To celebrate the release of Star Trek Into Darkness, the Flickering Myth writing team look back at the classic sci-fi franchise. Next up for Star Trek Month is Luke Owen looking back at the final movie for The Next Generation, Star Trek: Nemesis…
After the disappointment of the previous two Star Trek movies, the crew of The Next Generation needed something big to recapture the glory they found with the television series. Sadly, for the last movie of The Next Generation, Star Trek: Nemesis is kind of a bore.
That’s not to say it’s as boring as Star Trek: Insurrection or as face-palmingly embarrassing as Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, but Star Trek: Nemesis just doesn’t have any kind of spark to make it worthwhile watching – something all of The Next Generation movies have in common.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Unlike Star Trek: Insurrection, Star Trek: Nemesis at least feels like an actual movie. For all its plot flaws, the biggest issue with Star Trek: Insurrection is that it felt more like an extended episode than a feature film. Star Trek: Nemesis does feel like a cinematic continuation of a TV series – exactly what the original series movies felt like. The design is nice, the look of the movie is nice and the action set pieces (including the great ‘ram into them and hope for the best’ scene) are all really good.
On top of that, I really like the nature vs. nurture aspect of the movie. They hammer it home a little too much due to the armature writing, but the general idea is there. What if Picard didn’t have the upbringing that he did? Would he be as bitter as Shinzon?
Patrick Stewart is also really good in his Picard role – probably the best he’s ever been. His emotions run so high during his interactions with Tom Hardy’s Shinzon and the two bounce off each other really well. He also gives two very heartfelt moments with his speech at Riker’s wedding and his final goodbye to his long-time friend. Even though this was the final movie of The Next Generation and you should feel a sense of closure, Stewart sells this moment like no one else can.
But for everything that is good with it, Star Trek: Nemesis just cannot escape feeling boring. The pacing is awfully slow and most of the movie is filled with people sitting in rooms explaining the plot. One of the major problems, I feel, is that the director Stuart Baird (an editor by trade) had zero interest in directing a Star Trek movie or the universe it came from. Several cast members have since said that they felt he betrayed the legacy they worked hard to build just because he didn’t care about protecting it.
When bringing in someone with no affiliation to the franchise, it can work out one of two ways. You either you get a director like Bryan Singer (who never read an X-Men comic in his life) who goes and researches the history so as not to let the fans down, or you get a Roland Emmerich (who felt the Godzilla franchise was stupid) who just go into business for themselves without a care for the property and fans. Baird more or less falls into the latter category here. Without a love of Star Trek or the spin-offs that followed, you get a movie that is devoid of emotion – and if there is one thing that Star Trek has above all other franchises, it’s emotion.
Perhaps if they’d given the reigns to LaVar Burton (who had directed episodes of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine by this point), the movie may have had stood a fighting chance. Instead, we just get a half-arsed generic movie that, at times, could just be any other sci-fi movie.
With the exception of Star Trek: Generations (which I quite like), the crew of The Next Generation never quite made the leap to the big screen like their original series counterparts. Perhaps it was a lack of talent behind the writing team or just a lack of ideas but something just didn’t work. While I do feel that Star Trek: Insurrection is beyond the worst of The Next Generation movies, Star Trek: Nemesis isn’t too far behind. It’s slow, boring, bland and wastes what could have been an interesting character study of Jean-Luc Picard.
Star Trek Month continues tomorrow with J-P Wooding looking at his favourite episodes from Star Trek: The Next Generation…
Originally published May 11, 2013. Updated November 6, 2019.
