Star Trek: Nemesis

Oh wow. The late, unlamented Star Trek: Nemesis. This is when we all knew that Star Trek was so done... dead, gone. Consigned to the trash heap of the past. (I mean if Enterprise wasn't a good enough clue, they cough this up as well, just to drive the point home.)

To be fair, it's not horrible. Well, no, let's not be fair. This was horrible. This was pretty much Patrick Stewart and company going through the motions, YET AGAIN! The plot was predictable, rote and almost formulaic. The Romulans certainly deserved a better big-screen debut-- but, let's get this over with:

The Enterprise is called to Romulus, because apparently there's been a coup d'etat of some kind and some weird Remans have come crawling out of the woodwork and taken over. It's all very convoluted and Romulan, but needless to say- the Romulan Senate gets dissolved by a weird green terrorist ray shooter thingy-ma-jigger. The Enterprise arrives, sits around and then meets the New Boss and his Reman buddies. His name is Shinzon and surprise, surprise, he's a clone of Picard.

(Oh, before this, the Enterprise crew randomly and mysteriously finds an early prototype of Data on a planet that 'just so happened to be near the Romulan Neutral zone'-- but more on this later.)

Anyway, so Shinzon. He's all kinds of messed, has all kinds of issues and surprise, surprise is batshit crazy and wants to kill everyone with his larger weird green terrorist ray shooter thingy-ma-jigger (new, improved version can kill all PLANETS. Call NOW!) The usual shenanigans ensue. Danger, death, near death, space battles that are so familiar it's almost nauseating, but guess who wins? Shinzon does. (No, I'm kidding. OF COURSE, the good guys win. They always do.)

Data, in what would have been an incredible poignant moment sacrifices himself to destroy the larger weird green terrorist ray shooter thingy-ma-jigger, but instead of letting the characters absorb this news and grow as a result of it, they just cheat a little and turn Data's slow-witted prototype they found (remember that?) into the new Data. Thus combining the best part about Star Trek II (Spock's sacrifice for his friends) and pretty much the entire concept of Star Trek III (bringing back Spock) in about twenty minutes of the movie.

Oh and by the way, Riker finally decides to actually advance his career by accepting a promotion and getting his own ship- and he gets married- to Troi! Worf is grumpy, Crusher just says short, necessary, plot-advancing sentences every now and again and Geordi is a lot less cool without his VISOR thing.

What did we learn from this? Well JJ Abrams and Company learned all the right lessons and decided to take a risk or two. Nemesis is just another Star Trek movie- there's no attempt to take a risk or make it bigger, badder or look like anything remotely different from any prior Trek movie. None at all. This was an incredibly lazy movie that if someone willing to take a risk once in a while would have written actually had the potential to be good. At this point, the sad truth became clear to Trekkers everywhere: the franchise had degenerated into rote, formulaic movies designed more as love letters to the fans than anything else.

Growth of a franchise and just in general, growth of a story require risk-taking. That magic leaked out of Trek a long time before Nemesis and it shows. Plus, the inability just to kill someone for once pissed me off greatly- (why did we have to waste all this time getting Data a crappy prototype? Why can't he just make a noble sacrifice and die for once?)

Overall: Not painful, but generally bad.
My Grade: * out of 4. The air was all the way out of the balloon with this one.