'Nemesis' Cuts: No Regrets, Says Berman

Forty minutes of footage from the first cut of 'Star Trek Nemesis' were left on the cutting room floor, but producer Rick Berman said yesterday the film is the better for it.

"John Logan's script, although on paper it seemed like the right length, turned out to be a lot longer," Berman told TrekWeb. "This certainly wasn't a question of a director doing something at a slow pace, the movie is anything but at a slow pace. [...] Stuart [Baird] and I and with suggestions from the studio had to sit down and cut out forty minutes. Obviously there are some things you're delighted to cut out and there are some things that are really painful to cut out. There were scenes in the first act of the film that we felt slowed the film down a little bit that didn't get to the story quick enough."

The cuts were not made simply to get the film down to a two-hour running time - it was also an issue of pacing. "In terms of pace of the film, our goal was not to cut forty minutes out of the movie. Our goal was to make the movie as good as possible and that involved the studio's opinion of the pacing of the film, Stuart's, and mine."

Sequences affected by the edits were the Kolarun 'off-road vehicle' scene, the wedding (including Wil Wheaton's (Wesley Crusher) dialogue), and the film's conclusion. "In the Kolarun car chase sequence it was incredibly wonderful, the very first cut, but we probably ended up taking two minutes and it's always painful to take action out, but we did take a lot of stuff out of the wedding scene. We also took a lot out of the end but when you have a movie that's too long you unfortunately have to start whacking it down. In the case of the studio, Stuart and myself, in the long run we don't regret any of it because the picture seems to be paced in the right way for all of us."

To read more from Berman on topics ranging from script leaks to one of the film's pivotal moments, head over to TrekWeb.

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