This week: Tom Hardy as Picards vengeful alien clone brother-son.
Last week:The one where age is just a number.
Next week: Jeffrey Jacob Abrams.
Dune buggies and clones and colliding spaceships, oh my!Nemesisisnt trash, its a trashcan fire.
Its also the onlyNext Generationmovie I ever want to watch again.
Hardys flanked by Ron Perlman, our Karloff, still recognizably himself despite a mountain of bat-creature makeup.
Perlman is The Viceroy, a Reman.
The Remans hate light but love assault-coded telepathic invasion.
They never appeared beforeNemesis, and maybe their existence is an assault on continuity.
(Oh, so theresanotherrace, rightnextto the Romulans, sort similar buttwice as evil?)
But that assault is the point, I think.Nemesisisnt aStar Trekmovie.
Its what happens whenStar Trekgetting invadedbya movie, the way Stokers Dracula invades Whitby.
Somehow, the Romulans got ahold of Picards DNA.
(Thats the explanation, really.
Says Shinzon: The Romulans had somehow gained possession of your DNA and I had been created.)
You could counter-argue this plot with, well, logic.
(Why Picard and not an Admiral?
But Shinzons glorious destiny ran up against something much worse than logic: bureaucracy.
As happens frequently here on Romulus, a new government came to power, Shinzon explains.
Somehow, were told, the Viceroy is keeping Shinzon alive.
Is the Viceroy somehow assuming Shinzons pain into himself, removing his pain?
Or is the Viceroy somehow empowering Shinzon granting him some immunity from his own death?
Is that immunity somehow corroding Shinzon from within; is the cure worse than the disease?
How can such a foul creature survive?
What is Shinzons plan?
Here is anotherNext Generationmovie overflowing with technobabble, cascading biogenic pulses, thalaron radiation, temporal RNA sequencing.
And so theres a dark, silly gag when you figure out just what, precisely, Shinzon wants.
He needs your blood to live, Dr. Crusher tells Picard.
This isnt aStar Trekmovie; its a vampire movie.
And so we should not mince words:Nemesisis also the brain-rape movie.
Deanna Troi is, at the beginning of the movie, a happy bride.
The film takes time establishing the grinning delightfulness of the Troi-Riker union.
They are glorious, yet demure.
He wears his dress whites; she wears a pink dress.
Their future is bright.
Theyve got another wedding on Betazed itll be nudist, as is tradition.
(Oh, how I missNext Generations PG-rated hippie sensuality!)
After this final mission, Rikers off to theTitan, his first command.
What will Troi do?Nemesisreminds you that shes fourth in line to run theEnterprise.
Has she been promoted to executive officer?
Or is she giving up her work, settling down, raising a family?
(I refuse to believe that but maybe my family values arent your family values.)
Through a series of curious contrivances, theEnterpriseis called to Romulus.
Theres been a coup detat; the new man in charge is seeking peace.
Shinzons first scene is shot in backlit darkness.
This is one of the least subtle bad-guy introductions in movie history.
I didnt know you were so beautiful, he tells her.
May I touch your hair?
But soon enough,Nemesistakes us into Riker and Trois quarters.
See the happy newlyweds, him working late, her ready for bed.
They begin to make love and then the horror begins.
Troi looks in a mirror and the man she sees above her is not Riker, but Shinzon.
And then Shinzon becomes the Viceroy another horror, rendered in glowingly bat-faced nakedness.
(Death comes to theEnterprise-E, suddenly and with little fanfare.)
The most common perception aboutNemesisis that it was a work created by outsiders.
Never mind that terribleTrekmovies likeGenerationsandInsurrectionandSearch for Spockwere made by some of the franchises greatest minds.
Never mind thatNemesisis so obsessive in itsTrekno-babble that Worfs biggest line is a porn-y tactical analysis of Shinzons flagship.
(Fifty-two disruptor banks, twenty-seven photon torpedo bays, primary and secondary shields.)
The perception ofNemesishas always been that that its notTrekenough a complaint that echoes forward to the Abrams movies.
NotTrekenough, Not reallyStar Trek, Not true to Roddenberrys vision, Completely misunderstands the franchise.
BeforeNemesis, Baird directedExecutive DecisionandU.S.
(The planes carrying a senator and a nerve-gas bomb!
The fugitives a rogue government agent fleeing a Chinese double agent in the State Department!)
We arent yet equipped to feel nostalgic for these movies, and maybe we never will be.
This makes them simultaneously too goofy to be taken seriously but too barely realistic to watch for laughs.
But its easier to understandNemesiswhen you factor in John Logan.
He co-wroteSkyfall, which is best understood as a matriarchal-Freudian reimagining ofParadise Lost.
The bad guy wants Picards blood.
Nemesisbarely has any time for theEnterprisecrew.
Baird was an editor before he was a director, and he was an editor afterNemesisended his directing career.
(Oddly enough, he editedSkyfall.)
(Hi, Wesley!
Bye, Wesley!)
For this reason, pretty much no one involved inNemesishas nice things to say aboutNemesis.
Troi uses her Mental Link with the Viceroy to turn the tide of battle.
when Troi goes full Jean Grey in the climax.
But Baird shoots her vengeance with a bit of poetry.
The Viceroy screams, No!
Troi whispers, angrily triumphant: Remember me?
to rape-culture patriarch Immortan Joe right before she ends him.
Suddenly, theEnterpriseis off to Romulus, and to the space vampires and the clone son.
The two plots are linked, though it requires several leaps to figure out why.
Datas android brother was bait that Picard couldnt refuse, and he hacks into theEnterprises databanks.
The space battle inNemesismight be the best of its kind.
It gets the macro sci-fi stuff.
But theNemesisfinale is thrill-drunk enough to demand a final one-on-one showdown.
ButNemesisdoes feelcloserto these characters, on a purely cinematic level.
Its a strategy he uses again, to devastating effect, in a later scene.
Data has to shut down his android brother.
I have to deactivate you, says Data.
says his captured brother, naive and maybe just a little stupid.
Indefinitely, says Data.
How long is that?
Data shuts the android down.
Data was central toNext Generationfandom, and Im still not sure Brent Spiner gets the credit he deserves.
Data dies in this movie.
He jumps through space to rescue his Captain, and dies pointlessly firing a phaser at an exploding whatever.
Very little ofNemesisstands up to plot scrutiny, which is why the film has such a bad reputation.
How else do you kill a vampire?
You put a stake in him.
Its easy to watchNemesisnow and spot all the spiteful fun that Hardy is having.
Sometimes, as inThe Revenant, Hardy plays horrifyingandfunny at once.
Thats the vibe you get from the final climax ofNemesis.
Stabbed through the midsection, Shinzon pulls himself closer to Picard, until theyre breathing on each other.
(What am I while you exist?
Im afraid you wont survive to witness the victory of the echo over the voice.)
But in this moment, youfeelall those ideas.
But Shinzon is ecstatic.
Im glad were together now, he says.
Our destiny is complete.
And with that, Shinzon dies, falling forward onto his father.
Maybe you remember how, a few movies ago, Picard was worried about his legacy.
Maybe that explains the look on Stewarts face.
A film likeCaptain America: Civil Wargets praised for all its smooth edges every character gets a character beat!
even though nothing inCivil Warlooks half as interesting as the Quicksilver sequence in the nuttyX-Men: Apocalypse.
This scene strikes me as the Original Sin of contemporary geek culture.
Actually, those scenes always feel like the kind of unloved-but-important crap that tends to earn Best Picture nominations.
And so theres something lovely in the mess they made ofNemesis.
Really, the story of theNext Generationcast ended in their perfect series finale.
Data explodes and the Romulans call theEnterprise, letting Picard know that theyre dispatching shuttles to help the wounded.
Prepare the shuttlebay for arrivals, Picard says.
They…they dont know our procedures.
He walks off the bridge, emotional.
Later, Picard and his crew toast to their absent friend.
Riker tries to remember the song Data was singing, the first time he saw him.
What was that song?
I cant remember the song.
While Riker ponders this, the camera moves in to Picards face.
In the movies final scene, he talks to Datas android brother.
He embraced change because he always wanted to be better than he was.
Can we indulge ourselves for a moment?
I do not understand, says Datas android brother.
Its a lot to take in; maybe too much.
But Picard promises to talk to him later.
Picard helps him with the lyrics.
And then at the end of this very dark and very hopeless movie he smiles.
Maybe there is hope, after all.
Maybe every voice is just an echo.
Maybe someone will remember our song, and sing it.
