Star Trek: Nemesis

There's at least one thing Nemesis has over Insurrection - a sense of danger and excitement that at least makes it seem more like a science fiction movie than two hours of nothing. A lot of what it does is pretty dumb on further reflection, but it's got that being-a-movie thing down pretty well. It's a pretty slick movie too, benefiting from the relatively modern technology a fair bit. Like the recent Trek film, it features Romulans heavily, although they aren't exactly the bad guys this time, though in a way they're responsible for the villain. For some reason they're the least capable slave drivers of all time, having forced an entire species called the Remans to work their mines for them, but when a clone of Picard that they abandon plans for manages to start an uprising, they're able to create one of the most advanced starships I've ever seen in the Trek universe, built to stand up to the Enterprise with ease. Not sure how they managed that in captivity, but they forcibly take over and pursue Picard, needing his DNA to save bad-Picard from a degenerative condition.

And I mean, that's the movie I guess. There's some stuff with Data, and he becomes pretty important to the movie's resolution, mostly because Brent Spiner and his buddy wrote the movie. There's some solid action, including big standoffs in space and a number of phaser battles, although they seemed to take a fair bit from the Star Wars films, especially the Remans' inability to hid the broad side of a barn. Ron Perlman plays the bad guy's second in command, recognizable only by his gruff voice under all that alien makeup, and I enjoyed his role despite the pointlessness of it in the last third of the film. There's a fair amount of ripping off of the second Trek movie, and it doesn't really do anything as well as that movie did. I'd love to say the ending affected me, but it honestly didn't for some reason. Maybe it's because the tiniest bit of planning would have prevented the tragedy of some of the events, maybe it's because nothing the movie does to set up its grand moments is actually justified by the story in any way. I don't know. It's a stupid movie, made at least a little watchable by its flashier elements.