Star Trek 10: Nemesis

Join us on Facebook!

Star Trek 10: Nemesis - what the fuck is it about?

So the Enterprise is sent to the Romulan council in order to negotiate a peace treaty, for some reason. Not that it matters I suppose considering that they're all instantly killed by a young Tom Hardy. Hardy plays an evil clone of Picard which we as an audience can tell because they're both disgustingly bald. Honestly there were scenes in which the two of them had their naked heads close together in which I couldn't help but think of that moment with Barbara Windsor in Carry On Camping. We're told that this clone exists because the Romulans “somehow” managed to get some of Picard's DNA. We're never told how they managed this, although considering Picard has flirted with at least one alien per new planet, I kind of don't want to know. Even when Picard is looking at Hardy, you can tell he's trying to work out whether banging a clone would count as incest. Anyway, long story short, Hardy needs Picard's blood to live and has decided that he also wants to destroy Earth... because you know.. fuck it, why wouldn't you!?

So was it shit or not then?

It was nice that in this film Hardy didn't just do his usual thing of mumbling, although sadly I still couldn't understand a word that he was fucking saying. I mean, this is a genuine sentence uttered in the movie: “The Son'a, the Borg, the Romulans, the evil Soran, and that pesky Nexus. You seem to get all the easy assignments!”. Sorry, what the fuck did you just say? It got so bad in this movie in regards to all that space gibberish that I actually invented a drinking game whilst watching it. Simply take a shot every time you hear something that you don't understand and then see if you can get to the first half hour without being fucking dead. In terms of Hardy's performance however, although I don't know what the fuck he was saying, I did enjoy him in general. Although he was skinny as hell. I guess this was filmed during that point in which he was enjoying life as a crack-head, which is fair enough. As the film goes on, his character begins to get sicker and sicker.. I'm not sure if this was intentional or if the filming was just dragging on and he was being forced to go cold turkey.

Whereas most franchises are content with just the explosions, Star Trek likes to ask the bigger questions. You know.. the really important things in life such as what would we do without the environment? And what does a God really need with a spaceship? In the case of Nemesis, it seemed to me that the movie was basically just asking 'have you ever considered that your problems could be solved with suicide?' Picard is trying to kill his clone; Data quite literally deactivates a replica of himself, and then the film concludes when a main character Wrath Of Khan's it by sacrificing themselves to save their friends. In every case, it seems that topping yourself isn't the worst idea ever. Even in terms of the franchise this is true. I read that this movie was stupidly released at the same time as one of the Lord Of The Rings films and as such made piss all money. What was the result of this? The franchise basically died before being brought back with the much more accessible and noticeably more profitable reboot. Problem solved!

I did like this film though. It was the first of the Next Generation movies to feel actually cinematic, the action was pretty good, and I did feel some emotion with the concluding sacrifice. I mean the emotion was pretty much just “oh.. never mind” but that's more than I felt at my own granddad's funeral. Who can be truly sad when you know you have a free buffet coming up?! With it's pro top-yourself message however, I just worry now that if I'm ever feeling particularly low and find myself looking at my veins whilst holding a knife, I can't be sure that I won't suddenly hear Patrick Stewart's voice demanding me to “make it so!”.