My Review of "Star Trek: Nemesis"

Star Trek: Nemesis came out back in 2002. Not being a huge next generation fan I bypassed it and the other next generation movies that came out. Thankfully I've finally come around to check them out. In the last movie Star Trek: Insurrection, I've come to know and like the new characters. It was the first movie that I started to feel them gel. Now that I've gotten a handle of the characters I feel like I'm ready to tackle this last movie.

The movie starts off with a weird situation with Romulans. There's some sort of coup to overtake their government. It's unfortunate but the coup takes place and so there's a changing of power.

Meanwhile, on the enterprise the crew is celebrating the marriage of Riker and Troi. The two have been an item for a while and it was eventually going to happen. With this change of times is also the fact that Riker is now going to be taking on a captains role for his own new ship called the Titan.

This means that Picard has to choose a new first officer and that's going to be Data. In this movie the crew finds out there's this weird artificial life signature coming from another planet. They discover it's basically a prototype version of Data. For what reason was it there? Well that's obviously for a later plot point that will be revealed.

It also doesn't take long for the new head figure for the Romulans to show his face. Clouded in mystery but not for long because they quickly reveal it's a guy named Shinzon. Even more crazy is that they find out this guy is basically a clone of Picard.

Again this movie came out back in 2002, but the guy who plays the role of Shinzon is none other than Tom Hardy. Yes that popular actor. They had to have put some sort of prosthesis on him because he looks remarkably like a younger version of Patrick Stewart who plays Picard. It was pretty eerie but very well done. I didn't think this whole thing would play out very well but they somehow made it work.

Shinzon has had a far different past than Picard so he's basically like an evil version. They play on the fact that Picard is cocky and back in the day very arrogant and self serving. Picard does a lot of self reflections in this movie but doesn't dive too deep.

To mirror Picard's situation, Data now has a brother to contend with. This prototype version of him looks just like him but he doesn't have the same advanced AI as himself. He feels bad for his counterpart and wants him to live a full and adventurous life but you can't make someone live the life you want for them.

There are a lot of interesting things about this movie. Being made in 2002 I was actually surprised that there was a reference to trans people when announcing ladies and gentlemen. That was pretty ahead of their time to be adding that into the early scenes of this movie. I really didn't expect that.

Some may be quite disturbed at a sexual assault scene in this movie. I think this is the first time I've ever really seen something like that in a Star Trek film. It was surprising and very disturbing. The way they conducted it might also seem very different from what you expect them to act.

I was kind of disappointed at some of the inconsistencies with the technologies and the physics of the world in this movie. You'd think that Shinzon with all of his technology would have utilized his tools a lot better to easily win. He squandered a lot of potential and there were a lot of ex machina situations that get the Enterprise crew out of danger. There was so many that at certain points I kind of rolled my eyes.

Overall, I still had a great time. I think this movie further cemented the crew chemistry with one another. Not all of the characters got a fair shine in this movie but I think they did their best considering how many members they have in their crew. Some of the logic and inconsistencies set this movie back a bit but fun factor never really dwindled. I have to give this movie a 7 out of 10. Fans of the next generation will have a great time with this one.