It falls victim to the old SciFi trope “The only way to beat a Good Protagonist is with an Evil Protagonist”. And like all the Picard-Era movies, it has a habit of forgetting what made the television series gripping. Perhaps because it’s always afraid of doing something with a character that they can’t undo with a handwave by the time the credits roll.
It was always weird to me that, after 7 years playing Picard, as soon as they started making movies, Patrick Stewart’s instinct was to play him as an action hero 🤦
All of that beach buggy stunt driving in Nemesis should have gone on the editing floor.
Patrick Stewart was also deeply involved in the creative decisions on Picard seasons 1 and 2. He got to the point where he just wanted to do what he wanted to do, and since he is Jean-Luc Picard, what he wants is ipso facto the right choice:
“What I’d like to see at the end of the show,” I told them, “is a content Jean-Luc. I want to see Picard perfectly at ease with his situation. Not anxious, not in a frenzy, not depressed. And I think this means that there is a wife in the picture.” You see, the line between Jean-Luc and me has grown ever more blurred. If I have found true love, shouldn’t he?
Sometimes you do not want your actor actually in charge of their iconic character, and genuine embrace of it can manage to make it worse if they’re not writers. I will do my occasional hornet’s-nest kicking and say that Mark Hamill’s take on Luke Skywalker after filming The Last Jedi was similarly myopic, but in a direction that more fans at least think they wanted, and since we’ll never see his choices play out he still gets the benefit of the doubt.
I think the big issue there was Kurtzman talked to Stewart long before any deals were signed that set up what they were doing. But Stewart hadn’t played the character in 15 years and then not a proper portrayal of Picard since 94 when the TV series ended.
Without Kurtz awful retelling of Star Trek, along with it being fairly apparent to me he didn’t want to do Star Trek but something else entirely every time he’s helmed a project but can only get green lit by paramount when he slaps the Star Trek paint on it. And the projects he’s less involved with (like season 3) are the best received.
