Star
Trek: Nemesis is a 2002 American science fiction film released by
Paramount Pictures. It is the tenth feature film in the Star Trek
franchise and the last of the Star Trek films to include the entire
main cast of the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series. It
was directed by Stuart Baird and written by John Logan (from a story
developed by Logan, Brent Spiner, and producer Rick Berman). The crew
of the USS Enterprise-E are forced to deal with a threat to the
United Federation of Planets from a Reman clone of Captain Picard
named Shinzon who has taken control of the Romulan Star Empire in a
coup d'état.
Principal photography took
place from November 2001 to March 2002. Jerry Goldsmith composed the
film's score. The film was released in North America on December
13RD, 2002. The film received generally mixed reviews, with
publications criticizing the film for being the least successful in
the Star Trek franchise. The film went on to earn $67,312,826
worldwide and was a financial failure. Following the failure of the
film and the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise, Berman and Erik
Jendresen began development on the unproduced Star Trek: The
Beginning. Three years later, Viacom split from CBS Corporation and
Paramount eventually rebooted the film series with Star Trek by J. J. Abrams.
The film was cut by about a
third from a much longer running time. Many of the deleted scenes in
the movie were "character moments", which served to further
the characters' relationships with one another and the reason why
they were cut was to put more emphasis on the battle between the
Enterprise-E and the Scimitar. Rick Berman has stated that about 50
minutes worth of scenes were filmed, but cut (though not necessarily
all of them were usable in a final form). Around 17 minutes of
deleted scenes were included on the DVD.
Nemesis
was to have been the first Star Trek film to feature the character
of Wesley Crusher (played by Wil Wheaton). His scenes were almost
entirely cut from the film, leaving only a brief, silent cameo during
the wedding (which itself is only visible in widescreen
presentations, as he sits at the far end of the table). A deleted
scene on the collector's edition DVD features a brief conversation
between Wesley and Picard: Wesley, now a lieutenant in operations-division
gold, has returned to Starfleet and is a member of Captain Riker's
engineering crew on the USS Titan.
Three "extended
ending" clips were included on the two-disc edition. The first
was Picard talking to Dr. Crusher about her return to Starfleet
Medical and Crusher remarking how she works with a bunch of young
doctors who are ready to cure the entire quadrant. The second was
Geordi and Worf packing Data's possessions in his quarters. As they
are cleaning up, Data's cat Spot jumps into Worf's hands and Worf
states he is not a cat person. Geordi sees how Spot has taken to Worf
and replies, "You are now." Immediately following this
scene is the introduction of the new first officer, Commander Madden,
which is included in the deleted scenes of the DVD. The third, titled
"The Captain's Chair" features the goodbye scene between
Riker and Picard, as well as the introduction of the new Enterprise
first officer (Madden). The Captain's chair is newly installed with
the special feature of automatic restraint straps that trigger when
the ship goes to alert, to which Picard responds with a smile
"It's about time!"
In promotional interviews
for the film, Patrick Stewart stated that room for a sequel was left
as B-4 begins singing, "Blue Skies." Star Trek: First
Contact and Insurrection director Jonathan Frakes was not asked to
direct the film; he has said that if he had been asked, he would have accepted.
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AV
CLUB FEATURETTE DEPARTMENT
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Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his Enterprise-E crew encounter Shinzon (Tom Hardy), a younger clone of Picard, rejected by the Romulans as the human weapon of an abandoned conspiracy. Raised on the nocturnal Romulan sister planet Remus, Shinzon now plots revenge against Romulus and Earth but needs Picard's blood to carry out his scheme. Add
Star Trek Nemesis to your DVD collection.
The
Nemesis plot revolves around an imperfect clone of Captain Jean-Luc
Picard created by the Romulans with the intent of replacing Picard.
Not long after Shinzon (Tom Hardy, right) was created, though, power
within the Romulan Empire had shifted and the Romulan Senate
abandoned its plan, believing it to be too provocative an act if
discovered. With no use for such a clone, the Empire exiled Shinzon
from Romulus, sending him to work as a slave laborer in the dilithium
mines on Remus. Reviled by the Romulans working there, Shinzon became
the target of abuse. In his time in the mines, he was severely
beaten, having his nose and jaw broken by brutal Romulan guards, also
being forced to work for eighteen hours a day, being constantly
lashed with Romulan whips. One Reman, however, took pity on Shinzon,
teaching him strength and compassion and protecting him when he could
from the Romulans. This man would become Shinzon's Viceroy in the
conflict to follow.
In
2374, the Romulan Empire formally declared war on the Dominion,
joining the Federation and Klingon Empire in the hostilities waging
until 2375. Enlisting the aid of the slaves on Remus, the Romulan
military drafted Shinzon who quickly distinguished himself in battle
and ascended the ranks. Like his Starfleet counterpart, Shinzon
became regarded as a great tactician, leading twelve successful
engagements against the Jem'Hadar. Following the end of the Dominion
War, Shinzon had both military experience and a capable army at his
disposal. Forming an alliance with several Romulan officials,
including Senator Tal'aura and Commanders Suran and Donatra, Shinzon
vowed to free his Reman "brothers". Setting into motion a
plan to overthrow the Romulan government, he and his cohorts
constructed a massive warbird, the Scimitar. Operating out of a
secret base, Shinzon and his people also developed a weapon,
utilizing deadly thalaron radiation. Deploying a small thalaron
projector in the Romulan Senate, Shinzon was able to kill all the
Senate members, leading a coup d'état and installs himself as
praetor. Picard and the USS Enterprise-E travel to Romulus to meet
Shinzon and investigate his peace overture; Shinzon reveals his
identity and origins to Picard. However, the peace overture is part
of a plan to lure Picard to Romulus; the cloning process that created
Shinzon is killing him, and he requires an infusion of Picard's DNA
to stay alive. Simultaneously, Shinzon plans to use a thalaron
radiation weapon aboard his ship, the Scimitar, to destroy all life
on Earth.
Shinzon
is a Chinese name that means "heart". It is also a
Japanese name and means "new existence" in that language.
Jude Law was originally considered for the role of Shinzon and
Michael Shanks (Daniel from Stargate) read for the role of Shinzon.
Early in the writing stage, it was planned for Patrick Stewart to
play the roles of both Shinzon and Picard. The part of Shinzon went
to Tom Hardy. Hardy would later go on to play Bane in The Dark Night
Rises (right). Some have commented how similar Bane and Shinzom are.
Both are villains with a nefarious plan for revenge, Shinzon to
distroy the Earth, Bane to level Gotham City. Both grew up on a
brutal subterranean prison, were tortured and are critically ill in
some way.
Trivia alert: Hardy's
acting path would intersect with other Star Trek stars. He starred
with Jennifer Morrison in the acclaimed 2011 sports drama Warrior.
Morrison played Winona Kirk, mother of James T. Kirk, in J.J. Abrams'
Star Trek but is better known as Emma Swan on the fantasy ABC-TV
drama Once Upon a Time. Hardy worked alongside Eric Bana (Nero, in
the Star Trek reboot) in Black Hawk Down and also appeared in the
2011 film adaptation of John le Carré's novel Tinker Tailor
Soldier Spy, which saw him working alongside Star Trek Into
Darkness's Benedict Cumberbatch. Hardy also co-starred with Chris
Pine (new Kirk in 2009's Star Trek) as rival spies in This Means War,
a 2012 romantic comedy spy film directed by McG and starring Reese
Witherspoon (below).
For
the first time in Star Trek, The Enterprise E bridge was built on a
gimble so it would physically shake the set. However, the first space
battle scene on the bridge (just prior to Shinzon's visit to Picard's
ready room) was shot prior to the gimble's construction, so it was
done the old fashioned way (shaking the camera while the actors
move). Although most of the movie's SFX were CGI, the crash scene was
created using 40-foot models of the Enterprise and Scimitar. The
footage from the models colliding was then digitally enhanced to give
the final product.
On the computer display
showing the Federation fleet position, one of the ships is named the
USS Archer, after Captain Archer (Enterprise). The Engineering lab,
Engine Room, and Stellar Cartography sets were all the same set just
redressed multiple times.
The Romulan Warbird Bridge
set in this film is an extensive redress of the Enterprise-E bridge.
After the Enterprise scenes were shot, the set was refurbished to
meet the needs. The free-standing terminals used on the Scimitar
bridge are actually reused Cardassian consoles from Star Trek: Deep
Space Nine. The Reman costumes were re-used as Xindi-Reptilian
uniforms in Star Trek: Enterprise.
The Enterprise-E
observation lounge is an extensive redress of the Enterprise-D
Observation lounge as seen on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The
set's aft video wall and console were refurbished for the third
season of Enterprise, and the set as a whole was restored to its
"Next Generation" appearance in the Enterprise series finale.
Midway during shooting, the
captain's chair from the bridge set disappeared, apparently stolen.
While the film crew scrambled to find a way to work around the
problem, the "Enterprise" cast and crew shooting in the
soundstages next door decided to have a little fun at their
franchise-mate's expense: Scott Bakula visited Patrick Stewart's
trailer to present him with a makeshift wooden "replacement"
chair with the letters K-A-P-T-I-N painted on it. Picard's new
captain's chair used in a deleted scene set at the end of the film
was reused as Captain Archer's command chair during the fourth season
of Star Trek: Enterprise.
Bryan
Singer (X-Men movie director and writer) has a cameo in the movie:
he replaces Worf at Tactical when Worf goes to meet the Reman
boarding party. Jeri Ryan was originally going to have a cameo in the
movie, but she was unavailable due to shooting Boston Public. Kate
Mulgrew (right) was then given a cameo role. Ashley Judd was also to
have a cameo in an early version of the script, reprising her role as
Ensign Lefler, from the Star Trek The Next Generation episodes:
"The Game" and "Darmok".
The music to Star Trek:
Nemesis was one of the last works by veteran composer Jerry
Goldsmith, who composed such previous entrees to the franchise as the
Academy Award nominated score for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star
Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek: First Contact and Star Trek:
Insurrection as well as the themes to the television series Star
Trek: The Next Generation (arranged by Dennis McCarthy) and Star
Trek: Voyager. Goldsmith had also previously collaborated with
director Stuart Baird in Executive Decision and U.S. Marshalls.
The score opens with airy
synthesizers under a trumpet performing an augmented triad before
preceding into Alexander Courage's Star Trek: The Original Series
fanfare. The score then quickly transitions into a much darker theme
to accompany the conflict between the Reman and Romulan empires.
Goldsmith also composed a new 5-note theme to accompany the character
Shinzon and the Scimitar, which is manipulated throughout the score
to reflect the multiple dimensions of the character. The score is
book-ended with Goldsmith's theme from Star Trek: The Motion Picture,
following a brief excerpt from the song "Blue Skies" by
Irving Berlin and the original Star Trek fanfare.
Star Trek Nemesis received
"mixed or average" reviews. Roger Ebert of the Chicago
Sun-Times had mixed feelings of the film, stating, "I'm smiling
like a good sport and trying to get with the dialogue ... and
gradually it occurs to me that "Star Trek" is over for me.
I've been looking at these stories for half a lifetime, and, let's
face it, they're out of gas." Ebert gave the film two out of
four stars. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said that the
film is a "rather hairbrained story that's relieved to a degree
only by some striking visual effects and by Patrick Stewart's
outstanding presence as Picard".
Owen
Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a positive review,
commenting that the crew "indulge[s] the force of humanity over
hardware in a way that George Lucas had forgotten." Gleiberman
gave the film a "B-". Stephen Holden of The New York Times
said that the film is a "klutzy affair whose warm, fuzzy heart
emits intermittent bleats from the sleeve of its gleaming
spacesuit". Holden praised the scenes where the Enterprise and
the Scimitar ram into each other during the final battle.
Actors LeVar Burton (Geordi
La Forge) and Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi) have spoken critically of
Stuart Baird, criticizing him for not watching any of the episodes of
The Next Generation. Jonathan Frakes voiced similar criticisms of
Baird, believing the film would have been much better if he himself
had directed (as he had done with the previous two Trek films).
Nemesis was released on
December 13th, 2002, in direct competition with Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets (released November 15th, 2002), the 20th James
Bond film Die Another Day (released November 22nd, 2002), and The
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (released December 18th, 2002).
Rick Berman (executive producer of the film) has suggested that
Nemesis's performance may have been negatively affected by "the
competition of other films".
The film's gross domestic
income was the lowest of the franchise. It opened at #2 in the US box
office (just $200,000 behind Maid in Manhattan) and was the first
Trek film not to debut at #1. It earned a total of $67,312,826
worldwide, against a production budget of $60 million.
Internationally Nemesis, as most previous Star Trek movies, was
financially most successful in Germany.
Nemesis
was to have been the first Star Trek film to feature the character
of Wesley Crusher (played by Wil Wheaton). His scenes were almost
entirely cut from the film, leaving only a brief, silent cameo during
the wedding (which itself is only visible in widescreen
presentations, as he sits at the far end of the table). A deleted
scene on the collector's edition DVD features a brief conversation
between Wesley and Picard: Wesley, now a lieutenant in operations-division
gold, has returned to Starfleet and is a member of Captain Riker's
engineering crew on the USS Titan.
The
Nemesis plot revolves around an imperfect clone of Captain Jean-Luc
Picard created by the Romulans with the intent of replacing Picard.
Not long after Shinzon (Tom Hardy, right) was created, though, power
within the Romulan Empire had shifted and the Romulan Senate
abandoned its plan, believing it to be too provocative an act if
discovered. With no use for such a clone, the Empire exiled Shinzon
from Romulus, sending him to work as a slave laborer in the dilithium
mines on Remus. Reviled by the Romulans working there, Shinzon became
the target of abuse. In his time in the mines, he was severely
beaten, having his nose and jaw broken by brutal Romulan guards, also
being forced to work for eighteen hours a day, being constantly
lashed with Romulan whips. One Reman, however, took pity on Shinzon,
teaching him strength and compassion and protecting him when he could
from the Romulans. This man would become Shinzon's Viceroy in the
conflict to follow.
In
2374, the Romulan Empire formally declared war on the Dominion,
joining the Federation and Klingon Empire in the hostilities waging
until 2375. Enlisting the aid of the slaves on Remus, the Romulan
military drafted Shinzon who quickly distinguished himself in battle
and ascended the ranks. Like his Starfleet counterpart, Shinzon
became regarded as a great tactician, leading twelve successful
engagements against the Jem'Hadar. Following the end of the Dominion
War, Shinzon had both military experience and a capable army at his
disposal. Forming an alliance with several Romulan officials,
including Senator Tal'aura and Commanders Suran and Donatra, Shinzon
vowed to free his Reman "brothers". Setting into motion a
plan to overthrow the Romulan government, he and his cohorts
constructed a massive warbird, the Scimitar. Operating out of a
secret base, Shinzon and his people also developed a weapon,
utilizing deadly thalaron radiation. Deploying a small thalaron
projector in the Romulan Senate, Shinzon was able to kill all the
Senate members, leading a coup d'état and installs himself as
praetor. Picard and the USS Enterprise-E travel to Romulus to meet
Shinzon and investigate his peace overture; Shinzon reveals his
identity and origins to Picard. However, the peace overture is part
of a plan to lure Picard to Romulus; the cloning process that created
Shinzon is killing him, and he requires an infusion of Picard's DNA
to stay alive. Simultaneously, Shinzon plans to use a thalaron
radiation weapon aboard his ship, the Scimitar, to destroy all life
on Earth.
Bryan
Singer (X-Men movie director and writer) has a cameo in the movie:
he replaces Worf at Tactical when Worf goes to meet the Reman
boarding party. Jeri Ryan was originally going to have a cameo in the
movie, but she was unavailable due to shooting Boston Public. Kate
Mulgrew (right) was then given a cameo role. Ashley Judd was also to
have a cameo in an early version of the script, reprising her role as
Ensign Lefler, from the Star Trek The Next Generation episodes:
"The Game" and "Darmok".
Owen
Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a positive review,
commenting that the crew "indulge[s] the force of humanity over
hardware in a way that George Lucas had forgotten." Gleiberman
gave the film a "B-". Stephen Holden of The New York Times
said that the film is a "klutzy affair whose warm, fuzzy heart
emits intermittent bleats from the sleeve of its gleaming
spacesuit". Holden praised the scenes where the Enterprise and
the Scimitar ram into each other during the final battle.
