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List Price: $19.99 | | Label: Paramount
Salesrank: 14797
Released: October 7, 1998 |
| Our Price: $4.15 |
| Used Price: $2.00 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Even-numbered Star Trek movies tend to be better, and First Contact (#8 in the popular movie series) is no exception--an intelligently handled plot involving the galaxy-conquering Borg and their attempt to invade Earth's past, alter history, and "assimilate" the entire human race. Time travel, a dazzling new Enterprise, and capable direction by Next Generation alumnus Jonathan Frakes makes this one rank with the best of the bunch. Capt. Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his able crew travel back in time to Earth in the year 2063, where they hope to ensure that the inventor of warp drive (played by James Cromwell) will successfully carry out his pioneering warp-drive flight and precipitate Earth's "first contact" with an alien race. A seductive Borg queen (Alice Krige) holds Lt. Data (Brent Spiner) hostage in an effort to sabotage the Federation's preservation of history, and the captive android finds himself tempted by the queen's tantalizing sins of the flesh! Sharply conceived to fit snugly into the burgeoning Star Trek chronology, First Contact leads to a surprise revelation that marks an important historical chapter in the ongoing mission "to boldly go where no one has gone before." --Jeff Shannon
Star Trek - First Contact Reviews:
I Love Next Generation & the Borg, Hated This Boring Movie 
2009-11-29 - My God, I've seen most all the Next Generation series at least three, four times now. This movie was horrendously bad due to the script primarily. It didn't connect with me on any level and was more a special effects and high tech Hollywood set movie. Characters were far underdeveloped and I'd say the script writing was on a nearly amateur level. People who vote high on this movie I'm convinced are doing so due to the Star Trek name to save face. I'd love to rate this movie highly but this was a bomb in every way. Had it not been for the special effects and outstanding high tech sets, this movie would have really been exposed as horrendously bad. It's like putting large boobs on a homely women and expecting people to think she's a model because of the size of her breasts.
One interesting note, a guy brought this movie over for me to see claiming it was one of the better of the Star Trek NG movies. I was forced to watch this piece of garbage for two hours of my life because if it, and our friendship is now over. This movie ruined a perfectly good friendship.
Too many drawbacks... 
2009-11-25 - Although the opening of the film showed promise, this entry in the Trek feature film series turns out to be a real disappointment by taking a low-brow approach to its material. There are two main elements that I found to significantly detract from my enjoyment of this film:
1. A tone that attempts to appeal to "the average young Hollywood film viewer" instead of the intelligent and well-educated science fiction fans that the tv series had held as one of its core audiences. This is revealed in an early scene in which Troi gets drunk, and we're expected to laugh at her stumbling and bumbling. I live in a college town and can see this kind of junk whenever I want to, without paying for it, or having the Trek enterprise lowered to the level of a frat-house party night mentality. Later, we are offered various "humor" stemming from the high-volume blasting of mediocre rock and roll music. These types of characterizations suggest a lack of the traditional respect that Star Trek offers for intelligent and well-educated persons. It's one of the ways this film takes the low road...
2. An emphasis on stretched out and heavily contrived "action" sequences. We are "treated" to spectacles such as a pointed instrument probing into Picard's eye, a gratuitous "jump scene" in which a mechanical device punches through Picard's cheek (in extreme close-up), extreme close up shots of Data breaking a creature's neck, of needles jabbed into another creature's neck, of Worf delivering a Conan-style blood-spurting slash to another creature's neck, and so on. The effect is to reduce Star Trek almost to the level of any number of generic action thrillers, and thus to lose Trek's distinctiveness as being heavily rooted in characters, intelligent/creative plots, and *ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS*. This film features a villain who, although not the typical "snarling villain" in her tone, nevertheless repeats all the same unbelievable cliches of capturing crew members, hovering over them and telling them everything that they eventually need to know to escape and triumph. For those who enjoyed the Borg episodes in the tv series, I must say that the Borg in this film no longer felt truly menacing. This film was the last straw that finally wore thin the entire premise of the Borg.
In general, this is a production whose main plot elements are stretched too thin throughout the second half of the film. Like all Star Trek, it does include some enjoyable character moments, but in general, this is one of the weakest of the feature films. It's not awful, but on both my viewings of this film (once when originally released in theaters, once when released on DVD) my impression was the same - it's pretty weak as Star Trek goes, and not very impressive overall. (NOTE: The absolute worst of the feature films was Star Trek: Nemesis. Star Trek: First Contact is not nearly so bad and is generally watchable, though undistinguished in almost every important way except for its outstanding visual effects and technical credits, and the talents of its cast. Thus, in terms of the feature films, it operates on about the same level as Star Trek V or a bit weaker, containing some enjoyable content but a number of flaws that make it relatively unsuccessful in Star Trek terms. Most of those who enjoy this film, I suspect, are not particularly familiar with the first two tv series...)
ONE OF THE BEST 
2009-11-21 - This was probably the only Next Generation movie I really liked. I mean, it's awesome. I thought it was the only one that was as good as the television show. I would put this at the top tier of all Star Trek movies, just below "Wrath of Khan" and the 2009 reboot. It still remains one of the best Sci-Fi movies of all time. Now the film is not perfect. There are a few problems I had with it. Most of those problems have to do with continuity issues between the movie and the TV show. I'll get into those later in the review.
The movie centers around the Borg, the half-machine, half-organic aliens from the series. Considering that they were probably the most popular villians from the series, it made sense to make them the villians of the new movie. The plot involves the Borg going back in time to the year 2063. This is supposedly the year when we first invent the warp engine and meet the Vulcans for the first time. The Borg want to stop that from happening, and they want to enslave the human race. The Enterprise follows them back through time and blow up the Borg ship. The Borg beam over to the Enterprise and begin assimilating the crew. So you've got a movie that has the Borg, and time travel. Doesn't get any better than this.
At this point the movie branches off into two plot lines. One plot involves Picard and most of the crew trying to defeat the Borg on the ship. The other involves Riker and the rest of the crew on the planet helping Zephram Cochrane, the man who is supposed to invent warp speed. He is unsure about his calling, and Riker has to convince him to go through with his flight. Both of these plots are excellent. In fact, each one by itself is good enough for a whole movie. So my question is, why didn't they make one movie about the Borg, and another movie about someone trying to screw up the timeline? Putting both these plots in one movie made the movie awesome, but it made this movie hard to top. Of the two Next Generation films that came after this movie, neither one of them measured up tp this one. Maybe for the later movies, they should have used villians from the series again. But that's a whole different review.
About halfway through the movie, the villian of the movie is introduced. The Borg queen. This is my only big problem with the movie. On the show, it is established that the Borg exist as one consciousness, entity, and there are no leaders or subordinates. So all of a sudden, they have a queen? On the behind the scenes stuff, one of the writers or producers said that not having a main villian worked on the show, but it didn't really work in a movie. I can kinda see where they were coming from, but they really needed to follow the continuity of the source material. The Borg queen just makes no sense. The fact that she exests makes no sense, and most of her dialogue makes no sense. They say that she was on the ship with Picard when he was turned into a Borg and the TV episode "Best of both Worlds". At the end of the episode, the Borg ship is destroyed. If the queen was supposedly on it, then she would have been destroyed as well. When Picard comments on this, she responds with "You think in such 3-dimensional terms". What does that mean? Is that supposed to have a meaning? Whatever.
But thankfully, the Borg Queen doesn't have all that much screen time. So if you can just get past her annoying presence and the continuity errors, you should enjoy this movie. In fact, this is one of the three Star Trek movies that I think could appeal to mainstream audiences (the other two being voyage home and the 2009 reboot). Most of the charcter development is great, the action is great, the special effects are great, almos teverything about this movie is great. If this movie had had a strongerr villian, this would probably be my favorite Star Trek movie, even better than Wrath of Khan and the 2009 reboot.
Love the movie its excellent 
2009-11-18 - This seller is great and the movie is even better condition than expected... thanks... Carl V. ~~~
Great version of a great movie
2009-11-11 - While I was tempted to get the new box set that that was coming out of all the TNG films leading up to the new film's release on DVD, when you're on a budget you go with what you can afford. Besides I already had the first 7 films in the same style packaging so I didn't wanna mess that up. So I went the bargain route and got the original Special Editions of the TNG films to round out my collection and I couldn't be happier to finally have the full collection. Granted, the box for my copy of "Nemesis" is a little beat up, but the content plays okay, so I can't complain since it only cost me like 3 bucks plus shipping.
If you're a trek fan like me and on a budget and just can't dive into Blu-Ray yet, check out Amazon and try to get your hands on these special edition 2 disc dvds. The bonus features are great and even make re-watching Star Trek V worth it. :-)
-Eli
