The “dud” movie Patrick Stewart hated with a passion: “I didn’t have a single exciting scene”
No matter what else he’s done across his legendary career, to some people, Patrick Stewart will always be Jean-Luc Picard.
The iconic Englishman first took on the role in 1987 for the series Star Trek: The Next Generation. The character has followed Stewart around ever since, to the point where he reprised it decades later for the Picard series, which explored the former Enterprise captain’s life as an older man.
As well as in TNG, Picard, and the pilot episode of Deep Space Nine (that’s for the completionists out there), Stewart has also played the character a number of times on the big screen. The first time was in 1994’s Generations, which saw him come face-to-face with Big Bill Shatner’s James Tiberius Kirk. Then came First Contact, a movie that many fans (including Stewart himself) believe to be one of the best the franchise has ever produced.
The original ‘Star Trek’ gang got to make six feature films, seven if you include Generations. Most of them were pretty good too – sorry, The Final Frontier – so you can forgive Stewart for getting his hopes up that his batch would follow the same trajectory. Alas, as he wrote in his memoir Making It So, that didn’t happen.
“I was convinced that we were on the threshold of establishing a potent movie franchise,” he said. “Unfortunately, the two films that followed it, Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis, were both a letdown. And Nemesis, which came out in 2002, was particularly weak. I didn’t have a single exciting scene to play… Nemesis was a dud, as far as I was concerned. By the time it had come and gone, I wanted no further part of sci-fi, uniforms, or anything to do with outer space.”
The plot of Nemesis, which was released in 2002, is out there even by ‘Star Trek’ standards. The crew of the Enterprise receive word that a new Romulan leader has launched a dangerous coup that could spiral into intergalactic war. This new force isn’t actually Romulan at all, but rather a human who just so happens to be a clone of our boy Picard. To make things even weirder, the clone is played by a young Tom Hardy, whom Stewart had a tough time working alongside.
Nemesis turned out to be a step too far for the Trekkies. Poor box office results and critical reviews leave it as one of the worst missteps in the long history of the series. ‘Star Trek’ lay dormant at the movies for seven years, until JJ Abrams rescued it with his glitzy reboot. As for Stewart, he made good on his promise. He left Picard behind for the better part of two decades, slipping back into that famous red shirt for the first season of his titular show. When they’re literally naming the series after you, it’s hard to say no.
Star Trek: Nemesis’ reputation as a flop is well-earned, but at least it gave Stewart a chance to step away and do something else. Without it, he may not have played ‘Poop’ in The Emoji Movie. And then where would we be?
