Comments

1. Andre' S Grindle says:

   March 1, 2010 at 3:08 pm

   In an attempt to repli­cate the action-oriented sec­ond
   
   orig­i­nal cast Star Trek film ‘First Con­tact’ is alot of flashy
   
   action with lit­tle plot.But unlike the high qual­ity ‘The Wrath
   
   Of Khan’ this movie dumbs down the whole idea of Star Trek to such a degree that it comes off as a total vul­gar parody!The
   
   dia­log is wraught with annoy­ing catch phrases,pointless vio­lence
   
   with the usu­ally solid Patrick Stew­art act­ing TOTALLY out of
   
   character.The plot about the Borg try­ing to stop Earth’s first
   
   faster then light space flight is the only inter­est­ing aspect of
   
   this film.But it’s so poorly writ­ten and has such idiodic
   
   dia­log that no one will care very much!
   
   When I first saw this movie in the the­atre is was (as
   
   I still am) a STONE Trekker,not a fanatic but a vig­i­lant viewer.
   
   But I love it for inter­est­ing spaceships,great char­ac­ters and
   
   great social commentary.After I left I found the movie to be so
   
   awful that I con­sid­ered boy­cotting my favorite sci-fi series!
   
   This film will prob­a­bly please fans of big,dumb action flicks
   
   and WWE wrestling but for pure intel­li­gent con­tent this movie
   
   is a total wash out.Not worth the time even for the seri­ous fan.
   Rat­ing: 2 / 5
2. Anonymous says:

   March 1, 2010 at 4:47 pm

   Before I start please put all phasers on stun because this review’s going to be ugly. I hated “Star Trek: First Con­tact”. It is a pre­ten­tious borefest, filled with stu­pid one-liners, poorly writ­ten set pieces, and a per­pos­ter­ous con­cept. This film bears no resem­b­lence to the wit, awe, and excit­ment of any of the pre­vi­ous films or any of the series.

   It begins good enough as Picard and the Enter­prise bat­tle a Borg cube en route to Earth. After an all too brief bat­tle the Borg cube is eas­ily destroyed but not before spit­ting a strange sphere into the Earth’s atmos­phere. Picard and crew soon dis­cover the cube has trav­eled back in time and assim­i­lated the enire planet. The Enter­prise crew travel back in time with the Borg cube to avert this disaster.

   From here the film falls apart. The film tries to be epic in scale but instead con­cen­trates on a clauster­pho­bic envi­ron­ment and dank sur­round­ings. The story from here cen­ters on the Enter­prise crew’s attempt to stop the Borg from avert­ing earth’s first con­tact with an alien race. An impor­tant char­ac­ter here is the leg­endary Zefram Cochrane, the father of warp speed. Cochrane first appeared in the clas­sic Trek episode as a kind, noble and ide­al­is­tic man. Here he car­ries none of those traits, he’s a cow­ard whose only inter­est in warp speed is not the ben­e­fit of mankind but cash. Where did this char­ac­ter­is­tic come from?

   Another prob­lem is the crew’s total dis­re­gard of the “Prime Direc­tive” of non-interference. In pre­vi­ous episodes and films the sto­ries always had fun with this con­cept as the crew con­tem­plated how not to inter­fere too much with the nat­ural flow of time. Here they throw that con­cept out the win­dow as Riker and a drunk Troi tell Cochrane that they’re time/space trav­ellers and that Cochrane’s about to make the first warp jump. They arro­gantly assume that Cochrane needs their help. Why? Didn’t Cochrane per­form the exper­i­ment alone dur­ing the nat­ural flow of time? Why would he need their help now? Because it’s “cool” and the Star Trek char­ac­ters need some­thing to do.

   Other low points involve an achingly slow paced action sequence involv­ing Picard and Worf dur­ing a space walk to the main deflec­tor dish to stop the Borg from con­tact­ing another Borg col­lec­tive. This scene is not depen­dent on story or sus­pense or even action but instead shock value and stu­pid one-liners. “Assim­i­late this!”????

   Another dis­as­ter­ous scene is aboard the Enter­prise as Picard is har­rassed by a 21st cen­tury woman who is con­ve­niently trapped aboard the ship as Picard’s love inter­est. The woman is angry that Picard has decided not to destroy the ship but stay and fight to the death with the Borg. This scene could have been very good if it were between Picard and any one of the Enter­prise char­ac­ters. Instead it feels forced and unre­al­is­tic. Why would Picard lis­ten to her? Why are we sup­posed to care what she thinks?

   The premise of time travel in Star Trek has always been inter­est­ing but this time, it doesnt’ look or feel like time travel. It just looks like the Enter­prise crew are stuck in the woods. There is no era that the crew travel to for the audi­ence to relate to. No old west, no depres­sion era, no NASA launch and no 1980’s hump­back whales.

   The film tries to be an enter­tain­ing blend of action, hor­ror, romance, and com­edy. It does none of those qual­i­ties well. I tried to enjoy “First Con­tact”, I really did. The film has some great visual effects and soar­ing music by Jerry Gold­smith, but none of the great char­ac­ter­is­tics of what makes good Star Trek, only con­trived scenes and 90’s one lin­ers. This is the weak­est Star Trek film ever, and a bad movie in it’s own right.
   Rat­ing: 1 / 5
3. Twiddles42 says:

   March 1, 2010 at 7:16 pm

   Looks like a great pack­age for fans, but I’ve got real prob­lems with this movie, given that they had 2 years in which to make it.

   The teaser advert I saw on tele­vi­sion looked sus­pense­ful and grip­ping, and even gritty — all things I love. Of course, it used music from The Wrath of Khan (which was an instant ‘red flag’ for me), but I didn’t let it dis­tract me. I was hyped and eager to see this new film.

   So, I went to the the­atre to watch this flick… didn’t feel I needed to see it again. (I saw VI 3 times, Gen­er­a­tions 2 times, and Insur­rec­tion 3 times… Neme­sis 1 time and I nearly walked out, but that’s for another review…) But because it was on clear­ance, I ulti­mately bought the LaserDisc edi­tion in ’99…

   The good:

   Jonathan Frakes’ direc­tion. He really is good with cam­er­a­work. Espe­cially for the Borg intro, his direc­tion is spot-on and even deliv­ers the goods. Over­all, he’s the right guy… but you can tell he had to do a LOT with some mate­r­ial that proved itself to be low qual­ity fluff.

   I’m glad they kept him for Insur­rec­tion, an emi­nently bet­ter pro­duced film that, unusu­ally for a Next Gen film, doesn’t rely on its estab­lished lore and dares to tell a new story rather than feed­ing fans more of the same… but I digress.

   Picard/Borg sub­plot: The Fed­er­a­tion is proven right as Picard becomes more and more para­noid and is deter­mined to exter­mi­nate the Borg at all costs. (think of it as a rever­sal of “The Wrath of Khan). If only the movie spent more time on this aspect, because this was when the movie ditched all of the sup­posed ‘ha-ha’ moments and actu­ally try to pro­vide thrills and chills… The Ruby/Picard con­fronta­tion is the zenith of this sub­plot and it is both sub­lime and superlative.

   Spe­cial effects: They’re good. But by 2005, peo­ple will re-visit the movie and think that the effects look cheap. Then they’ll try get­ting into the plot and some of them might ask “Why did I like this slop? That’s why bas­ing a movie on its effects never works; spe­cial effects always become dated. The plot and char­ac­ter­i­za­tions don’t.

   The bad:

   The Picard/Borg sub­plot: Let’s fig­ure this out: The Fed­er­a­ton gives Picard their new flag­ship and then tells Picard to go play tid­dley­winks on the Romu­lan bor­der just as the Borg inva­sion com­mences. Now if the Fed­er­a­tion execs can’t trust Picard when­ever a Borg dare spouts off the usual dreary dia­logue dri­vel, why give him the sup­pos­edly best ship out there?! Isn’t that, well, dumb?

   More inter­st­ing is this: The “E” is sit­u­ated at the Romu­lan bor­der and the Borg strike. They hear over sub­space comm that the Feds are los­ing. Picard and Data do their lit­tle song and joke and ‘dis­obey orders’ and head to Earth. That’s EARTH. Hardly the neigh­bor of the Romu­lan neu­tral zone. Even at warp 9.9, it’s BOGUS to think for even one attosec­ond that they’d make it back in time to save the day. This is very sloppy writ­ing, and we’re not beyond the first 10 min­utes yet!!

   Most inter­est­ingly of it all — given the pre­vi­ous state­ment, how come all the Fed­er­a­tion ships instantly obey Picard who breaks orders (with Data being a 2nd rate Spock, no less in an awful so-called humor­ous moment) to go con­cen­trate their fire­power on the one area of the Borg ship?

   And for a species that pro­claims to be able to rapidly adapt, the Borg keep send­ing o n l y o n e c u b e to take over the Fed­er­a­tion. Hav­ing been in tus­sle against the Fed­er­a­tion before, you think they’d send TWO cube ships and be done with it, but nooooo. Worse, the usual issue of con­ve­niently being able to kill Borg in one scene, fol­lowed by a scene where they adapt, and then later another scene where lo and behold they can kill some more Borg again became tiresome.

   Time travel. How many more times do we need to see a slop­pily writ­ten way to get every­body back in time. Even bet­ter, with the Enter­prise heav­ily dam­aged and hav­ing its deflec­tor removed, I’d won­der HOW they could get back to the 24th cen­tury so easily…

   “Watch you’re future’s end” says the Queen. Never mind that the Queen is totally incon­grous with what we’ve been led to believe about the Borg in the past. Her com­ment is stu­pid. Picard and the gang have already ecounted the Borg and even have lives. Had this scene been in the 24th cen­tury, it might be pass­able. But with using time-travel (WHY? There is no need to except to deliver us the means to add the Zephram Cochrane sub­plot which is utterly atro­cious and point­less), this big phrase of hers loses all mean­ing because we already know they’re going to win. More sloppy writ­ing, if there hadn’t been enough at this point!

   The com­edy, it shouldn’t be called ‘humor’: Ever since Trek IV, Para­mount seems intent on ensur­ing every Trek movie gets a huge dose of humor (except for ‘Neme­sis’, which is iron­i­cally the biggest joke of them all…). Guess what? It ain’t funny in this one. It’s so awful, it’s even embar­ras­ing in scenes. This movie was pre­sented to me as being a sus­pense­ful adven­ture and what we truly got was this farce?! Oobie doo­bie this!

   The music. Jerry Gold­smith is not at his best here. One exam­ple is the Borg bat­tle music’s intro; it’s B-material at best, overly pompous and embar­rass­ing to lis­ten to at worst. Some­thing about the music doesn’t fit the movie. Goldsmith’s done bet­ter (namely the first Trek film) What was wrong with Den­nis McCarthy’s style? Or, bet­ter yet, why not get Ron Jones to do the music? Oh yeah, he was fired because his style was too lively and engag­ing and didn’t put peo­ple to sleep while watch­ing the show.

   Con­ti­nu­ity flubs: They exist in great num­bers here. Non-trekkies won’t care because they won’t see the goofs. Trekkies who like the Kirk era WILL care. (Obvi­ously I pre­fer the Kirk era, gen­er­ally, but Insur­rec­tion Spe­cial Edi­tion hasn’t been released yet…) Fans of the Next Gen­er­a­tion will love any­thing it all regard­less. (try to sit through ‘Neme­sis’ and you’ll know quickly what I mean…)

   Pro­duc­tion flubs: Barclay’s toupee and some other tri­fling bits, there’s a sur­pris­ingly good scene where Ruby is threat­en­ing Picard with a phaser. He ulti­mately gets her to stand down, but when she hands him the phaser you can see it light up. Why didn’t Picard die as he did say it was set to kill?

   And worst of all: Cameos from two of Star Trek Voyager’s cast for no rea­son: The McCoy ripoff holo­gram doc­tor… and Neelix minus his makeup in the holodeck ball­room recre­ation. Just when you thought that Michael Dorn’s butting into Trek 6 was bad enough, now we get two from a far worse spin­off. (not to dis Mr. Dorn, I rather liked how they were mak­ing con­ti­nu­ity… and for once not wil­fully break­ing it, as can be seen in Gen­er­a­tions and 1st Contact…)

   Along with time travel, other bogus con­ve­niences include how easy it is to turn off the holodeck safety mech­a­nism (which should also mean that when one exits the holodeck, any bul­lets would also van­ish, yes?)

   Ulti­mately? Go buy “Gen­er­a­tions” instead. It feels even more like an over­long TV episode, but despite its prob­lems it’s at least got the humor part done well.
   Rat­ing: 2 / 5
4. Bob Dobalina says:

   March 1, 2010 at 9:13 pm

   Hey glad you noticed my post. Actu­ally you have made a sub­tle mis­take. If the Borg had taken the earth in the past THERE WOULD BE NO ENTERPRISE. Get it? No Picard, No Kirk. Noth­ing. That is what I meant by my post. Its quite pos­si­ble I didnt explain it prop­erly in my post and I apol­o­gize. How­ever to assume I didnt have the vol­ume up is just rude.

   From a warm place,

   Wayne
   Rat­ing: 1 / 5
5. James McDonald says:

   March 1, 2010 at 9:47 pm

   Directed by Jonathan Frakes.
   
   In the last film, STAR TREK: GENERATIONS, Cap­tain Jean-Luc Picard was with Cap­tain Kirk at his death who both were fight­ing Suran. At the moment, Kirk did indeed die alone. Picard buried Kirk under stones in the rock canyon.
   
   Note: James T. Kirk does come back to life in William Shatner’s books, The Ashes of Eden (1995) and The Return (1995).
   
   The next three films are solely the STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION cast (1987–94).
   
   Star­date: 50893.5 Cap­tain Picard (Patrick Stew­art) con­tin­ues to have night­mares about the time he almost became a com­plete borg. The evil Borg is on their way to Earth and about to cross Fed­er­a­tion line, Against Fed­er­a­tion orders Picard trav­els at max­i­mum speed to Earth to stop the borg. Wolf (Michael Dorn) is aboard the Defi­ant. Picard destroys the Borg Cube, how­ever just before destruc­tion, the cube releases an escape sphere to Earth. Data (Brent Spiner) dis­cov­ers the Earth con­tains 9 bil­lion lives. They are all borg.
   
   The Enter­prise has trav­elled to April 4, 2063, per­haps after World War 3. They have destroyed the dan­ger­ous sphere. So Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Troi (Marina Sir­tis) meet down on earth, Zefram Cochran (James Cromwell), but first they have a female rene­gade, Lily (Alfie Wood­ward) to deal with. To make mat­ters worse, the Borg Queen (Alice Krige, GHOST STORY [1981]) has cap­tured Data.
   
   Also in the cast: Levar Bur­ton as “LaForge”, Gates McFad­den as “Dr. Crusher”, Robert Picardo makes a cameo appear­ance as “the holo­gram doc­tor” (Deep Space Nine 1993–99).
   
   Com­puter voice is Majel Bar­rett. “Nicky the Nose” is played by Don Stark.
   
   DVD is in widescreen. Two audio com­men­taries, one with Jonathan Frakes, the other by Screen­play writ­ers. Text Com­men­tary will play, at your option, full of inter­est­ing facts. This text fea­ture can not play at the same time as lan­guage sub­ti­tles.
   
   Disc 2 is Spe­cial Features.

   This story con­tin­ues in the STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE tv series, Sea­son 4, episode 94 & 95, “In A Mir­ror Darkly”, Part One, Part Two.
   
   The next voy­age is: Star Trek — Insur­rec­tion (Two-Disc Spe­cial Collector’s Edi­tion) (1998).
   
   Fol­lowed by:
   
   Star Trek — Neme­sis (Full Screen Edi­tion) (2002).
   
   Star Trek (Single-Disc Edi­tion) (2009).

   Update: The twelth STAR TREK movie will be released in 2012. J.J. Abrams men­tioned only as an idea that they could have the char­ac­ter of “Khan” and William Shat­ner return.
   Rat­ing: 1 / 5

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