Star Trek: Nemesis/YMMV


 * And the Fandom Rejoiced: For the first time ever, fans were happy at the news that Wesley Crusher was to appear, mostly because of the actor becoming a nerd icon in the years since the character's last appearance.
 * Yank the Dog's Chain: Most of the cameo was cut from the film.
 * Big Lipped Alligator Moment: The car chase scene on the desert planet. The apparently xenophobic natives chasing them are never mentioned again, nor is the flagrant violation of the Prime Directive incurred by firing on them with energy weapons and flying spaceships in plain view.
 * Shinzon taking over Riker's body to rape Troi. An utterly tasteless moment that serves absolutely no purpose except Shinzon doing something villainous, like we couldn't tell he was the bad guy already.
 * Well, "pointless" except for setting up the psychic connection between Troi and the Viceroy, which is later used in the movie to attack the Scimitar and keep the Enterprise from being destroyed. Just that small thing.
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome: Yes, the movie is mediocre at best, but the scene where is still unquestionably awesome.
 * Hell, say what you will about the rest of the movie -- and you can say a lot -- but the starship combat in general was the most interesting, most involved, and most sensible in terms of execution since The Wrath of Khan. The transition to full-digital 3D allowed them to do a lot.
 * As well as escaping the Scimitar by flying a fighter through it. Actually, this movie could have been pretty good if it had had a bit more meat on its bones.
 * Also This is actually based on a classic painting.
 * Troi gets a nice little moment turning the psychic link the Viceroy forced on her back against him.
 * Film - Jerry Goldsmith is right in form in his final Star Trek film score, even if no one else is.
 * Fight Scene Failure: proof that Your Mileage May Vary on just about anything, other fans found the starship fight listed above to be boring and without tension. Four ships looping through empty space throwing little droplets of light at each other, taking forever to break through the Deflector Shields and start setting off the Explosive Instrumentation. That's very realistic... But it's also kind of boring. Tropes Are Not Bad!
 * Rather odd in that Shinzon's ship was established to have hundreds of fighters and attack drones onboard, which are never used in the fight.
 * SF Debris points out that in terms of sheer scale, the fight scenes are a failure; we've already seen epic space battles featuring hundreds of ships - on a TV budget, no less! - on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
 * Generic Doomsday Villain: Shinzon. His reasoning seems to consist of "Well, I'm the villain of this movie, so I guess I better mentally rape Troi and destroy Earth." The extreme actions that actually relate to his supposedly well-intentioned goals occur entirely in the opening minutes of the movie: as he was raised by the Remans, he understandably doesn't like their status as the Warrior-Slave Race of the Romulan Empire. But when he assassinates the entire Romulan Senate and installs himself as the new dictator...he's already solved all the Remans' problems. At that point his only real explanation for wanting to destroy Earth is to prove the Remans' superiority over the Romulans and show the galaxy that their Romulan empire is not to be messed with which is somewhat unclear. For a poorly explained reason (to prove to everyone that the Remans are to be taken seriously), he has a super battleship way more advanced than every ship it comes up against. He also got a planet-destroying superweapon from... somewhere.
 * He's Just Hiding:
 * Idiot Ball: In the original script, Doctor Crusher and several others ask B4 how he'd ended up on the desert planet after turning him on. He then launched into his autobiography, explaining every moment of his life since he was first turned on by Pak'Leds ("they are fat.") Most of the tale would repeat several times over because he would also include instances of others asking him where he came from, at which point he tells the story about telling those people the story. On a second watch, the viewer would realize that at some point in there, B4 had actually spilled everything about Shinzon's plan, but Doctor Crusher had long since fallen asleep.
 * Memetic Mutation: In an unusual example, this happened to a line that never actually made it to the final movie. When Riker kicked the Viceroy to his death, he was scripted to quip "Don't worry, hell is dark!" The script was leaked on to the internet however, and the line was mercilessly lampooned by Trekkies, which -- along with Jonathan Frakes objecting on the basis that it looked like Riker was killing the Viceroy for the fun of it - resulted in the line being quietly dropped. It's somewhat strange, considering in actual context he's getting revenge on, so it probably would've been well-received if it had been left out of the trailer.
 * Motive Decay: Shinzon wanted to free the Remans, but he managed to do that before the movie started. Then he wanted to be the new Praetor on Romulus, but he didn't seem to like that job very much. So then he went to some really elaborate measures to bring in for Picard a blood transfusion, but that didn't work out so well (largely because he kept blowing it off until after Picard had left), so he finally settled on trying to kill everyone on Earth.
 * Recycled Script: tries and fails to mirror a similar moment in Wrath of Khan. Hell, even the main villain feels like a poor man's Khan.
 * Picard beaming over alone to the enemy ship to confront the cheesy villain and blow up the Applied Phlebotinum of Doom sure sounds familiar...
 * In all of the TNG movies, it's often Picard who goes alone to confront the villain (aside from Generations, where he gets royally schooled before recruiting Kirk to help him).
 * Special Effect Failure: The overall standard of special effects is better than in the previous movie, but some of the CGI (especially the model texturing) is awful, especially if you're watching on Blu-Ray.
 * Spotlight-Stealing Squad: The film plays out like a Picard and Data Fan Fiction, with most of the main cast limited to holding the floor down.
 * They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: You know, even with the Ass Pull involved in the Remans being Nosferatu knockoffs and Shinzon and Picard being related, there were still seeds of a neat plot in there (that dinner scene isn't half bad). And the concept behind B4 isn't really too out there, since Dr. Soong did say prototypes existed prior to Data & Lore. And hey, the starship fights are pretty rad. But mash them together nonsensically, and throw in random car chases, and... well...
 * Not to mention that this was supposed to be the first Trek film to truly feature the Romulans, after being in the background through previous films. But they're barely in it. Fortunately, the next Trek movie would show how badass the Romulans are.
 * Took the Bad Film Seriously: Tom Hardy is actually pretty decent; him and Patrick Stewart make the one-on-one scenes between Shinzon and Picard watchable, at least.
 * In an interview given years after the film came out, Hardy said that he took the film role very seriously, as it was intended to be his big break. The commercial failure of the film and the response from longtime fans apparently led to his relationship dissolving, his turning to alcohol, and considering suicide. It was only when he pulled himself together and starred in Bronson that he got over the film (and we all know the rest).