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Jan 18
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IGN named the ST:TNG DVD sets "Best TV DVD" and "Best DVD Audio" of 2002.
Jan 17
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Variety reports that film studio Constantin has acquired the German film, VHS and DVD rights to produce "(T)Raumschiff Surprise" (spaceship / dreamboat), a gay STAR TREK spoof based on a German television sketch show.
Jan 16
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StarTrek.com reports on an effort to rename a segment of highway in El Paso, TX after Gene Roddenberry.
Jan 15
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Sci-Fi Wire reports on TDK Interactive's new STAR TREK: SHATTERED UNIVERSE game for the PlayStation 2 console. The game will find the post ST6-era Excelsior stuck in the mirror universe.
Jan 12
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Former TREK illustrator Rick Sternbach recently discussed his NEMESIS work and thoughts on ENTERPRISE at StarTrekUK.
Jan 10
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The Patrick Stewart Network reports that the actor will appear in the documentary THE SHAKESPEARE SESSIONS on PBS February 16th.
Jan 08
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The Official STAR TREK Fan Club and home of the STAR TREK COMMUNICATOR has launched its all-new web site.
Jan 07
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Paramount has created an award consideration web site, including STAR TREK NEMESIS, submitting the film and others for Academy Award consideration. (Thanks to 'Matt Klamm')
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Jan 16, 2003: STAR TREK NEMESIS debuts in Germany
Feb 6, 2003: STAR TREK NEMESIS debuts in Australia
Feb 13, 2003: STAR TREK NEMESIS debuts in the Netherlands
Feb 14, 2003: STAR TREK NEMESIS debuts in Brazil
Feb 26, 2003: STAR TREK NEMESIS debuts in Hungary
Feb 25, 2003: ST: DS9 Season One DVD Set U.S. Release
Mar 4, 2003: STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME Collector's Edition DVD Arrives
Mar 21, 2003: STAR TREK NEMESIS debuts in Norway
Mar 26, 2003: STAR TREK NEMSIS debuts in Belgium and France
Mar 28, 2003: STAR TREK NEMESIS debuts in Sweden
Apr 1, 2003: ST:DS9 Season Two DVD Set U.S. Release
Jun 3, 2003: ST:DS9 Season Three DVD Set U.S. Release
Aug 5, 2003: ST:DS9 Season Four DVD Set U.S. Release
Oct 7, 2003: ST:DS9 Season Five DVD Set U.S. Release
Dec 2, 2003: ST:DS9 Season Six DVD Set U.S. Release
Dec 31, 2003: ST:DS9 Season Seven DVD Set U.S. Release
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Copyright © 1996-2003 Steve Krutzler and TrekWeb.com. All Rights Reserved.
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| Patrick Stewart Post-NEMESIS: Audiences More Comfortable With Digital Fantasy Than Challenging Drama |
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Posted:
07:27:23 on January 16 2003
By: Steve Krutzler
Dept: Star Trek: Nemesis
Patrick Stewart has made his first major remarks in the wake of the dismal box office performance of STAR TREK NEMESIS, saying he thought the film's themes would've played better to the audience.
"I would have expected a more positive response to the theme of our film," he told Ananova.
The actor goes on to speculate that current trends in Hollywood filmmaking combined with our post-9/11 world may have had something to do with it.
"This may be because the real world has become too dangerous for us. Middle Earth or Hogwarts seem to be more attractive and more comforting in these times," he says. "As a child, I believed what was happening on the screen with all my heart. Today, I watch Lord of the Rings and I know these armies don't exist."
You can check out the original story here. Thanks to 'Cyrus' for the info.
 | Star Trek Nemesis Mania!
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TREKWEB TALKBACK
(41 comments)
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i wonder...
By Sabotman
() at 01:37:44 on January 19 2003
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You know, i wonder if Star Wars fans or Lord of the Rings fans sit about and b***h about the problems with the movies. i for one didn't notice anyone coming out of "Attack of the Clones" commenting about how some of those scenes looked better in other movies (anyone remember the gaming series BattleTech? look for similarities with 'Clones). Hell, even if the movie is just a poorly scripted, over anticipated, over-bugeted, horrablly acted, obviously ripped off ideas, pathetically cgi'd, people go and support it. "Phantom Menace" was just that folks, and how many hundreds of millions did it make? Sure i liked the Batman & Robin buddy-buddy thing with the Bat-oxygen mask and Bat-rope, and sure the meti-clorides were much better as kironide in classic Trek, as does the tri-corder (very original George), but despite all the bad things, the fans came out in droves.
Ummm, maybe Trek should go away for now. And say 15-20 years from now we can bring it back. And in the mean time we can do what the original fans did, sit about waiting, waiting for something, anything.
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Patrick Stewart should stick to acting....
By Cylykon
() at 19:45:01 on January 17 2003
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Patrick Stewart should stick to acting, because he sucks as a writer and a film critic.
Why did Nemesis tank? Here's my three sentence review of Nemesis after waiting to see it and wanting to like it:
Nemesis is a movie about the complete and total emasculation of Picard and the deification of Data. Compare the end of Nemesis, where Picard's berries have shriveled to the size of raisins until he was rendered apoplectic by his "nemesis", to the end of Search for Spock where Kirk's rather substantial satchel remains completely undimished by his "nemesis". Logan, in effect, has given the fans the answer to the question "who's the better captain," thereby setting up the fans for the movie version of Shatner's ghostwritten "The Return".
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Patrick Stewart blames failure of Masterminds on Pre-9/11 escapism by
By O. Deus
(odeus@concentric.net) at 22:57:56 on January 16 2003
URL: http://www.concentric.net/~odeus/ | User Info
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Patrick Stewart blames failure of Masterminds on Pre-9/11 escapism by US audiences
SciFi.crp
link
While at work doing commentary for the new DVD release of his 1997 film, Masterminds, in which he plays Rafe Bentley, an evil security guard who takes a prep school hostage, Patrick Stewart blamed the film's failure on Pre-9/11 escapism by the American public.
"Masterminds was a wonderful project." Stewart said. "We had Roger Christian directing, who later went on to do Battlefield Earth and a crackling script from the producer of Big Daddy, Master of Disguise, Mr Deeds and Deuce Bigalow Male Gigolo. There was only one possible reason the movie might have failed. Perhaps psychically anticipating 9/11, US audiences prefered to wallow in escapism instead of embracing the gritty hard core realism of a toned down version of Die Hard for children."
Patrick Stewart also went on to blame Pre 9-11 escapism for blowing the openings for others of his films such as Conspiracy Theory, Jimmy Neutron, Jeffrey and the failure of his play A Ride Down Mount Morgan. However in a depature he does blame the failure of Pagemaster, starring Macaulay Culkin, on evil Leprechauns who followed him to America all the way from Yorkshire on a transatlantic flight.
"Evil Leprechauns are a very real problem in the movie buisness." Stewart went on to explain. "Unlike the good Leprechauns who only want to be left alone with their gold, evil Leprechauns hide underneath the table and steal your cookies. They impersonate your voice and call up reporters to badmouth your film projects. And they convince audiences to stay away from your films for no concievable reason."
---
"Predators of the 21st century will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons...There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq."
President Clinton
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Rise of Fantasy, decline of Sci-Fi
By Cyrus
() at 19:11:49 on January 16 2003
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I think Stewart is attempting to echo what was said in a TIME magazine article (which appeared before the release of LOTR and Nemesis) though he is not doing it very eloquently. Here is an excerpt from that TIME article:
----------------------------------------
The past quarter-century of American popular culture was ruled by the great mega-franchises of science fiction—Star Wars, Star Trek, Independence Day, The Matrix. But lately, since the turn of the millennium or so, we've been dreaming very different dreams. The stuff of those dreams is fantasy—swords and sorcerers, knights and ladies, magic and unicorns. In 2001 the fantasy double bill of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings ranked first and second at the box office, and it's happening all over again this year. In its first weekend alone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets cleared $88 million. Think Star Trek: Nemesis is going to come close to that? Harry hasn't done badly at the bookstore either, having moved a total of 77 million copies in the U.S. so far, while Tolkien's works sold 11 million copies in the U.S. in 2001 alone. The online fantasy game EverQuest pulls in more than $5 million a month from its half a million subscribers, and the fantasy card game Magic: The Gathering boasts 7 million players. The business of fantasy has become a multibillion-dollar reality, and science fiction is starting to feel, well, a little 20th century.
Popular culture is the most sensitive barometer we have for gauging shifts in the national mood, and it's registering a big one right now. Our fascination with science fiction reflected a deep collective faith that technology would lead us to a cyberutopia of robot butlers serving virtual mai tais. With The Two Towers, the new installment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, about to storm the box office, we are seeing what might be called the enchanting of America. A darker, more pessimistic attitude toward technology and the future has taken hold, and the evidence is our new preoccupation with fantasy, a nostalgic, sentimental, magical vision of a medieval age. The future just isn't what it used to be—and the past seems to be gaining on us.
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...
By sliny
() at 19:00:01 on January 16 2003
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That's ok Patrick, you'll get your revenge on Gandalf in X2.
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It actually happened and was relevant, even though it was a dream. - O. Deus
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There is a point
By Sim
(sebian@simpathy.de) at 15:30:53 on January 16 2003
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There is a point in what Stewart says.
Since 9/11, a lot of people seem to be more interested in just knowing who is good and who is bad, instead of dealing with such "complicated" ideas like everybody of us could turn out bad under certain circumstances, or that even "bad" guys may have reasons for their actions.
Today is a good time for Norah Satie, Ben Maxwell and Eric Pressman, but a bad time for Picard. :(
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Mad Clones and Englishmen
By Insurrectionist
() at 14:50:34 on January 16 2003
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"This may be because the real world has become too dangerous for us. Middle Earth or Hogwarts seem to be more attractive and more comforting in these times."
What? Romulans are real? And mad Picard clones??
Get real Patrick! We love you but don't put your reputation on the line defending mediocrity.
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Hey, Patrick!
By capt craptastic
(gamequest@bendcable.com) at 14:40:20 on January 16 2003
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Mister Stewart, maby people didn't go and see your movie because Star Trek sucks so bad right now that even fans are tired of the same crap and don't want to fork over 8 bucks to see it.
They can watch crap for free on UPN!
Or maby he's right and thinks were to stupid to "understand" the greatness of a movie that's a NEMESIS to Star Trek.
---
Why is bear driving?
-Clerks Uncensored-
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I disagree with the captain
By cooper2000
() at 12:38:19 on January 16 2003
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Patrick, Patrick, Patrick. Sounds like he is a bit upset but its not the audience entirely who is to blame, its the people behind the scenes and especially whomever decided to cut the character moments out of the film in favor of Action sequences. LOTRs has both and that didnt stop it from grossing 300 Million.
I think Nemesis had the potential to be a great film but its downfall can be blamed on too many hands in the pot and too many cuts from the film which contributed to its lack of humanity.
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I think what Patrick is saying...
By viking5150
(viking5150@hotmail.com) at 12:30:08 on January 16 2003
URL: http://viking5150.dyndns.org | User Info
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...is that general audiences aren't into a real drama with a real script, but instead prefer light entertainment with flashy CG animation.
Nemesis didn't have a clear villain right off the bat.
Either way, Nemesis suffered at the hands of a stupid release date and a director that wanted to throw away 15 years of "how things are done".
---
It's All Good.
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What do you expect him to say?
By InverseTachyonPulse
(christopher.potter@esc.edu) at 10:53:23 on January 16 2003
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Of course what he says makes absolutely no sense. My little brother Harry's first movie, as well as the first LOTR, were released in the final months of 2001 but had been anticipated by the viewing public well before 9/11.
And to say that Nemesis was too "dark" for contemporary audiences is ridiculous. LOTR, especially TFOTR, is much darker, and even some of the "good guys" have plenty of internal struggle with their evil/cowardly aspects.
But what do you expect him to say? "Paramount did a sloppy job, the editing sucked, the story made no sense, and Spiner and I emptied the bank with our $10M salaries." To paraphrase his character from The First Duty, the first duty of an actor getting paid millions of dollars is to spin the truth in favor of the studio.
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"The line must be drawn heeyah!"
-- Captain Picard, First Contact
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Stewart's observation is correct
By Akita1999
() at 09:11:45 on January 16 2003
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Literally speaking, Stewart is correct that mainstream movie-goers found Harry Potter and TTT more entertaining than Nemesis. Although Stewart articulates a narrow explanation for his view (post-9/11 and fantasy genre), his unstated premise is even more compelling: Harry Potter and TTT were more entertaining because they were better movies as far as the general public was concerned.
Whether a movie is fantasy, sci-fi, or a crime-action drama, it has to be entertaining and accessible to the fans. Look at Gangs of New York. This film cost approximately $100 million to make and had a marketing budget of approximately $25 million. So far, Gangs of New York has taken in about $60 million in North America -- far short of its $125 million price tag.
My point is that Gangs of New York is a bigger financial flop than Nemesis. Why? Despite its great performances (Daniel Day-Lewis and Cameron Diaz) and exquisite sets and costumes, the movie is not getting high marks for being entertaining. The movie is grim, and a key performance is uneven (Leonardo DiCaprio). Moreover, as with Nemesis, the movie has a jumbled, piecemeal quality. The public left the theater feeling unfulfilled.
People didn't choose not to go see Nemesis because the villian and plot reminded them of current events. They didn't go see the movie because they didn't think it would be any good, and there were far better choices out there during the holiday season.
Timing and writing folks, that's what hurt Nemesis.
Who disagrees?
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Perhaps not so preposterous?
By Steve Krutzler
(s_krutzler@trekweb.com) at 08:37:00 on January 16 2003
URL: http://trekweb.com/brittandsteve | User Info
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At first glance, it seems that Stewart is grasping at straws. But then I thought about it and you know, he may be somewhat correct. I don't think he's belittling LOTR, and while I haven't seen TTT, I think it's probably safe to say that the audience doesn't have much trouble identifying who is evil and who is good in those movies. The evil guys are monsters, for the most part, right? So to a certain extent that's a lot different from NEMESIS, where the villain was human and the whole idea was that the villain was also the hero and who's to say what separates the two.
I think back to several reviews of NEMESIS and I remember that many critics actually drew a parallel b/w Shinzon and his coup d'etat of the Romulan Senate and terrorist organizations and plots in the post-9/11 world. Frankly, I would never have seen such an association any more so than any villain in any movie could be likened to a "terrorist." One reviewer even went so far as to suggest that the "major theme" of NEMESIS was "don't trust people who say they want peace" (that's almost a direct quote, btw), trying to find some sort of parallel in the movie to the U.S./Iraq situation, which is just utter silliness.
So at first maybe it seems like Stewart is making a similar stretch, but if so many reviews saw echoes of terrorism in NEMESIS, a film written before 9/11, then why would it be so difficult to consider the possibility that perhaps he's right. Perhaps audiences (and the critics) didn't want to see what NEMESIS presented, the potential for evil in us all, even our most cherished STAR TREK icons like Captain Picard, and instead lambasted the film viciously for presenting "another ubervillain." There's no doubt that the critics en masse hated NEMESIS and similarly LOVED both the first and now second LOTR. I don't think it's much of a stretch to see quite a bit of "pack reviewing" going on here. What are the chances that so many critics would be so identical in their opinions of these different movies? The reviews of NEMESIS were really vicious, more so than I think any sane person would admit the film deserves, and how else can such vitriol be explained when by all accounts, most fans and most people polled upon exiting NEMESIS actually rate the movie pretty high, even if they admit it set itself up for far more potential than it ultimately delivered?
Just something to consider. I think there's something to be said for the poplarity of movies with clear cut good and evil. POTTER, LOTR, BOND. I also firmly believe that NEMESIS, even though over-edited, contained a very strong theme of the evil within us all and despite attempts to minimize it to "just another ubervillain," it exists and perhaps was just too dark and depressing for people these days.
That said, there are plenty of other reasons why NEMESIS failed, chiefly a release date that almost assured comparisons with LOTR and since that film is the critic's darling, is it any surprise that they just had no patience for another TREK film just five days before their beloved Oscar candidate? Who doesn't love a film that's pure genre, pure "nerd" by the traditional societal standard, yet transcends all that to become a mainstream success and garner Oscar consideration? NEMESIS didn't do that and no TREK probably ever will; and they buried it for it.
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-Steve Krutzler
==V/-/== Rocks
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I hadn't realized that unlike Middle Earth, the Federation is real
By O. Deus
(odeus@concentric.net) at 07:53:14 on January 16 2003
URL: http://www.concentric.net/~odeus/ | User Info
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Oh Boy, I need to get me a ticket on a starship!
---
"Predators of the 21st century will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons...There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq."
President Clinton
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Look, I really like Stewart as an actor
By nitflegal
() at 07:41:14 on January 16 2003
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but this is just foolishness. My film tanked because it was too challenging/the world changed/my makeup was bad, etc. It failed because it wasn't as good as it should have been (not that it was nearly as bad as some reviews have stated) and some idiots decided to release it against Lord of the Rings. I would expect that this will be the first of a slew of apologists from Paramount who will downplay any of their responsibility.
So, we blame the audience and the atmosphere. Right. Let's be charitable, however, and say that he is exactly right. In that case, it's the job of the writers, director, and producers to make sure that their mass market film will have mass appeal. This is akin to people who kept making silent films after the advent of talkies. The market changed and you'd better realize it. Don't blame the sudience, anticipate them.
Look, Insurrection, IMHO, sucked pond water. This film is dying at the box office. Either the principals involved take some hard looks at why the franchise seems to be in trouble and fix the problems or they can simply put their hands over the their ears and sing to themselves and keep following a lackluster formula. I sadly expect a lot more of the latter than the former.
Matt
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How would you rate the latest ENT episode, "Dawn," in comparison to the best and the worst of all previous STAR TREK episodes?
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