Star Trek: First Contact - Video Review

[Serafina]

Not yet fully watched, hence posted without comment.

[Srelex]

Yeah; say what you will about FC, it was at least entertaining and fun, unlike, say, Insurrection. Nice review from Chuck as always.

[Crazedwraith]

Hmm. I feel an increasing tendency for most a review to be a slightly tongue in cheek recap. I actually like more analysis than just a brief statement in the post-episode follow up.

The main sole humour segments are once again The Sisko love. We get it, you like Sisko. He's a manly man. New material please

[Captain Seafort]

Hmm. I feel an increasing tendency for most a review to be a slightly tongue in cheek recap. I actually like more analysis than just a brief statement in the post-episode follow up.

Heartily agreed - that was what made TWoK the best of Chuck's reviews by quite some margin.

[Serafina]

Well, i rather like the analysis - in the good movies/episodes. Analysis for those and humor for the crappy ones seems to fit Chucks style (which is important), and certainly works for me. I rather liked this review in any case - i take it as an intellectual exercise - it inspires me to analyze them myself.
So yes - i somewhat agree, but i wouldn't say that there was no analysis in this review.

[OsirisLord]

I think the reason Chuck's review is more of a recap with less analysis is because RedLetterMedia anaylized the ever loving fuck out of this movie, going so far as to explain every, single inconsistancy and plot hole imaginable. He devoted an entire segement to deconstructing the plot holes involved with simply the scene in which Picard shows the woman a view from Earth, were as Chuck just glossed over it, saying this is were the Enterprise crew goes to pee on planets. He does seem forced however to mock Picard saying the Enterprise-E has 24 decks when someone then makes a refrence to Deck 26, which is the kind of bullshit you would expect from a Brannon Brega script.

I did like his take early on, showing how so very quickly the purpose of the Enterprise went from an enlightened voyage of peace and scientific knowledge, to a war vessel protecting the Federation from it's enemies, and what a clusterfuck that must have been like to the Joe's down in the lower decks who just want to study comets and xenoflora. That said, fucking lay off the Sisko love. Even in a film were Benjamin Sisko makes no appearances or is even mentioned he has to get his tongue as far as possible down Sisko's proverbial sphincter. Which is funny because for the most part I saw Sisko as kind of a mirror verse Adama. Adama is a total badass who eats war and shit awesome, but occasionally shows signs of being an all around nice guy. Sisko is so friendly and cheerful most of the time that I feel like he wants to give everyone a big ol' bear hug and send them off with a cookie, but is forced to become a badass as the situation around him deteriorates.

[TC Pilot]

I don't see what's wrong with bringing up Sisko any more than when he brings up Janeway to take random potshots at her character. Aside from the whole Borg invasion angle (both times) actually being relevant to Sisko and DS9's arc (new uniforms, for instance), there's the presence of the Defiant sans-Sisko and the rather interesting coincidence that the attack takes place on the same stardate Sisko's out of the loop in a DS9 episode.

[Marcus Aurelius]

I don't see what's wrong with bringing up Sisko any more than when he brings up Janeway to take random potshots at her character. Aside from the whole Borg invasion angle (both times) actually being relevant to Sisko and DS9's arc (new uniforms, for instance), there's the presence of the Defiant sans-Sisko and the rather interesting coincidence that the attack takes place on the same stardate Sisko's out of the loop in a DS9 episode.

I agree. Besides, the recurring joke or gag is a traditional comedy technique that still works fairly well if not overdone. The problem of course is that people rarely agree on what is the level that it gets old rather than funny, but I haven't yet got tired on the Sisko. I understand that some people have, but let's be fair: it's not like he mentions him in every review, either.

As for reviewing the FC goes, it has the same problem as all fairly average episodes or movies. It isn't lame enough to make much mockery of, but neither is it good enough for a deeper analysis. In that regard the FC is very much like the nuTrek movie: both have a lot of plot holes and so on, but they are not bad enough to distract from the fact that both are watchable as single-view popcorn movies, mostly because the execution of the movies in other ways is good enough to make the viewer forget about the plot holes. Unless you're a really fatty nerd, that is.

[Serafina]

I would sum up this review like i would sum up the movie "enjoyable, but not notable".
I enjoyed it, i would watch it again if i am looking for some entertainment, but it wasn't a masterpiece of humor or inspiring intellectual brilliance like some of the other reviews. Hence, it's nothing special.

[Ghost Rider]

It's a decent review for a movie that is not as offensively stupid as Generations and tries to cover a few decent points. It is sad this is the relative best of the TNG movies and just demonstrates how stupid they were.

Guh.

[Gil Hamilton]

I don't know how much more analysis you CAN do on First Contact that hasn't been done to death. The part that really warrants some serious discussion is Picard's relationship with the Borg and why he was so willing to sacrifice everything not to surrender to them was a good one. Beyond that, there isn't that much MEAT on the First Contact bone to chew on. The other plot is Zephram Cochran, and there isn't much to really talk about there.

You can get alot more analysis out of TWoK and Undiscovered Country because those are deeper movies. Chuck can't be expected to plumb depths in a movie that doesn't have too many depths.

[Agent Sorchus]

You know I find it interesting that Chuck didn't call out the fact that this movie breaks with ST movie tradition and doesn't have the only ship within spitting distance from Earth being the Enterprise.

[Serafina]

You know I find it interesting that Chuck didn't call out the fact that this movie breaks with ST movie tradition and doesn't have the only ship within spitting distance from Earth being the Enterprise.

Good point - tough he did comment on the militarization of Starfleet, so he already named the probable reason for that: Starships are used in a fashion that makes sense from a military-POV, rather than from that of an explorer.

[Crazedwraith]

He also failed to mention 'I You were any other man I would kill you where you stand!' That's right, The Sisko ain't shit. Worf only backs down to frenchmen with british accents.

[Thanas]

Best part of the review - and the movie - were Picard's character moments. The rest is just popcorn fun - not great, but inoffensive.

[Stofsk]

You know I find it interesting that Chuck didn't call out the fact that this movie breaks with ST movie tradition and doesn't have the only ship within spitting distance from Earth being the Enterprise.

Star Trek III and IV broke that tradition, if it could even be called a tradition.

[Channel72]

Good review.

First Contact is disappointing because it had the seeds of a much better movie, but just failed to really deliver any greatness. I think the first mistake was making this a time travel movie. The concepts of "Borg invasion" and "time travel" don't exactly complement one another very well. Obviously, the writers had to do something to avoid a complete rehash of Best of Both Worlds, but there are any number of ways this could have been accomplished without involving time travel. For me, the entire secondary plot involving Cochrane and the away team doesn't really do anything to complement the main plot. Yeah, Picard's outburst in front of Lily reveals that 24th century man isn't any more fundamentally "evolved" than 21st century man, but this isn't really compelling enough to warrant the whole time-travel B plot. The same character-weakness could have been brought to light in the 24th century, after all.

A better film would have stayed in the 24th century, and revolved around Picard's obsession with tracking down and stopping the Borg, to the point where he starts making ridiculous decisions driven entirely by revenge.

[Big Orange]

First Contact is a good Trek movie, warts and all, and I agreed with the review, but it's a real shame that it's going to be a bumpy, unhappy ride between FC and XI.

The Borg Queen's death spelling the end of mini-collective around her is lazy writing to resolve the hijacking of the Enterprise-E, but it could be interpreted as the Queen sending a command code to kill her drones - Picard's crew - a final 'Fuck you!' gesture to spite Picard, preventing him from saving them from assimilation.

[Stark]

What's Star Trek XI?

[Srelex]

What's Star Trek XI?

The new film?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

What's Star Trek XI?

The new film?

Not even the official Paramount literature calls it "Star Trek XI" or "Star Trek: Whatever-lame-single-word-title-goes-here" It's just "Star Trek." The only connection between it and the previous sequence of films is Leonard Nimoy, and his Spock is a minor character whose purpose in life is to provide someone for Nero to exact his revenge on and to info-dump on nu-Kirk.

[Cecelia5578]

My opinion of FC has consistently declined since it first came out. At the time, it was enjoyable when compared to the shitacular Generations, but over time it just seems like a mediocre action movie rather than really sticking to the ethos that made TNG great.
Even its qualities as a mindless action flick seem wanting-the big space battle at the beginning was rather truncated, and a good chunk of the movie felt like a mediocre rehash of Aliens with the crew wandering around in the corridors shooting Borg.

When you think of the best episodes that TNG had to offer, its a shame that none of their movies could really approach those episodes in terms of writing quality. TPTB never really figured out how to write TNG for the big screen.

[Stofsk]

I think the problem is that they rushed too early into feature film territory. TOS had a 10-year-more-or-less gap between the day it was cancelled and the day The Motion Picture was released. Add to the fact that the show was originally cancelled when it shouldn't have been, and you have a legion of fans who wanted more.

With TNG, they cancelled it at the height of its popularity, then they jumped into films and pretty much all of them were awful. Even First Contact, which I enjoyed when I saw it in the cinemas, began to bug me as I noticed little things that just made no sense - Picard having a psychic connection to the borg for no reason at all (certainly wasn't demonstrated in the show when he dealt with Hugh), the borg queen totally retconning the entire concept of the borg, all those stupid looking starfleet ships which seemed to exist only to get blown up by the cube (where's my wolfpack of Defiants ffs), and the fact they only sent one cube etc. The whole 'quick assimilation' thing was a joke too. In BOBW it takes a long time to do that shit but in FC they just poke them with some needles or whatever and they're quickly assimilated. I also wasn't impressed with the first contact plot or the character concept of Zephram Cochrane (played by James Cromwell - who looks nothing like the previous actor that played the character).

Given how bad the TNG films turned out, I feel that it would have been better to have more seasons of TNG instead of films or Voyager.

[Srelex]

I don't know--there's rarely too much of a good thing. Better to have ended the way it did rather than get dragged on and become stale.

I'm not too bothered about most of the supposed inconsistencies in FC--I actually found its intepretation of the Borg to be scarier than the way TNG initially presented them, and overall the notion of Picard's thirst for revenge against them was an interesting concept. That said, the latter could have been executed slightly better, along with the Borg Queen. Cochrane's character I also liked, but the Enterprise crew milling around on Earth could have been handled a touch better.

I still enjoy watching FC even now, even if I don't quite regard it as being part of the apex of the Trek films as I used to.

[Stofsk]

I mean as an alternative to what we got - an eighth, ninth or even tenth season of TNG couldn't have been worse than Generations, First Contact or Insurrection (to say nothing of Nemesis, though that was made with people from outside the show).

It would have also been better than Voyager.