There is an old cliche that every odd-numbered Star Trek film is bad, so 1. The Motion Picture – bad, 3. The Search For Spock – bad, 5. The Final Frontier-bad 7. Generations – bad, 9. Insurrection – bad, which brings us to the topic of this article – 10. Nemesis. You will notice the even number – but it is still bad. It broke a pattern that had endured for decades.

What’s Going On?

One of the main antagonists to the Federation is the Romulan Empire and the film starts with the annihilation of their government by the Remans, a slave race the Romulans use for their most dangerous and arduous work. The leader of the Remans, Shinzon, assumes control of the Romulan Empire and after professing a desire for peace the Enterprise is sent to meet him. Then things get weird. It is revealed that Shinzon is a clone of Picard, created years ago by the Romulans so they could replace Picard with a spy, but apparently dropped the plan and left Shinzon to die with the Remans. Because of the cloning process, Shinzon is ageing rapidly and so needs a transfusion of blood from Picard and kidnaps him so he can get what he needs and continue his villainous plans.

Franchise Syndrome

When you have these decades-long franchises where numerous films are made, new directors brought in, and the times have changed since the original was created things can go off the rails a bit. Star Trek had already done this with Insurrection and it was hoped Nemesis would change course. It did not. It got worse. The best example I can think of is the decline of the Bond films that ended with Die Another Day and took a complete retooling to make the great Casino Royale. Nemesis is what happens if they’d stuck with the Die Another Day style.

In Front of the Camera

There is the usual The Next Generation cast Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard, Brent Spiner as Data etc, but really all I want to talk about is Shinzon…who is played by a young Tom Hardy. These days Hardy has a tendency to play gruff, bearded, tough characters but back in the day Hardy was a male model who had a very different look and style. In this film, Hardy has shaved off his hair but also he has a more slender and wiry appearance. Normally I am okay with the slight incongruity that can come from a younger/older version of a character being played by different actors and just accepting that as the truth of the film. But imagining that Patrick Stewart and Tom Hardy share even a slither of commonality is too much.

Hardy also verges on pantomime levels of villainy and can monologue with the best of them. He makes entrances so dramatic as to how the actors and characters manage to keep a straight face is beyond me. This is not so much to criticise Hardy, who I consider to be a great actor, but just how muddled this film is. Sci-fi is of particular risk of these over-the-top performances and it’s very important that they be reined in.

Behind the Scenes

The film is directed by Stuart Baird who only directed a few films but as an editor has worked on everything from Demolition Man to The Omen to Skyfall.

Is It Any Good?

No. It is not. It’s often said that the worst thing to be is not bad, but forgettable. People at least remember the weird premise of Star Trek: The Final Frontier. And they remember the bizarre badness of Star Trek: The Motion Picture but I struggle to remember Nemesis. Most people who see Star Trek films will go in with a lot of goodwill, these are characters they’ve known for years, so it’s not a simple thing to mess that up. I do feel like when you’re getting into younger clones of existing characters (as well as another part of the plot where there are essentially two Datas) you may be heading into absurd territory. There is even a car chase.

The film also does something that I have to come to hate, especially in franchises, the fake death. We are led to believe one character has died only to find out that no, they haven’t, and while the sci-fi elements of Star Trek can make this more feasible than other films it still feels like cheating. This is especially true as maybe their death makes sense in the story but the franchise doesn’t want to remove a key character.

My Nemesis

With the critical and commercial failure of Nemesis (even amongst Star Trek fans) the franchise considered its options and elected to give Star Trek to someone who clearly wanted to make Star Wars.

Rating: (1.5 / 5)

Also Read: The Best Performances of Tom Hardy

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Bloody Violence

Star Trek films have typically shied away from much of the possible blood and gore of fight scenes. Even when featuring Klingons, whose favour sword-like weapons, there was little blood. But even if you know next to nothing about Tarantino you will probably know his films are bloody. Kill Bill 1 and 2 are horrific limb slicing, blood spurting rampages. Reservoir Dogs has THAT scene involving Stuck In The Middle With You. At times Django Unchained is drenched in blood and one would expect Star Trek: Tarantino would be too. The traditional weapon in Star Trek, phasers, have never seemed to do too much damage but I’m sure Tarantino would have them blasting off arm and leaving gaping holes in people. I would have said at some point there would have been a samurai fight but with Star Trek already having done a sword fight maybe not.

Swearing

There has never been much swearing in Star Trek. Certainly, at times it has been seen as a broadly family show. I watched it as a young child and only learning a few Klingon insults. Obviously, with a show running over decades, the idea of what they can and can’t be said has changed, the original series was usually restricted to Bones shouting dammit. I distinctly remember being shocked at Data’s use of the word “shit” in Generations. Quentin Tarantino, however, fills his films with profanities, The Dallas Observer went through his films and totalled up the swearing, Tarantino dropped the f-bomb 269 times in Reservoir Dogs, and throughout all his films has used that word 901 times. While it does point to a downward trend in swearing within Tarantino films we could expect Bones to be far more aggressive when explaining what he can’t do.

Star Trek Further Into Darkness

The single biggest change would simply be the tone of Star Trek. Traditionally, it has been a “nice” show, Earth and the Federation were beacons of justice, prosperity and equality. The original series was praised for its diverse cast and over the years it has become a near-utopian vision of the human race. They journeyed through space as explorers and scientists, never looking for a fight. The more recent films have tried a grittier and darker view of the universe they inhabit and I think it’d be safe to say Tarantino would raise this 1000%. In Tarantino even the good guys aren’t that good, in Inglourious Basterds, the heroes explicitly go out to torture, maim and do everything they can to terrorise the Nazis. In Kill Bill The Bride seeks revenge on those who wronged her but she spent years doing exactly the same work, hardly a hero. Would Captain Kirk go a revenge rampage? Is Spock using the science labs to make drugs? Has the ultimate epitome of Federation-niceness Captain Picard started mutilating captured Klingons? You dread to think what the actual villains might be like.

The problem with auteurs…

Ultimately the problem with having Tarantino direct Star Trek is that it wouldn’t be a Star Trek film, it would be a Tarantino film. I think this is what happened with Star Trek directed by J.J. Abrams – he is a director with a very particular style that I don’t think he could relinquish for the good of the franchise. On top of that a director like Tarantino would want to make his presence felt, much in the way Abrams did, starting over and rewriting what happened so he could tell the story he wanted to tell.

At the time of writing, it seems like this film won’t happen and another director will take over, which I think is broadly a good thing. Of course, there is a perfect Star Trek vehicle for Tarantino – the Mirror Universe, the alternate reality where all the main characters are evil. This is the origin of the trope of evil versions of good characters having beards, referenced in everything from South Park to Community. In the Mirror Universe, the director could have the characters go full Tarantino without spoiling Star Trek itself.

Also Read: What Makes A Tarantino Film?

The post Quentin Tarantino Directing A Star Trek Film? Here’s What It Would’ve Been Like appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.