Star Trek: Nemesis [DVD] [2003]

I suspect that viewers are expecting bigger and better everytime a new ST film comes out.

Nemesis has all the good stuff a Star Trek film should have in it, and is thoroughly entertaining. If the "critics" continue to show their disappointment as they are doing, they may be no more for them to critisize, be warned...

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Last night, though, I rectified that by watching it on DVD. Was it worth the wait? Was it worthy of the name Star Trek? How did our illustrious Enterprise crew acquit themselves? And just what is it with bald men in the 24th century? The answers to all of these questions is: yes, yes, reasonably well, and bald is sexy (not to me, of course, but some women seem to like it). It's probably the second best Next Generation movie out there, after First Contact. It's a bit rough around the edges, a bit "been there, done that," but overall it's entertaining.

When I first heard about Nemesis, my first thought was: COOL!! ROMULANS! Then, I watched this movie, and was a bit disheartened. There were hardly any Romulans in it! Instead, Nemesis introduces the Remans, a slave race from the Romulans' sister planet, who have decided that they've had enough. The make-up for the Remans was really cool, but I want my Romulans!!! I had to make do with a couple of iffy military types, Donatra and Suran (Dina Meyer and Jude Ciccolella). They got a few lines (Meyer more than Ciccolella), were able to sound suitably haughty, but that was about it. Neither had the chance to really stretch themselves (though Meyer was able to sport some interesting green bruises on her face when her ship was damaged).

A lack of pointy-eared enemies was not my only problem with this movie, however. The whole android sub-plot with B4 seemed shoehorned into the film. Yes, he is part of Shinzon's plan, but it just seemed like an excuse to get Spiner some more screen time and to give Data and Picard a way off of Shinzon's ship. While the whole B4 sequence can be defended, the execution of how they find him was ludicrous. It smacked of "we're 30 minutes into the film and we haven't had an action sequence! Quick, go find Michael Bay!" The whole dune buggy chase scene was completely ridiculous. The "inventive" way that they are able to escape was even more ridiculous (it's hard to be more than completely ridiculous, but this sequence manages it). Not to mention that it's against Starfleet policy of interfering with a pre-warp civilization. Just imagine what would happen if, in the early 20th century, a bunch of US soldiers were chasing a car and that car jumped into a floating spacecraft and took off. What would be the reaction? Yet our intrepid crew ignore other possibilities (sure, transporting a crew down there might leave them stranded, but how about beaming the sources of the signals up instead?).

My final complaint (just to get them all out of the way) is the fact that most of this stuff has been done before in Trek. Sure, there hasn't been a clone of one of the major characters done before, but the issues explored (identity, nature vs nurture, etc) have been. Nemesis seems like a souped-up Toyota Tercel. Sure, it's a sleek looking, motor-revving Tercel, but the old Tercel was just as good and besides, it's still a Tercel! Give me something new with my extra money.

After all that, you'd expect me to give this movie a really low rating. Right? Ok, no fair...the rating is at the top of the review so you've already seen it. 4 stars? Really? Why? It's simple. I was entertained by Nemesis and I love these characters. Patrick Stewart is simply wonderful with the material he's given. Tom Hardy makes a pretty good adversary for him, and I didn't have much trouble feeling like this was a Picard who had a horrible upbringing and is ready to lash out at everybody. He has the same sense of drama as Picard can have at times. Brent Spiner folds himself in his Data persona but also does a wonderful job with the naïve B4 (despite the fact that I don't think he was necessary). The other regulars don't get a lot of screen time, but they are also perfectly in character and bring a warm, cozy feeling to the whole thing (though I don't think Sirtis did the greatest job in the mind-rape scene).

The special effects and the battle choreography were probably the best I've seen in a Trek movie. Everything had a greenish tinge, which matches with the greenish look that the Romulans have. I thought that was a nice touch. The collision of starships was simply brilliant (it's a wonder what you can do with computers!). By battle choreography, I'm speaking of the starship battles. I couldn't believe it when they all actually moved in 3 dimensions. Other than Wrath of Khan (where they make special mention of it), no other Trek movie (and only an episode or two that I can think of) has actually had ships zooming in different directions, over and under ships, etc. Everything's always been in two dimensions, and it's been annoying. It was a wonder to see in this case.

All in all, I found Nemesis to be an entertaining time-waster, even more so if you're already a Trek fan and have something invested in the characters. It felt nice to see old friends again. If I wasn't a Trek fan, this would probably be only 3 stars (or maybe even 2), but since I enjoyed it, I'll be generous.

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