There’s a rumour going around that good Star Trek films only occur in films with an even numbered title. I’m not too sure I agree because despite not really liking Star Trek, I did enjoy all of the original films. Yet as far as The Next Generation films were concerned I was starting to admit the pattern was forming. I saw Generations and found it to be one of the more boring experiences of my life.
Yet the second film First Contact was great, and my personal choice for the best of the Star Trek films to date. However the third film Insurrection was nothing more than decent fun, and when the trailer for Star Trek Nemesis was released it promised to be the best of the series yet.
Sadly this is ultimately the film to prove the Star Trek theory wrong once and for all, as whilst certain scenes are every bit as dark as the trailer promised, the majority of the film fails to deliver in any good way.
It’s a shame because there are quite a few moments where the film succeeds at everything it promised. A perfect example of this is the first time you see the Nemesis ship. The way it de cloaks and the way the camera slowly pans around it’s exterior highlighting it’s every jagged edge is incredibly eerie. The tension of this scene is reminiscent of the first time you saw a Borg Cube all those years ago. Sadly the payoff is not nearly as effective! The Borg exceeded the expectations of the audience and managed to be one of the few Star Trek monsters to be genuinely frightening, but the creatures on the Nemesis ship are green monsters with sharp teeth.
They have no character of their own being just a mismatch of every other monster in movie history, and they’re not even close to being scary for that. Still at least the captain of the ship had a little personality compared to the others. He was a human, and to be precise a clone of Captain Piccard who had been locked on a prison planet for his entire life.
As a clone of Piccard Shenzon had the potential to offer the kind of fully developed character usually forgotten in this kind of science fiction. With him being a clone of Piccard it wouldn’t have been difficult to make a comment on how our choices in life are the result of our experiences. How even the best of Men (Piccard) could have become the worst of Men (Shenzon) given different experiences.
Unfortunately while this is touched upon in some of the early scenes it goes almost forgotten as the films moves on, and by the time you reach the second third of the film you get the impression that the clone angle was just tacked on in order to provide a side story that doesn’t seem to lead anywhere.
It get’s worse though because Shenzon fails, even as a pure blockbuster villain. Looking at the Star Trek history that I’m familiar with and I’ve never known a villain who wasn’t given a motive. Sometimes their motives were good, involving protecting another life form. Other times it would be just to continue their race. Yet they always had some form of motive, but in this film I found myself wondering what the motives were.
It started out that his D.N.A was degrading and he needed a complete D.N.A transfusion from Piccard. That was fine but being Star Trek the stakes had to be much higher than one character, so Shenzon decides to destroy the Earth. Throughout the film you are in no doubt that The Federation didn’t know of Shenzons existence, and that Shenzon knew they were unaware. You are also shown that The Romulans were the cause of all his suffering in life, yet there’s never an explanation as to why he decides to team up with The Romulans and destroy the Earth.
I could go on and on about Shenzon, complaining about how Tom Hardy looks nothing like Stewart (Except for the bald heads of course), or about how his performance is dull and lifeless. The worst examples though are in the things they did trying to make him a good villain. Such as his costume, the thick black material with the curve of the back made him look like a menacing vulture.
Unfortunately the shoulder pads were so large that he could barely move, and so when he came waddling down the corridor he started to look more like a comedy penguin. Like I said, I could go on for this entire review complaining about Shenzon because these few things I’ve mentioned are just a few drops in the sea of faults he brings the film. I’m not going to go into anymore detail though because I want to mention the films action before I finish.
Ultimately the action scenes, both the dark tense moments and the faster paced shootouts, are the films only saving grace. There’s one wonderfully chilling moment at the start of the film where the entire Romulan government is wiped out using some form of radiation. On the whole the rest doesn’t live up to that moment but there’s still some terrific action sequences. The best way to describe them would be in comparison to a First Person shooter video game.
Those kind of shootouts, where characters hold there ground against a seemingly unlimited barrage of monsters whilst other characters desperately try to get the locked door/vent open, are the kind of scenes you can expect to find littered throughout Nemesis. If you’re unfamiliar with videogames, then a good film comparison would be the original Star Wars trilogy. Those shootouts are the same sort of thing you can expect in Nemesis, and they feel spectacular. You may want to ignore the first action scene that is some kind of extreme sports jeep driving thing, that feels like a combination of Black Hawk Down with XXX and Star Trek technology.
My only problem with the action is that a few moments, such as Data’s leap between ships, are just too over the top. They’re only small moments though and easily ignored. My real problem is that there’s too much time between the action scenes for a film with such a terrible story. They constantly brush over the issues they address and all but forget these issues for the final reel.
It does make these scenes incredibly dull and while a few of the idea’s are good, such as Shenzon’s infatuation with Dianna Troy and the things he does because of it, these idea’s are never fully developed. The scene where Shenzon invades Dianna’s mind while she is making love to Riker is disturbing, but then they simply use it to give the audience a revenge scene at the end and it cheapens the effect. It’s unfortunate because these dull story moments take up nearly 2 thirds of the films running time; and ultimately the action can not save it from the h(word I can’t use???)ole it digs itself into.
Ultimately the films review can be summed up with the tale of the little girl with the curl, ’When it’s good it’s very good, but when it’s bad it’s wicked’ There are some extremely exciting action scenes and some very disturbing moments but unfortunately there are also moments when extreme boredom can set in. At it’s best it’s equally as good as First Contact, but at it’s worst it’s nearly as bad as Generations.
Disclaimer- I have posted this review before on the website movieweb.com (also known as lightsout entertainment) and the only reason I picked this review to post is that it was an older review of less than 8000 characters.