms of box office gross and tickets sold, Nemesis is the lowest grossing Trek movie of all time, even lower than The Final Frontier. I guess part of the reason is that after two lackluster seasons of Enterprise, and the final few seasons of Voyager, people just weren’t interested in any more Trek. Enterprise itself only lasted two more years after this. But the main blame has to fall on the movie itself. It’s just not very good, either as a Trek movie, or a standalone. I guess we’ll have to wait till next year to see if the new movie can reignite people’s interest.