NEMESIS 2: NEBULA

1995 / Director. Albert Pyun. Movie #22

Fans can be forgiven for being disappointed with NEMESIS 2 because it bares little resemblance to the original film. That is not to say that it's without merit. It begins 73 years later in a time where cyborgs have all but cleansed the world of humans. A new DNA strand is engineered that will bring an end to the cyborgs and a pregnant mother is injected with the new strand. She has the baby and with the cyborgs determined to terminate her child she steals one of their space crafts and travels back to 1980. The mother is killed on arrival and the baby is adopted by a local african tribe who raise her as their own. Cut to 20 years later and the child is now a fully buffed up tribeswoman with a cyborg bounty hunter closing in. The film has all of the characteristics of a stand-alone film that has been modified to fit in with the NEMESIS storyline. The unique style and creative set-ups of the original are lost here and the film plays out more like a futuristic western. Where the first movie was heavily influenced by THE TERMINATOR this sequel takes a lot of cues from PREDATOR. Sue Price was a world champion body builder at the time and her huge muscular physique is, at first, unsettling... but she soon becomes a consummate action hero and proves to be a welcome alternative to the typical blokey stereotypes. Despite the film's overall lack of originality the action sequences are still awesome. The film clearly had a limited budget in comparison and it would seem that much of it's money went into pyro and explosives (wisely so). With the first film in mind it is far too easy to criticize NEMESIS 2 but watching it in it's own right it clearly has a lot of it's own merit. When it comes to mid 90's direct-to-video releases this was a cut above the rest. Good fun and an all new type of action hero unlike any other.  

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