You are now watching the "directors cut", otherwise known as the version that's just not boring 2001 type shots. I am amused at having something Roddenberry wrote called "hard-sci fi", though

Wow. Listened to the DiF on this one again, and this time I read through these posts....
Fun times. I clearly missed some of the more contentious ages of this community.

One thing that nobody in the discussion (DiF or forum) talks about is how wrong everyone was about Nero's motivations: he explicitly tells them to Pike while torturing him, and it makes sense.

Nero tells pike about how torn up he is that his family died, and then he got wormholed back in time. Pike tells him Romulus is still there. Nero screams at him because "I saw it happen!"
I understand this might be where the confusion comes from, but I see it as 1) an emotional outburst which even normal people have, and 2) even though Nero KNOWS that Romulus is fine in this timeline, he STILL WILL NEVER SEE HIS FAMILY again, since they're a century in his future now. From his (reasonable) perspective, his beloved wife and child are dead. THIS is why he wants to hurt Spock Prime (sure, Spock was trying, but again, Nero is allowed a little senseless rage).

So that explains his emotional moment there.
More importantly, what follows is Nero's self-explanation: he knows he now has a century to save Romulus. He's not concerned about that. He's torturing Pike so he can get the codes to shutdown federation defenses or whatever. Why?
"To create a new future for Romulus, one free from the Federation."
That's it. Right there. Literally in the movie. Even aside from Romulus Prime blowing up, the Romulans and Federation have mostly hated each other, and Nero has decided to kill everyone so that his home Empire will be able to expand unchecked into the next century. This (while definitely a bit megalomaniacal) is a perfectly good motive for everything Nero does as a villain. After he blows up Vulcan (to punish Spock Prime AND to remove Romulus' enemy) he goes to earth to do the same thing. Nero has a century to save Romulus, and he's going to change its future into a Glorious, unopposed Empire "free of the Federation."

TL;DR I think Brian's main story critique (and the other guys agreed on this point mostly) is actually groundless. The villain's motivation is totally explained, by the guy, in the movie, clearly: he has all the time in the galaxy to save Romulus, but he's going even further, freeing it from the Federation so the Romulan Empire can grow unchecked in the new timeline.

Last edited by Writhyn (2017-01-11 18:05:32)

1) Thanks for mentioning it.

2) I'm an idiot.

3) The link has been pointing to [whatever].mp3. The file on the server has been named [whatever].mp3.mp3.

4) Fixed.