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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."
Maybe it tanked because Star Trek is dying out in mainstream culture. We still have Enterprise, which is interesting, and Voyager reruns, but I can't imagine that they get good ratings. Sure the cultists still worship Star Trek, but I imagine most people have become less entralled with it.
in a better way, in previous Star Trek adventures.
It was retelling of Wrath of Khan without the great characters.
Just as "Generations" sucked, where they tried to put every element into one movie (destroy the ship, cold character gets emotions, major character dies, etc.), so did Nemesis.
That, and the movie before that, Star Trek - Insurrection wasn't good at all. Remember: Once fooled, shame on you. Twice fooled, shame on me.
The public might be stupid, but not THAT stupid
1) The actors hadn't played the parts in so long, they had forgotten their characters.
2) The actors had all aged a good decade since the last episode and aren't as appealing anymore.
3) The plot had more holes than swiss cheese.
4) Better movies were released at the same time.
5) The previous movie was going downhill, why see another if the previous one wasn't worth paying for.
I have to agree. The Star Trek franchise needs a 15-20 year hiatus. It's just our of ideas. Enterprise is like watching paint dry. I saw Nemesis in the theater and it was just an average 2 hour episode. I'm a huge fan of Star Trek in general, and TNG in particular - but the Star Trek universe needs a break.
Unfortunately, Firefly got cancelled. It was 10x better than Nemesis or Enterprise. And there are no mid-season sci-fi replacements.
I was a trekkie when younger - also a star wars fan. I am much less the 2 now, even though sci fi and sci fantasy still capture my interest.
Why? Well, it isn't the characters, but most definately is the plot. Star Trek lacks history. It had it with TOS and TNG. Technology had advanced, and we could see that. Story lines were still based on the premise that people and aliens have feelings and personal demons to battle.
With the advent of DS9 and Voyager, Star Trek left the historical line and issues between peoples and personal demons for outrageous story lines that included the borg chasing but never defeating a small ship in the middle of no where- neglecting the history of the borg as almost undefeatable. And a space station of mixed people. So much potential in that series, but it lost because they could not create enough internal issue stories.
Star Wars had a huge following not only because of its ground breaking fx, but also because it had history. 1000 years of jedi rule. Empire that was how old? Jedi master was how old? Clone wars? Obi Wan knew Vader before The Fall? History was loud in the ears of Star Wars fans. I cared less for the post ROTJ books. I wanted more history. It was finally granted- and I was sickened.
I think another area is culture. Star Trek was a 'perfect culture' that worked well in TNG, and was still rough and being learned in TOS. But there was culture. It was neglected in the newer series. Again, DS9 had the opportunity, but the ball was dropped in favor of a huge war that left me thinking 'eh'.
I loved the culture of star wars- so many peoples, and yet corruption, love, hate, revenge, politics, all together loosely in a republic and empire. It works for me.
I think that the rules were perverted so severely in Star Trek that it wasn't funny. Suddenly in one episode the tachyon field can be adjusted to deflet energy fields, while in the next they can't stop weapons from smashing the shields to '12%' and 'surrender'. Star Wars allowed for everyone to be able to die- and the heroes are either gifted or lucky- not suddenly supremely good at manipulating technologies and even nature.
Time travel and cloaking devices should go. Why does it work here, but not there. Suddenly we can track a cloaked ship, but next time we are completly caught off guard. I understand the element of surprise, but people, come on.
Rick, Star Trek is dying because you neglected what made it great. Sure, some story lines were campy, but until the end of TNG, it worked. Culture, history were enough to keep the story fresh. But you trashed those along with technology and left it utterly unwatchable.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
Ask Slashdot why Nemesis failed. You just know you'll get a ton of insightful and intelligent answers out of a question like that.
I got no indication that the poster was trying to make a joke. I think Paramount, Berman and Braga would do well to listen to the fans for a change instead of ramming standard sci-fi with the Trek label slapped on down our throats. The size and imagination of the Trek fanbase is legendary. There is TONS of free information out there for them to consider. Obviously, the studio wouldn't want to take some fanboy's idea verbatim or even hire fans to provide input. All they would have to do is cruise a few forums and get an idea what the fans want. Nemesis is a classic example of what happens when a studio is completely out of touch with their fans and thinks they can figure out what the fans want more than the fans themselves.
It doesn't have to be slashdot. There are plenty of free forums where the so-called creative talent behind the Trek franchise could go cruising for inspiration and insightful analysis. After 30+ years of Trek, there's really no excuse for them the studio to get it wrong.
GMD
watch this
The TNG Universe (and Enterprise) is formulaic, over-produced, slick to the point of featurelessness, and so politically correct it is painful to watch.
In other words, it sucks. I have not seen it; nothing in the previews gave me any sense as to why I'd want to see it.
I've been watching Trek since the original series. The original was fun, quirky, politically-incorrect for its time, and just plain fun. The dynamic of Kirk-McCoy-Spock was fun and stimulating.
TNG started off good, and sank into mediocrity, boring characters, and political correctness. The Federation had gone from being an adventure to being a boring bureaucracy filled with faceless people who remind me of white bread. DS9 had some good moments, most of which were lost in Voyager and the movies. Where is the passion, the joy of exploration, the diversity of cultures? Bah, Berman's Trek is mostly about destroying any sense of individuality or culture or faith or initiative.
Enterprise is an example of everything that is wrong with Trek. These are not bold adventurers; they are simpering fools who wouldn't last fiv minutes in the universe of Kirk and Spock. The only character I have any fondness for is the Chief Engineer, who exudes some personality (when he's allowed to).
I do not want to live in the Star Trek envisioned by Berman and Braga; in my opinion, they destroyed the series with blandness.
All about me
A quote from his Nemesis review:
" think it is time for "Star Trek" to make a mighty leap forward another 1,000 years into the future, to a time when starships do not look like rides in a 1970s amusement arcade, when aliens do not look like humans with funny foreheads, and when wonder, astonishment and literacy are permitted back into the series. Star Trek was kind of terrific once, but now it is a copy of a copy of a copy."
Well he obviously survives or is brought back somehow.
If you watch the last ST:TNG episode, "All Good Things..." Picard is jumping between the present, past and the future. In the future Data is alive and well other than the rediculously overdone grey streak on one half of his head.
So how would Data survive? Many ways!
- Q could bring him back easilly.
- Time travel, after all this is Sci-Fi
- Beamed out by the other Romulan ships in the area and help captive for a time for study.
- Since he uploaded himself to B4 (think Spock grabbing McCoy's head and saying "Remember!") they could potentially rebuild Data and reload him from the image stored in B4. (I can just see "Star Trek, Search for Data!")
- I suppose even the nanites which Wesley created in one of the episodes could stumble upon the wreckage and rebuild him from vaporized particles.
- And the most likely and to revive him: Random annoying Star Trek plot device.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
I think the movie failed because it wasn't satisfying, nor it it seem to make much sense.
And no, I'm not talking the dumber-then-hell physics nonsense that usually permeates ST. I'm talking about the plot.
Cuts. Check IMDB for the movie's quotes. How many of those were actually in the movie? The cut out a lot of background stuff that explained why this stuff was happening, and what the character's motivations were.
For instance: That Romulan commander (woman). At first she appears she's going to be a toady for Shinzan. She was asking that Romulan admiral some pointed questions after the big ship goes to zap Earth, like she was trying to see if the admiral was going to betray Shinzan. Then, all of a sudden, she's betraying Shinzan? What? Why did she change her mind? Did we learn enough about her character to understand why she might change her mind?
Over and over the point of the movie is that people are good when they aspire to be better than themselves. That's what is supposed to make Data better than B4. It's a fine sentiment, but where is it actually shown in the movie? Saying it is fine for a book or something. But you've got to have it be a central part of the movie, or it is just a plattitude.
And how did Deanna learn to fight back against Shinzan and the Chancellor? Why didn't she do that the first time?
Oh yeah, and as for physics... Ships with impulse drive can go like 0.99c. If you decide to ram another ship, you're going to end up with a big cloud of plasma and debris, not some lame "crunch".
And the cloaking... why couldn't the Enterprise's brilliant engineers program the weapons to shoot right back at anything shooting at the ship? It doesn't matter if the Romulan ship is cloaked, it's shooting you right now! Right over there! Sheesh.
Rick Berman needs to go. Rick Berman has needed to go for a very, very long time. Under Rick Berman Star Trek went from cutting-edge Sci-Fi to recycled plots and characters. The most refreshing thing Berman did was make Captain Janeway a woman, which would have been interesting were there not already female admirals. The most exciting thing Berman has done with Star Trek is cheesy sexual innuendo on "Enterprise;" other television shows broke that barrier in the 1980s.
Star Trek fans have been sick of Berman for over a decade. His stewardship has done nothing but run Star Trek shows and films into the ground while Paramount marketing made it a commodity. Perhaps the failure of Nemesis will finally wake up Paramount and Rick Berman will get the boot.
It didn't matter how good they made it; thanks to the string of bad movies before it, the characters had completely lost credibility by the time they got to Nemesis.
:(
See, the big thing about the Next Generation series is that a lot of people really felt for the characters. They all had their own individual battles or things that made things difficult for them, even though this was supposed to be a utopian future. The ones that come to mind immediately are Data, who struggled to be human, and Geordi, who had no natural vision. And Picard, of course, with the Borg. (And his other little quirks..)
So instead of seeing some real character development over those first few movies, with each of them struggling with their impediments or against them, and triumphing over them, which is what being a hero's all about, we see them getting them handed to them deus ex machina. LaForge--bam--has these newfangled eyes. Data--bam--emotion chip got fixed. Picard... is a special case; I'll get to him in a minute.
Data, they should've done the following; stretched out the problems he had with his emotion chip. We see him responding poorly to it when he first gets it, but very quickly he overcomes this--and here's the kicker--in such a way that the audience never actually sees him overcome it. We, the audience, don't get to see this happen, and thus, we aren't able to really root for him. He has many minor struggles, but we never really see the big one, as it were.
So when Data dies in Nemesis, he's no longer the same entity we know and love; we can't even tell what emotions he's feeling in a lot of those scenes where he finds B4, because we feel no empathy for this feeling Data. To the audience, he's totally different. So when he goes bye-bye, we feel a sense of loss, but not because Data overcame all and gave of himself, but because the writers took our Data from us, and never let us get to know him before kicking him out the airlock.
LaForge, I don't really know what to say.. there just should've been more to his ocular upgrade. It just happens too quickly, and without cost.
Worf---What the heck is he doing there!?!? The fact that he's there, doing the same old job, just screams TV episode to everyone in the audience. Especially after all that he went through in DS9, regaining the respect of his fellow Klingons... to treat him like the Worf from TNG is just unacceptable.
Finally, the biggie; Picard. He's the one character that you've admired through the whole series. You sympathized with his problems with talking to kids. (Because he had to tell Wesley his father was dead.) You respected him because he was the voice of reason in times of war, conflict, strife. He's been the source of nobility in times of uncertainty. And you sympathized with him when he personally experienced what it was like to have his humanity ripped away from him by the Borg, and cried with him as he struggled to regain something of that humanity from his brother.
Then the movies started.
Generations started off the work on him by throwing him into the Nexus, and having him meet up with Kirk for some good 'ole fashuned cowboy-style fun. Okay... so it's his first movie in this role... but still, they managed to completely ruin the Guinan/Picard dynamic, and kill off his family. The former wrecked a very delicate and interesting relationship between the two; the latter destroyed something about the nobility of the man--from here-on he's lost something of his humanity, of his nobility, that his brother was providing him. Now, he just fights for the federation; his links to the average man have been severed, and he's now just another member of the military arm of the federation. This is a sad turn of events.
Next comes First Contact. One word; borg queen. Whaaaaaa...?? Okay, if it, like, explained something about why the borg were doing what they were doing, or gave us some better piece of the bigger puzzle, then okay. Instead, she's just the new voice for the borg, who has the hots for Picard. (Huh???) And Data. (Double huh????) Other than that and the fact that it's a time travel plot, though, it was the most credible of all the movies.
Then came Insurrection, and Picard's been reduced yet again. Now he's off on some planet playing hokey mind-magic... I think everyone's starting to suspect by now that Picard's really off his rocker. First his family's gone, then this borg queen shows up again, and now this mind-magic fountain of youth crap he's playing with some old hag....!?!? It's just ludicrous..! Remember how he cried after Best of Both Worlds? That's what we needed to see; him struggling with what he's lost, and trying to build on what he's gained, and instead we get.. this?!?
Why Nemesis failed is because Picard was no longer the emotionally strong man he was in the series--and yet they pretend he still is. They've torn away at what makes him tick so much that to have him act like none of this ever happened--or that he came to grips with it all while we weren't looking, and hey, no biggie, nothing changed as a result--is just insulting the audience.
So when you see Picard saying crap throw-away lines that use the words "unsafe velocities" or you see him laughing like a crazy man on the desert planet, so at ease with himself that it's beyond belief, you just can't help but realize that this isn't the same man from the series, or even the movies. This is someone completely different, who has more in common with someone like Storm from X-Men. ("Know what happens when a toad gets hit by lightening?") And that just plain sucks.
I'm not even going to bother going into Riker, Troi, Crusher, or anyone else at this point because they haven't been the focus for any of these movies anyways. The problem with the movies for TNG has been that they've just destroyed the characters we've cared about too completely.. and any time they spend on any of the other characters would certainly finish the rest of 'em off.
Berman, I hope you're reading this..
Dear Rick
The screenplay was horrible! The writing for Voyager and TNG was wonderful. I remember plots within plots and sideplots and twists and turns.
Nemesis was so one-dimensional, it hurt my head. I kept waiting for the "retarded" Data to turn out to be Lore or for some new technology to be introduced or for Troi to get pregnant... or a million things that might have been interesting with that much raw acting talent on hand.
You gave a cast of superb actors the worst screenplay I think I have ever seen. It looked as though every interesting idea got tabled by committee or something. We ended up with a really flat uninteresting story. Whatever happend with Wesley going off with the traveler?
Where are the other members of the crystalline entity's species? How about Species 8472? How about Janeway and Picard gettig together? What about the Voyager crew on Earth.. what about the reunion therE? For crying out loud, this could have been SO cool! It just plain sucked because it didn't live up to its potential. DAMN it could have been awesome! Instead it was just disappointing.
The machine that has been Star Trek still has the capability of producing heart-pounding, thought-provoking and deeply interesting entertainment worthy of the cast and worthy of Roddenberry. Hop to it! We expect more.
- a Star Trek fan
Vortran out
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
There's something to be said for one-off episodes and movies, but I have to admit as much as I hated the whole trek phenomenon after the 3rd or 4th season of TNG, I really got into the last couple seasons of DS9, because it had a serial format to it that made it compelling to watch next weeks episode. That whole serial format is what makes things like 24, West Wing, Farscape, Stargate SG:1 interesting to watch. There's no fear in me that the good guys are in trouble. No suspense, because you know Jordi and Data are going to save the day.
No. We need death. We need strife. We need chaos. Heroic actions that lead to horrible consequences. Ala Lord of the Rings (sorry to insult LTR by comparing it to trek). But the trek series was never very serial to begin with, so this format might not work at all. I hate the fact that the Klingons kept getting beat down by the humans. Let's face it, a warrior race, based on strong tactical skill (al Queda) facing off against a strong enemy with powerful weapons, strong moral code (for the sake of argument) (U.S.A), etc. etc....
-Chris
Seriously, Wil, got any comments?
Well, I was going to burn my mod points in this thread, but I'll give it a shot:
I think that the release date was incredibly stupid. It's almost like Paramount wanted to "bury" this movie. I have no idea why they released it when they did.
But the release date shouldn't matter. If the story is strong enough, people will go to see it over and over again. As far as I can tell, this is where Paramount fumbled this movie.
When Star Trek is good, it's about people. That's why my favorite episode is Inner Light. That's why I loved working on First Duty and Final Mission.
The script that I read for Nemesis was about people. John Logan is a HUGE fan, who knows every detail about TNG. He infused the characters and plot with detalis that would make a Trekkie drool. He understood why people cared about these characters, and told an incredible story. I still haven't seen the final cut, but everything I've read indicates that they got away from that. I have heard that on more than one occasion the director proclaimed that he didn't care about Star Trek history and continuity. It seemed like he really didn't respect the fans or the franchise, so they ended up with yet another action movie with robots and laser guns.
Sadly, I think that an action movie in space is exactly what Paramount wants.
Marketing a Star Trek movie is insanely difficult. Mainstream audiences think it's just for nerds. They think that they need to watch seven seasons of TNG to know what's going on. Paramount knows that the hardcore fans will show up no matter what, so they focus their attention on convincing the mainstream audience that they'll like this movie.
The trap they seem to fall into when they do this is to cut up the movie, take out stuff that's too "fan-specific," and focus on themes that appeal to a broader audience: babes and bombs. This usually alienates the hardcore fans, and doesn't excite mainstream audiences enough to see it more than once -- and that's where a movie makes money: on repeat sales.
The few times they've managed to hit both audiences -- Star Trek IV and Star Trek II -- they've focused people.
I'm hearing that this is the end of TNG, and it probably is. From what I've heard, some of the actors aren't interested in doing it any more, which is understandable, considering that they've been playing those characters for over 15 years.
But I don't think it's the end of Star Trek movies. TPTB aren't stupid. If they were, they wouldn't be running this franchise. I think they've just gotten away from the heart of Star Trek. If they find that heart again, and hire some very good SF writers to defibrillate it, Star Trek will be fine. There's still some life in the old girl.
"Remember that "Bones with tits" season-2 doctor? That was a direct result of Roddenberry insisting that Dr. Crusher be written out."
The reason people stupidly prefer Dr. Crusher is because she is a likeable character, whereas Pulaski could be a real bitch at times. But she was human and she was interesting. Dr. Crusher was just like a Stepford Wife, or a 50s TV "Welcome home, Jean Luc, how was your day at work?" kind of stupid thing.
graspee