Current State of the USS Hadhafang
Had the same friend I mentioned in my Star Trek VI review over. We had fun. We talked TFA (which was cool), and watched some Danger Committee stuff (it's a juggling show, very funny) and MST3K, which was awesome. And later on discussed bad movie stereotypes (usually the types that showed up in every bad movie, e.g. the jerk, etc.).
The downside was that we watched Star Trek: Nemesis, as Insurrection was misplaced for the moment. How was it? Well, I'll talk about it more under the cut.
I wanted to like this film. Indeed, after the opening scene which started off dull at first before getting more interesting and an actually adorable wedding scene for Riker and Troi, I thought it was going to go along fine. And Shinzon's earlier scenes...I feel massively guilty for saying this, but his backstory scenes were actually well-done, as was his conversation with Picard over dinner.
And then we get to a later scene in the film where Shinzon uses the Viceroy to forge a mental link to rape Counselor Troi while she and Riker are on their honeymoon, mentally and physically. And that's where the film really got tainted for me. While there were still good moments, like with B4, a lot of Shinzon's scenes rang hollow with the knowledge that he did this to Troi -- this absolutely unforgivable act where, other than Troi using the link to find the Viceroy later on and get her share of revenge, it's hardly acknowledged or seems to have any effect on the story itself. The thing is, stories with sexual assault in them can be done well. Last House on the Left is one of them. Speak is one of them. Two works by Cheryl Rainfield, Scars and Stained are two of them. (And Cheryl Rainfield is a child sexual abuse survivor herself, so a lot of it is drawn from her own experience) Dolores Claiborne and Gerald's Game by Stephen King are two other books that deal with sexual assault/abuse well. Perks of Being A Wallflower another. And unfortunately, that's really a scarce amount of works that actually handle the subject with the gravity and sensitivity it deserves, because a lot of fiction doesn't take it seriously, eroticizes it (from the sporking of Fifty Shades I read on the das_sporking comm, Fifty Shades seems to do that), has Unfortunate Implications galore regarding it (how LOTF treated Tahiri molesting Ben Skywalker, for starters) or uses it just for shock value. And it's terrible, because it's a subject that deserves to be treated with respect, but bad writers simply don't do that. And people who bring up the idea of Gratuitous Rape being bad writing are occasionally accused of censorship -- but here's the thing. Stuff like that isn't courage or honesty in art: it's exploitation, it's trash. And it's the wrong way to take for something like this. Honestly, Troi deserved a lot better than this, she really did.
And it really derails Shinzon's character significantly -- even after the rape scene (which the writers seem to have crammed in without any regard as to how it would affect the story), even after Picard *knows* what Shinzon did to Troi (Troi tells the others on the bridge what happened to her), he's still trying to help Shinzon in some ways. In another, better story I would have admired Picard for what he was doing. Here? It just rings incredibly false and hollow. And it undermines the whole theme of counterparts that Nemesis has set up, because Picard talks about how Shinzon has a bit of himself in him (that point is raised repeatedly over the course of the film), but here's the thing -- Picard isn't a rapist. Picard is actually a good, noble man. And Shinzon didn't need the scene where he raped Troi to show how evil he was. In earlier scenes, the filmmakers set him up as a sort of Moses figure to the Remans -- wanting to lead them out of suffering, out of slavery and evil. All with a deceptive trait to him. Him being deceptive would have worked fine. Him being a villainous sort of Moses would have worked fine. Not this. Seriously, not this. Overall, Shinzon is an unfortunately sloppily constructed character, whose motivations seem to change on a dime and whose character drastically fails after the scene with Troi, and it's the scene with Troi that sticks out in my mind the most thanks to how it casts a shadow over the rest of the film.
So yeah...Nemesis wasn't very good.
So overall? Skip it. Maybe go and find some fan edits of Nemesis instead. Maybe some will disagree with me about certain points I raised in my post, but that's really my take on things.
The downside was that we watched Star Trek: Nemesis, as Insurrection was misplaced for the moment. How was it? Well, I'll talk about it more under the cut.
I wanted to like this film. Indeed, after the opening scene which started off dull at first before getting more interesting and an actually adorable wedding scene for Riker and Troi, I thought it was going to go along fine. And Shinzon's earlier scenes...I feel massively guilty for saying this, but his backstory scenes were actually well-done, as was his conversation with Picard over dinner.
And then we get to a later scene in the film where Shinzon uses the Viceroy to forge a mental link to rape Counselor Troi while she and Riker are on their honeymoon, mentally and physically. And that's where the film really got tainted for me. While there were still good moments, like with B4, a lot of Shinzon's scenes rang hollow with the knowledge that he did this to Troi -- this absolutely unforgivable act where, other than Troi using the link to find the Viceroy later on and get her share of revenge, it's hardly acknowledged or seems to have any effect on the story itself. The thing is, stories with sexual assault in them can be done well. Last House on the Left is one of them. Speak is one of them. Two works by Cheryl Rainfield, Scars and Stained are two of them. (And Cheryl Rainfield is a child sexual abuse survivor herself, so a lot of it is drawn from her own experience) Dolores Claiborne and Gerald's Game by Stephen King are two other books that deal with sexual assault/abuse well. Perks of Being A Wallflower another. And unfortunately, that's really a scarce amount of works that actually handle the subject with the gravity and sensitivity it deserves, because a lot of fiction doesn't take it seriously, eroticizes it (from the sporking of Fifty Shades I read on the das_sporking comm, Fifty Shades seems to do that), has Unfortunate Implications galore regarding it (how LOTF treated Tahiri molesting Ben Skywalker, for starters) or uses it just for shock value. And it's terrible, because it's a subject that deserves to be treated with respect, but bad writers simply don't do that. And people who bring up the idea of Gratuitous Rape being bad writing are occasionally accused of censorship -- but here's the thing. Stuff like that isn't courage or honesty in art: it's exploitation, it's trash. And it's the wrong way to take for something like this. Honestly, Troi deserved a lot better than this, she really did.
And it really derails Shinzon's character significantly -- even after the rape scene (which the writers seem to have crammed in without any regard as to how it would affect the story), even after Picard *knows* what Shinzon did to Troi (Troi tells the others on the bridge what happened to her), he's still trying to help Shinzon in some ways. In another, better story I would have admired Picard for what he was doing. Here? It just rings incredibly false and hollow. And it undermines the whole theme of counterparts that Nemesis has set up, because Picard talks about how Shinzon has a bit of himself in him (that point is raised repeatedly over the course of the film), but here's the thing -- Picard isn't a rapist. Picard is actually a good, noble man. And Shinzon didn't need the scene where he raped Troi to show how evil he was. In earlier scenes, the filmmakers set him up as a sort of Moses figure to the Remans -- wanting to lead them out of suffering, out of slavery and evil. All with a deceptive trait to him. Him being deceptive would have worked fine. Him being a villainous sort of Moses would have worked fine. Not this. Seriously, not this. Overall, Shinzon is an unfortunately sloppily constructed character, whose motivations seem to change on a dime and whose character drastically fails after the scene with Troi, and it's the scene with Troi that sticks out in my mind the most thanks to how it casts a shadow over the rest of the film.
So yeah...Nemesis wasn't very good.
So overall? Skip it. Maybe go and find some fan edits of Nemesis instead. Maybe some will disagree with me about certain points I raised in my post, but that's really my take on things.