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Rick Berman Doesn't Know Why Nemesis Tanked
Steve Krutzler writes "Star Trek producer Rick Berman broke his silence today on the debacle that was the North American box office for STAR TREK NEMESIS. The film grossed $18.5 million in its opening weekend in mid-December, the lowest of any TREK bow, and its current domestic total stands below even that of the much-lambasted STAR TREK V. Read more at TrekWeb. Berman says he doesn't know why the movie failed and the future of more TREK movies is uncertain."
The Star Trek previews sucked. It had no 'new' plot, it seemed like an extension of any normal weekday movie. You weren't going back to earth, you weren't doing anything original. Didn't seem to be an exciting movie, so I skipped it. Get a better plot and people will watch Star Trek again.
saying something along the lines of "we don't know why the kids aren't buying more albums. This last boy band album was just like the others we've released, and they made millions."
Perhaps they'll eventually learn that a good script with an original story line even off a commonly used theme (see Big Fat Greek Wedding) will make more money than a rehashed overdone clone.
- gtaluvit (prnc. GOT-tuh-LUV-it)
Not only is Star Trek your daddy's sci-fi, but Berman also released it way too close to Harry Potter and The Two Towers. Most of all, Rick Berman is no Gene Roddenberry.
How ya like dat?
There seems to be this consistent need to preserve everything from film to film; plots get wrapped up too neatly at the end. At least at the end of Star Trek 2, it looked like Spock bought it.
Babylon 5 understood this. You never could be sure at the beginning of each episode and season whether the characters were going to pull through, as it seems they almost always do in the Star Trek films. You know they're going to win. That's why I'm sick of it.
They blew an incredible opportunity with Voyager. Wouldn't it have been interesting if Voyager returned home only to find the earth completely assimilated by The Borg and the entire Federation being decimated? Or maybe just have the Borg follow them home, to add a bitter note to their return?
What about a Star Trek film which details the birth/genesis of The Borg - how they came to be? Star Trek films also have got to start killing characters and *losing* sometimes.
And they really have to get a grip on their incessant need for cute humor. Humor once in a great while is fine, but they seem to really want to pack that into movies, and I'm just not interested in that. When I watch Star Trek, I want *epic* struggles. I want multilayered plots with twists and turns and powerful moral challenges (Picard trying to get his reign on his hatred of The Borg is the kind of thing I'm talking about.)
The characters are too perfect, and they are too at the center of the Star Trek universe. The emotion chip for Data was one of the stupidest ideas ever; they completely ruined his character.
I'm speaking generally of all of the Star Trek movies of course. Trek needs less action, and more cerebral plots. The shiny, bright Federation needs fascist factions and political problems within. More espionage, and most importantly - the *death* of some of the main characters. I want to
It's always disappointing watching Star Trek because I know going in everything's going to end up fine. It didn't at the end of Star Trek 2, and Kirk lost his shit and let the hatred boil, adding a rough, imperfect edge to his character. No wonder that movie is most peoples' favorites.
I'm just tired of the perfectly lit, wall-to-wall carpeted, Dudley Do-Right shit that makes up Star Trek films. I would hope the future would be partly that, but that should stand in contrast and struggle against darkness, greed, hatred, and fascism.
I want to see The Borg infilitrate the federation and eventually earth. I want to see a Star Trek movie end with a helpless crew watching as Earth or Vulcan is assimilated.
I want to see starships blowing up, and captains of them being pushed to the edge and sometimes losing it and acting immorrally.
I want to see guerilla rebels resisting the Federation like the Maquis. And I want to be on their side.
I want to see characters die. I want to see an end to all time travel plots, and want to see more plots that - as on Enterprise - require the characters to use cunning rather than tech to get out of scrapes.
I want to see no more hippie political crap like in Star Trek IV. I wouldn't mind them dealing with political issues we have not yet faced, but this whole Trek-as-metaphor-for-present-social problems stuff is played out; it was played out after the first series where they dealt with all of the 60s problems like race, space hippies, etc. Star Trek 4 was a travesty.
I want to see more darkness and less humor. All of this will make the victories of the main characters that much more interesting to watch, rather than just assuming that they'll triumph. Movies need to be treated as serials; plots need to continue from movie to movie and they have to leave us hanging. I don't want to see it all wrapped up at the end of the movie. That just ruins is and wrecks the tension. "Oh who cares that they're hanging off of a precipice, we know that can't be the end; there's still 17 minutes left to the movie."
Most or all of this applies to the television series as well.
Watching Star Trek in any form is an infuriating thing; if you're a hardcore fan, you grit your teeth and get through it for some reason; but my teeth have been ground down to powder. Berman needs to sit down and watch Babylon 5, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Space: Above and Beyond, and get some ideas.
Amen. Look at the best episodes of the original TV series.
"Amok Time"? Written by Theodore Sturgeon.
"Trouble with Tribbles"? David Gerrold.
"City on the Edge of Forever?" Harlan Ellison.
Further, the "franchise" needs to take more chances. You have to take risks before you can produce something as good as "Darmok" or "The Inner Light".
Maybe it tanked because Star Trek is dying out in mainstream culture.
I think it's the opposite - Star Trek is distancing itself from mainstream culture. Consider the original series. Kirk and his crew roamed the galaxy exploring the frontier, basically doing good, but they wouldn't back away from a fight and they weren't afraid to break the rules in the service of a greater good. That's not just entertaining TV, it resonates deeply with the way Americans see themselves.
Next Gen was California in the 1990s - the Captain took his therapist with him on board and no-one made a decision without getting a consensus from everyone that their feelings wouldn't be hurt. And Voyager - Janeway wasn't a captain, she was a self-loathing Democrat senator, never hesitating to put every other species' interests ahead of her crew's. Californians don't realize it, but they're held in contempt throughout the rest of the world - when some actress announces she's converted to Buddhism or taken to a macrobiotic diet or started wearing crystals, the rest of the world just rolls its eyes.
Essentially, Star Trek is dying because the people making it make it for people like themselves, not the fans and not the general public.
How dare they allude to this being the last episode of the next gen crew and have Data die.
Particularly since Berman/Paramount already made the final episode of the ST:TNG series in which we see that Data survives to a ripe old age and becomes a professor at Cambridge after retiring from Star Fleet. That's why the fans don't care: we're not invested at all in the fate of the characters, because we know that the producers will just change it afterwards anyway. And no amount of CGI can save you if the audience fundamentally don't care what happens next.
Yes, I think Gene Roddenberry's spirit is missing in Nemesis. What disappointed me was that there was just one storyline and that this storyline was pretty straight rather than containing twists that would have made the movie more interesting. Surprisingly, aside from a new wonderweapon and a second "Data" there was not much going on in the technical sector, too.
And yes, I did feel a little disappointed in the end.
where's all that Karma?
He doesn't know why? He doesn't know why? I hope he reads this site so I can clue him in on it.
I was watching an episode of enterprise; the one with the Klingons abusing the subdued duterium miners. Well heads blowing up all around, phaser fire filling the sky, Klingons on the hunt, and the total fatalities: 0
I mean good god I was sitting there screaming about how I was expecting Mr. T to come around the corner at any second. A visit to bureau42.com only reaffirmed that situation when someone with a similar sensation stated "I pity the fool who messes with duterium miners!"
In the end they trap the Klingons in a ring of fire, not one with a signed eyebrow and what do my ears behold. Did that Klingon just say, "We don't want your dueterium anyways!" and stomp off like a small child back to his ship (teleported out anyways...)
The Klingons I know would have teleported up, then back down directly behind the unsuspecting enterprise crew, slit their necks before they knew what happened, slain have the duterium miners as a lesson, and demanded the same yields. The two writers of that episode should have been hung up and bled dry for that sorry excuse of an episode.
Nope Star Trek is just a T&A show now (thats TITS and ASS)... so anyways I digress. Rick Burman, obviously needs to pulls his ****ing head out of his ****ing ass.
Go ahead mod me down for troll. But it's true. Star Trek was great. How the mighty have fallen.
I was sorely disappointed after all the buzz about Nemesis being similar to 'Wrath of Kahn'. It held NONE of the dramatic acting, and none of the sheer POWER of that movie.
They (Berman & Crew) keep screwing up by trying to tell a sci-fi story rather than telling a HUMAN story. The REAL issue is, they try to focus on too many characters at once, at the expense of the story. When the series (TNG) was running, I LOVED all the character-building episodes. They'd pick out one character, and base the entire episode around that character, with the rest of the crew in 'fringe' roles, which added continuity.
I personally think to retire the Trek series would be a serious mistake. The things Trek 'stands for' still exist. The opportunities to tell incredible stories are immense - if for no other reason, than because they don't have to spend any amount of time detailing the history behind the characters anymore. I would recommend they take the time to examine classic literature (for story ideas), and classic films (for editing), pay more for the 'movie' crew (director, editors, etc.) than the cast (to improve attention to STORY rather than EFFECTS), and get back to telling simpler, more human stories.