Star Trek: Nemesis - We don't get the credits at the start this time, just the name of the movie (with BACKWARDS LETTERS) then straight into the action: a really nice shot of the Romulan Imperial Senate, in the Romulan city we saw often in TNG but updated to movie quality. The Romulans are debating "Shinzon's proposal" to team up with the Remans and destroy the Federation. ALAN DALE is the Romulan Praetor and he doesn't want none of Shinzon's shit. A female senator walks out but leaves a strange device behind (Nobody thinks this is strange.) It drops a cloud of green energy on the senators and turns them all to stone. Picard is making a weird speech somewhere (his voice sounds wrong? Like he soudns more like American Dad Patrick Stewart rather than Picard.) Turns out he's the best man at Riker and Troi's wedding. He makes jokes and everyone laughs even though they aren't funny. Riker is finally leaving the Enterprise for his own ship and he's taking Troi with him. Wesley is there in Starfleet dress uniform but don't expect to find out why because he gets no lines. Guinan is there too. She at least gets a line (she was married twenty three times.) Worf says "Romulan ale should be illegal" and Geordi says "it is." In the script Wrof then said "then it should be more illegal!" but they cut that. Just thought I'd note it! The rest of the wedding will be on Betazoid where everyone will be naked. Data fucking sings and it's terrible and Brent Spiner has too much creative control. On the way to Betazoid, Worf picks up a positronic signature from a planet on a nearby system (I'm pretty sure this is a continuity error because I remember loads of complaints about it on TrekBBS.) It will take them close to the Romulan Neutral Zone. Hmm, this isn't suspicious at all. Picard leads the away team because he's been "itching to try the Argo." He calls Riker "Mister Troi" and everyone laughs and Riker makes an insulted face. Take that, feminism! Picard, Data and Worf take a shuttle to the planet then drive out of it in the Argo which is...a dune buggy. That's literally all it is. It can't even fly or anything! And why couldn't they just fly the shuttle just above ground? An android hand reaches out of the ground and grabs Worf. They find more android parts scattered around, including a head which is identical to Data's. Some aliens in their own dune buggies start firing machine guns at them. The android head says "why do you have a shiny head?" to Picard and it's terrible. After and unexciting chase the Argo jumps off a cliff into the back of the shuttle. The aliens watch it go. We never see them again or find out what their deal is so just forget them okay.
Geordi reports that the android they found is a prototype created by Doctor Soong. Its name is B-4. Nobody mentions Lore or the possibility that this is Lore pretending to be an idiot as part of some plot. B-4 says "why does the tall man have a fuzzy face?" about Riker and oh God somebody kill it please. Picard gets a message from Admiral Janeway(!) Shinzon, the new Praetor of Romulus (he's from Remus though!) wants a meeting with someone from the Federation. The Enterprise is the nearest ship (hmmm) so it has to go to Romulus. Kate Mulgrew's acting in this scene is terrible but, to be fair, so is Patrick Stewart's so I'm not sure what's going on (though I suspect it's down to a terrible director!) Data gives exposition about the Romulans, they live on a permanently dark world and they're very powerful. Riker mentions they were used as ground troop in the Dominion War. Maybe we'll see them in DS9! Data downloads his memories into B-4 so that B-4 will have all his abilities and be able to be a more complete individual. Geordi suggests that maybe that's the wrong thing to do since B-4 is a different person. Data says B-4 should be able to explore his potential (by having Data's personality overwrite his own?) Data also says "I feel nothing" because this movie is pretending the emotion chip never happened which is pretty insulting. Data notices a (really obvious) extra memory port in B-4's neck. STILL NOT SUSPICIOUS AT ALL. A massive Warbird (The Scimitar) with loads of guns appears. Shinzon's Viceroy (Ron Perlman) hails them. Remans look a lot like vampires. Picard and others beam down and we meet Shinzon (Tom Hardy): a bald human. He instantly gets all creepy with Troi because he's never met a human woman before. He asks to touch her hair. It's weird. Shinzon finally turns the lights on and Picard is shocked. Shinzon tells Picard of a rare disease he had as a child. He says "cCme to dinner tomorrow,just the two of us...should I say, just the ONE of us!" because he's spent his life mastering bad clone puns. He gives a blood sample and Crusher confirms that Shinzon is a clone of PIcard. Shinzon's Romulan allies are angry that he is meeting with the Enterprise rather than attacking the Federation. Shinzon wants Commander Donatra (Dina Meyer) to prove her allegience. She asks what she must do and tries to storke his face but he's disgusted by Romulan women. He watns her to kill the other Romulan Commander at the first sign of treachery. As she leaves she notices that something is wrong with Shinzon.
SPOT IS STILL ALIVE (the best thing about the movie so far) and B-4 strokes her, but then he starts typing something evil on Data's computer. Shinzon explains that the Romulans planned to replace Picard with him but a new government called the plan off. But this would have been before Picard was Captain of the Enterprise so why would the Romulans have cared about him? He was sent to the Dilithium mines on Remus to die but the Viceroy protected him from the cruel Romulan guards and taught him how to survive. He built the Scimitar at a "secret base" (When he was in the mines? Or did he escape from the mines at some point? We're not told) to liberate his Reman brothers. He tells Picard he wants to learn what it means to be human from him. He and Picard both looked up at the stars and dreamed of new worlds so they suddenly feel closer. Doesn't everyone look up at the stars and dream of new worlds? Picard hopes than Shinzon can bring a new era of friendship between the Federation and Romulus. Picard returns to the ship and finds the computer has been hacked (nobody suspects the android they just picked up.) Geordi has detected some weird radiation from Shinzon's ship. The Viceroy tells Shinzon he's wasting time. Picard looks at an old photo of himself that looks like Tom Hardy, which is stupid because Tom Hardy looks nothing like a young Patrick Stewart. Also he's bald in the photo but we've seen a young Picard with hair in one of Crusher's flashbacks. Riker and Troi go to bed together but Riker turns into Shinzon as they have sex. He then turns into the Viceroy. Literalyl two minutes ago Shinzon was acting nice to Picard and now he's mind raping Troi and risking his entire plan. What an evil genius! He beams B-4 to his ship (B-4 was the trator!!!) and downloads stuff from him. Picard asks Troi to describe her mind rape. She should have just told him "it was exactly like the last episode where I got mind raped." Picard is then beamed away (yep, they didn't raise the shields even after Troi was mind raped.) Shinzon takes blood from Picard and tells him he knows the entire location of their fleet from B-4. He won't be a real person until Picard is dead and he won't bow to the Federation. Shinzon says if Picard had lived his life he'd be doing the exact same thing. Yeah, but he didn't. B-4 gives a Reman a Vulcan never pinch and rescuses Picard. He was Data all along! He gave Shinzon inaccurate locations of all the Starfleet ships. Also he has a prototype emergency transport unit. I wonder if that will be important later. Okay, if this was all a plan, why did they let Shinzon beam Picard over and steal his blood? Picard and Data have a weak Star Wars style corridor shout-out with the Remans and steal a Romulan fighter plane thng. Luckily it's really small and Reman corridors are really big, so they fly it dwon a corridor and through a window into space. It looks lame. They get back to the Enterprise and warp away.
Shinzon's Romulan allies are atill angry at him. Donatra tells and other Romulan that Shinzon isn't planning to defeat Earth, he's planning its annihilation. Wasn't she totally into Shinzon before? Crusher tells Picard that Shinzon is dying and needs a complete transfusion from Picard to survive. Picard has B-4 locked up and tells him he's dangerous. B-4 knows nothing so Data deactivates him. Geordi explains that Shinzon's super weapon can kill everyone on Earth. The Enterprise heads to meet the Federation fleet to stop Shinzon. There's a lame "battle stations" montage. The Enterprise flies into some weird space rift on its way to the fleet. Hmm. Picard and Data have a scene in what I think is meant to be Stellar Cartography but doesn't look anywhere near as good as the one in Generations. Picard is sad because his clone turned out evil. Data says Shinzon and B-4 don't try to be good but they do so they're different. The rift interferes with long range communications. WHY FUCKING FLY THROUGH IT THEN? SPACE IS 3D. Shinzon attacks because OF COURSE the big space battle has to take place in a weird space cloud thing. This one is green. There's some shooting. Shinzon beams a hologram into Picard's Ready Room to talk to him. Picard tries to appeal to the potential to do good in Shinzon. Shinzon keeps saying he is what his life has made him and leaves. Two Romulan Warbirds decloaks and Donatra hails Picard and offers help. The three of them attack the Scimitar but it keeps activating its cloak after shooting. It destroys one of the Warbirds pretty quickly. Shinzon tricks Donatra by dropping his cloak and luring her in. So the Romulans didn't really help that much.
The Scimitar is beating the Enterprise but Troi thinks she has a way to find them through their cloak. She enters the Viceroy's mind (somehow?) and gudies Worf's hand (HEY REMEMBER WHEN WORF AND TROI WERE A THING) to fire in the right place. The Enterprise shoots the Scimitar a lot so Shinzon has the Viceroy take a boarding party to get Picard. Riker (hey he's in the movie!) and Worf go to fight them and Worf kind of randomly says "The Romulans fought with hounour" along the way. I'm guessing there was a subplot about Worf's dislike of Romulans and all of it but that one line was cut because they needed more time for Picard and Data. Riker follows the Viceroy into a spooky area of the Enterprise. They have a fight. I love Jonathan Frakes but he's really showing his age by now (he's a bit tubby) and shouldn't be in a fight scene. The Viewscreen is blown off and the helmsamn is sucked into space. It's probably a stupid idea to have the Bridge at the top of the ship, isn't it. The Scimitar's shields are still at 70% so Troi's reverse mind rape did nothing. Picard says Shinzon "wants to look me in the eye" and realise he's got him because Shinson thinks he knows what Picard's about to do. He sends a secret message to Troi (who took the helm, because she's the official reserve helm officer) telling her what to do and the Enterprise flies straight at the Scimitar. Yep we're finally getting the "ramming speed" scene we've been promised before. Lots of stuff explodes on both ships as the Enterprise ploughs through the Scimitar's hull (wouldn't the Enterprise's hull be just as badly damaged?) Oh yeah, Riker and the Videroy are still fighting but we cut away again because we're seeing as little of the fight as possible. They fall onto a birdge over a pit (where in the Enterprise are they?) and the bridge breaks because Riker's fat. Riker kicks him down this bottomless pit that exists inside the Enterprise for some reason and the Viceroy says "NOOOOO!" as he falls. It's terrible. In the script Riker said "don't worry, Hell is dark!" but they cut that line. Maybe for the best. Picard activates auto destruct. Shinzon turns his super weapon on to kill everyone so they can go to Earth because killing everyone on Earth is now worth dying for. Poor Levar Burton has to give more exposition about how the super weapon works. That's literally all he's done in the movie. Picard beams over to the Scimitar by himself. Conveniently the transporters explode after he goes (What about shuttles? Remember shuttles?) Data has Geordi lower a forcefield covering a hole in the hull so he can run and jump out of it and land on the Scimitar. This is the kind of thing that sounds cool on paper but the way its executed it doesnt look all that good.
Action Picard shoots all the Remans until it's just him and Shinzon. Picard is going to destroy the weapon but he lost his gun (I guess?) Shinzon tries to stab him but Picard impales him using a ranom piece of metal that was hanging on the wall (those Reman designers!) Shinzon pulls himself along it so he can look at Picard. Data arrives with one minute before the weapon activates. He puts the emergency transporter on Picard and says "goodbye." He shoots the weapon and the whole ship blows up. Data's dead. Everyone is sad (except Worf and Crusher who have disappeared.) Donatra sends shuttles with medical supplies. Worf and Crusher fianlly showup as everyone drinks Picard's wine and remembers Data. Troi is the only one who cries because she's a girl. Riker talks about how he first saw Data on the Holodeck trying to whistle but he couldn't get the tune right. That's a semi-nice continuity moment at least! The Enterprise is in Spacedock later and the Enterprise music from TMP plays for a few seconds. Riker says goodbye to Picard and tells him that serving with him was an honour. Picard says the honour was his. This really should feel like a bigger deal. Picard speaks to B-4, who is still thick. Worf and Geordi are still on the Enterprise. Who's First Officer now? How cares, B-4 is singing 'Blue Skies' like Data did. So maybe he's turning into Data or something. Kind of makes killing off Data pointless, eh? Picard walks away smiling. The last thing we see from the TNG era is the Enterprise in Spacedock around Earth.
I remember the whole script for this movie leaked on the internet about a six months before release and there was a detailed summary of it posted on TrekBBS. I think this wasn't long after Voyager had just finished its pretty bad final season and Enterprise was in the middle of its first pretty bad season. It had been a while since Insurrection (it was four years between release, the longest gap until this movie nearly killed the movie franchise) and really my faith in the Star Trek franchise was at all time low. So I read the spoilers. I didn't care. I just wanted to know if there was a chance the movie could be good. And what I read sounded kind of promsing? I remember wondering if they'd be able to make the big space battle look good and the interactions between Picard and Shinzon sounded potentially very interesting. The script was by John Logan, who received and Oscar nomination for his screenplay to Gladiator. He was a huge Star Trek fan, and shoved many references all five series in there (he even wanted a Gorn to appear but was told it was too expensive.) But maybe his script is proof that you shouldn't let a Trek fan write Star Trek, because he also completely ripped off both TWOK and TUC. I can see why that would be tempting, they were arguably the two best movies (I'd argue that TVH and FC are better than TUC but whatever) but Trekkies are going to say "oh this is just like TUC" when Picard has dinner with Shinzon or "oh this is jst like TWOK" when the big space battle between two ships takes place in a nebula (to be fair Nolan actually wanted the battle to be between two whole fleets but was again told it was too expensive.) And a lot of Logan's script doesn't make it to the screen, I mentioned some cut lines above but the ending was also a lot longer than his script, showing that Crusher had left for a new job and letting us see the new first officer. And a terrible joke about seatbelts. So yeah it probably wasn't the best script (it definitely wasn't) but maybe with the right director it still could have been a good movie...
Stuart Baird edited the original Superman movie and was Oscar nominated for it. He is well regarded as an editor and got the job directing this is payback for doing re-edits on the first Tomb Raider movie and Mission Impossible 2. I'm not sure why he WANTED the job though, because based on this movie I'd say he hated Star Trek. Bringing in an "outsider" to direct a Trek movie isn't a bad idea, of course, Nicholas Meyer was an "outsider" between TWOK and we all know how that turne dout. But Meyer took a crash course in Trek before directing it, watching every episode of the original series, whereas I doubt Baird even read an episode guide. Many of the cast have talked about how they hated working with him. Levar Burton said that Baird thought Geordi was an alien! It really shows in the performances. Everyone just feels off. That could be partially down to it being four years since the last movie, but I think I'm going to blame Baird anyway. He frickin' digitally altered Worf's voice to sound deeper. Worf, the character who's been in more Star Trek than any other, and they decide to change his voice in his final appearance. That's really stupid! Maybe that's why Worf only gets about six lines in the movie. There's several attempts at humour early in the movie that fall completely flat. Even the great Patrick Stewart doesn't feel like Picard for most of it. Brent Spiner's performances as B-4 is cringeworthy Insurrection might have been light and dull but at least it still felt like Star Trek. And hey if you want to modernise Trek, make it more exciting for a new audience, I'm fine with that. The next movie does a good job at that thing. But this isn't exciting! It's really shockingly dull for the first hour. It picks up a bit when the space battle starts, but even that isn't really much better than the space battle from Insurrection. The action is nowhere near the level of First Contact (that Riker/Ron Perlman fight is the pits) and the Enterprise interior looks ugly and dark. Baird hasn't directed another movie since this.
In terms of character, the only interesting stuff goes to Picard and Shinzon. Picard trying to persuade Shinzon that he could do good if he chose to, that Picard's existence is proof that Shinzon could be good, is the only part of the movie that kind of feels like good character work. For a few seconds. But Shinzon doesn't have any depth, he's just evil, he talks in an evil voice, he wants to destroy Earth for reasons that are never really explained and he pointlesssly mind rapes Troi. There doesn't seem to be any conflict in him. Tom Hardy is fairly good at some of the EVIL line readings but this isn't a good character.
Data has no emotions again because...fucks knows. Brent Spiner gets story credit on the script so maybe it was his idea The B-4 story is terrible. I have no idea what it's meant to be saying. Picard believes that Shinzon has the capacity for good but Data seems to think the opposite of B-4. But they're not really analogous: Shinzon is a fully grown adult clone of Picard whereas B-4 is just a mentally challenged android who Soong apparently dumped somewhere (and he was found by Shinzon...somehow.) He only shows signs of becoming intelligent because Data gave him all of Data's memories. But doesn't that mean B-4 just turns into Data? That's the route the comics went down, but the movie cuts off without having to answer that.
You might have noticed I hardly mentioned Riker above. That's because he gets almost nothing to do the movie. Sure the movies have always leaned towards Picard and Data, but Riker at least got subplots in the last two. Here he gets...a terrible fist fight. Great. Yeah he finally gets promoted to Captain but he never talks about that in the movie. Poor Marina Sirtis has to play a mind rape again. Worf, Geordi and Crusher might as wel not be in the movie.
Jerry Goldsmith does the music for the final time and it's sadly not very memorable. Or maybe it's because I was too busy hating the movie to concentrate on it. The main theme is pretty decent. I think he was ill at the time? He died a couple of years later.
It's just a bad movie. Not just because it's an insult to Star Trek fans, it's just bad in terms of movies in general. It tries to be an action movie but the action is bad. It touches on some themes of identity, nature versus nurture, but doesn't develop those themes at all. It's not particularly good looking, aside from some of the space ship shooting each other parts. It's the worst Trek movie yet, worse than TFF. A sad end to TNG. It makes me wish that the rumours of Picard returning are true...as long as they have a good script and director for his return.
SCORE: 2.5/10
