OnToMars
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Member # 621
posted
Greetings all, I'm back - if I was ever regular enough to qualify for gone in the first place.
I saw Nemesis on opening day, interestingly, the first and so far only movie I've ever gone to and seen myself.
I wasn't that impressed. I've always been fond of the even/odd legend and for me at least, it's held true all these years, so I perhsaps biasedly placed it in the middle of the list, at the bottom of the evens but above the odds.
But really, I didn't like it all that much. The plot holes bothered me, the dune buggy scene was downright angering, I didn't think the mirror self theme was executed very well, and I thought Stuart Baird's direction was mediocre on the high end and averaged at incompetent.
Through most of the movie, all I could think of were jokes, the writing of a spoof, and on the whole could not take the movie very seriously. Coming into a second time, I had meant (but forgot) to carry along a notebook and scribble down whatever further myriad of jokes would come to my mind, thinking that the movie would prove only even funnier a second time around.
To my suprise though, I found I liked the movie significantly better on a second viewing. The Dune buggy race is still pointless, the turning to stone is a stupid effect, and for a Star Trek fan, Logan's weaving of the great tapestry is still not what it was hyped to be.
But it is there, and I noticed it more (or more accurately, with more appreciation) a second time. They are not completely, throwaway references (things like a Kirk Epsilon manuever not withstanding). The Dominion War is established as part of Shinzon's history. Yes, I remember that scene from before, but I suppose I just didn't register it significantly before.
Spiner and Stewart continue to impress me, though I still think Stewart's lines were too out of character for even him to deliver effectively at times. And Tom Hardy's performance impressed me even more this time.
Logan's mirror identity theme seemed more competent this time. This aspect I can't explain, I don't know why I felt it worked on the second viewing and not the first. I can only think to chalk it up to bias before walking in.
The space battle I liked the second time whereas the first time I had beef. It wasn't as fast paced and the tracking shots and cutting didn't seem as incomprehensibly fast as they did before. And I don't think I gave the viewscreen bit as much credit as I should've, again most likely for having known about it before hand. It really was a cool idea.
Out of all this, the thing that I noticed most significantly was concerning the rest of the cast's involvement. A fairly constant critique of at least the new movies is the involvement of the rest of the bridge crew. Generations is the most notable of these, and to a lesser extent, Insurrection, and First Contact. I would've, and did, criticize Nemesis for the same infraction. But looking again, while the characters don't have subplots of their own, they do have a good amount of lines and contribute to the two main plots around them. The good doctor who had maybe three lines in Generations at least delivers a good deal of exposition. Geordi does his bit with Data and the battle, and Riker filled his usual role (though the less said about Troi's involvement the better). Only Worf is lacking for supporting screen time, which is a fault, but overall the scorecard doesn't look that bad.
Yes, there are faults with the movie. It does not approach the quality of Wrath of Kahn or Undiscovered Country, but I think, it's a better movie than I gave it credit for in the beginning. Where at once I had placed it in the middle without really feeling it had deserved that spot, I've come to feel that it has genuinely earned it.
-------------------- If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.
Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I rather enjoyed the Dune buggy. I thought it was lots of fun, and Worf in the back with that huge ass canon was cool as hell, as well as how they jumped back into the Argo.
What was wrong with it, specificly?
Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Its primary sin, in my opinion, was that it lacked connection to the rest of the film. (My primary complaint about the entire movie is that is suffers from a terminal case of disconnection; each scene exists more or less on its own, with the links between them being almost entirely arbitrary, and the entire film suffers from a disconnect with the wider Star Trek universe.) For instance, why are the locals just lying in wait around the scattered pieces of an android? The movie never bothers to tell us. Far worse, the characters never bother to ask.
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Proteus: I rather enjoyed the Dune buggy. I thought it was lots of fun, and Worf in the back with that huge ass canon was cool as hell, as well as how they jumped back into the Argo.
What was wrong with it, specificly?
What was wrong, specifically, was that "cool as hell" was ALL the sequence was. There was no plot sense behind it at all. It was just an excuse to do some dune-buggying and a stupid CAR CHASE with aliens. Most un-Trek-like, if you ask me. And the chasm jump looked reeeaaally fake.
Trek movies should be exciting and entertaining, but that's not a proper end in itself. They can't simply be rock 'em sock 'em action films, they have to be dramatically satisfying as well. Nemesis largely failed at this, not because of the overall story but because of the distracting and pointless stunts like the Kolarus III chase.
-MMoM
-------------------- The flaws we find most objectionable in others are often those we recognize in ourselves.
Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
It was just wow factor material. It's terribly convenient that Picard and co. end up being chased by a vehicle that's equal in speed to their own. It was only so there could be a chase element, nothing more. Why were they not being encountered by a vastly more rapid vehicle...all just terribly convenient.
Since Spock said in "A Piece of the Action" that the automobile was a 'primitive form of transportation' (or something to that effect), why is it that a four-wheeled vehicle is suddenly a practicality 100 years after Spock's statement?
posted
It's funny... I was given the option of watchin Nemesis again or Celebrity Mole: Hawaii and I ended up watching Stephen Baldwin get eliminated instead of this film... that's how bad the movie is still to me. I find Celebrity Mole more entertaining and funny than the movie.
-------------------- "It speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow, it's not all going to be over with a big splash and a bomb, that the human race is improving, that we have things to be proud of as humans." -Gene Roddenberry about Star Trek
Registered: May 1999
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posted
But within established Star Trek technology, I would argue that any four wheeled vehicle would be an old idea to them. They had a shuttlecraft with them and that would've been sufficient to collect the android parts.
They *couldn't* do that, though, because a shuttle could easily outrace the Kolaran hummers. Where's the fun in that?
And why does an android, who can withstand natural radiation and the vaccuum of space need goggles when he goes for a drive?
posted
I saw it twice too, and I still couldn't get past the dune buggy chase, either. I read an interview with the director in the Magazine and didn't feel any better about any of it. The decisions in his own words often came down to "satisfying fans or moving the story along". He decided to move the story along because "why would fans want a scene that was longer than it needed to be?" Ummm... to make the story make sense? To make us feel like we're getting something important for this that is being billed as the last movie for the TNG cast?
I feel that the whole film and the details of the story lacked the impressive quality that was needed in order to wrap this up. Perhaps the indecision was part of it. They want to bill it as the last movie for effect, but they don't want to ake it *too* impressive or final just in case they want to do another one. That bigs me. Make a decision. Make a good movie. Don't say "this is the impressive last chapter... but we'll leave it open for a sequel just in case." It's insulting to the story and to the characters.
Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
Well, the movie has finally started here today. I'm going to see it tomorrow and I will try to leave my bias outside the cinema. Will have my two cents worth ready this weekend...
-------------------- Lister: Don't give me the "Star Trek" crap! It's too early in the morning. - Red Dwarf "The Last Day"
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted
Logan says he couldn't work Spock into this? Raise your hands if you couldn't help but think: hey, this particle of the week could have been a ressurection of the Genesis device. You could have a lot of fun with Spock considering dying AGAIN to stop the thing. And why couldn't Sela have been worked in, anyway? What is this guy talking about when he says he couldn't figure out a way?
-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Meh, I'm sorry you let those things get in the way from enjoying the flick. But really, there�s nothing to �get in the way� here�
There was certainly a reason they needed to use the dune buggy. Because taking off and landing in a shuttle would be too tedious for every part of B4, and beaming was obviously not an option.
I was satisfied with those reasons that a fast-moving land vehicle (which I�m really glad was finally introduced into the Star Trek universe) was needed on Kolarus III.
Plus, the scene was very fun, and although the vehicle itself wasn�t used In the rest of the film, retrieving B4 certainly effected the plot, which was pretty much WHY they were down there in the first place.
What�s wrong with that?
Registered: Aug 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Sol System: Its primary sin, in my opinion, was that it lacked connection to the rest of the film. (My primary complaint about the entire movie is that is suffers from a terminal case of disconnection; each scene exists more or less on its own, with the links between them being almost entirely arbitrary, and the entire film suffers from a disconnect with the wider Star Trek universe.) For instance, why are the locals just lying in wait around the scattered pieces of an android? The movie never bothers to tell us. Far worse, the characters never bother to ask.
Perhaps they wernt WAITING. I saw it more as they were detected, so they went out to see what the hell it was.
Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
There may have been reasons for the dune buggy, but those reasons were placed there by the same person who put the dune buggy there in the first place. You say that beaming wasn't an option. Why not? Because the writer made it not an option? What was stopping him from writing the scene so that they beam down to each part and beam back up?
Registered: Mar 1999
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