The film that killed the Next Generation era is a grim, derivative slog that fundamentally misunderstands its own cast. Nemesis grafts Wrath of Khan’s bones onto a Wrath of Khan inferior plot: a clone of Picard named Shinzon has seized control of the Romulan Empire, and he wants to kill his genetic donor and the Earth with a radiation weapon, mostly because the script requires a villain. Tom Hardy does committed work making a shaved head menacing, but the character is a black hole of motivation, a slave miner who built a warship and a doomsday device off screen and now monologues about destiny.

The film’s one bright idea is Data’s counterpart B-4, an earlier model android recovered in pieces, and even that exists to set up a sacrifice that copies Spock’s death without earning a shred of it. The dune buggy chase is the franchise’s most pointless action sequence, Ronald Perlman shows up buried under makeup for three scenes, and the entire Romulan command structure is overthrown in a paragraph of dialogue. The wedding opening has warmth, which makes the rest feel even colder.

Stuart Baird, an editor directing his second film, reportedly did not know the characters, and it shows: the cast sleepwalks through a script that gives them nothing but glances and phaser fire. The Picard and Shinzon mind duel, the ship ramming sequence, these are staged with competence and no soul. The ending buries Data in space and toasts him with a bottle of Chateau Picard. The audience filed out instead. Three out of ten, for Hardy’s effort and the occasional handsome frame.

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