I.A.M. Musing About…

And thus we come to the end of the films using the cast of The Next Generation. All sorts of things seem to have been happening to the characters off camera, but as we’re not privy to them, we can only try to piece together the end-results and wonder if someone is, yet again, having a better time somewhere without us.

Star Trek X: Nemesis (2002)

Beginning with a reception after the wedding of Troi and Riker – during which we see, but never get to actually hear, Wil Wheaton – we suddenly veer off into the land of “Crisis is Brewing!!!” which drags Captain Picard away from potentially attending an ambassadorial event to be held in the nude (local customs, apparently, will be excused for some of those attending). Off we fly to a planet which is perfect fro driving a dune buggy around on, which is precisely what Jean-Luke and his merry band of men do. Huzzah! Fun times galore here.

Oh, but then someone has to go and spoil it, and the locals attack them with nasty things like guns and missiles. Damn them and their fun-busting ways!

Anyway, the real problem here is caused by guy who has been carefully selected to be the truest arch-nemesis (see how they did that? isn’t that clever?) of our favourite captain who’s open about his bald-headedness. Without revealing much of anything about the Very Bad Man – he’s mad! MAD, I tell you! – he is a match for Picard, but his clock is rapidly ticking, and he needs to win quickly, otherwise he will lose everything! This set of heightened stakes makes him a bit crazed – he’s mad! MAD, I tell you! – but it does at least drive the character’s need with a better devise device than is usual with these things. There’s “revenge”, sure, but just how far a level would you take that to, really? A willingness to plow-up a planet with yourself included just doesn’t seem reasonable, so with this villain’s situation – he’s mad! MAD, I tell you! – it’s at the very least plausible.

Our evil doer here – he’s mad! MAD, I tell you! – has an aide played by Ron Perlman in a latex head appliance. At some point, hopefully, he’ll be able to play a character which doesn’t require a latex head appliance, but here he gets to wear one that does at least as much to cover his face as the ones for Hellboy do.

Reman Viceroy Vkruk (that’s Perlman) isn’t as interesting as the guy he’s serving – who’s mad! MAD, I tell you! – but he is at the very least able to kick some ass. So he does. Like you do, when you’ve been wearing a latex head extension most of the day.

I really want to like this film, especially as we get to see people do things they’ve not before: Picard running around being a really action-oriented hero, Data doing noble things and taking control, Riker and Troi zooming all over the place to get word from one team back to Federation HQ by way of a chase / battle sequence… all very good things! Somehow it doesn’t hold together and feels disjointed afterwards. It’s possible that its three acts are too distinguished from each other, and thus the story isn’t so much of a unified one.

Did I mention the villain? He’s mad! MAD, I tell you!

Star Trek X: Nemesis (2002)
Paramount Pictures 

Directed by
Stuart Baird

Writing credits
Gene Roddenberry (television series Star Trek)
story by John Logan & Rick Berman & Brent Spiner
screenplay by John Logan

This year, I’ve been watching DVDs from the library for a number of reasons, mostly to do with a combination of “filling in the gaps in my ‘pop culture’ knowledge”, as well as a concerted effort to better understand story editing by both watching a film and then re-watching listening to people who have studied that particular movie for years in order to better appreciate the themes, plot construction, symbolism, and so on.

The process would be nothing without the secondary audio tracks. Sometimes it’s like having actually been through the film-making process with the people involved.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 at 1:25 pm and is filed under movies, Personal, Reviews, TV Series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.