Review of Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) by Kevin G — 30 Apr 2009

What do you get when you try to take an idea out of Star Trek II and try to update it a little bit for today's audience so that we can see another big blockbuster action Star Trek movie. Well you end up getting this, which, sad to say was a disappointing movie.

This 10th Star Trek movie ended up being the 4th and last one for The Next Generation crew. It was obvious that this cast too wanted to go out with a bang like the original series crew did with Star Trek VI. However the result was forced and terrible.

It was obvious what they wanted to do with this movie, they wanted to make it similar to Star Trek II and give John Luc Picard an enemy that wanted to kill him for some personal reason. There were however just a few problems with that. The first one is that Tom Hardy is NOT Ricardo Montalban. Tom can't hold a candle to Ricardo's talent. I will give Tom some credit with the effort he made, but he had to know which character in past Star Trek's he was going to have to be like and really should have realized that this role was just way too big for him. I didn't like Tom Hardy as Shinzon and it really should have been someone else. Who? I don't know. Just someone better then him.

Also the side stories in this movie although interesting end up being kind of dull. It's sad for me to say this considering at the end of this movie a major character ends up getting killed off, but due to the focus on the action and not on the characters themselves, I didn't have a sad feeling inside myself when it happened. It stinks that the movie was put together without much care to the characters at all. There was just no feeling there.

Overall, at the end of this movie, The Next Generation crew ends up going out with a whimper. There is no big send off. No memorable credit's signage like Star Trek VI had. It just ends and that's a big disappointment to people like me that kept up with The Next Generation show for many many years.

Lesson learned here. Awesome action and amazing special effects don't equal a good movie by any means.