I finaly saw Star Trek: First Contact
07-28-2019, 02:50 AM (This post was last modified: 07-28-2019, 02:57 AM by classicdrogn.)
07-28-2019, 02:50 AM (This post was last modified: 07-28-2019, 02:57 AM by classicdrogn.)
I found a copy at a yard sale and figured I might as well, since I've been doing Trek stuff for the past couple of days. I was surprised - this wasa a good movie. I wouldn't have felt like I got cheated out of twenty bucks to have bought a DVD new, or for a movie ticket and a "small" (read, 32oz.) soda. Why can't they make movies that make me feel like this anymore?
Why can't they put in a female character like Lily Sloane, Cochrane's chief assistant, materials scavenger, and intended copilot, who picks up a gun to defend their work from invaders, quietly and effectively gets free from the people who have (as she sees it) captured her, and after getting filled in on the actual situation walks into Picard's ready room and gives him a reaming for being a stubborn, obsessed jerk and pulls his head out of his ass, and yet is never "a strong woman defying the patriarchy" or whatever, just being a strong character who fills a critical role in the plot? Deanna Troi, having put up with Cochrane's off-camera but implied to be half-socialized-geek level attempts at flirting and gotten drunk enough that she passes out after tagging Riker in to try to get him to try to convince him to do his test flight as planned, doesn't come off as a "weak woman conforming to outdated role expectations" either, for that matter. And Bev Crusher is a consummate professional who shepherds her team to safety with the Borg overrunning the Enterprise having literally beaten down the door to Sickbay, and still worries about the somewhat hostile local they picked up earlier when she realizes she's gone missing, again with no gender politics involved. Truly, the future is a different time... except the movie is over twenty years old, so why does it come off with a better representation of female characters than the supposedly pro-feminist "triumphs" of the past two or three, that seem to only be able to make their ladies look good by turning the men into incompetent buffoons? Eh, but that's not what I wanted to talk about.
This is about First Contact! So-- the starship battle in the first act! That was great! It's only relevant to set up the rest of the movie and confirm that Picard does have a point when he says he has knowledge that makes him the best man to fight the Borg, while at the same time that he's really not in a very good place to do so from a personal standpoint as the film goes on to further explore. Heck, despite knowing Data is in the rest of the TNG movies and has some kind of major role in the upcoming Picard series, despite even having watched documentaries about making the effects for the movie's climax that mentioned the broad details of the ending, there was some real tension in the final act as he seemed to have been won over to the Borg's side.
I wasn't even annoyed by the rock-song insert of Magic Carpet Ride during the Phoenix's launch sequence, and was disappointed when Party Pooper Number One asked him to turn it down and Cochrane shut off his music player. I don't even resent the movie Jossing the old FASAtrek and novel assertion that Zeyafram Co'achran was actually an Alpha Centauran human, because this version was just so much fun, even if he is a drunken ass and had the odd idea that spending years of effort and all the resources he could convince an apparently rather large group to scrounge to build an FTL rocket would somehow let him retire to a life of wealth and leisure on a tropical island full of nubile women, instead of building a comfortable settlement and machines to make widgets even barely-above-post-apocalypse level WWIII survivors would want enough to trade goods and services for. He'd hardly be the first inventor to have an over-inflated idea of the results of demonstrating a successful prototype, I guess, but still.
Oddly enough, it didn't fuel my desire to get back to working on my own ship models again though, and I didn't even notice the Akira making her screen debut despite having thought to look for her in the battle sequence. Ah well, I don't mind the thought of watching it again, and that's something I haven't been able to say about a movie since Revenge of the Sith stole two precious hours I could have been reading fanfic or watching cat videos. I got Insurrection and the last two seasons of Depp Space 9 at the same place and have had the Star Trek Continues playlist open on YouTube for months, so there should be plenty of other inspiration to be found.
Why can't they put in a female character like Lily Sloane, Cochrane's chief assistant, materials scavenger, and intended copilot, who picks up a gun to defend their work from invaders, quietly and effectively gets free from the people who have (as she sees it) captured her, and after getting filled in on the actual situation walks into Picard's ready room and gives him a reaming for being a stubborn, obsessed jerk and pulls his head out of his ass, and yet is never "a strong woman defying the patriarchy" or whatever, just being a strong character who fills a critical role in the plot? Deanna Troi, having put up with Cochrane's off-camera but implied to be half-socialized-geek level attempts at flirting and gotten drunk enough that she passes out after tagging Riker in to try to get him to try to convince him to do his test flight as planned, doesn't come off as a "weak woman conforming to outdated role expectations" either, for that matter. And Bev Crusher is a consummate professional who shepherds her team to safety with the Borg overrunning the Enterprise having literally beaten down the door to Sickbay, and still worries about the somewhat hostile local they picked up earlier when she realizes she's gone missing, again with no gender politics involved. Truly, the future is a different time... except the movie is over twenty years old, so why does it come off with a better representation of female characters than the supposedly pro-feminist "triumphs" of the past two or three, that seem to only be able to make their ladies look good by turning the men into incompetent buffoons? Eh, but that's not what I wanted to talk about.
This is about First Contact! So-- the starship battle in the first act! That was great! It's only relevant to set up the rest of the movie and confirm that Picard does have a point when he says he has knowledge that makes him the best man to fight the Borg, while at the same time that he's really not in a very good place to do so from a personal standpoint as the film goes on to further explore. Heck, despite knowing Data is in the rest of the TNG movies and has some kind of major role in the upcoming Picard series, despite even having watched documentaries about making the effects for the movie's climax that mentioned the broad details of the ending, there was some real tension in the final act as he seemed to have been won over to the Borg's side.
I wasn't even annoyed by the rock-song insert of Magic Carpet Ride during the Phoenix's launch sequence, and was disappointed when Party Pooper Number One asked him to turn it down and Cochrane shut off his music player. I don't even resent the movie Jossing the old FASAtrek and novel assertion that Zeyafram Co'achran was actually an Alpha Centauran human, because this version was just so much fun, even if he is a drunken ass and had the odd idea that spending years of effort and all the resources he could convince an apparently rather large group to scrounge to build an FTL rocket would somehow let him retire to a life of wealth and leisure on a tropical island full of nubile women, instead of building a comfortable settlement and machines to make widgets even barely-above-post-apocalypse level WWIII survivors would want enough to trade goods and services for. He'd hardly be the first inventor to have an over-inflated idea of the results of demonstrating a successful prototype, I guess, but still.
Oddly enough, it didn't fuel my desire to get back to working on my own ship models again though, and I didn't even notice the Akira making her screen debut despite having thought to look for her in the battle sequence. Ah well, I don't mind the thought of watching it again, and that's something I haven't been able to say about a movie since Revenge of the Sith stole two precious hours I could have been reading fanfic or watching cat videos. I got Insurrection and the last two seasons of Depp Space 9 at the same place and have had the Star Trek Continues playlist open on YouTube for months, so there should be plenty of other inspiration to be found.
--
noli esse culus
noli esse culus
