Grossly Inaccurate Movie Reviews: Star Trek: Nemesis
Star Trek: Nemesis
Paramount 
Patrick Stewart
Brent Spiner
LeVar Burton
Jonathan Frakes
I admit it. I used to love Star Trek.
I think we all did, at one time. We longed to surf the stars from comfortable arm chairs, on board a ship using technology so advanced it doesn't require any technical knowledge to operate it (ship! Fly me to Alpha Centauri!). Who didn't daydream it, exploring distant, exotic civilizations and finding they're filled with English-speaking, air-breathing Caucasians with exotic alien clothes and exotic alien foreheads. We would walk among them in our snug uniforms, revelling in their exotic customs, like shaking hands in a slightly different way than we humans do and tasting all their alien, exotic ways of preparing chicken.
But then we grew up, didn't we? Critical thinking crashed in on us like a high stack of turd crates in life's poo warehouse. We saw that the Enterprise's console was just painted plywood. We cringed as we really noticed Shatner's acting for the first time. We found out the whole Star Trek concept was a slapdash bit of naive communist propaganda by Gene Roddenberry (who donated all proceeds from the show's syndication to buy arms for the Chinese Red Army).
Kirk: Scotty! How in the world did you get the warp drive working? It took a direct phaser blast!
Scotty: Sir, I used communism!
In the years since we opened the trade magazines and read about William Shatner's alcoholism and womanizing and DeForest Kelley's ritualistic serial killings. We read the stories of Patrick Stewart's ties to Neo-Nazi groups and heard his sickening plans for a perfect Aryan world on his Christmas album, I'm Dreaming of a White Nation. We heard rumors of Brent Spiner's cannibalism, found out LeVar Burton actually lost his eyesight when a homemade acid bomb went off in his face (found near him were detailed blueprints of a nearby orphanage).
By now we've all realized that space travel is more a part of our past than our future, the whole idea an expensive, pointless 60's fad fueled by our hatred of the Russians and our desire to build gigantic penis-shaped objects that spat fire. Our once-fanciful ideas about space have been crushed under the unspeakable reality that we are alone in a frozen, black expanse of dust and barren rock, the planets coated with unbreathable air and acidic vapor, their surfaces either encrusted with arctic ice or charred by heat a thousand times that of any human's worse conception of Hell.
If there are any lifeforms out there, we could no more make peace with them than we could befriend a jellyfish. Their communication would be through a series of intricately-shaped clouds of flesh-burning enzymes, their idea of a "hug" would reduce a human body to a spray of wet hamburger. Not that we would ever get that far; their mere appearance would be so horrific to us that we would immediately be driven into the primal, murderous dementia that is the foundation of all human personality.
Speaking of which, the creation of a machine such as the humanoid robot Data, self-aware and conscious, would destroy all human ideas of God and the soul and of any uniqueness of the human mind. Such a being would possess all human desires but none of the abilities to fulfill them, spending every microsecond of its silicon hell longing the most for the one thing he can truly never have: death.
Which brings me to Star Trek: Nemesis.
There is a thing with the Star Trek films; the odd-numbered ones tend to suck. The even-numbered ones, like The Wrath of Khan and this one, also tend to suck.
This film also happens to be the end of the run for the Next Generation crew (named that because their series is set approximately three generations after the original Star Trek). Patrick Stewart (Captain Jean-Luc Picard) asked out of his three-film contract three films ago, but was forced to gut out the role he loathes one more time. It shows.
Data: Captain, there is a ship coming into sensor range.
Picard: .....
Data: Captain?
Picard: Yes. Of course. Man, we sure are in space. Hey, let's all go on board the holodeck so that it can almost kill us again.
(Picard takes a drag off a poorly-concealed cigarette)
Data: The ship, sir...
Picard: Ram it!
(long pause)
Worf: Perhaps we should bring it up on the view screen...
Picard: Ah, yes. Whoa, look. There it is. Let's all look at the green screen. Man, it sure is shippy. Worf, hand me my light saber.
Worf: ...uh, Captain...
(Picard stands, appears unbalanced, maybe intoxicated)
Picard: I'm going on board that ship! I'll dick-slap every last one of them!
(He runs at the view screen with a howl, then bounces violently off it.)
The other problem I have with it is the cursing, especially by Patrick Stewart's character. Not crude language; actual cursing. Early in the film he actually turns to the camera and shouts, "a curse on all your houses! May the sword and bloodshed never depart from your family, may tumors never depart from your groins!"
There is a plot of some kind, involving aliens and/or other dimensions or time travel. At the end, everyone dies. If you like Star Trek, you'll probably like this movie. If you like crap, you will also like this movie. I give it one star.
*
I might be overstating my case, but I suspect that unless scientists can prove that we can create spaceships that can travel to the nearest stars within a few years or less, not several thousand years or more, I think we will pretty much give up on space travel.
ReplyDang, Nemesis sucked. I hate that movie (but I really love Star Trek).
ReplyThey used the wrong ship, they should have a picture of the Enterprise E a Sovereign class starship. Instead they used a picture of a the Enterprise A a Constitution Class starship refit. And yes I'm a big Star Trek fan. No I am not a virgin. :p
ReplyYes you are.
I think this was the first David Wong article I'd ever read. From this I was introduced to Pointless Waste of Time, and followed him to Cracked. God bless you, Wong. God bless you.
ReplyHilarious as this was, I think a more inaccurate review would end with it declaring "Nemesis" to be the best in the series... :P
ReplyI know, i'd frankly prefer to have watched the exact movie this review describes than to have sat through the actual Nemesis... ;)
Worf, hand me my lightsaber.
ReplyI'd prefer Stargate lol
ReplyThat's just sad.
Yes, but it's hard to weasel your self out of a three movie contract when there's only one movie.
This article is sadder now that the shuttle missions have been canned.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesLet's not mince words. They were shitcanned. The cans contained shit.
Blame your government for not coming up with a replacement. I'm for all studying space and and the pursuit of science, but the money spent on maintaining the ageing fleet of shuttles is better spent elsewhere.
This article is sadder now that someone has associated it with America and NASA.
@SeanYamazaki The wealth available in society, particularly America, far exceeds what you'd need to provide decently for every citizen *and* maintain a shuttle program. It's politics, not economic rationalism. (Hell, 'economic rationalism' itself is more politics than 'economic rationalism'.)
I know this was a humour article but I still googled it to make sure Patrick Stewart wasn't a Neo-Nazi. My world would have ENDED...
ReplyI did that exact same thing, probably at the same time you did (reading-the-article-wise). That would have hurt like getting gut-stomped.
Eh, Star Trek became hilariously unrealistic after Mass Effect came out.
ReplyThat's like saying that Lord of the Rings became unrealistic when D&D came out.
No, it's like saying SamYates became hilariously unrealistic after his mother gave birth to him.
I think it's a mix of a satire and he just really doesn't like Star-Trek anymore. Too many painful memories of long ago reminding him of what it was like to dream. Of getting far away from this sucky, miserable experience we call life and going into a fantasy. Reminds him of the good old days when his dreams were as big as his... well they were just big. Painful memories is what I'm trying to talk about.
ReplyHell, by DS9 Star Trek hardly looked like what Roddenberry thought it should.
"What Roddenberry thought it would" was actually a bizarre interpretation of people like Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. DS9 actually showed us a realistic Federation, I think. Some of the writers actually bothered to take Roddenbury's premises and run with them, rather than sidelining or ignoring them completely and mistaking Star Trek for a monster-of-the-week show (which it only resembled because of syndication concerns in the first place (networks want to be able to run episodes in any order they want without worrying about arcs)).
What in the hell did I just read? I am confused, yet allured.
ReplyI resent this bashing of the TNG, I'm all growed up and I still love it, but even that resentment couldn't change the fact that this article was very, very funny.
ReplyNo shit, huh? When Patrick Stewart showed up on my doorstep again this afternoon, fucking burned out of his skull (AGAIN), I asked him if he had ever thought about counseling or something, and the crazy son of a bitch actually put his dick right on my face. This may not sound all that impressive, until you realize that he was lying on the floor at the time and I was standing at the top of the stairs.
ReplyHoly crap, that comment made me cry.
At least you got Stewart! LeVar showed up at my house, broke in, and then broke all my vases trying to find his glasses. I told him, "LeVar! You're blind! The glasses won't help!" but he keeps insisting that he can see infra-red with them.
Prometheus: You don't like intellectual humor? Why the hell call yourself Prometheus? Do you even know who Prometheus is? Anyway, I found the other reveiws to be slightly better than this but I'll say anything is good if it's written by David Wong. Pwot was a great site and our fanbase appreciated that, but here on cracked, a lot of posters are retards.
ReplyThis article is several years old, but I still find it to be hilarious as balls (and balls are hilarious).
Reply