Star Trek First Contact

The cover of the VHS had a hologram on it. That may sound horrifically 90's, but you watched Data and Picard get assimilated every time you picked it up. Nice touch.

This is easily the best Next Gen movie. Considering that the next closest, Generations, only does well because it's funny, that's not hard. But the honest truth is, First Contact is great. People these days just go "Oh, the Borg, they're just space zombies. We've seen zombies before." Can I just say, first of all, this is not a mass of mindless cannibals. This is a hoard of sophisticated aliens, powerful on an individual basis, that all act according to a single intelligence. A single highly sophisticated goal drives them all, and that goal is to remove your individuality, leaving you a captive in your own body, and use you to assimilate your friends.

These guys are bloody terrifying. Zombies have nothing on the Borg.

"Oh, hey bro, it's you! A normal human like myself! You kinda freaked me out when you grabbed my arm there like..."

"WAAAAAAAUUUUUUUGH!!!"

Now, what's more important is that this is not a zombie movie. I've seen zombie movies. They all have one thing in common: No reason for existing. The main characters aren't fighting for any real purpose, and usually I end up wanting them all to die before the movie is over anyways (Notable exceptions to this are World War Z and I Am Legend). First Contact is about saving humanity, saving the Federation, heck, saving the whole dang galaxy, from becoming completely Borg. High stakes. Then, of course, there's Picard's well founded hatred of the Borg that drives what would otherwise be completely arbitrary plot points. Things in this movie don't happen because HOLY CRAP BEHIND YOU GROSS ENTRAILS BLOOD! Things in this movie happen because it makes sense!

Okay, aside from the time travel. But you know, it was more believable than the time travel in The Voyage Home.

Sense!

Now that point aside, let's talk about things the movie does particularly well. First is the action. By which I mean Borg blowing stuff up and being generally unstoppable. They give that impression very, very well. That makes it all the more impressive when the crew of the Enterprise actually manages to hurt them. The movie starts almost immediately with a huge space battle. My only quibble is that this battle does not last long enough.

But to be honest, this couldn't have possibly lasted long enough in a two hour movie.

Then we get into the rising action that takes us to the climax of the first act. It's paced well, doesn't last super long, and drags a good amount of both tension and disbelief along for the ride. It ends when Picard realizes that SPOILER! the Borg hadn't been destroyed above Earth, they'd transported to the Enterprise and were busy assimilating the ship from the bottom up. This leads to the rest of the movie consisting of a running battle against the Borg. We have Worf killing a drone with a machete, Data breaking some necks, various other crewmen failing to make a dent in hand-to-hand combat, and Picard with a Tommy Gun. A+ for the action.

If you haven't seen this and it's not on your bucket list, I don't know what you're doing with your life.

Next, the characters. Everyone is just great. They act like you would expect them to act. No one is overly dramatic. They fit very well into the world and situation, and there's even a little humor sprinkled in there. The stand-out performance, as usual, is Patrick Stewart. He nails this part. Picard is given a great role to play, and a great set of motivations, and Sir Stew just nails it to the floor. And the walls. It's about the best you'll see of Picard. You see leadership, outright, justified hatred, and that thread of logic that underlies every decision he makes. The turning point of the movie hinges completely on Sir Stew's ability to convince us that Picard has had a sudden change of heart based on a fresh, removed perspective, and I was so convinced of the legitimacy of that decision that it has never felt sudden, even when I'm aware that it technically is.

Pictured: Nailing it to the floor. Or the wall, maybe.

And a shout-out to Alfre Woodard, without whom that moment would have felt completely empty. A+++ for the characters and acting.

Can't pick my favorite line from her! "You broke your little ships" or "see ya around, Ahab?" So hard!

Lastly, (look guys! A list with three items! Bet you didn't see that coming!) the emotions. The feelies. Like any good movie, First Contact takes you through an array of emotional responses. The first, frankly, is "eww." The movie starts with Picard about to take a drill bit to the eye. They follow that line of thought really quite far, in fact. This reminds you (or shows you first timers) that the Borg are creepy and not to be trifled with. It sets the tone for the rest of the film nicely.

Followed it almost all the way. Any further, and this might have been rated R.

Your next emotion is righteous indignation at Starfleet's retarded decision to assign the Enterprise to patrol the Romulan Neutral Zone while Earth is under direct attack by a Borg cube. This is followed quickly by a kind of glowing "hoo-ah!" when Data says "to hell with our orders" and they go save Earth anyways. That emotion kinda reaches its peak somewhere between "Prepare for ramming speed!" and "Pew pew pew! KABOOM!"

"Perhaps today IS a good day to die!" An actual line that doesn't sound out of place at all. How can you not love a movie like that?

If I'm honest, addressing each moment of the movie like this will cause me to quickly devolve into a ten-year-old telling you a story you couldn't possibly follow, so I'll just wrap up with this. There's hate in this movie. There's revenge. There's pity and righteous fury and just the right amount of tenderness and humor to balance it all out. It's a very human movie, with very human emotions in the face of inhuman problems. A+ for the emotes. It really is about the best that sci-fi has to offer.

This android makes me SO proud to be a human!

But it's not the best Star Trek has to offer. And whenever I watch the Enterprise time-warp (somehow) back to the future, and listen to Jerry Goldsmith's fabulous score over the end credits, I can't help but think "That was awesome. And it gets even better." On that note, we'll head for The Undiscovered Country.