Yesterday I was finally able to watch Star Trek: Nemesis, the tenth Star Trek movie and ostensibly the last "Next Generation" movie. Simply put: I'm done, and if this is the best that Paramount can muster to continue the Next Gen. property, I hope it is the last movie.
From Star Trek VII: Generations onward, the movies took on the cast of the Next Generation. Despite the best aspects of the series being its ensemble cast working well together, taking turns in the spotlight, and playing off of each other, the movies with the same cast consist of ways to showcase how remarkably clever Captain Picard and Lt. Cmdr. Data are, and what fabulous acting chops the Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner have, respectively. They are remarkably talented, but Trek is at its best and most interesting when the entire group is interacting, and perhaps more importantly, in the way and pace that the characters move in-and-out of the focus of the narrative. Two guys hogging all the screentime is not what Trek is about, and it's sad to see that this is the direction that the movies have taken.
As if to top this trend with something even more centralized to those two characters, Nemesis revolves around making an additional Picard and an additional Data as the primary foils. Good grief, who promotes this kind of thing within the studio? The Praetor Shinzon, a clone of Picard, is obsessed with him, needs him to solidify his worldview (and some other DNA technobabble) -- the whole movie is about obsession about Picard; this is ironically the status of the entire movie franchise. At one point in the movie, Picards head fills the whole screen as he marches purposefully toward the cameraman and states, "This isn't about me anymore." Sadly, this only meant it changed to Data, who has one of the most interesting E.V.A.'s I've seen, before meaninglessly blowing himself up, for want of a autotransporter beacon.
Several things come to mind here: Was there only one of those beacons? That might have been stated, but it's unclear. They said "prototype," but that didn't clear up why it can't be replicated. Data presenting Picard with the device, then hanging out for the boom was like watching Bruce Willis intentionally go into the end of Armageddon with a broken wristwatch. What else...? The subatomic radiation that Shinzon is using was clearly detectable (though only theoretical!) in the beginning of the movie, but his perfect cloak can hide it along with everything else. Hm. Okay, fine: technobabble is not held to internal consistency. What about the transporting through shields? What about broken transporters working on the beacon? What about... Oh, sorry; I was really getting to be a pain-in-the-ass, nitpicking geek there. A list of the problems with the movie feels like it would nearly become a shot-by-shot recounting. It felt really sloppy, and disrectful to the efforts of keeping the shows honest. If this is the curve the movies are on, let me off here.
Last July, five years into their ten year contract, Activision decided to sue Viacom (Paramount) due to the "stagnation" of the Trek license as a property. A better idea than that, unless Activision needed something to keep their lawyers busy, would be to make a new deal with Paramount, wherein the content of the games would be considered Trek "canon." Maybe players could be Riker, Picard, or Data -- maybe not. But I can't think of a single Trek fan that would be able to resist playing through additional storylines that were considered really, really, really part of the same universe as the TV shows and movies.
UPDATE: Maybe these guys can keep the dream alive.
From Star Trek VII: Generations onward, the movies took on the cast of the Next Generation. Despite the best aspects of the series being its ensemble cast working well together, taking turns in the spotlight, and playing off of each other, the movies with the same cast consist of ways to showcase how remarkably clever Captain Picard and Lt. Cmdr. Data are, and what fabulous acting chops the Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner have, respectively. They are remarkably talented, but Trek is at its best and most interesting when the entire group is interacting, and perhaps more importantly, in the way and pace that the characters move in-and-out of the focus of the narrative. Two guys hogging all the screentime is not what Trek is about, and it's sad to see that this is the direction that the movies have taken.
As if to top this trend with something even more centralized to those two characters, Nemesis revolves around making an additional Picard and an additional Data as the primary foils. Good grief, who promotes this kind of thing within the studio? The Praetor Shinzon, a clone of Picard, is obsessed with him, needs him to solidify his worldview (and some other DNA technobabble) -- the whole movie is about obsession about Picard; this is ironically the status of the entire movie franchise. At one point in the movie, Picards head fills the whole screen as he marches purposefully toward the cameraman and states, "This isn't about me anymore." Sadly, this only meant it changed to Data, who has one of the most interesting E.V.A.'s I've seen, before meaninglessly blowing himself up, for want of a autotransporter beacon.
Several things come to mind here: Was there only one of those beacons? That might have been stated, but it's unclear. They said "prototype," but that didn't clear up why it can't be replicated. Data presenting Picard with the device, then hanging out for the boom was like watching Bruce Willis intentionally go into the end of Armageddon with a broken wristwatch. What else...? The subatomic radiation that Shinzon is using was clearly detectable (though only theoretical!) in the beginning of the movie, but his perfect cloak can hide it along with everything else. Hm. Okay, fine: technobabble is not held to internal consistency. What about the transporting through shields? What about broken transporters working on the beacon? What about... Oh, sorry; I was really getting to be a pain-in-the-ass, nitpicking geek there. A list of the problems with the movie feels like it would nearly become a shot-by-shot recounting. It felt really sloppy, and disrectful to the efforts of keeping the shows honest. If this is the curve the movies are on, let me off here.
Last July, five years into their ten year contract, Activision decided to sue Viacom (Paramount) due to the "stagnation" of the Trek license as a property. A better idea than that, unless Activision needed something to keep their lawyers busy, would be to make a new deal with Paramount, wherein the content of the games would be considered Trek "canon." Maybe players could be Riker, Picard, or Data -- maybe not. But I can't think of a single Trek fan that would be able to resist playing through additional storylines that were considered really, really, really part of the same universe as the TV shows and movies.
UPDATE: Maybe these guys can keep the dream alive.
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