Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Rewriting Trek
I think Star Trek: Nemesis needs some work on its ending. In fact, it's really only a very few minutes, with a corresponding change earlier in the movie to match, that needs the change. At the climax of the film. Data, the android, sacrifices himself to save his shipmates. At the conclusion of the film, however, we see Captain Picard meeting with Data's brother, B4, who shows some glimmer of having inherited Data's personality through a memory transfer earlier in the film. If I were going to have creative control of the film. I don't think I would have included this. It's far more powerful a sacrifice if it is final. Having a copy of the deceased, even if it isn't fully realized just cheapens the act. A much more fitting ending would have included a memorial service of some sort, and would not have included B4 at all, who should never have even existed in the film. A full honors funeral would have been a more fitting tribute and a more final goodbye to the Next Generation cast.
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I think this is a really interesting rewrite. From your description, it appears that the underlying purpose of B4 (also a joke on "before"?) is simply a character created to allow for a death scene without an actual DEATH. That's a very weak reason to have a character, but it happens all the time. It really bugged me when I saw Mission Impossible 3 and it was obvious from the first 10 minutes that the Katie Holmes-like girlfriend was a nurse purely as a plot device, as it was a given she would have to save the lead at the climax. But I digress. I believe there's a lot of fear about real emotional resonance and, as we've seen in the readings, studios are notorious about getting cold feet about really provocative moments. But then again, this is the same narrative legacy that killed off Spock, had a really stirring funeral service, and then resurrected him for a very bad third film. Maybe it's a shtick with them . . .
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