![Nemesis 2: Nebula [VHS]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/217AKBPKVDL._QL70_ML2_.jpg)
The original
Nemesis
was no cinematic masterpiece but it was nonetheless a satisfying sci-fi action-adventure and one of director Albert Pyun's best pictures. Of course, if ol' Albert creates something, he has the right to destroy it, which he more or less does with this inferior, contrived sequel that does away with almost everything that was cool or enjoyable about its predecessor. I'm pleased that heroine and bodybuilder Sue Price was able to break a few ceilings with her starring role (inconsequentially, thanks to the film's obscurity), but this vehicle built for her just isn't fun enough or even produced with the proper competence to make it worth investigating.
The story: decades after the events of the first film, a mother smuggles her genetically-enhanced baby daughter out of a cyborg-controlled dystopia via time travel to 20th-century Africa. Twenty years later, Alex (Sue Price, named after the Olivier Gruner character) finds herself pursued by a cyborg bounty hunter...
I'm pretty sure that all of the "Nemesis" sequels (all three of 'em) were designed to tell an expansive story arc over their duration, since it really feels like "Nebula" just stops in the middle of things by the time the credits roll: Alex doesn't travel back in time and certainly doesn't seem to fulfill her destiny otherwise. It sort of feels like one of those movies pieced together from episodes of a TV series, where you know there's still plenty of story still untold. Perhaps in the sequels, some of the gaping plot holes are explained, like why Alex's mother ended up in Africa even though she time-traveled from Los Angeles, and why the bounty hunter didn't simply time-travel back to when Alex was a baby to nab her, instead of waiting until she was big and strong. I'm not a stickler for things like this most of the time, but in the case of this movie, the lapses in logic are particularly glaring.
As aforementioned, I like Sue Price. You don't have to be an admitted fan of female muscle to realize that she's a sight to behold, and actually quite pretty. Additionally, she's not the worst actor in the movie, so I'm sort of disappointed that she never worked with any other director than Pyun, but as far as credit goes, even he deserves some for selecting such a unique lady to star in three of his movies. Regardless, Sue Price could be the greatest potential action heroine the world has ever seen and you wouldn't know it, based on "Nebula": The prequel was a relentless shoot-`em-up in a similar vein as John Woo's pictures, but this one suffers from a deficiency of discernible adrenaline scenes. Some explosions abound, but there are only two hand-to-hand fights and one extended gunfight. The former are junky, and even though the latter lifts a couple moves from its predecessor, it's not much better. The Nebula cyborg is played by Chad Stahelski, a current action director and former onscreen fighter, but even though he had some better-than-average brawls in
Bloodsport
sequels, his character here is stiff as a board and relies on
Predator
-esque projectiles to fight people.
There's a good deal of some African dialect spoken, which I appreciate, but it goes on for so long that the lack of subtitles becomes really dire. The special effects of the film are generally substandard, with no fun stop-motion to fall back on like its predecessor. Additionally, the entire tone of the movie is a downer: Sue Price isn't exactly a likeable character and her immediate companion for a little over half of the film (Tina Cote,
Mean Guns
) is even less so, making the entire adventure feel sort of meaningless - why am I supposed to cheer for you guys, again? At any rate, I'm not sure if I'll be pursuing the other installments of Alex's adventures, and if I do, they'll have a lot to improve upon to make it worth my while.
