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Critics Pan Nemesis
Reader NCC1701E submitted a short write-up on the movie:
"First, the executive summary: wait for the video. Now, the Gory Details, in all their splendor. I somehow received an email invitation to an advance screening to the Paramount Theater in Times Square, here in NYC. I had to wait in line for 30 minutes, and there was some confusion in swapping my email print out for a pass. But they didn't even check names against a list; it was basically first-come, first served among those who had been inveigled there through various means. In the end, there were even some empty seats. The movie itself? Basically disappointing. IMHO, the weakest entry yet in the series. Production values and special effects were excellent. And it was great to see the movie in a big theater with Dolby sound. But NEMESIS is little more than a Western type "shoot out" movie. The bad guys attack. The good guys fight back, Then, there's more attacking and more fighting back. Then it happens again. And again. You get the idea. I'm a sucker for the hokey humanism that was the hallmark of Star Trek at its best. There was very little of that on display here. In fact, there was very little in the way of a plot. Just some mildly amusing cutesy scenes, plus some murky musings about the nature vs. nuture debate re: a Picard clone. So I didn't much care for the movie. And judging by the subdued response in the theater, neither did the audience. BTW, NY audiences can be cruel. This one snickered at corny lines that weren't supposed to be funny. The phrase "derisive laughter" leaps to mind. I predict NEMESIS will be a huge box office hit. But long-time fans may be as disappointed as I was."
Can't be any worse than Star Trek XXIV - Scotty passes a stone
That blows the snot out of the old "even episodes good", "odd episodes bad" theorem. Or was that the other way around? I can never remember....
If it's worse than Final Frontier - which, according to official continuity, never happened, it's gotta be pretty bad at that.
Then again, the plot reads like they're merging the "Picard's son" ep of TNG with the plot of Wrath of KHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN! So it just might be that bad.
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
. . . and how much is culture.
I think that the general public is kind of tired of Star Trek. Some of the reviews I saw sounded like the same negative comments made about the "First Gen" cast.
We've also had plenty of other sci-fi series to come around - Babylon 5, Farscape, X-files. Maybe Star Trek doesn't hold the same place in people's hearts.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
"The 10th entry in the Star Trek movie franchise ... is the dullest and drabbest of the lot
So I take it that I'm not the only one who has repressed the horrible memory of seeing Star Trek V.
I once shot a man in Reno 'cause they cancelled Firefly.
I'll see it and enjoy it no matter how good or bad. It's like watching your favorite sports team. They have good years and bad years, but you still watch for the fun and excitement. There's always a good scene or two you can take with you.
"It's not even a good two-parter," he sobbed.
Actually he probably has a bot that does it for him.
I'll still go see it, so what if the critics say its bad, I've very rarly agreed with the critics anyway.
:D
Like any Sci-Fi movie, I take them with a grain of salt. There are very few made that can be called great, and usually their only saving factor is the special effects, which the critic said were good. So thats enough incentive for me
There's a rather clear and definable moment where Star Trek's quality suffered a containment breach. The moment Gene Roddenberry died.
The original series was a classic, and he led TNG well. However, after his death Deep Space Nine spun out of control, Voyager was an ugly stepchild from the start, and now Enterprise can't keep its story consistant with the events of the Kirk era that happen 100 years later.
Not a big trekkie (don't kill me!), but don't most fans of Star Trek claim that Star Trek V was the worst in the history of Star Trek (including Shatner himself?) I may be mistaken though (I am referring to the Star Trek where the crew is caught in a battle between what was SUPPOSED to be God and the Devil).
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
were pretty bad. i especially didn't like the one where piccard was all fascinated with the chick from that race could slow down time with thier minds. it was like they were having mind sex for 45 minutes.
Harlan Ellison? Is that you? I thought you were dead!
He would have installed Linux on the Borg Collective, and when they tried to install Interstellar Explorer, they'd set off a Blue Screen of Death and earth would have been safe!
...where it's due damnit.
Gabe from Penny Arcade said this exact paragraph earlier in the week about Equilibrium.
Seriously, citing Gabe on this wouldn't effect the moderation you get, and it's pretty lame to steal words just to karma whore.
Getting diabetes AND salmonella would be a bad weekend.
The critics aren't much impressed with the new Star trek...
Since when have the critics ever been impressed with Star Trek? I take anything a critic says with a grain of salt.
I am a meat popsicle.
Outa steam (or antimatter) for sure. And at 44, I was raised on this stuff, waited on queue for the original movie, tore my hair out when the local tv station pre-empted The Best Of Both Worlds part II for over a month, can't watch Boston Public without expecting you know who to show up with facial hardware, etc. etc... There was a time when the disembarking of a reborn Enterprise to the strains of the main theme could just about bring tears to my eyes, but I honestly can't tease apart the plots of the last few movies. Especially when the strength of the show this crew was on is on a par with the movies, this stuff is beginning to taste too much like a Pokemon or Croc Hunter movie. Ouch, but hey.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I had the TV on providing background noise last night, and someone called it "As good as the last Star Wars". I laughed to myself wondering if it was an insult to AOTC or not. I guess now I know.
Let me start with something that seems trollish....Reviewers (in general) are full of CRAP. Reviewers hardly ever seem to review a movie in a way that reflects public opinion.
They have thier reputation at stake, and that reputation is among a snobbie group of follow-the-common-review-sentiment. I will not allow a reviewers opinion affect my enjoyment of the movie.
May I also liken a "Movie Critic's" review of a startrek movie to a M$ employee's review of the latest linux kernel. I'm a techie and a trekie and those outside those worlds don't often understand me.
I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence. Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1845
Unless Gabe started mumbling in Penny Arcade forums, you sir have ripped this quote from the Penny Arcade website... I'm confused how you were modded up.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
yeah, I think that Tycho said something like this yesterday, sans the Nemesis wording. He was talking about Equilibrium. At least give the author credit when stealing his work. You fucking cut and paste karma whore.
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Not that I support this movie, but I'd really have to think quite a bit to come up with one popular action movie that does not have the basic story line that you describe. (Of course, few can do it with the finesse that Itchy and Scratchy do it.)
I think more people watch action movies these days for the ``non-action'' parts rather than what it really is all about - the good guys beating the s**t out of the baddies. Is that good? I know not!
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
Ensign... set a course for bargin bin at local video store...
ENGAGE!
Ah, what do the critics know?
:)
It's tough with something like science fiction. If, like most big-name critics, you are slightly suspicious the genre is tricked-up low-brow, then you come in with an attitude that make it harder to enjoy the movie or understand the willingness of those who do like it to view minor deficiencies in, ahem, plot for the larger vision of the film.
I'm sure books and scads of boring dissertations have been written on this question of how the critic is culturally situated.
More to the point, if you really like a scorecard of critics more than the well-argued view of an individual critic you trust (or perhaps just the recommendation of a friend with discriminating tatse), this site continually tallies and links to new reviews. Looks pretty evenly divided at the moment. Check elsewhere for tabulation of all current films.
I am not sure what these reviewers are looking for in a Star Trek movie. It has good special effects and a lot of action and thats what I want to see on the big screen. If you want a bunch of character development you can watch the 10 years of back episodes they show every day on TV. These movies are supposed to be fun. If you would rather see a movie with more depth I am sure they will be churning out another 4 hour Jane Autin novel movie in the near future
Worst. Sig. Ever.
He doesn't like action and shootouts in star trek and pines for the sappy crap that is apparently missing here.
Well that settles it for me, this one might even be better than Wrath according to his description!
Bet he's seen search for spock like 50 times.
No Comment.
funny, because i know in my soul that nothing can be worse that the first star trek movie, veger made me want to die
It can't possibly be as bad as Star Trek V: The Search for Jebus!
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
There -- now us geeks can go on with our lives.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Movie criticism has always been, and always will be, some of the least objective forms. Watching a movie, or any other form of art, is a very personal thing and it's very hard not to allow personal things to cloud your judgement. So I will be seeing this flick. If for no other reason than to finish off story of that timeline in the ST universe.
An Open-handed slap is better than a punch any day: Humiliation is a great tool
I think "panned" is a relative concept here. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 51% positive rank and concidering the SF-bias in the media, I think it's probably safe to assume this is an entertaining movie for the average Star Trek fan. I'm sorry to see the Next Generation go.
In this film, it is revealed that the whole of the Next Generation TV series was a dream. 'I am your father, Wesley'. Riker turns out to be an android. Then it all ends with a big song and dance number.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
It is BECAUSE they've repressed the memory that they FORGET that V really was the worst Star Trek of all time, arguably in serious competition with bad movies in general.
Leonard Nimoy versus William Shatner as directors -- the choice is logical.
V was so bad it made the fairly forgettable III and VI look epic and skillful. Apparently Shatner did not get to do in the climax of V what he's wanted, and if he had, the movie would have at least been funny.
Everyone's favorite movie review compilation site, Rotten Tomatoes, gives Nemesis a pretty solid 51% rating, with the big name reviewers rating in at 88%. Full details here.
For a franchise movie such as this, that's not so bad. Die Another Day got a 59% rating, and the Rush Hour series usually scores in the 50s. I have a feeling Nemesis will get exactly the same numbers from Trek fans.
Visit me on the web at Permanent4.com.
Considering that Die Another Day might only just barely break even, seeing the $80-million Nemesis flop is not going to look good on the 2002 bottom line. So much for getting fat off the big franchise sequels.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
Mr. Cranky gave it three bombs! It can't be that bad then :) If it was really bad it would have gotten mushroom cloud - "Proof that Jesus died in vein" :)
h tm l
:) LOL
http://www.mrcranky.com/movies/startreknemesis.
PS - he apparently doesn't like Will Wheaton much
What?? That can't be right, that's the funniest thing I've read all day!
As others have pointed out, this is a blatent cut-and-paste plagiarizing from a rant Gabe at PA had about Equilibrium this past week. Please moderate accordingly.
Becuase Bond is MGM. Go me.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
But anyways back to Star Trek, here's the thing people, there's one thing to being a fan and there's another to dedicate your lifestyle to it. Fans enjoy watching the films and know the characters and MIGHT own some memorabilia. HOWEVER, if you dress up in star trek outfits, and would consider yourself a Dorn Groupie, then you are no longer a fan, you are obsessed with it all. Fans won't correct if I'm right or wrong about Star Trek facts.
Star Trek may not follow the same plot/storyline as its previous movies, but for a series of movies and television shows this long, wouldn't it be absolutely boring if all they did was rescue disparaged refugees all the time??
I'm going to see it, probably two or three times because this one looks like a story builder where you can get more into the movie and there's not just unexplainable things (IE: Q) that can just make things unexplainable acceptable. New aliens, new weapons, and new characters will make this one a good edition to the Star Trek series.
Lastly, what the hell did you expect from a movie called Nemesis (enemy of equal power), them to go hug and kiss? NO! there gunna fight because that's what they do.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
I've seen Ms. Sirtis partially nude in at least one forgettable flick. Never thought much about her bod.
While I've always loved Star Trek, the old cast were more appealing than those on the Next Generation. If fact, I even prefer the cast of Voyager to that of TNG, except for Picard, Wesley and Worf.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Hey, if the movie stinks, it's largely the fault of people who say "oh well, I know the plot stinks, but I'll go and see it anyway." The only thing Hollyweird really comprehends is money... if people keep flocking to the theaters to watch computer generated explosions, well, by golly, Hollywood will keep delivering more of the same.
If you want the quality of stories to improve, tell it to Hollywood in the language they understand. If the writing stinks, and you KNOW in advance that it stinks, don't bother with the theater, DVD, or merchandise.
And in the end... it... it... well, it won't make a bit of a difference. Sadly, the bulk of the population is quite happy with Things Blowing Up.
Moron movies are for a moron populace. Find a better use for your time.
What a coincidence:: www.penny-arcade.com/+%22Equilibrium+%22+%22most+p eople+who+review+things+are+the+very+people+who+se em+to+have+the+most+hang+ups%22&hl=en&lr=lang_en&i e=UTF-8
http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:s33jDY3bjPwC
Moderators: don't waste karma modding this post up. I'm just building upon the comments aside my own post. (save the karma for the Score:1 postings and the occasional jewel AC post). Personally, I suspect most Karma whoring here is done to build up points for troll-building. Because of the filtering Slashdot attempts to use to PREVENT this, it has the net effect of NEVER selecting capped karma folks like myself (I post 2x a week and that's not enough stupidity to get knocked off my Karma cap).
that's funny, The New York Times gave it a pretty good review this morning. When I read it on my way to work I was ready to cringe.
:)
I'm goin' tonight.
Triv
Better yet: even movies are good, odd movies suck. every fifth movie turns out not to be part of the continuity.
As a matter of fact, I hear they changed the ending. In the original ending, Troi wakes up, it was only a dream, and Patrick Duffy was in the shower.
Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble... can't we just go to Starbuck's for coffee?
..in reviewing this movie? In fact there are only 6 Star Trek movies (the first 6 ones..) everything else is crap... TOS had the first interracial kiss in TV.. that was (at those days) highly poilitical incorrect (for american measures)... today 99.9% of star trek is about political correctness and shit terrorists would never watch.. so forget nemesis.. and spend the money on the old episodes.. spend your money on that shatner'n nimoy movie where they discuss shit (even that is more interesting than the whole TNG fame..) in the garden.. give all star trek money to Nimoy because he was spock and deserves it.. then he can make more nice photos and shit he loves to do... give all your money to william shatner.. give all your money to geroge takei so he can produce Star Trek 7 (i mean the REAL 7th episode) with him as captain zulu.. everything else is boring shit... oh.. and dont forget to watch TAS after TOS.. nuff said.. who flames here is a poor ass or hollywood-i-like-shit-sucker and no fan...
Wow, are you in denial! You sound like one of those "fans" who think just because something has been branded with a franchise name, it can do no wrong.
You probably still defend Star Wars Episode I and II as "pretty good movies" when they were simply AWFUL. The most recent Austin Powers movie was sad and simply un-funny, although I am sure die-hard fans will say they liked it.
I don't get the devotion to things like this. I guess if people live through lives and events that are not their own, they get offended and embarassed when those things turn out to be disappointing.
Yes, they are only movies - but why can't everyone see that? Why cling to the illusion that something is better than it really was, simply because you hope and wish it to be so? Jeez, if you don't care what a reviewer says, and are going to go see a movie anyway, then why take so much stock in the reviewer? In my opinion, reviewers are sometimes nicer than they should be, instead of what you suggest. Every review of AoTC gave some praise to it, but I just didn't see it. I would put it up there with some of the most overhyped movies of all time (including Episode I). Stop clinging to your illusions and come back to reality. Why the hostility towards a reviewer when you haven't even seen the movie yet yourself? All you have on your side of the argument is that the person must have a hang up about Star Trek? Physician, heal thyself.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The thing I loved about Star Trek was the underlying idea that we could eventually solve our problems. They showed us a time when we were approaching this. Until DS9 came along and had to invent a bunch of internal strife and conflict.
While I did eventually watch DS9, I tended to try to seperate it from the rest of the series to hide my disappointment and just viewed it as a seperate action series.
The problem is that most people who review things are the very people who seem to have the most hang ups about that thing. This makes their reviews worthless to the rest of us who simply enjoy watching movies or reading books. So Mr. Moviereviewerman, you think Equilibrium had a "derivative, punch-the-keyboard plot." You think it was "crude, but occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, merely for its sheer ridiculousness." You think that a movie like Equilibrium is just too far below your standards. Well I bet you twenty bucks you have a painting in your house that you bought because it matched your couch, how fucking pedestrian.
That little blurb was taken from here. Mod this lamer down, please.
I mean, we still have Star Trek V: The Final Frontier on DVD and VHS. People, if you really want to see the worst of the series (this from a die hard Trekkie) watch Star Trek V, you'll want to shoot yer eye out!
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
I always liked the first Star Trek, you know, the REAL Star Trek. With distinct, individual characters who had distinct, individual personalities. Bones screaming at Spock that he wasn't a doctor, he was an ocean sponge and Spock death gripping him to the floor.
Now here's the experiment: take any of the scripts from any of the subsequent rip... err... sequels and pick a line. Now read the sentence to your friend and see if they can guess which character said it. They won't be able to figure it out which character it is 90% of the time. Why? All the lines are the same between the characters, there is no significant distinctions, personalities, or flavors to the characters.
If you do that with an ORIGINAL Star Trek script, you can't help but pick out "Dammit Captain I'm a doctor not a floor wax!" goes with Bones!
Forget "it's good science fiction" -- without good characters you have nothing. Before you get mad at my post, try the experiment yourself during your next drinking party. If you pick the wrong character, you take a drink...
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
... considering the way Berman treats Wheaton. Bad reviews == I won't be missing anything.
ok, let's say they were going to make a Star Trek Movie with your favorite cast members, good and evil. From ANY of the series.
..etc..
Who would you want?
Who are the opponents?
Cast members I couldn't do without:
* Worf
* Seven of Nine
* Data
* Spock
* Checkov
Leave 'em at home:
* Kes
* Troi
* Dr Pulaski
* The Kazon
Favorite disturbers of the Peace:
* Q!
* Ferengi
* Borg Queen
* Klingons (before treaty...)
and so on...
PICARD: Good God! We're caught in a temporal quake caused by Nemesis' evil mind powers! We'll be torn to pieces for sure! It's curtains for us! Will, can you think of anything that might save us?
RIKER: I'm so goddamned drunk I can't even see straight. Give me another gin and tonic.
PICARD: Make it so. Mr. LaForge, do you have any ideas?
GEORDI: Well, we just might be able to decouple the iambic pentameter from the refrombulatory cryo-units in order to cause a temporonucleic disturbance that just might break us free.
PICARD: Good god, Geordi, that's the craziest goddamned idea I've ever heard! No, strike that. Pure genius! Capital! Do you think we can actually make it work?
RIKER: Gin and tonic, God damn it!
GEORDI: I don't see that we have a choice, Captain. We have to try.
PICARD: Make it so. Mr. Worf, please accompany Mr. LaForge to Engineering in order to try out that crazy idea of his. And make sure to shut the watertight doors so that the water doesn't spill over the top of the bulkhead at E deck.
WORF: Roger.
WESLEY: I sure hope that this works, captain!
TROI: The fuck are *you* doing here?
[ Worf and LaForge leave bridge ]
PICARD: Data, what do you calculate our odds are at getting out of this situation alive?
DATA: I'm afraid they don't look good, Captain. The computer is claiming that they are only 5% or so.
PICARD: Jesus jumpin' Christ! I told you we should have upgraded to Mandrake 12.0.
RIKER: Who do I have to blow to get a gin and tonic around here?!?
GEORDI (on tricorder): Captain, I think we've done it! If you yell "Warp one, ENGAGE" right now, we will escape from Nemesis with approximately 0.01 seconds to spare!
PICARD: Holy moly! What are the odds? Helm, warp one, ENGAGE!
[ Enterprise zooms off. ]
[ Credits roll ]
Straight from the desk of Brannon Braga.
Go look at the reviews at rottentomatoes and see for your self... If you look at the 'creme of the crop' reviewers, who are "famous" you'll see that 80% of them did like it. Only 50% of the other revieweres didnt like it, which for a star trek film is pretty good if you ask me. They've never been in bed with the critics.
I guess he never saw Star Trek V, or even Star Trek "I" (aka Star Trek: The Motion Picture). I honestly wonder how they got permission to *make* ST II with as bad as that first one is..
here. For example,
Fearsome death rays strike the Enterprise, and what happens? Sparks fly out from the ceiling and the crew gets bounced around in their seats like passengers on the No. 36 bus. This far in the future they wouldn't have sparks because they wouldn't have electricity, because in a world where you can beam matter--beam it, mind you--from here to there, power obviously no longer lives in the wall and travels through wires.
It's the little things that you don't really realize (until someone points them out to you) that put you off a movie.
Best Slashdot Co
I'm a sucker for the hokey humanism that was the hallmark of Star Trek at its best. There was very little of that on display here.
Must disagree with you here. IMHO, hokey humanism is one of the worst aspects of Star Trek. Its lack in the new movie is a HUGE selling point for me.
I cringe everytime they pull the "can't we all just get along and we can't hurt them even though they are trying to kill us" crap. These bozos wouldn't last 2 seconds in a real universe. The fact that they continue to survive such stunts ruins the believability of the storylines for me.
Quoting Penny Arcade much? Three cheers for plagiarism! You could have at least gave them credit... Here is original text (at bottom).
From what I have heard, this movie is a triumph of style over substance.
I loved TNG. I have a signed picture of the crew including the annoying kid, darnit!
But what made it so great were the characters and the dialog. All the actors grew so dramatically in those first three seasons, it more than redeemed those of us who endured jeers in the beginning. Captain Picard is a broad, cultural icon because of Patrick Stewart's famously modulated portrayal.
Unfortunately, and to my great chagrin, it sounds as though this delicate treasure has been defiled by the ruthless forces of Hollywood into a product that looks good on a poster, but lacks its essential soul.
I don't need more movies. I can just look at my autographed photo and smile.
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. -A. Turing
Okay, my favorite Star Trek movie was #2.
Why?
For exactly the reasons I'm seeing this movie panned off. I'm a huge fan of space battles. I don't know why, I just am.
If they've for alot of flying, crashing, shooting, and exploding, all the better. The only way to make it even better is to have Scotty saying, "She canna take much more of the captain! She's breakin apart!" Which, sadly, just doesn't sound the same from LaForge.... But for some reason, I have to hear the phrase "auxillary power" at least once.
Better yet, maybe Riker will have to enter an engine compartment to restore main power while they're escaping an explosion in a nebula!
I ask of you. Tell me why the entire Star Trek franchise isn't a complete waste of oxygen. Losers. 'I'll be going to see it anyhow!' - you do that poo-beard. Do it up broadway style.
until Wesley Crusher's scene was cut.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
I even prefer the cast of Voyager to that of TNG, except for Picard, Wesley and Worf.
Wesley? Surely your on crack.
Trolling is a art,
Woah - hold on there Captain. Let's see. The Original Star Trek (OST) was written in 1965 and spoon-fed to NBC as a "wagon train to the stars", which means NBC viewed it as a futuristic western; and westerns dominated that era's television programming (hence the incredible number of bare-knuckled fist fights). OST was episodic and disjunct, with many writers doing as they pleased with the characters within a very gray scope (see Whitfield and Roddenberry, The Making of Star Trek, Bantam Books). In fact, they were making it all up as they went along, especially when it came to matters of science.
Then the Star Trek franchise happens quite by accident, so that all subsequent efforts are placed very carefully under the control of the Great Overseer of the Grand Story Line. In fact, all of Star Trek goes through a single office, including books, movies, and television shows to keep the product, well, pure. Now, trying to take what was in the OST and blend it into what is makes for no easy task. In fact, there of those of us who would be happy if OST were basically ignored, except for a few basic concepts and events.
I could go on, but I've already revealed the extent of my Star Trek Geekdom.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
I personally like the fact that it dealt with the darker side of the Star Trek universe. Everything wasn't great for everyone all the time. The Federation sat around while the Bajorans were oppressed for years and did nothing. And, some people in Starfleet were willing to do things that while bad were for the greater good. "In the Pale Moonlight" is my favorite Trek episode ever because it explores Sisko's decision to kill a Romulan in order to save the Federation. Not an easy decision for anyone to make, but one that leaders sometimes must make. Churchill had to allow Coventry to be bombed by the Germans while knowing about it in advance in order to not reveal that they'd cracked the German code.
I mean, come on, its Star Trek. Its SUPPOSED to be above the average idiot reviewers head. If it got a GOOD review I'd be surprised! But isnt that what we love about it?? I mean, have you all ever watched some of the episodes (early TNG, like, pre Yar dieing), they are horrible (the acting, special effects) when compared to the later episodes, but by god every time TNN does a marathon I'm right there watching them because for all the campiness and whatnot, the show is DAMN GOOD and the pinnacle of GEEKINESS. I've spent more than one rainy day watching my columbia house ST:TNG VHS collection. I love Star Trek. I love the Next Gen cast. I wouldnt replace any of them. But I dont expect it to have a story line to rival LOTR or something, nor do I expect the actors to be given praise for their performances. Its a campy sci-fi flick, with over used plot devices and over used character templates. And I wouldnt have it any other way.
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Must be good! Besides, what makes them think a western style shoot em up isn't what we want.
Public service announcement: If you move your left hand one key left, "got" becomes "for", and F7 won't save you.
I think his cameo was shopped out because the film was over 3 hours, and that now he merely appears -- no lines.
;-) Although how much does an "extra" -- or whatever a star who doesn't talk is called -- get paid, anyway? I guess CleverNickName can tell us.
That, or they didn't want to pay him.
Well, at least it's a break from the even=good, odd=bad status that the Star Trek movies have had.
I think one of the things people are reacting to here is, given how
funny and clever Galaxy Quest was (and how positively audiences
reacted to it), people were sort of expecting the Trek powers that be
to get a clue, and they obviously didn't.
Nope. "Final Frontier" may have lacked a certain sort of continuity, and had some *serious* cheese, but can't possibly compare to how much "The Voyage Home" sucked. The time-travel scene made just about the worst I've ever seen (even compared to how they portrayed it in TOS), the over-the-top environmentalist message just annoyed me beyond words, and lacking any potential for "hard" sci-fi, resorted to endless, and unforgiveable, cuteness to keep the audience entertained.
And VI, "The Undiscovered Country"... Okay, that one at least had its moments, but for the most part, about as exciting as watching paint peel.
I'd take V over either of its neighbors *any* day.
Here's a review that puts a positive spin on Nemesis. Without any real spoilers, the reviewer discusses the plot and its similarities to other ST films, especially The Wrath of Kahn. The review echos what critics in mainstream media have been saying.
Love justice; desire mercy.
...they're not bombarding me with messages like "Most Action Packed Movie of the Year!"
You've been trolled by a cut and paste karma whore! Nitwit.
What was your fave? The one with the whales is mine...what is that, 4?
Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
I have never been a fan of the original series or Voyager/DS9/Enterprise. I could hardly be called a Trekker or Trekkie or whatever. But I do love The Next Generations seasons 3 through 7, and in my opinion, that show ranks as one of the top ten of the past 20 years.
What worked so well with TNG was a blend of an ensemble cast and fantastic writing. The viewer cared about the relationships between the characters -- Geordi and Data forging a friendship despite the latter's inability to love, Jean-Luc's unwielding stoicism in the face of his crew's attempts to humanize him. Furthermore, the scripts were just great -- they came up with interesting ideas and stuck to a space trek, rather than try to create some sort of epic battle of good vs. evil and sprinkle in one-liners. Who didn't cringe in Insurrection when Data said, "Saddle up. Lock and load?" He didn't say those sorts of things in the TV series because each episode was (as much as can be expected) consistent and well planned. Data's role was that of artificial life desperately trying to grow in a manner impossible. That, in itself, is epic.
These movies continually attempt to appeal to a broader audience and insist on childish humour instead of intellectual wit. The result is a frustrating mix of my favorite cast and crew with a pedantic, immature script.
Finally, the TV series worked well because it was only an hour long and there were 20-25 episodes a season. With that format, you can devote an entire episode to Worf hurting his back or Geordi turning invisible (twice). Each character could be featured for an entire episode, such that at the end of seven years we had a closeness with each. These movies clear emphasize Data and Picard, and the rest are sadly shoved to the background.
I already have my ticket for Nemesis which I'll be watching in about six hours and I'm excited. I suspect there will be plenty to be disappointed about, but I still care about these characters and will watch them until they stop making movies. But in retrospect, it would have been so much better to have a few more years of the TV series than these movies. And as for critics -- well, they assured me that Attack of the Clones was good. And I have died a little each day since wasting that eight bucks.
I saw it on Wednesday night. I liked it. It's like a two part epidode with much higher production values. I think that what it should be. It's not supposed to be an arty foreign film or a Blade Runner. It's Star Trek. It's also better than Oscar winners "Gladiator" or "Braveheart"
Well, it can't be that bad, the "Reserve your copy" on Amazon.com gives it five stars!
Well, reviews be damned, I'm seeing it tomorrow. However, it occurs to me they've opened up another continuity hole with Worf. At the end of DS9, Worf was appointed Federation ambassador to the Klingon Empire. Now he's back on board the Enterprise.
I saw a brief red-carpet interview with Michael Dorn (who plays Worf) who said, "You know, they never addressed that..."
Which makes me wonder...
Here.
No way...the even numbered movies are supposed to be the good ones!
The worst in my book was The Voyage Home.
To all who are saying "But ST6 was a great movie!":
Star Trek: Generations is the last movie of the old generation, not Star Trek VI. The first part of Generations had some of the "old-skool" cast, and the rest of the movie still had Kirk.
Thus my addition to the rule holds.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Because movies that feature deep and original storylines with a lot of character dialogue and development are never successful in the theaters! MORE EXPLOSIONS AND BOOBIES!!!
Thats what made star trek suck. its goody goody humanistik " hey weve discovered a planet full of dylithium and servive primatives lets leave them alone" star trek refuses to acknowlege the human condition for the ideology of what thigs should be like. i hope that this movie dosent fall into this trap. i hope its violent cruel blood thirsty and filled with killing and action. i dont go to a movie to see reality and i dont want to see tree hugging people with feelings i want to see, violence sex , more violence , sex sex sex, cool space ships, domination of an inferior race , imperialisim, than more violence and sex.
...was Spock saying "hell."
Gee, nice quoting of penny arcade there. How about writing your own comments?
Eh? Shatner's in it? I thought they killed Kirk?
"Dammit Jim, you're dead!"
Harlan Ellison? Is that you? I thought you were dead!
Nah. That's Stephen King.
Wow. The /. community will be a little bit more forgiving than your average joe when it comes to sci-fi movies. So for a bad review of star trek to show up on /. the movie has to be a serious dud.
Check www.mrqe.com, it gets 50-75% ratings for the most part...
General criticism seems to be it's an hour of boring build-up and then an uncharacteristically action-oriented 2nd hour. But I always thought Trek needed more action anyway.
I'm going tonight, what the hell?
Check out RottenTomatoes
Overall it's getting a 53% positive rating. However, the so-called "cream of the crop" reviewers are 88% positive.
"And like that
Someone who works as a critic for living is someone who failed in life and devotes his life in destroying those who did.
This story reminds me of a critic in the Toronto Star back in the seventies when I lived in Canada. I sent a letter to the editor thanking them for their great information on movies. I pointed out the movie of the Pink panther that was destroyed in the critic's column. If it hadn't been for the critic I might have missed a good movie. I usually looked at his critic in order to make my choice on a movie at the cinema. I would pick among the ones he hated the most. I don't rememver a bad choice of movie with this technique.
What really bugs me is that with hundreds of great SF (and fantasy) novels that have never been made into films, folks spend hundreds of millions making terrible scripts into films. Sure, making Lord of the Rings into a film is a no brainer -- we had to wait fifty years for that?!
Just off the top of my head (and everyone will have their own ideas):
Note: I'm picking big, generally violent, splashy stories that would turn into the kind of movies that Hollywood likes, and not subtle stuff. Most of the books have franchise potential (i.e. they're part of long series).
Isaac Asimov's "Foundation"
Iain Banks's "Excession"
Greg Bear's "Eon"
David Brin's "Startide Rising"
C.J. Cherryh's "Downbelow Station"
Arthur C. Clarke's "Earthlight"
Gordon R. Dickson's "Tactics of Mistake"
William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Dispossessed"
Cordwainer Smith's "Norstrilia"
Neil Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" (or get Spielberg to do "Cryptonomicon" since he has this WWII bug)
Jack Vance's "To Live Forever"
Walter Jon Williams's "Aristoi"
I won't even bother listing fantasy series that could be made into movies once they've finished making every posthumous exhumation of Tolkein's crap into movies (I foresee five films based on the Silmarillion and then there's the volumes and volumes of junk published by his son...)
On a side note: why is it that Philip K. Dick's most obscure novels and short stories that are often boring or make no sense do get made into films? And generally they're stories about someone who is totally passive and runs away at every sign of trouble who ends up being played by Arnold Schwarzenegger... Maybe the screenwriters see a kindred spirit or something. Or maybe the rights were cheap.
If we're going to make Dick's books into movies, what about:
"Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said"
"A Scanner Darkly"
Maybe Pixar can make "Ubik"...
More than once I've seen a movie get clobbered by the critics, and when I went to see it in spite of the criticism, I've found a movie I really enjoy. Its especially funny to watch a critic blast a movie early in the year, see it do really well at the box office, and find the critic quietly adding the movie to his top ten list at the end of the year.
Years ago, I learned that its better to form your own opinion than to simply borrow someone else's second-hand.
The thing with Marina is that she is obviously a voluptuous woman who starved herself down to what the fags running Hollywood won't find too feminine, ie offensive to their warped sexual drive.
She has a beautiful face and great eyes, and if she gained the weight that would flesh out her body, she'd be a knockout, but all the wrist-flapping butt-slammers would be holding each other and trembling with disgust as they see their first woman.
The fags just feel safer with starved women with no sexual drive and 12-year-old-skinny-boy bodies.
The characters are just plain boring. I don't want to see the uber-nerds of the 24th century boldly bringing bland, politically-correct attitudes to the universe. TOS at least had main characters with actual human problems and idiosyncracies. The only ones in TNG that come close are Worf and Data, since they are most un-human. It seems fine to allow those characters to struggle with issues, but just hand Picard the typical soliloquy for doing the "right" thing.
I just don't see people identifying with the struggles/problems of the characters in TNG, with the Data and Worf exceptions. Probably why those two are the most popular(?).
So, another TNG flick? beh... rental.
The (television) trailer tells you all you need to know - There were zero slow plot point shots in it. That means that the movie will have no plot, it'll just be a collection of action sequences.
I just wish the acting on babylon 5 (outside of a couple of characters; the only people on that damn show who could act were jurasik and katsulas. That way I could wish for and look forward to a real movie. Instead they made all that made for TV shit.
In the end I don't think anything could be worse than the search for spock, though. I watched that again a few weeks ago and it has transformed from an epic dramatic quest to complete cheese factor as I transformed from a child to an adult. Well, that god movie... I blocked that out.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
At first thought it will be a flop, but who am I for taste in movies.
Since I don't find the MTV/Saturday night knock of movies funny. But look at JackA$$ which has done well at the movies or Adam Sandler(Who I hate with a passion).
So the mindless MTV crowd my make this a big hit....
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
Anyone who says this is the worst forgot the even rule.
Star Treks I, III, V, VII and IX were all awful. They were odd numbered.
Star Treks II, IV, VI and VIII were good. Some not great, but worth watching.
X is even, so it follows the second line. And we all know statistics don't lie!
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
Hell First Contact got a 93% and it wasn't even all that great. I can pretty much rest assure that Nemesis will be the same awful tripe that was Insurrection, which got a 59% rank. If this type of stuff is entertaining to the "average Star Trek fan", then the average Star Trek fan has set very low standards form themselves.
Lets see some other recent examples of the SF-bias in the media:
Minority Report - 93%
The Matrix - 87%
Galaxy Quest - 86%
Contact - 84%
You can't make a Star Trek movie that you guys will like. Nothing will ever live up to the stuff you saw as a kid. I bet if Star Trek II: TWOK would come out today you guys would pan it. First, most of us have not seen the movie yet. Most of the "real" reviews have not come out yet. It has not even had the chance to speak for itself and you guys are panning it and that's not being very fair. Personally, I rather believe/hope that this will be another rock em sock em trek movie like First Contact was. I rather liked that one. Insurrection was bad also. Also, saying that one is not a true Sci-Fi fan because they have not read Asimov, Heinlein, Bear, Benford, Brin, Adams, Niven, Pournelle and others is not fair either. I am also tired of seeing Sci Fi be over ridden by the fantasy stuff. Fantasy may have come from Sci-Fi or Sci-Fi from Fantasy but Fantasy type books are different, to me, to not be Sci-Fi. I like seing shows that take place on starships and I like Star Wars. Just because it does not stand up to the image you have built up from Star War over the years does not mean that other folks with better expectations won't like it. It's just like the Linux zealots who don't care about making their programs easy to use for others because they think that their way is better. If they made a trek movie that sounded like it was wrote by these supposed better writers, noone else would go see it!
Gorkman
...the Fetish Frontier. These are the voyages of the Latexship Boobyprize.
Only in slashdot are posts of solidarity modded at -1 Redundant, while posts of antagonism are modded as -1 Flamebait.
What does God need with a starship?
I was at a preview screening at Toronto's Paramount theater. Nemesis is not a great movie, but it's not bad.
There are at least 3 parts to this movie that are outright stupid. The whole audience actually laughed out loud at times. Other than that, it's a decent movie. I just don't think it lives up to the series. I'd rather have spent my 2 hours watching a couple TNG episodes instead.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
I'd like to nominate Olaf Stapledon for "Star Maker" (which wasn't even meant to be scifi when he wrote it) for it's depth and vision, John Brunner for "Stand on Zanzibar" (cyberpunk in the 1950s - eat your heart out William Gibson), and James Blish for "Cities in Flight" (weak ending but the anti-humanist tone throughout is chillingly plausible).
Plus: Doyle? Good writing? He was a total hack. Entertaining, and inspiring, possibly. But good? No. Not a lot of human truth in Sherlock Holmes. If you want classical period detectives, try Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Top notch scary old bag.
Pity this post is totally off-topic. But don't mod it down 'cos I'm paying for yesterday's refusal to endorse the herd view that St. DVD-Jon should be given the keys to the city of Hollywood.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
Because submitting stories like this is cheaper than buying firewood.
Here, lemme help:
There you go! Hope you're warmer now.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Sure there was some expansion here and there, but in general the feelings for the characters never changed. Checkov never really "rose through the ranks" like Wesley did
I believe that in "the Undiscovered Country", cheesy as it was, Sulu did get a captaincy (sp?). Checkoff... well he probably never made it 'cause he couldn't pass his written test:
Desired Rank: Keptain Experience: Starships and Nuclear Wessels
I don't watch a whole lot of TV, and I hadn't noticed that, and probably wouldn't have seen that before I went to the theater.
Gee, thanks.
is that Scotty is now so fat he's creating a noticeable gravitational field, and the dilithium crystals have started orbiting him.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
This quote from the MSNBC article caught me off guard:
[quote]
(the) android Data (Brent Spiner, who also co-conceived of the film's story) and an earlier prototype of himself, amusingly named B-4 (also well-played by the versatile Spiner).
[/quote]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Data's prototype supposed to be Lore?
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
that think this is the last trek movie, I cought an interview with Brent Spiner on MTV last night. He stated that if this movie didn't make money, it would be the last. If it does, then they will be back yet again. Just thought I would state that.
Maybe the problems started when they stopped putting Roman numerals in the titles.
Damnit I was looking forward to this tonight.
..in the ground.
They constantly have the opposite opinion of what most people think are good movies.
I don't know why anyone bothers listening to them anymore.
If Paramount was ever serious about making a quality ST film, they'd hire a decent writer and director. I wonder what a Peter Jackson or Ridley Scott would do with Star Trek. Might be interesting.
Here are the IMDB ratings for all 10 movies.
It's the worst even-numbered movie ever released,
but it still beats all of the odd-numbered movies. Note that the even/odd rule still applies.
#10 Nemesis: 6.5 (based on 52 votes)
#9 Insurrection 6.3
#8 First Contact 7.2
#7 Generations 6.1
#6 Undiscovered Country 6.8
#5 The Final Frontier 4.7
#4 The Voyage Home 7.0
#3 Search for Spock 6.1
#2 Wrath of Khan 7.5
#1 The Motionless Picture 5.7
Doug Moen.
I have written a truly remarkable program which this sig is too small to contain.
Well, at least for me.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
I always hated hearing someone call themselves a Star Wars or Star Trek geek and then I ask them "Have you read Asimov, Heinlein, Bear, Benford, Brin, Adams, Niven, Pournelle?" And the answer was invariably "Huh?". Sad. So much more out there.
I first read this book while in sixth grade (and from then onward it set my whole standard by which to judge all other scifi), and have always wished it would be made into a big-dollar Hollywood movie production. Now I'm not so sure about that wish... maybe it will be best that this wonderful story never get ruined for me. I'm not so sure any actor could ever portray the Gulliver Foyle I picture in my mind.
At least they're not saving the world by caputuring F(@$%(!&^% whales.
Remember where we parked.
Ahh, the classics.
I don't even have your number.
Computer, on.
Poe - appropriately cynical/morbid for my tastes. Some was over cute (The Gold Bug), other stuff was right on. I especially liked The Cask of Amontidello(sp?). That is true horror, no supernatural creepies needed.
Steinbeck - Only read East of Eden. Best use of adjectives I've ever come across. His scenery descriptions are to die for. He also, FWIW, really captures that feeling of morbid depression that comes from being in love with someone who uses you and leaves you
Shakespeare - taming of the shrew is funny, Romeo and Juliet seems unlikely (they fell for each other way to quickly), skimmed some of the rest. I think there may be something to the theory that they are written by different people using a common pen name....the quality is too inconsistant to be one person.
Chaucer - bit of a perv, very funny once you get used to the language
Woodhouse - Glad you put him on the list. Martin Woodhouse is a name that never comes up in nerd circles, and that always puzzles me because his characters are great. Both the books about Giles Yeoman (e.g. Treefrog, BushBaby and BlueBone) and the "historical novels" about Leonardo Da Vinci are great. I just finished The Medici Guns and The Medici Hawks.
For the uninformed, the Giles Yeoman character is an aeronautical engineer who is constantly pressed into service - against his will - by secret branches of the British government. He's a cynic and a smart-a##. Think of these as Tom Clancy set in the 1960's, but with more focus on technology and less on guns.
The portrayal of Da Vinci in The Medici * naturally focuses on the artist's engineering feats. Like Yeoman, the da vinci character has a sense of humor and an "I'm smarter than them" attitude, but the cynicism is directed at the papacy's views on science, not at his employers. In case if anyone is interested, the events described in The Medici Guns appear to be based upon this letter of introduction from Da Vinci to Ludovico Sforza, the regent of Milan.
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
I'm the same way with "Spring back! Fall forward."
*************************************************
I like The Bet...very fun to read around materialists and Ayn Rand fans. :)
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
Wow, are you in denial! You sound like one of those "fans" who think just because something has been branded with a franchise name, it can do no wrong.
Well, first, the piece you responded to was actually written by someone else about Equilibrium (as has already been pointed out). If you read it that way, a lot of your criticizms are invalid.
However, the "denial" think I think is a load of crap. I'm not a Star Wars fan. I haven't seen Episode 1. I just recently saw Episode 2 on DVD, and despite the fact that the writing sucked and Anakin and Natalie did piss-poor acting jobs, the movie was still entertaining.
Same with Austin Powers -- I thought that the first one was funny, the 2nd and 3rd were both more of the same with some new stuff added in. They were both still entertaining.
I didn't enjoy them because of some stupid devotion to a brand. I just thought that they were an ok way to spend 90 minutes.
Yes, they are only movies - but why can't everyone see that?
Do you see that? It's just a goddamn movie. If you don't find them entertaining, don't watch. If other people do like them, it doesn't make them any better or worse than you. I like in-line skating, but I don't like rock climbing. Do you see me calling rock climbers delusional fools?
Stop clinging to your illusions and come back to reality.
Take your own advice. Different people like different things. Maybe you're just so jaded (for whatever reason) that you refuse to let yourself like such lowly entertainment. I say too bad to you. If you expect every book to be Great Expectations and every movie to be Casa Blanca (sp?), you're gonna be disappointed. Besides, an occasional mindless diversion never hurt anybody.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
C'mon, folks... How much could you really expect from a movie with a trailer in which the Big Villain says something as campy as "Set a course for Earth. Kill everything." I darn near spewed a mouthful of fizzy when I heard that!
;-)
;-)
The thing with 'Star Trek' movies and books can be summed up in three words; 'Paramount Loves Formula.' Of course 'Nemesis' has no plot. It's not supposed to. It's filler. Fluff. Packing material for mental gaps. Mind-candy. All ka-blooey and no GUI.
Anyway... That's NOT to say it wouldn't be something worth watching. It probably will be, on the order of "It's so bad, it's fun." See it on a matinee, so it's less $$ out-of-pocket, be prepared not to take it at all seriously, and it'll be a good way to blow a couple of hours.
For added fun, gang up on it in MST3K mode with your seat neighbors. Whether said neighbors are friends or family is up to you to decide.
Where the heck are Joel (or Mike), Crow, and Servo when we need them?
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
[IGNORE]
This is obligatory filler.
[/IGNORE]
I guess CleverNickName can tell us.
No he can't...at least not for a year or so...most actors have a clause in their contract that keeps them from talking about the film or those involved for a certain amount of time following some sort of release...today it's generally some time after the DeeVeeDee is released...
There are a few reasons for this...actors letting spoilers slip...bad mouthing other actors/director...etc...
There is actually one exception to this clause...they are only allowed to discuss the movie when they appear to market the film ("exclusive" interviews, talk shows, etc)...and they are generally only allowed to answer within specific guidelines...
Maybe not Wrath of Khan good, but really pretty darn good!!!!
The revised theorem: odd numbered moves are bad, even numbered moves are good, movies that are even multiples of 5 are bad.
Except for 3, The Search for Spock was loads better than I, V, or generations.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Too many people keep saying "this is the last film."
I don't think there's any reason to believe that to be the case, as long as the film makes money.
I think maybe people are reading the film's tag line, but not reading the whole thing. The tagline is:
(emphasis mine)
See... the tagline doesn't say that this is the end. If anything it says that this film is only the beginning of the end. And if it's only the beginning, that all but promises that there'll be another movie!
...expectations, and my guess is you'll find the movie enjoyable. Most of the time when criticism abounds concerning a genre rendition (who can deny that Star Trek is anything but that?) it's because the movie has dashed expectations. That's the whole problem with genre series like this--everybody has his own individual expectations. My guess is that those who see it who aren't so "serious" about it and take it on its own merits will enjoy the movie most.
Careful. DS9 was probably the best series of all of them. It had a direction to go, it did so, and the fans were satisfied. Unfortunately, the people who didn't/couldn't keep up with it were the ones that were burned. So I can see why you say that about DS9.
And here I diverge to off-topic...
I watched every episode of every Star Trek series and I found DS9 to be the least satisfying. It was Days Of Our Lives In Space. The characters were, by and large, not satisfying and spent most of the show in a morose funk -- especially Sisko. The only character that I felt had any depth was Garak -- and he was not a primary character. Colm Meaney was wasted in his role as Miles O'Brien. His mysterious disappearing wife Keiko added nothing to the show and left one wondering what kind of marriage he had.
DS9 was a post-war-pissing-contest between the Cardassians and Bajorans -- with religious mysticism thrown in for bad measure. It was simply boring, with the crew helpless to do anything while sitting around on the station. The being-stuck-on-a-space-station is why the Defiant was added to DS9.
I want something uplifting. I like travelling with the proudest crew on the Federation's flagship. I want to see a captain and crew that make first contact and wrestle with ethical decisions that define our humanity. I'm not interested in seeing someone sitting around fondling a baseball while grieving over his dead wife for seven years.
Beowulf was a stupid Geat!
Ironically, some time last year, my company's leadership dropped the "What does God need with a Starship" comment and replaced it with the South Park Chewbacca Defense, (aka "This Does Not Make Sense") for describing strange provisions in project plans...
FYI: The review of Nemesis in the Seattle Times has a reference to a plot point that the reviewer claims 'is not a spoiler.' Well, it is. Don't read it if you want to be surprised...
but i agree with Ebert. Que the pigs flying and the snowball rolling through helll, but i'm serious.
Your points to counter his seem resigned to accept bad movie physics or design as _OK_ purely for the visual experience. Are you a Mac user by chance?
Look, I think Star Trek has a serious case of the NASA's. It's still mainly stuck in the 60's. As our civilization progresses so too much our seers. And movies are a direct result of our very human imagination. I see bits and pieces of stuff where i go "cool" and think about it all night. Think about how it could work, how it would work, what would be required to make it work. Stuff like the helmets in Red Planet (and to a lesser extent Lost in Space). We're better off looking to a Bond movie to see a fortune telling of far out technology then Star Trek.
As for plot, yeah, well i think it's obvious. I can't help them there. They should just rehash one of the seeds of literature. Like War of the Roses or some other pillar. Because they don't have the talent to spin one on their own.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Did any of you upeople see Insurrection? Because if you had, there wouldn't be an argument about "worst Trek movie ever". Insurrection was like a $50 million episode that sucked.
"Calling this movie the worst of the series is a pretty harsh criticism"
no it's not. not for a movie made after "the wrath of khan". twok is _THE_ start treck master-piece and compared to it _ALL_ TNG movies sucked big time.
of course, is hard to beat a master-piece, but TNG movies doesn't have to be that bad.
some one please, bring Kirk back from the dead.
What ? Me, worry ?
Right concept. Wrong man. Gene L. Coon was what made the original Star Trek shine.
The Roddenbury years of Next Gen are utter garbage.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
After watching the SuperDeluxe version of the LOTR FOTR DVD, I came to the conclusion that waaaaay too much was edited out of the original FOTR movie. It looks like it'll be the same for the Stat Trek movie; the SuperDeluxe DVD With Deleted Scenes will be a ton better than the original movie.
Besides which, movie tickets around here are half the purchase price of a movie DVD, the cinemas are dirty, and the popcorn is far too expensive with the portion sizes far too small. I can rent the including-deleted-scenes DVD for a fraction of the ticket price, and be in far more comfortable surroundings. And I'm ONLY renting the DVD if Wil Wheaton's deleted scene(s) are in it!
The Two Towers is the only other movie I plan to see in a cinema this year as Harry Potter has already aired.
If I might suggest: From The Restaurant at the End of the Universe "Do people want fire which can be fitted nasally?"
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
.. but the last AP movie WAS funny, funnier then the second one at least. I wish that everyone could see that there are only good reviews. Obviously, this isn't one of them.
Now there's an interesting fight.
Would you like to play global thermonuclear bat-leth? (sp)
(I'm sorry, I lost my Klingon dictionary.)
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Let me get this straight .. you honestly believe that a statement like "At present rates of hunting, humpback whales will become extinct in the next 50 years" is an "over-the-top environmentalist message?" You're kidding, right? If you don't care about the whales, that's your business, but the whole humpback sub-plot was not about the crew of the Enterprise chaining themselves to trees or railing about the evil of "multinational corporate polluters." There's a world of difference between conservation and radical, over-the-top (as you say) environmentalism.
If you didn't like The Voyage Home, then that's fine, but try to keep your criticism credible.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
I had no idea they'd made that many Star Trek movies. I stopped watching around #3.
Yep. I've seen five movies in the theatres in the last two years. I'll bee seeing only one more this year: The Two Towers. I won't be seeing Nemesis as I do not feel the need to throw my money away to see third-rate bilge.
Most movies these days are garbage because, as you said, people don;t seem to want good movies. All critisisms of movies are refuted with a "Dude, get a life! It's just a movie!". These people who put up with the constant flow of "XXX", "Charie's Angels", "Batman And Robin", etc... are the ones responcible for the total lack of worthwhile movies out there.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
it will now be known as /3 of /10 . . .
seriously, its always a joy to see the cast of TNG on the screen. i luv the trek, and well, couldn't care less if there's a plot, or if there's not. does real life always have a plot????? i'll live if its missing, just so long as there's alien babes in short skirtz
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Instead of fixating on 10 take the 1 and the 0 and add them together.
:-D
You can claim the movie to be either even or odd depending on your view of it.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
I was hoping they learned their lesson after the last one was choked with pedantic bs that would have been best left to Saturday Night Live parodies.
IMHO, the problem with Trek movies nowadays is that they are trying to copy what worked in the past instead of coming up with something original.
Case in point: Star Treks I-IV were all differerent. Nothing alike, some better than others, but at least each were orginal plots.
With Insurrection they wanted a light movie like Star Trek IV. They analyzed why that one worked so well, then got it all wrong and made a horrible movie. The first was a fish out of water story that what charming and humor cam from seeing these people from an advanced future trying to deal with 1986 San Fran, while Insurrection gave us pimple and boob jokes. All I hear about Nemesis is that it is very much like The Wrath of Khan, something they set out to emulate.
As for this being the worst, it cannot be as bad as Insurrection or Star Trek V. Those are the bottom of the barrel.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these...
Personally, the books I love I hope never get touched by Hollywood. I'll never forgive Hollywood for "Starship Troopers."
However, yes, "The Stars My Destination," is one of the best SF books ever. I put Bester's other famous work, "The Demolished Man," as even better, though. The prose just grips you and absolutely will not let you put the book down. It's also a story that depends on the medium and would never survive the silver screen transition. Ben Reich is a great character, a truly magnificent predator among men.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Careful. DS9 was probably the best series of all of them. ...but wasn't that the series that revolved around the premise where the so-called space heroes were sitting still in space, waiting for something to come along and kick their asses?
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Good is good, bad is bad
Nunbers don't count (people do);
My working comspiracy is: Wednesday releases good, Friday releases bad.
It works like this:
If they figure that a movie is gonna get rave reviews they release it on a Wednesday so that the word of mouth can build and give good first-weekend results.
If they figure that the ads are better than the movie, they'll give it all the PR they can and release it on a Friday. That way, people won't find out just how bad it is until Monday. This way, they get the best possible first weekend numbers.
Since nemesis was released on a Friday, I suggested that my friends wait for the reviews before going to see it.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
if they didn't cut all of Wil Wheaton's scenes...
*duck*
Or maybe if say Wesley was abducted by the Romulans and they either took all the crap he knows about the Federation and starships and all and used that against the Federation, or maybe instead of Picard's clone, the Romulans make an EVIL WESLEY CLONE!!!! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA....
It's definitely on the poop deck. :)
Sorry, resistance was futile.
--
No electrons were harmed in the typing of this note.
I think if you're a member of the SAG, they have to pay you scale at a minimum; there are probably different scale rates for mute roles versus lines. Extras don't get paid scale, they get paid a lot less (like around minimum wage). But IANAA. Maybe CleverNickName can correct that (it's not specific to ST:N).
I recently saw the directors cut of ST TMP on DVD, and it is till the worst of the lot. ST V had serious plot problems, but atleast the characters were there and yes there were some nice parts.
ST:TMP the director's cut is still sleep inducing despite all the hype over it.
Somehow you missed the whole point of the movie, which was: "Oh my goodness, if we don't save the humpback whale, the Earth is going to become uninhabitable by humans!"
Actually, I love lowly entertainment. What I absolutely hate is the way things are marketed and sold (at least here in the US). I wish people would wake up and make up their own minds, instead of just believing what the marketing people want them to believe. I think things like movies, music, etc (entertainment) should stand on their own merit. Too many times, they don't. It is either a huge marketing "buzz", or loyal devoted fans who drive something.
I hate seeing commercials for movies where there are all these quotes from paid endorsers, trying to push it as "the best XXXXX movie of the year". Now I didn't see Scooby Doo, but I think it is safe to say that it was a badddd movie. Yet, I hear it being referred to as a "blockbuster hit". Everything is a "hit" nowadays. What the hell is going on?
OK, so I didn't get the troll in the original comments (sue me), but what was said in it was certainly believable. There are people who feel that way. The guy gives an honest review of the movie, and gets slammed as a non-fan.
I don't mean to insult people for their opinions on things, if you REALLY thought Attack of the Clones was a good movie, I don't care. (in my head I will think you are a fool, but I wouldn't say that.) But when people jump from bandwagon to bandwagon, simply because they cannot think for themselves, because they are suckered into all the marketing and hype, it pisses me off. And I don't know why. But it does. The people who don't have a genuine opinion stand out when you try to discuss anything with them. They usually get very defensive and pissy, without being able to back up their opinion. I like discussing things, like movies and music, and I can have heated discussions about things without getting upset. People who blindly follow something can't seem to do that, they can't "turn off" their devotion and objectively look at what they are devoted to. I think that applies to a lot of people in a lot of different scenarios - from movies, to music, to religion, to Operating Systems.
To illustrate my point, why do people line up for hours, if not days, to see a movie on opening night? I honestly do not understand it. Why do people go see a movie 10 or 12 times in the theater? I find it hard to believe that they are seriously that moved by mere entertainment. I simply don't understand it, and nobody I know has been able to explain it to me. I am really looking forward to the new X-Men movie, and the Matrix Reloaded, but I am not about to take off work and go camp outside a theater to see it on opening night. I am a huge Simpsons fan, but I would never go to a Simpsons convention.
Maybe it is just me, I don't know. I feel like it is. I feel like I am so inundated with advertisements that if I don't fall in line I will be shunned by the cool populace who has seen the light. If I don't latch onto what is popular, I will be missing out on the best life has to offer. What sucks is when something is genuine, and it gets all twisted and popular. I honestly fear this will happen to Linux. It happened to geekdom. It happened to Star Wars. It probably happened to Star Trek (I don't know, I have never seen a ST movie, and am not a fan). It seems to happen to everything. Yeah, you were right, I am jaded. I think I became that way when my eyes were opened. Now I can't close them.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The revised theorem: odd numbered moves are bad, even numbered moves are good, movies that are even multiples of 5 are bad.
The "even multiples of 5" thing is too complex. How about "ending in 0" or "multiples of 10"? Ending in "0" is easier I think.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Star Trek - Planet of the Hippies (Insurrection).
Save the World! Use a Quote!
I usually see what boredmovies.com has to say.
Here's a quick rundown of the results so far: (green - good, yellow - caution, red - forget it)
New York Post (yellow)
Atlanta Journal (yellow)
USA Today (red)
Roger Ebert (red)
Houston Chronicle (yellow)
Seattle Times (yellow)
LA Times (green)
NY Times (green)
Spliced Online (yellow)
Boston Globe (yellow)
Miami Herald (yellow)
Why in hell did they get Baird to do this one? Frakes did a pretty bang up job with First Contact. Insurrection, was relatively watchable to me at least, being not THE worst film in the series. I think Nemesis would have been a great opportunity for Frakes to refine himself as a Trek director, learning from mistakes of Insurrection and building on what he did well with First Contact. Instead we get the guy who directed US Marshals, a movie which had very forgettable direction at BEST. And people are wondering why this one came together badly? People complain about the plot. Well, Frakes took the old overused Trek staple of TIME TRAVEL and managed to turn it into a real gem of a film. I'm sure he could have put an interesting spin on this one. Anyway, I'll still check this out in the theaters for the whole experience, for better or worse.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
The bad guys attack. The good guys fight back, Then, there's more attacking and more fighting back. Then it happens again. And again. You get the idea.
exactly like every star wars movie ever made..
so what was the reviewer's point?
Let's see...
"I am NOT a merry man!"
"Eat any good book lately?"
"If you prick me, do I not...leak?"
Just of the top of my head. Granted,those examples were from some of the better characters from STTNG. And there are some STTNG characters that had no real depth to them (Riker, Beverly Crusher, Geordi, Tasha), and could arguably be interchanged. But you can't seriously maintain that any of the characters lines I quoted were interchangable with those of another characters?
The parent post to this one was "Insightful"? I think not. The author of that post picked one of the most repeated (and by now, hackneyed) lines from TOS (along with "Fascinating") and holds that up as proof. Riiiiight.
As for TOS's characters, IMHO, in the TV show, Spock was one of the most frustratingly faulty character, since he routinely said (and did) the most illogical things, and never got called to the mat on it. Like all the time he calculated probabilities to the nth decimal place, when he could possibily have enough quantitative information to carry a calculation to that level of significance. It's illogical to be that inaccurately precise, and I cringe just about every time Spock utters a line. One can perhaps argue that Spock was emotionless, but he was hardly "logical".
And, if you couldn't tell, the lines I quoted above were said by Worf, Q (incredible character and acting), and Data, respectively. Worf's character development was disappointing in the first few seasons, but he became the best and most underrated character in the whole franchise, IMHO. Data was a much better Spock than Spock. And Q saved the terribleseries' first two episodes for me, and every episode with Q in it was a must-see for me. (The one where he is stripped of his powers? Classic!)
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
people that don't like Trek didnt like it and the ones that do did?
this is news?
Moderators: don't waste karma modding this post up. I'm just building upon the comments aside my own post. (save the karma for the Score:1 postings and the occasional jewel AC post). Personally, I suspect most Karma whoring here is done to build up points for troll-building. Because of the filtering Slashdot attempts to use to PREVENT this, it has the net effect of NEVER selecting capped karma folks like myself (I post 2x a week and that's not enough stupidity to get knocked off my Karma cap).
ST1 - $370m
ST2 - $194m
ST3 - $159m
ST4 - $225m
ST5 - $104m
ST6 - $127m
ST7 - $147m
ST8 - $174m
ST9 - $131m
(all figures in adjusted 2002 dollars, worldwide gross)
De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum!
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
+5 Funny
It was really, really bad. I wanted to like it so much. Spoilers below! Beware! It started out relatively promising. The Picard clone seemed like a possibly viable villain. But the fact that he doubles over numerous times made him lame and unbelievable. The Data "precursor" B4 was stupid and inane. It stuck out in the plot like a sore thumb. And you just knew at the end that Data was going to croak. But lo and behold! B4 is there to replace him and Picard just "happens" approve transferring Data's memory engrams to B4 earlier in the movie. Wow, what a coincidence! NOT! The cast is sagging big time. Troy, who used to be a hottie, is truly showing her age. Poor Wesley (wil wheaton - who is a cool guy, see his web site at www.whilweaton.org or .com, I can't remember which) had his scenes totally cut.
The Troy/Riker wedding should have happened 10 years ago. Who gives a shit now? Riker finally accepts a captainship. Wow. Big deal. How interesting, how exciting.
I was ready to walk out of this piece of crap 40 minutes into it but figured since I paid I might as well just stick it out. I should have saved myself the time and just left.
Don't bother with this one. The only thing good about it is some of the special effects. Big deal, I can see effects just as good in flicks like Spiderman, the Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, etc. without the shitty script, bad acting and ridiculous premise.
Save your money!!!!!!
Most environmentalists seem to believe that if we don't save species the Earth's machinery will get mucked up, making it uninhabitable by man. But that doesn't make for a good enough Star Trek plot apparently so they take this tack instead.
nothing could be worst than the last one. hell, i can't even remember what it was called. and no matter what anyone says, every loyal trekkie will go to see it. myself included.
I have never regretted my speech,
but I have frequently regretted my failure to speak.
After having just seen it, I can tell you he is still in the movie. He's not doing anything special -- he's a guest at a reception, sitting among the rest of the bridge crew. Wil Wheaton is also listed in the closing credits of the movie. There are no small parts, right?
Get off my lawn.
"You get the easy missions Jean Luc."
Sure Janeway... "Now tell me Kathryn, how many lights do you see?"
"THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!"
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
> Too bad, as is my frequent lament, the fiction section at my uni's multi-floor library could be stacked on the space left over on my desk RIGHT NOW.
Of course it could. The good parts of it, at least. It's the Internet terminal, that allows you to surf to the Gutenberg Project site and get hold of some rousing good fiction. Give it a shot. You can even download most of the works and carry them around to read off your palmtop (you do have a palmtop, right?!?).
Virg
lol.. i opened my mouth... -1 Overrated
:p)
(thing is, that's my default post score
Don't be too sad. They woefully screwed up Dune the first time out, but the remake (done over six hours, not two) did a much better job of it. Perhaps the SciFi channel will get hold of this one, too.
Virg
I still have nightmares from "The Mummy": I have this recurring dream where I'm working for the CG artist who created that retarded looking mummy.
;)
Not that you're wrong about its sequel being crappy, but come on... there are lots of better examples than the "The Mummy".
Well, at least now we know where you're coming from and ignore you
You are a tool
As the only film critic on earth who reads Slashdot regularly (not including Slashdot staffers, of course), here's my review of Nemesis.
And yes, it is worse than Solaris
Oh, and the official word from Trekkies who haven't seen the movie yet is that it is awesome and I am an idiot who is "going to hell" for panning a Star Trek movie, per my hate mail.
Cheers.
filmcritic.com - Movie reviews on Internet time
I am going to make this as spoiler free as humanly possible, but for some who take things to an extreme, turn back now.
That being said, I will go on.
The movie is 2h 10minutes long, I really liked what I'd say was the 80-90 minutes of the film. Finally a villian who could act, and one with a *mean* side. I expected the film to really drive his point home [bad pun... once you see the film], but it seems that all the good writing, acting, and SFX were *totally* blown out the airlock in the final minutes of the film. Suddenly everything was rushed, and it ended, without even any suspense. It's like they were doing a live impromptu taping, and suddenly the teleprompters stopped working, and they rolled credits.
I am normally very hard with regard to film. So often character development has given way to "crap that blows up", and in this movie, I was tricked... It started out so well, only to let me down in the end.
Sigh. At least I didn't want my money/time back
Blocklevel: Practical Information Architecture
/. users having a Star Trek discussion? I thought something this cliche only happened in the movies.
Heh.
I think you're making the same mistake as the writers did -- that is, no longer being able to understand or "feel" their own creation. They come up with the ultimate distributed mind, it has no single point of "thinking power", and chopped into pieces, it is dumb, as Hugh showed. Only when all (or a lot of) the pieces are brought together does an intelligence emerge that is larger than the sum of the parts. This is probably a very difficult concept, if you try to really grasp it (witness the century old debate over mind vs soul vs set of synapses when it comes to our own intelligence), so they probably just borked it, perhaps by accident, perhaps also because they suddenly realized that such a lifeform is so alien that they cannot effectively develop it as a character or even as a plot device.
"I'm a sucker for the hokey humanism that was the hallmark of Star Trek at its best. There was very little of that on display here."
Well, shoot! That's enough to make me go see it right there, because that's precisly the problem with Enterprise! They've turned Star Trek into the touchy-feely UN of space. That humanitarism must be why Wrath of Kahn remains the best Trek movie to this day. Sorry, but hokey humanitarism wasn't the core of the original series. It was Kirk with a phaser in one hand and a green wench in the other. Oh how far we've strayed...
On that note, lets destroy ANOTHER Enterprise for the next movie, shall we? That never gets old. *sigh*
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Rating: ROTTEN Reading: 44%
Reviews counted: 73
Fresh: 32 Rotten: 41
The franchise is going the way of James Bond.
- Health, Fitness, and Weight Loss News
You think that IV "Save the Whales" was the best Star Trek?!? Wow! You must be the most gullible, stupid, retarded pile of doggie-do that has ever graced this website. The story was completely lame, the acting was unforgivable, the humor was a disgrace. Why didn't they just do "Star Trek Meets Laverne and Shirley" if they wanted to do slapstick? Go back to your sitcoms lamer for it is you that defines the term "Moron".
I agree that the tomatometer is by no means an accurate measure of how much one will "like" a movie is, but it does give a pretty good ballpark idea of the quality of the film in terms of writing, pacing, acting, cinematography etc..
I have actually subconciously created a margin of error in my head of around ~10% on the Tomatometer score, so that a score of 50% on Rotten Tomatoes could potentially be as good as a personal 60% score to me or as bad a 40% personal score. It seems like a fairly good distribution for me. I will also add or subtract points based on the genre of the movie and also weigh some reviews heavier than others. But in general, I think a margin of 10-15% is good for me.
I consider a movie "good" if it is above at or above an 80% personal score or above, so a movie with a 70% Tomatometer could potentially be "good" to me.
I never really looked at Trek as being science fiction. It's an opportunity to comment on big-system politics and other social institutions, in a world sufficiently removed from this one that you don't have to worry about anyone protesting your network or studio.
Kirk could get away with kissing Uhura because it's just damned difficult to take something like that seriously when there's a Russian at the helm and guy with pointy ears in the near vicinity. It never would have happened on a sitcom first.
The politics thing is especially true in later seasons of DS9, when things changed from "The enemy is evil" to "The enemy is just like you, only you just don't realize that yet."
Or that episode where Bashir (how embarassed am I that I remember these character names of a show I havn't seen in years) has to deal with Dax getting a new symbiot? (Or was Dax the symbiot? Whatever, new body, different gender.) There's a like the person/like the body + like the person/like the gender + homosexual issues metaphor all rolled up into one.
There are plenty of people out there exposed to messages like that through Star Trek who would never get them any other way.
paintball
To me, Star Trek is all about learning more and more about the fictional universe they have created, but with ST10, the audience knows nothing more about the Star Trek universe when it ends than when it began.
Evil half-brothers.
Giant talking heads.
Traveling to the center of the universe.
Sounds like a typical original series episode to me...and everyone knows if you don't like TOS you're not a real trekkie.
Obviously no other trek movie will ever be able to live up Wrath of Khan standards (at least not in my lifetime), but at least Star Trek V was original and entertaining (in a cheesy late 80s kind of way).
Of the original Star Trek movies, I would have to say III and IV are the big stinkers...they were just part of a lousy hollywood excuse to bring spock back to life. And what was all that "save the whales" BS about?
As for the Next Generation movies, they all just stunk up the screen. Generations and First Contact were "acceptable" films, but these last two make want to cry they're so horrible.
Just an opinion....but seriously, I would like to know if there is a single soul out there who appreciates Final Frontier as much as I do.
William Shattner for president for 2004!!!
(too bad he's Canadian)
Absolutely. I've tried to explain this to actual Trek fans who loved the movie, and failed miserably. "But... but they don't have a queen!" Heck, Q himself said it best in TNG 2x16, "Q Who":
You can't outrun them. You can't destroy them. If you damage them the essence of what they are still remains. They regenerate and keep coming. Eventually you will weaken, your reserves will be gone. They are relentless.
And while I'm at it, from the same episode, same character, maybe the best quote of the whole series:
If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go home and crawl under you bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous. With treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid.
In my little world, the story of the Borg ended with "Descent". Nope, nothing after that. "First Contact" never bloody happened.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
While some of Shakespeare is brilliant, some is just twaddle. And recommending Chaucer? What next? Say go read Beowulf in the original prose? Read Voltaire in the original French?
Well, you haven't read Shakespeare until you've read it in the original Klingon!
There are different rules for reviewing Star Trek and Star Wars movies than there are with straight films. Each franchise has its own built in audience who will see it regardless of critics. Each one has its own sensabilities that is has developed throught the life of the previous entries. The expectations are different; easier in some ways to fulfill, hampered by precedence in others. I tend to view each of them as a new chapter in the genre. As such, "Nemesis" is not as bad as some of the Treck films ( why DOES God need a starship) nor as good as the best of them. It IS a bit long in the tooth. There are reasons that this is the last TNG adventure. Berman has gone to the well one last time and the bucket is about half full. As another episode in the series, Nemesis is OK. It was an enjoyable afternoon at the bargain matinee. There is no real new ground broken here except for one spoiler that I will not reveal. But it is a good time. In short, those of the "faithful" who want another hit of the franchise should have fun, those who are looking for great cimema should see something else.
Are there are reviews by NON-fans of the whole Trek thing? The only thing that attracts me about Nemesis is that I hear that it is about as non-Trek as you can get in the franchise. I'd like to know what someone who doesn't want to see Yet Another Trek Movie thinks. I'm sick of the preachiness of Star Trek and would like some Sci Fi that is a little bit innovative.
Does anyone remember a sci-fi short story from the 70s called "Common Denominator" or something like that? It had excellent descriptions of ship-to-ship combat in space, used rocket propelled missles, some sort of nasty beetle creatures were the enemies. I can't remember exactly what the story was called or who wrote it, but I think it would make an excellent flick. There is just something very tired and "blah" about the whole Star Trek thing that makes me crave something new...
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
But since his role was origonally much bigger, he is still paid for the deleted scenes as if they were in the movie.
As for him replying...don't count on it. you can bet Paramount knows he frequents this site...as such, he will probably play it safe and not reply to any comment/articles with TNG attached...in fact, with the wording of most contracts, it actually forbids just that...even if he's talking about something completely different in the comment...
I went and saw this movie today with our IT department and productivity team. The theatre was packed and I'll bet if you asked everyone who's ever overclocked a PC to standup there would have been there would have been a loud wooshing sound as the pocket protectors inflated then deflated on their way up.
I loved the film. It was great. Special effects were good, plotlines were good, evil character was really evil (more than Dr. Evil of Goldmember - now that's evil!).
Don't believe the critics.
I'm not an expert, but I can look stuff up
Here is Bulfinch's description of Hades (Tartarus? Elysium?), and Lowell's poetic rendition of the rivers five:
Wow.
If I remember, the Greek sense of Hades and Pluto were very different from Hell and the Devil. Unlike the Devil, Pluto was just one of the gang with the other gods, even if he was kind of the depressing uncle at the reunions. He made deals with the other gods, with Hercules, with his wife, with Orpheus, and so on. Moreover, the Elysian fields ("Heaven") were right next door.
*
Would be funny if you could beam people out of hell.
Perhaps I'm uncharitable, but I'd be doing quite the opposite.
You'd probably like David Weber. The way he handles starship design and combat is absolutely phenomenal. Trek can't even compare to the amount of thought this man puts into his fiction. And the fact that he uses different physics in every series is pretty damn cool in and of itself. I mean, that alone alters every aspect of how your ship and characters interact with the universe around them.
Don't go in looking for the Star Trek "UN of space" philosophy though. I'd almost consider him the Tom Clancy of spacial warfare, except his novels are much better written.
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*** WARNING MAYBE SPOILER, NOT SURE ***
:-)
But I went to see it, worried that it would be another disappointment, and was pleasantly surprised.
While it wasn't the ever morale, ever boring flics that you see with the TNG. It has some great moments and overall is a great sci-fi action flick... NOT a hard sci-fi or moral tale though...
The storyline is straightforward, and almost a cookie-cutter replica of ST II, TWoK. 'cept this time since there was no really good adversary from the series for picard (That is still alive) they use something just as useful... picard himself.
For some reason though, it seems that the guys who wrote the reviews, either watched only half the movie and left, watched the wrong movie, or went to the movie with the attitude that it is a bad ST movie and thus will suck. Their reviews have no content at all as to all of the good features of the movie, and the content they do have refers to what I would consider is the _only_ bad features of the movie, or I disagree that it's a bad thing... ie. Referring to the dim lighting, for God's sake, is something I've read in first year English essays by people who didn't pay any attention to the movie. ugh. Get better reviewers/reviews people.
Anywayz... I had a roommate who is definitely _not_ a trekkie that I dragged kicking and screaming to this one, and he really enjoyed it. "It's actually a pretty decent action film" is a direct quote from him, and this is the guy who gets violently mad when we watch star trek in the house... so if nothing else that should say something.
Well, personally I really liked this movie, and I recommend it as an action film to anyone who is interested. Not very deep, but exciting and fun.
~ kjrose
which says a lot. Oh I know that will make this a flame because too many here are mindless sheep that must conform to a particular party/team/color and give themselves fully to their partisonship. "You just don't like their ideals," a liberal would mindlessly parrot, yet the answer is not so far off as that. I like reading and think that more children should be inspired to read however I would NEVER support an organization that wholeheartedly and unabashedley put their full support behind actions that go against the very heart of reading and education, much less the constitution and rule of law. Everytime I see a "Proud to be a Democrat" sticker it makes me sick in the same way that I see a "Proud Nazi."
I just head some sad news on NPR. Horror/Sci-Fi author Harlan Ellison was found dead in his Sherman Oaks home this morning bleeding profusely from the rectum. There weren't any more details available. Even if you never read any of this work, there's no denying his impact on Trek fandom. Truly an American icon.
Speaking of bad-mouthing, Wheaton alleges credibly that he has been getting a continual string of abuse from The Trek Powers That Be (Rick Berman). See WW's blog for the latest jab, dated 12/9/02. It spoils the illusion of one big happy Trek family (I've heard similar stories about Harve Bennett, but it's hard to say -- character assassination seems to be a Hollywood hobby). Oh WTF I'll just quote it. (Note that this slight comes on the heels of numerous others, each petty and vindictive.)
I took a look at some Nemesis reviews today on Yahoo to see if it was any good. One summed it up amusingly well that "while every even numbered movie is usually better than the odd ones, every fifth movie is a load of crap."
Alot of others felt that this movie is running out of plot lines, and it's getting old.
Instead, I found a great alternative. You can pass on Star Trek and go find Equilibrium. It doesn't look like it's in wide release, which is odd because it looks like it cost alot to produce. It has the best member ratings of any movies on Yahoo's current board (4.5 out of 5 - average is 3.1), and even better ratings than the sleeper hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding (3.8). The plot (it has one!) goes into a "what if" futuristic scenario about a world without feeling (reminds me of Gattaca), but has great action shots reminiscent of the Matrix that rivals John Wu's bullet-flying glass-breaking work. The critics don't like it much, perhaps too much action for them, but it's definately not a run-of-the-mill shoot-em-up.
-ez
Why was the kid so pissed at earth anyway? It would seem he should be pissed at Romulus for sending him to work in the mines and such... What the hell did Earth ever do to him?
What was his hangup at being touched by a female?
Why did the green guys follow him when he was a prickly scrawny human and they were big and bad?
They were bred for war. Why were they such bad shots?
Why couldnt warf hit the barn?
That seemed to be some pretty decent method for tracking andriod parts from pretty far away. Why couldnt have that been used before to track Data?
Why was Warf whinging like a little girl at his hange over? Why wasnt he busy being pissed at Riker for taking his woman?
What the hell is it to Picard if his officers dont want to get publicly naked, at what could only be described as a personal event? (maybe he has some other issues....)
Why all the anoying closup shots?
When Troy tells Picard she has 'been violated' why didnt he look with suspision to Riker like anyone else would have reacted?
Picard tried to kill everyone with self destruct becouse the situation just got really bad, they all live. Instead of having a party and celebrating life, they go on about a peice of hardware(Data) that was lost.
These people just are not normal damnit! They all need help.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Psychotic Romulan Vampires From Beyond The Neutral Zone!
This was even before it came out. Seems fitting.
Moekandu
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
BAH (Score:-1, Interesting)
;)
by Romothecus (553103) on Fri Dec 13, '02 11:46 AM (#4881307)
I feel there are some inherent problems with movie criticism. The problem is that most people who review things are the very people who seem to have the most hang ups about that thing. This makes their reviews worthless to the rest of us who simply enjoy watching movies or reading books. So Mr. Moviereviewerman, you think Nemesis had a "derivative, punch-the-keyboard plot." You think it was "crude, but occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, merely for its sheer ridiculousness." You think that a movie like Nemesis is just too far below your standards. Well I bet you twenty bucks you have a painting in your house that you bought because it matched your couch, how pedestrian.
[ Reply to This ]
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=1, Interesting=2, Funny=1, Overrated=5, Underrated=1, Total=12.
------------------
Yeah, but can Gabe snag 12 mod points in one post, and *still* get a '-1 Interesting' ?
I think not.
(Whether the critics think it sucks or not, I'll still see the movie - rental or theatre.)
Ok, so he might simply be a little pissed. You have to realize, this is a JOB for him...and if your boss wanted to treat you like that, would you want to be talking about it all the time? I highly doubt it...
And, in case you didn't remember, there was specifically an incident involving the ending of Generations...apparently Jonathan Frakes let slip about Shatner's death scene and they ended up reshooting the ending because of it...
AC, go watch the movie, and then come back with your head hung in shame.
You P'Tak!
And no I didn't look up that Klingon, so if the spelling is wrong, I don't want to hear about it!
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Please.
Your points to counter his seem resigned to accept bad movie physics
What "bad physics"? I thought I explained my viewpoint on that.
Star Trek has a serious case of the NASA's. It's still mainly stuck in the 60's
Trek has its own universe, just like westerns always have cowboys, indians, and guns. You don't "update" westerns. Sure, they can make minor changes here and there in Trek, but I see no major problems. Most of the "problems" I see are to add theatrical appeal, and not due to out-modded thinking. If they "fixed" such, ratings would drop. Like somebody said, if you want hard-core sci-fi that tries to be super-accurate, then read a book from the top sci-fi authors. Criticism is easy. Presenting good alternatives is where the talent lies.
Table-ized A.I.
or not...
W00T! I married the geekiest guy I know (/.er #3115) on July 19, 2003! Who says nerds never find love?
[Title: Star Trek XXXIV: So Very Tired]
Sulu: Sir, Klingons off the starboard bow!
Kirk: [sigh] Again with the Klingons. Scotty, shields to full power.
Scotty: It's no good sir! I cannot reach the control panel!
Just got back - Have to admit it was better than most; effects were awesome, tho the crew is fast aging.
Not sure what guy at post was bitching about - family/friends that saw it all said it was pretty good.
I thought the movie got better as time went on, and the only uncomfortable spot was Data singing.
How bloody long have we been waiting for Picard to "drive" home his point?
This movie delivers in a big way like no other has.
I give it 9.5/10 for Trek, and 9/10 for any movie.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I just got back from the movie, (ideed wallowing in nerdiness by composing this review in bed, on a Dual Booting Sony Viao, running Linux over a wireless connection, through an IPTABLES based router, across another connection, and through my Office T1 line.)
Do not believe the bad hype. The movie has a good bit of soul. Indeed, it does ask some very real questions about humanity.
You feel for the villian at times.
The story tellers lead you down dark corridors. When you don't think the protagonists are going to be able to get out they find a way through brainpower and force of will. The director really keeps you in the dark about where the story is going. When you arrive, you feel like you have been on a rollar coaster.
There is a shock at the end. I can't tell you what, but you will not see it coming, I assure you.
Now, go out, give Paramount some of your hard earned dollars, and come back to tell me how I got it all wrong.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Exiting the movie theater:
Wow! I can't believe Picard is Data's father!*
You rock Star Trek! But you ain't getting any more money till the DVD is out [or maybe in the cheap theatre]. Well... Maybe one more time at a $10 theater.
*Simpsons joke for the uninformed.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Don't listen to all of the negative press... I'm a real fan of TNG, I've seen each of the movies, and gosh darning Jim, this ISN'T the worst of the bunch. That's just sillyness. I went out to see it tonight and I was pleasantly suprised. I had a good time -- there were lots of fun moments. This movie isn't a "great movie", but that's not what anyone would expect out of Star Trek... so go see it and have a good time.
Hey, Shatner's death was the only thing I liked about ST:V!!! I wouldn't paid $6 to see that, except it wasn't painful enough. Worse, it wasn't Shatner's death but Captain Kirk's. I don't remember the incident, but there was nothing anyone could do to ruin Generations, anymore than you can ruin an omelette after it's burned to a crisp.
Now, I imagine some authoritative-sound AC could post Wil's approximate salary and it would never be traced back to Wil. Right Wil?
I seriously don't care how much he made, it's just interesting to speculate. And I would like to see what a typical contract looks like, what odd clauses it might have, like the stuff they post on The Smoking Gun.
I just got back from seeing Nemesis with a couple of friends. It's just like what I was expecting and hoping to see. A TNG 2 parter, all in one shot, with a big effects budget.
I really enjoyed my 2 hours living in the world I grew up in. Watching the explosions, the chases, and the coolest looking ship since I first saw that Borg Cube.
Go see it, have some laughs, cringe at the destruction, and slowly smile in the end.
Pick it to pieces if you want, tell others how cliche` and awful it was. Or, simply enjoy it for what it is. I know I did.
I just went and saw Nemesis. And besides the obvious take off of several other Trek films, this was a pretty good movie. It was up there with First Contact. However, it cannot touch The Wrath of Kahn, still the best Trek ever
-=You might be a geek if your computer is worth more than your car=-
Was anybody else thinking that the blaster battle when Data and Picard escape was straight out of Star Wars?
And then the part on the Enterprise, Worf == Chewie.
All in all it was a cool movie, but it did have some rather lame plot devices in it.
Oh, and way to kill off a character and bring them right back. That's just dumb.
This movie was simply a re-make of the Wraith of Khan. Data sacrifices the good of the few for the many, but his consciousness isn't completely "lost".
You bring shame on both Trek and The Simpsons!
Go to the corner!
I've very rarely been one to agree with anyone critiquing a movie, and this is no different. I enjoyed the film, and though it was rather good by Star Trek standards.
The only thing that didn't make sense to me was the new Data double, they seemed awfully amazed that there was another android of similar build and looked just like Data. It was like they had completely forgotten their previous interactions with Lore, the previous Data twin we know from the TV series. After confronting Lore a couple times they shouldn't have been that suprised to find an android that looks like Data. (what happened to Lore last we saw him? I can't even remember now)
I liked this movie better when it was called 'The Wrath of Khan' in 1982.
- Shooter
You should read Hamlet in the original Klingon.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Always keep a functional Data backup.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Sorry about taking this discussion offtopic a bit, but one part of your comment stuck out like a sore thumb...
unexplainable things (IE: Q)
[humor]
I think you might have suggested a reason as to why Internet Explorer is such a shit browser and always misbehaves!! If Q is involved it explains it all... maybe Bill himself is a member of the continuum, that's why he gotten away with corprate murder in the face of such corporate investigations as of late. All he has to do is click his finger (along with a flash of white light) and everything goes his way...
Just a pity one (or more) of his wishes backfired.
[/humor]
I just saw the movie and:
WTF are you guys and all the critics complaining about? This film was much better then Insurrection (which I hated) and almost on par with First Contact which was enjoyable. It didn't have some overly sentimental theme (always ruins Star Trek) and the plot was interesting. The space battles were great and the Scimtar was baaaaaddd ass. where can i get me one of these??
I wish I had mod points today to mod this up. I'v been a long time fan of Star Trek -- which almost didn't happen since my first experience was "Spock's Brain". I've enjoyed TNG and the orginal series, LOVED DS9, and think that Voyager and Enterprise are OK. Overall, I've liked most of the movies with the exception of 5.
While I will likely be flamed for this, I also enjoyed Insurrection. After seeing Nemesis tonight, I have changed my choice of top TNG movie which used to be First Contact -- in my opinion, Nemesis is even better than FC -- there's decent character development, great action, a believeable villain, a decent story and just enough comedy that it didn't go overboard. I really felt like we *knew* the characters.
My wife, a casual watcher of the series, also enjoyed it very much just for the "movie" quality and when not being held against other Star Trek movies.
I read a number of extremely negative reviews before I saw the movie as well as a few positive ones. I didn't see a lot of what the negative reviewers were complaining about. In my opinion, the movie was well worth my $8 and I would gladly fork over another 8 to see it again.
I just saw this and as a long time Trek fan (30+ years) all I can say is that is easily the best Star Trek movie ever made. The action was tense and had just enough comic relief. The story itself was classic Trek. They had a few inside jokes and references to old episodes in both the original series and the next generations. The ending harkened back to "Wrath of Khan" which was a really nice touch. Well done!
When the gothic font reared its head, I feared I had been cast into Diablo: The Movie somehow. Then the reversed letters and it was all about Toys 'R Us. It just went steadily downhill from there.
Rick Berman must be found and shot.
Why bother.
You know, after having seen it, I would have to agree. I won't give away the movie, but I will say that I felt decidedly let down. I was promised this "fan flick," and instead I got a film that left me disappointed, as a fan. I would think that others feel the same way. You finally see this new slick ship in depth, and the story is about Picard almost exclusively.
I'm a Worf fan, and I'd say that Janeway's cameo had more lines to it than he had in the movie. And Dr. Crusher had less than that. It was an effect thriller, but Star Trek has always been about story. This one was about action. It tried to emulate Khan, and managed to get the crazy badguy, though distill all of what made Khan great out of him. It managed to get the major conflict, but it was too busy pulling in Matrix-esk computer interfaces and Mad Max chase scenes to capture what trek is.
There were little touches, like the humor of small things, and seeing things tie together (like the new shuttle, minus the lame buggy, that paid homage to the Delta Flyer). It was nice to see interfaces actually doing something, instead of being a plastic overlay on a lighted panel. I liked how there was a Tablet PC on Picards desk, and how they made the ship look more real.
I only pray that the whole Generation didn't go out like this. They left it open for other movies, but left it so main characters could leave and not be there.
And on a side note... I don't believe that Federation ships are tactically inferior to Klingon and Romulan ships, and the Enterprise is the flagship of the fleet. Which is odd, since there were no flag officers on the ship, but that's another story. It was more a matter of tactics. The Federation ships could pound Birds of Prey, and were supposed to be an even match to Warbirds. Later ships were topped by Federation ships like the E. But that's more Trek-trivia and less movie review.
What I can say is that as a trek fan, it is still worth seeing. However, I'd say it might be worth risking the sunlight and actually catch a matinee for this one, because I myself would rather have watched Generations or Insurrection over this one.
why did they use such a crappy movie to kill off Data? Why?
The dichotomy really is that TOS, TOS, and Voyager are all PLOT-driven. DS9 is CHARACTER-driven. This makes them appeal to completely different audiences, both of whom generally think that the other's guy's taste sucks.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
While I think First Contact was the best of the Next Generation series of movies, it will never hold a candle to II and IV, in my mind.
The Borg were something unique, but they as they were, they would never be something great in the movies. They were the best in the arching story lines, before things like the Queen messed them up. While she was a crappy villian, Voyager restored a little bit of faith in it for me. It made her look like a main node for the collective, and she could hear, see, and do anything through them.
I know it seems kind of lame, but sometimes they needed to talk to explain things, so that we weren't just assuming, oh, that collective stuff again. What I wanted to know is why they didn't just find the frequency, and start playing Barry Manalow or something like that over the collective mind.
And you never know with the Borg, they could need companionship because they found a way to get better with it. Or found a way to make sex a weapon. That could explain the nipples. Of course, she was slimy, green, and all that, but what can you do?
I say make a new Next Gen movie, get Picard, bring in Checothe (sp?) and Seven, and it's all good. Then make the Borg not suck, or even give us the Dominion. Or something. I just don't want the series to end on this note...
Seriously, I liked it better when it was called Wrath of Khan.
I saw it tonight, and I couldn't agree more with the critics...At best, the story was about as good as a mediocre tv episode. It's too bad really, you'd think after 4 years since the last movie they'd have more developed material to put into the story.
Review: Where we've gone before: 10th "Star Trek" film looks a lot like the second one
What makes a 'Trek' fly? Just beam up a good bad guy
On Screen: Trekkies know how to hit the escape button
Time to retire the Enterprise?
Trevor
You wicked evil-doers. How dare you criticize ST:Nemesis! Just because it doesn't have a hot bitch in it doesn't mean it's a bad movie! :-/
This is a fun discussion, but you've clearly got the upper hand. I'm not too pedantic about language because I don't know that much about it. I know the basics such as nouns and verbs, subjects and predicates, but when it comes to any advanced elements of grammar or syntax, I'm lost. (I just learned the proper spelling for `grammar' a few months ago. It looks really bad to misspell that word.)
Thanks for that Calvin and Hobbes link, that's a cool site. I like Calvin's sentence because it shows a certain playfullness that's very endearing to me. To turn the noun "verb" into a verb in a sentence about verbing is truly beautiful (IMHO). You're probably already familiar with The Jargon File, but just in case you're not, you may want to check out this, this, this, this, and this. (I'm going for an award for Most Gratuitous Linking To ESR's Site. :-) )
As much as I like word play, I'm not always very good at it. I can't tell if your quotation at the end is simply saying, "apathy is bad", or if it's grammatically incorrect in some amusing and subtle way.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
When I was doing bits and extras (1985-1990ish) the going rate for non-union extras was $35/day plus one meal; overtime pay was 1.5x for over 8 hours, 2x for over 10 hours (I believe that's per CA state law, tho it was often violated by not giving us the 2x rate after 10 hrs). Some shows paid only $30 base. I'd expect the pay scale has only gone up in parallel with minimum wage. Studios are nothing if not cheap.
:) but back then, IIRC if you got two speaking roles (then defined as 5 or more words) you had to join SAG before you could work a union show again. SAG/SEG members were not supposed to do nonunion extras work, but it happened all the time anyway, because it was the most-steady work. If you watch the extras carefully, you'll see the same faces over and over! The regular crowd is really quite small -- when I was in the business, I'd guess fewer than 500 who worked all the time, and maybe 200 who did extras for a living. Most newbies didn't stick more than a few months. It's not hard work, but the long hours are draining.
At the time, union extras (maybe 10% of the available work as it depends on the show being contracted that way, or being made in a union-only zone like NYC) made $100/day +OT. At the time, SAG minimum was $700/day +OT. SAG has since eaten SEG (the extras union) and I've heard the union extras pay scale has since gone up relative to SAG scale, but I don't have numbers handy.
Don't know what the rules are now (I'm "retired" so I don't care
BTW, the added cost of NYC being a union-only region is why many shows that are set in NYC and nominally "shot on location" are actually shot in Pittsburgh, outside of the union-required radius. Studios will do anything to carve a few bucks off the bottom of the pile, and extras budget is typically cash (no accounting required, so much of it disappears into various pockets). Universal was so bad about this, that I got to where I would not knowingly work a Universal shoot.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
--spoiler alert--
not sure what to make of it, really. initially, when i left the theater, i was rather angry at how they handled data's death - i.e., not at all - he gets a quick scene where the bridge crew each drinks a glass of wine in his memory, riker recounts the first time he saw data in the holodeck in 'encounter at farpoint,' and troi starts to cry - about 2 minuts worth, at most. data was easily my favourite character in the series, and i'd like to see more of a farewell given to him (hell, i'd rather see him not die, but...).
but now to the rest of the film...
the villain - believeable, mean and cruel. one of the rare bad guys that i didn't even feel the least bit of sympathy for. in the end, when picard beams aboard shinzon's ship at the end, i actually said out loud, with glee, "shoot him, picard!" shinzon - a clone of picard - tried to be the center of the writers over-obvious attempt to attack the nature vs. nurture debate - but he ended up just being evil, and not much else.
most of the cast was pretty well ignored. data and picard were in the spotlight. riker and troi got their little attention for the marriage thing, but that's about it. most of that focused on picard's speech, anyway. worf had about 5 lines in the entire movie, geordi not many more, and i hardly remember crusher being there most of the time. the short appearance made by guinan was nice - i felt she always brought a lot to the series. a shame that wesley's scene(s) was(were) cut. picard was the true focus of the movie, with maybe half as much attention devoted to data. michael dorn, i believe, said in an interview that the movie might have been called "star trek: narcissist," and i wholeheartedly agree.
but it feels like the writers were trying too hard to come up with new and novel ways for the characters to act. picard ignores riker's usual plea that his captain not go on away missions, just because picard wants to try out their new dune-buggy-like vehicle, driving around like a maniac. jumping the thing off a cliff and into the back of the hovering shuttlecraft was a bit much. picard's wedding speech - perfectly plausible things for him to say, i think, but the delivery was just... off. some of data's facial expressions to me just seemed out of character for him as well - looking angry at times when it didn't seem appropriate. sex scene with riker and troi - quite unnecessary.
oh, and i fail to see how the enterprise lasted more than a few seconds against shinzon's ship. the facts:
1) shinzon's ship can fire while cloaked
2) shinzon's ship has over 40 disruptor cannons
3) shinzon's ship has over 20 torpedo launchers
4) shinzon's ship has double-strength shields
seems to me like the enterprise should have been easily and quickly disabled. even considering mini-picard wanted picard alive.
and why, oh why, did they get a director who didn't know shit about star trek? whatever happened to nicholas meyer? i'd love to see another trek film under his direction. or jonathan frakes? he did a great job with first contact, and, while insurrection surely was nowhere near as good, i was pleased with it. why bring in a complete newbie to direct what may be the last of the TNG movies (and may be the last of the trek movies, period)? why?!
the parallels to other films were just ridiculous. after the final battle, the enterprise trying to pull away, not fast enough, saved at the last minute (st II, anyone?). the ultimate sacrifice by a crew member - the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one (st II, again). god, in the ending scenes, as the camera panned over the spacedock holding the under-repairs enterprise, they even used an excerpt from the exact same musical sequence from star trek: the motion picture, the scene where they pan over the enterprise for the first time! (yes, i'm revealing a bit too much of my geek-hood on this one). then of course data transferring his memories to his simple-minded prototype brother - somewhat reminiscent of spock's katra transfer to mccoy... as well as blatantly obvious foreshadowing ("oh great, so data really _is_ going to die?!"). the nurture vs. nature component was way too glaring and obvious, both in picard vs. shinzon and data vs. b-4, his earlier model.
so i don't know. getting rid of data really pissed me off, but i suppose i'd see it again. i guess we have to get used to the fact that movie-trek just can't compare to tv-trek. at least not anymore. hollywood wants money, they don't want to fit the (small) niche of hardcore trek fans. and you can devote an entire episode of a tv series here and there to one particular character, and that strengthens the series, and the character. you can't do that in a movie. newcomers or even casual trek observers would think very little of worf, crusher, geordi, even troi and riker. they'd see a seemingly troubled and indecisve picard and an insightful introspective data, and not much more (with regards to the core cast, anyway). the only character i was really happy with was data. not to say patrick stewart did not give a brilliant performance - as always he did not disappoint, but i don't think picard was written all that well in this one. stewart probably played picard better than the script deserved.
and if they try to bring data back by having something magically click in b-4's head with data's old memories, i will kill them.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
(These aren't huge spoilers, but be warned...)
It looked to me like the Enterprise was on its way to Riker/Troi's second wedding when the whole thing got interrupted; Worf, who was there as a wedding guest, had no chance to leave. Why Riker and Troi get to use the Enterprise as their own little wedding taxi is a subject for debate though...
DS9 rocks! It was the best!
Nemesis was way better than any of the critics let on. My only bitch is we're left with a retarded Data.
Last night I went to see the movie with a few friends. I will not spoil, but it did have some scenes that could have been better written. The acting was as usual very well done. The opening was changed to something less thatn spectacular, but thankfully it does not sett he toe of the movie. All in all, I think everyone should go to see it because it was for the most part very well done.
As for the critics... FSCK them! It's been my experience that they always give bad reviews to what turns out to be very good movies. Critics are just ppl who have made a living boasting their opinion. As we all know opinions are like anal sphincters... everyone has one, and they all smell. It's just a matter of who you ask.
The best part of seeing Nemesis was not the dune buggy chase. If 600 years from now that is the best design they can come up with it is very sad. Why use energy weapons when they always miss? Why jump into the shuttle when they just had to se it down 20 ft closer? I could go on about all the scenes but many did not make sense. I have come to the conclusion that the best thing I seen last night was the previews for Dare Devil, 25th hour and National Security. They look good but then again they always put the good parts in the previews. I guess thats why the previews are the best part.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
A SAG/Star Trek story I think I read in Koenig's book -- the scene in ST IV where Chekov is asking passers-by "Excuse me, where are the nukelear wessels?" originally called for him to stop real strangers. I guess they hoped no one would say anything. But the woman with the digs who replies, "I think they're over in Alameda" did, and turned out to be an aspiring actress. Nimoy loved it, so they did some sort of complicated hustle to get her into SAG after the fact.
Nimoy:
There's also a tale at http://mario.lapam.mo.it/films/st4.htm about how a child actor botched a scene and robbed Takei of his one big scene.
The movie was quite good. After reading so many bad reviews, I was quite worried that it would suck. I enjoyed every minute of it.
I'm not sure what people have built up in their heads about Star Trek, and maybe this didn't break huge new ground in some directions, but it was good! The acting was good. They didn't give Gates too many lines, which was good. We examined the Romulans in more detail, which was great!
There were a couple flaws, but this movie was by far better than people are saying. It ranks above The Search for Spock, The Final Frontier, Generations, and Insurrection, in my book. I'd rank it with The Undiscovered Country. It's not as good as The Voyage Home or First Contact, but it's not so very far behind.
I have NO clue why the critics have come down on the movie like they have. It was excellent.
You, sir, are in dire need of a LIFE. Stop reloading Slashdot for six minutes, walk outside, and re-acquaint yourself with sunlight.
I could have sworn this movie was an Austin Powers parody. I kept expecting Shinzan or whatever his name was to demand one million space-bucks with his pinky. He even had the little scar.
Aside from that, I rather liked the movie. I have huge problems with plot holes, which Star Trek is generally full of no matter what you do. Ebert's right, Star Trek has problems--but that doesn't make this movie bad, in my opinion.
I was very impressed with Data's role in the movie. Including the sad ending. Nearly broke my heart.
And the bottom line is: I was pleased with it because it was...entertaining.
ST has never been the height of story telling. One of the other posts got it right: it's like junk food. I've never watched ST in any interation to gleen some insight into myself, humanity or the dog for that matter. I've watched it because I wanted to be entertained. I like the fights, the ships, the special effects, the characters, et al.
Like anything else, it's been a mixed bag. Occasionally the writers would hit on all cylinders and I would come away thinking, "Shit, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout." Yesterdays Enterprise and First Contact come to mind. There have been times I have thought "Jesus, Joseph and Mary! What the hell were those clowns thinking?" This would sum up most of the first season of TNG. But most times ST fell into the "That was pretty good. What's on now?" category. Even so, most of ST's average episodes are better than 95% of the stuff on TV anyway.
With that said, I'd give Nemesis a 3.75 out of 5. It's above Insurrection and Generations but not quite up to First Contact. I think Logan did a damn good job with what he had to work with (15 years of continuity can be a bit constraining) and acheived a good balance between the action and the character developement. The little tips of the hat to previous Treks in all forms were nice too (Tholian and Dominion War references, USS Archer listed on stellar map, Janeway character making a cameo). However, they should have killed Data outright (saw the "We better have a replacement in case there is a ST-11" plot turn coming two sectors away) and they could have revealed a bit less of the Shinzan's plot so early in the movie.
I recommend going to see it...if you want to be entertained. If you want hard sci-fi, probing questions and insight into what makes the world spin, go see an arthouse flick or read a book. Better yet quit yer bitching, get off your lazy ass and write one yourself.
In the final episode of TNG, was the future Picard talking to Data or mistakingly refering to a mature "B4" as Data?
"All Good Things..." hit the big reset button at the end of the episode; none of it actually happened. This is established explicitly in the final scene--before Picard enters, Geordi asks if Picard hasn't corrupted the timeline by telling them what he saw in the future, and someone replies that the timeline would be different anyway because the anomaly had been retroactively eliminated.
1. The 42 minute time limit of each episode. They would come up with all these interesting, complex situations and yet they'd have neat solutions cuz they'd run out of time.
2. Nothing ever changes. Everything at the end of the episode is the same as it was at the begining. You know Picard really isn't going to take up that research job on earth, that person that just fell in love with one of the charachters is either going to get left behind or killed.
3. Picard is a pansy. Every single confrentation would revolve around the Enterprise getting the crap kicked out of it because Picard would be busy hailing the enemy to talk some sense into them. And how many frikkin times to the Romulans have to cross the Neutral Zone before the Feds get off their asses and make some cloaking devices?
Worse than Generations or Insurrection or (jeez) Final Frontier (????); no F-in way!
Commented on how bad the MUSIC in this is? I mean is it just me, or was this music the WORST music in a movie EVER?
I tell you, I'm no music critic... I don't go to movies and listend for how good the music is. No... This music was just SO BAD, that I'm watching it, and suddenly I'm thinking... what the hell is that awful racket?
What were they trying to do, mix some kind of bad techno future music with the traditional orchestra? Because it didn't even come CLOSE to working well. In fact the techno instruments sounded all flat compared to the srings and stuff, like they didn't have any reverb or something.
If the music is bad enough that I would even notice it when I've never paid any attention to movie music in my life, I don't know how it managed to stay in this film until it's release unless all the production people are TONE DEAF.
Oh and also nobody's commented on how it made NO sense whatsoever for there to be a copy of data sitting on that planet. Supposedly the bad guy placed him there as a lure. Right. Okay. Well two questions then. How did HE get ahold of this copy of data, and who the hell were those freaking star wars guys on the planet chasing after the crew and why didn't they want them to get the android?
Perhaps we'll find out in the deleted scenes on the DVD.
Law & Order is shot entirely in NYC. They have a studio over by the Chelsea Piers, but even many of the interiors are shot on location, resulting in chronic parking headaches. NYPD Blue does their exteriors in NYC, but I believe they shoot most of the interiors in LA. I don't know why everyone talks like a Chicago meatpacker circa 1950, though.
Yeah, some NYC friends saw Stone and "The Old Man" (as we knew the first DA) lunching in MHT. Seemed kind of funny somehow; such sight sare familiar in Hollywood, where we used to having everything come from.
:)
Speaking of which, I visited Korea the last time I was in So. Cal. -- the Malibu ranch, now a park, where M*A*S*H is taped.
Law & Order causes parking headaches in NYC? As opposed to "normal" parking there?
Sorry Anonymous troll, you aren't going to get me to divulge any personal info just to prove that I don't live oniline. Nice try though, but the term "get a life" was pretty played out 5 years ago, and it isn't old enough to be cool again. You'll have to live vicariously through someone else.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
it's a good thing they backed up their Data
This movie did trek space battles right. The Enterprise is supposed to be a very advanced ship with extremely powerful shielding. Previous movies and episodes (with the galaxy class D) where we see it being disabled in one to three shots are rediculious. Those battles were caused by the writers/directors deciding that most of the battle isn't important, so they skip everything except one or two key shots.
The first volley from Shinzon's ship was something on the order of 20 photon torpedoes all targeted against the warp core, followed by disruptors against shield generators et al. Someone earlier was complaining that the Enterprises's shields were too weak - they aren't meant to stop 100% of all damage until they drop. All in all, those shields were awesome.
The length of the battle allowed tactics like maneuvering the Enterprise so that romulan allies covered their weak shields, using phasers as sensors to find Shinzon's ship, and managing _several_ key moments instead of one cheeze-whiz shot like we got in every Next Gen movie to date.
1) Generations. "Use gee-whiz tech to cloak them and kill them with one shot"
2) First Contact. "Let's boil this several-day-long space battle into one big volley and take up no more than 3 minutes of screen time with the whole scene.
3) Insurrection. "Dump the warp core to stop the, um...subspace shockwave -- ya...and magically win the battle by exploding some gasses."
4) Nemesis. "Find the enemy with phaser spreads, unload 200 photon torpedos and 50 quantum torpedos on it. Manage shield facings to maximise survivability, fight off boarding parties in the middle of the battle, protect the warp core, and when all options are exhausted, ram the enemy."
There was a hell of a lot more thought put into the battle in Nemesis than in any other Trek, even Wrath of Kahn.
The Wrath of Kahn boiled down to 3 key decisions. Kahn surprising the Enterprise, the Enterprise dropping Reliant's shields, and Kirk ordering the ship to run to the nebula. ST2 was a GREAT movie, but Nemesis is right there with it. Because the battle was shown in its complete form, and didn't rely on cheese-moments, I put it above all other Trek movies. Call me stupid if you want to.
Picard tried to come up with special tactics to take down Shinzon. His ship simply wasn't capable of pulling it off. He wanted to concentrate fire, he wanted to self destruct (they had escape pods still), so screw it, he rammed.
The movie is not perfect. Here are the flaws I have found:
The romulans can find the Enterprise but the Federation battle group either doesn't try, or cant. With a Federation ship in a known hostile environment, they would have crossed the zone to save their flagship when it didn't emerge from the nebula on time.
The Enterprise did not launch probes to get a message to the fleet.
Geordi should have said "first volley" instead of "first shot" because apparantly it inflames people who think they have elite sci-fi minds.
With the ship taking a total pasting, the bridge crew on the enterprise should have retreated from the bridge after the hull was blown off. A decent shot to the power system would have sent them all flying out into space.
However: The Enterprise did not move away from Shinzon's ship like Kirk did in Wrath of Kahn. Picard said to try to put some distance between them, but the ship had no power. They never moved an extra inch.
They made a new data so Brent Spiner can be in any future movies. He doesn't have to be exactly like data or even follow the same themes as data. It's a blank slate for writers to work with.
And people looking for moral guidance or enlightenment from Trek need to get real. Get your enlightenment from your own mind, and use what examples you run into in your life. Some stories can provide examples for you to consider, which Nemesis did (what constitutes an identity, etc) but Trek is not an adult version of Sesame Street. Figure things out for yourself and watch it for the conflict factor.
Just flashed on this:
scene: Geek typing on computer...Looks a bit puzzled, pauses.
off camera: STOP!
Catherine Zeta Jones walks on screen.
CZJ: This poor slashdotter is trying to type a reply to a Star Trek post but can't remember the spelling of a Klingon weapon. Perhaps a call to the Klingon Language Institute will help...
Slaps phone in hand of slashdotter...
KLI: Greetings human worm. Asking questions is a sign of weakness!
(sorry, bad association with an even worse commercial)
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Just saw it. It stank. I farted to clear the air.
> I thought the acting was abismal in the second one.
Well, it was second rate, perhaps (William Hurt actually did a good job keeping Leto close to the book) but it was not worse than (and in some places was much better than) the first film, with the notable exception that nobody could play Feyd better than Sting. Add the better production, and the fact that the extra time meant that one didn't need to know the book deeply to understand what the hell was going on, and you can get to "much better job" with only a little kindness.
Virg
Churchill had to allow Coventry to be bombed by the Germans while knowing about it in advance in order to not reveal that they'd cracked the German code.
Captain Sheridan mentioned this exact same story on Babylon 5, when he had to decide whether to reveal the existence of the Shadows or not. He basically made the same decision, and sacrificed millions of lives so they would have more time to prepare for the upcoming war. And Sisko did what, killed one Romulan? Oh no!
1. How did the Remen slaves find the time/resources to develop a super-secret weapon and build one bad-ass ship? Weren't they busy mining and being thrown against the Jem'Hadar? This is a big one. I know they referenced it with one line of dialogue, but it didn't make much sense to me. 2. What happened to the Tal Shiar? Are we supposed to believe that if the military stages a coup over the civilian government that the intelligence agencies AREN'T going to get involved? The Obsidian Order sure as heck would have if the Central Command took over. 3. Why does the Viceroy have healing and/or telepathic powers? Doesn't it seems like these Remen special abilities would be of some use to someone? Or do the Romulans just say, "Well, they've got super-human powers, but they're ugly, so into the holes with them!"
DOOD! You are too kewl!!!! You quoted Klingon! Wow! Do you know that it's not really a language? You are such a loser!!!! I hope you don't dribble too much on your Star Trek jammies!!!
[laughing] Well, I used to live in the deep south, according to the Dukes of Hazzard :) The track they used for the rural car chases was just a few miles up the road, in Soledad Canyon. One of the drivers must have lived in Canyon Country as one of the several "General Lee" vehicles was routinely parked right down the street.
:)
.. http://home.earthlink.net/~rividh/asylum/rogue.htm :)
Since I've already driven off the road, silly car story: all action shows use a certain amount of stock footage. Knight Rider used the same fender shot til I was sick of it, not to mention you could see a broken piece of chrome flapping in the wind. So I wrote 'em about it, pointing out the damaged part. Funny how it was never used again.
BTW, for a laugh, see me "hijacking" Airwolf
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I'd have preferred SAG wages too :) And MTM Productions still owes me $18 -- got stiffed on OT the last time I worked one of their shows. With a lot of studios, it was a constant battle to get what you were fairly owed. Most extras were afraid to say anything, lest they "never work again". Not me, I'd speak up -- and miraculously, sometimes that got conditions changed for the better. And guess what -- it never once cost me a job.
I haven't seen Law & Order in a long time (can't get the NBC channel over the air due to crap reception) tho it kinda lost me when Michael Moriarty left anyway. Still, it was unique in its day, and had great atmosphere.
Gagme and Rapeme.. er, Cagney and Lacey (as renamed by its crew!) was shot in L.A., exteriors mostly in Koreatown and interiors in the world's most beat-up old studio, kinda south of Burbank. Good show to work, if you ignored the stars.
The "complicated hustle" you mention is actually the way it's usually done. I forget the slang term for when it happens on the set, but every so often a director decides they want THAT face to say something, and congrats, you just bought a SAG membership, with any non-scale pay terms negotiated on the spot. Nimoy is a good director, and I'm sure he exercised sound judgment in ST-IV's case.
Normally productions don't use "real people" in street scenes, because it causes so many retakes and because of legal liability issues. Watch talking-head-on-the-sidewalk scenes, and you'll often see the same troupe of extras trudging back and forth several times, maybe having changed hat or coat at one end of the trip so they look different.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I usually find that most movies the mainstream critics pan I actually like... with a few exceptions, like those films that are just so poor that almost *everyone* pans them. I've found that most of the films the critics give five stars are usually some sort of arty-farty "thinkers" movie, and some of those sorts can be quite good, don't get me wrong... but sometimes I just want a nice, sit back in your seat, and watch some starships blow-up movie.
I haven't seen Nemesis yet (not out down under until the new year), so I'll reserve judgement until then... but I think if most folks are saying it's "better than Insurrection, but not as good as First Contact" I should like it. But I have Two Towers to watch first, and I know that I'm going to enjoy that. ;)
To the poster who thought that Pitch Black was nothing more than a horror movie: it combines two classic sf stories, "Nightfall" and "Alien." Both are effectively hard SF. "Nightfall" is the classic hard SF story - just imagine a planet in a multiple-star system that only has night every once in a great while (a few millennia in the story; much less time in Pitch Black). What would night mean to the inhabitants? "Alien" is based upon the simple premise of an alien predator which incubates inside a human host. A few incongruities, certainly, but pretty hard SF really (the main problems are explaining how the alien can get that big with the little amount of food it has had a chance to eat, and with how fast exactly the Nostromo travels - while they have sleep compartments, one gets the idea that normally they traveled rather faster than c).
Some don't like Tarkovsy's film. Those who say they don't like it often point to the relative lack of special effects. This tells me that they probably like action flicks rather than more avant garde films. Lem's dislike of it is based on his own (understandable and forgivable) prejudice in favor of his own story against the changes Tarkovsky made (and Lem's story is better than the film, though not by much); most other people's prejudices are based upon their unwillingness to sit through a film in subtitles with no real special effects and with rather auterish camera work. It is in its way as important a film to SF as 2001. And if you don't like 2001, then I can't help you.
Now to k-0s question:
OK, here are some things I never understood, maybe you can answer them for me. What did the creatures eat/drink for seven years?
Two possibilities: 1. they hibernated, living off the food they ate the last eclipse; 2. there's a whole other ecology underground that we don't get to see.
If the former is true, they must eat a hell of a lot each eclipse cycle. Imagine that they eat five or six times their normal weight in the course of a few days (that was eclipse period I thought was being implied). Of course, now that the planet is deserted (the creatures' population probably exploded until they ate themselves out of a habitat), most of their eating is now probably cannibalism, except for the occassional interstellar snack. So their population, which until they wiped out the planet's ecosystem had increased geometrically, will now continue to decrease geometrically until they go extinct.
I think of them as some kind of predatory alien cicadas; cicadas have a long underground development cycle, effectively a many years hibernation, and live a very, very short active adult life.
Why did the eclipse take so long when the time leading to the eclipse didn't take that long at all?
Guess I'm not sure what this means. The time leading to the eclipse? Do you mean the time from when they look up and realize that the eclipse is coming until the eclipse starts, or the time from partial to full eclipse? If the former, they just didn't pay attention to the celestial mechanics of their situation. If the latter, the planet is imagined as having a pretty clear (and thin) atmosphere, so the terminator would be pretty dramatic.
If it is a desert planet and there were no/zero/zip clouds in the sky up to and during the eclipse, then why did it start raining at the end?
There's water in the atmosphere, that's why the dew collectors and precipitators at the encampment work. The temperature must have dropped quite dramatically during the eclipse (which was total over the whole hemisphere of the moon, if the model is correct), below even the rather low dew point of a "desert" moon, causing the water eventually to precipitate out of the atmosphere. That's the idea, anyway. I'm sure having it rain was a decision on their part based upon the assumption that the temp would drop dramatically; the finding of the water precipiptators at the encampment may have been meant to foreshadow the rain storm. It does rain even in deserts occassionally; just not often (and every 7 years or 22 months or years or however long the period between eclipses is in Pitch Black is a long stretch between rains).
Anyway, that's how I explained it to myself when I saw it. Realistic enough for "willing suspension of disbelief," anyway, and pretty much hard SF.
... or in some cases, just some asshole's opinion.
I think the reality is that the reviewer has the attention span of a fly paired with the intellect of fresh feces.
I suppose the reviewer also thinks that the Matrix was brilliant.
Thus spake the master programmer:
"A well-written program is its own heaven; a poorly-written program
is its own hell."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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