"Best Trek yet!" Could well be.
I was wondering about First Contact. After all, it was:
A followup to the less-than-sterling initial Next Gen movie.
(Which I admit had to double-over backwards to accommodate the characters.)
It was directed by Jonathan Frakes, Mr. Done Some TNG
Episodes Director Kind of Guy. After all, the previous movie was directed
by a Next Gen ep director and that was not auspicious.
Brannon Braga, who has written one of the worst Treks ever,
(the Voyager where Paris and Janeway turn into giant salamanders and
do the nasty--complete with offspring (?!?!?!?!?!) which slip into the swamp.
How's that for violating (in more than one sense of the word) the
Prime Directive?
It's like this: the movie is a home run.
It's flatout great.
The writers hit those perfect notes to make a great action flick. There are ever increasing levels of tension. There are interludes with witty dialogue and character interplay. It has an ending which is uplifting, charming, and gives a well-deserved peek at some Trek canon. So in other words, Braga has atoned for his sin of the Voyager "Spock's Brain"-equivalent with the randy salamanders.
Jonathan Frakes is a more than just capable director. He does well. He has a sweeping grasp of camera movement to give the movie a grand style. His use of a variety of camera angles and views (closeups and medium shots, all the way to long shots) demoes competence which his predecessor never had. The first movie's director was stuck in the TV-style medium shot rut--lots of heads and shoulders talking at other heads and shoulders. Which is unavoidable for low-rez TV, but death to big screen movies thanks to sheer monotony.
The lighting is on-the-money correct--dark, gloomy, leaden. Again, this points to a complete failure of Generations with its bright yellow, near-horizontal, never-seen-in-the-series uber-lighting.
First Contact's plot is wonderfully simple: the Borg go back in time to change the history of Man's first true leap to the stars. Picard and crew are there to stop them. I'll admit a soft spot for time travel stories-- they are ripe with possibilities. Look at "The City on the Edge of Forever", Trek IV The Voyage Home, the "Enterprise C" ep from TNG or DS9's "Trials and Tribble-lations". These are all winner stories.
FC emulates the same tactic of Old Trek's The Wrath of Khan: it resurrects an excellent villian from the series. (Hmmmmm.... Both movies hit home runs after less than marvelous freshman efforts. Coincidence or not?)
Patrick Stewart gets to do something which nearly no other actor is allowed to experience: growth in a character which has been literally years in coming. It is movie-time and real-time six years since Picard was Borg-er-ized and made Locutus. His quest for ultimate absolution for own tribulations is something to behold. Stewart nails the lines.
Other characters have their scenes. Troi does a scene which is a gem. Crusher is handled in an offhand manner. It's as if this is a "guy" picture and her presence is more of an interference than anything else. Her hair is noticeably blonder too--not unlike aging, desperate woman TV news readers.
Data is suitably written. The complete misstep of the first movie's "emotion chip" is deftly folded into FC's plot.
Worf has a couple of just plain terrific scenes. His arrival onboard the Enterprise E is plausibly told. He has dialogue which has real Klingon krunch. His bigger-than-life actions are there too.
The woman who plays the Borg Queen holds her own against these actors who have known each other for so long. Altho she looks like a refugee from a Hellraiser flick, her combination of lizardly coolness and opportunistic sexuality is an actress' dream come true. This is a part many actors could not comport. Alice Krige handles it with aplomb.
This is a sciffy flick, so we expect F/X to drop our jaws. The movie delivers. There are views of, well, I won't say... You have to see it for yourself.
All is not perfect in Trekland. (Close tho.) One wishes that the spaceship sequences were bigger, more rollercoaster-thrilling with stupefying camera zooms, tilts, pans, and tracking. The weightless sequence had a whole clumsy, no suspension of disbelief to the "zero-G" environment. Plus there are puzzling (SPOILER WARNING) plot developments which if you think about.... And there are a few homages or refs which range from subtle to blatant and enliven the story (still a SPOILER WARNING)
First Contact is a movie to savor. Even if a person was not a Trekker or (shudder!) a Trekkie, but a Good Movie Lover; then he or she would get a bang out of this flick. Well done everyone.
Movie's suitability for: