The movie was released November 1996 and as I noted is the one movie that was considered pretty good, even great. Making the Borg the villain was a no brained and the lovely Alice Krige made a great Borg Queen. Yeah she was a retcon but not a terrible one. It made sense, sort of. However while the movie was really good that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Here are five things I hated.
The music
People may disagree with this but for me, this is one of the worst Trek scores. The opening is boring as hell and it never really gets better: I usually love the music in these movies but man, not this one.
Director Riker
I have no issue with the idea of Jonathan Frakes directing. He proved to be a good director on several episodes of the series. The problem is that because he was directing, it means Riker got short shrifted for the movie, it would have been nice if he had been in it more. In fact one of the few things I liked about Nemesis was seeing Riker finally get some action.
Split up
The first half hour is pretty awesome it feels like a hyped up episode of the series. But then they are separated into groups and this causes something that bugs me. We never see the crew together again except for the very end. Yeah we get some nice character moments including a few cute cameos but it always bothered me that the crew isn’t together for most of the movie. And while at least Riker has an excuse, Laforge and Troi feel more then a bit neglected. They both really get one big scene each (and LaForge’s makes him look like a dope). And don’t get me started on Data spending half the movie with the Borg Queen. Those scenes with the Queen teasing him would have been better exploded in an episode rather crammed into a movie
Picard Rage
So let’s talk about the big criticism of the movie. That Picard is a little to angry here, between the holodeck scene and the big blow up at Lily scene where he screams “I’ll make them pay!”. The argument by some is that Picard did show that kind of ptsd in the series. Especially the episode “I Borg”. However, I also think that the scene in the movie was a bit much. Yeah I get it this is the low point of the film and while he’s not out of character I also can’t see series Picard foaming at the mouth the way movie Picard does here. The movie tried desperately to make Patrick Stewart an action hero.
To much action?
Some great action set pieces including the deflector scene and that awesome final fight with the queen. But.,is there to much action and not enough character scenes? I know it’s foolish to say I wish this movie had slowed a bit for more character moments or that it felt more like an episode of the show since that’s how we got Insurrection. That being said, once the action gets going it really never stops. There are one or two exceptions like Troi’s drunken scene but that’s all. The big problem with these movies is that Trek isn’t supposed to be all action. There’s supposed to be more to it and it’s something all these movies miss. It’s why Trek works better in episodic form (despite recent examples to the contrary). For example at the end we see the Vulcans arrive and the crew of the Enterprise just leave. And,,,what happened when they got back? Did they get into trouble (Picard disobey Starfleet)? Of course neither the wrecked Defiant or Worf being away are ever mentioned on DS9. An episode can end the way this movie does because there’ll be another one next week. Here I always felt like I wanted more, an epilogue? A post credit scene? Something!
So bottom line, it’s a great movie with solid action and some decent character scenes. Supporting actors James Cromwell, Alfre Woodward and Alice Krige all do a great job. But in the end I’ll stick with the series, that’s the TNG I really love.
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