DVD Review HTF REVIEW: Star Trek: First Contact - Special Collector's Edition (Recommended) (1 Viewer)

[Will_B]

I also found the bright green cross-hair logo to be terribly large, and felt they should have taken some care not to cover up some vital scenes. They covered up the Borg Queen's entrance for heaven's sake! They could have swapped the bright green cross-hair to the right and it wouldn't have been in the way so much. But oftentimes it was sitting dead center on the screen.

After hearing about these text trivia commentaries for so long, I think I was also expecting more than what was delivered. Along with a very few nice goofy facts (black tape on the consoles, resuse of sets later for Enterprise), there was pointless crap about actor's other gigs that any fool could get from IMDB. What was the point of telling me that Cromwell starred in Babe the Pig? That's hardly trivia, that's readily available info. And ultimately the whole thing would have worked better as a "nerd commentary" track (with voices) rather than text.

In short: They should have taken more care not to cover up important parts of the picture, and they should stop relaying commonly known info when they have no actual trivia to relate.

 

[Colby]

It looks like Picard is looking at the film artifacts in that second screencap.

 

[Ocean Phoenix]

I just tried watching the movie with the pop-up text commentary and turned the text off because the facts were boring, and (as mentioned before) were distracting from the movie because they took up too much space. This is the first "special collector's edition" Star Trek DVD I've bought, so I'm wondering, is the text commentary better on the other ones? (I've thought of getting Star Trek II and Star Trek IV).

 

[Alex-A]

Pardon my ignorance here, but why exactly are you people complaining about the text commentary? It is a completely optional thing and if you don't want it to interfere with the film then just don't turn it on. I fail to see why you choose to view the commentary and then complain that it is distracting you from the movie.

I don't know about you guys, but when I play the movie with the text commentary turned on, I have every intention to read the text, and accept the fact that I can't pay attention to the film itself in the process of reading the text. If I just want to watch the film itself, I'll do just that.

I find that the style of the text commentaries as they are now are much more "interesting" and "pleasing to the eye" then the regular subtitle tracks they were for the first six films. They add that extra level of "pizazz" to the DVD.

Here is my suggestion. When you first buy these Collector's Editions, watch the film for the FILM. Then at a later time/date, watch it again for the "inside information" provided in the text commentary. For this situation, you just can't have your cake and eat it too.

BTW, this isn't meant to royally offend anyone, it just surprises me how much some people can complain about the most trivial things.

confused:

 

[Seth--L]

I guess you've never seen any of the threads devoted to complaining about a disc's cover art.

 

[Alex-A]

I suppose not. Perhaps I'm in the minority group that doesn't really care about the cover art as long as the content is of a quality nature. Then again I've never been one to complain too much about anything, as long as something is released in a decent fashion I am kept happy.

 

[Jaxon's Dad]

I gave up DVDs for lent (Except The Passion of the Christ - which I didn't even watch until Good Friday evening, and Veggie Tales & Gaither Gospel Series since those are all my two year old watches.), so I've been catching up on my DVD watching over the past couple of weeks. Well over the last couple of days, I had a Star Trek mini-marathon of sorts and fired up the projector to watch the Collector's Editions of Generations and First Contact. Generations was absolutely horrendous to look at! With so much EE and moire effects, I found myself pulled out of the story too often. Thankfully, the transfer for First Contact is without a doubt incredible. Maybe so many scathing reviews of Generations shamed PHE into replacing their quality control staff, because the video transfer for First Contact is breathtakingly gorgeous. Now, if only we could get a re-issue of Generations with a better transfer and trailers. Maybe for the HD version?

 

[JoeStemme]

Never really got into the Next Generation crew, but, this is the best of their films (of course, it's an 'even number' film!). It opens like its just another episode of the TV show, but, it develops into something quite interesting with the Borg and the First Contact backstory. James Cromwell is a fine actor, but, he plays the whole 'I'm not really a hero' bit far too broadly. Much better is Alice Krige as the Queen. Sexy, lethal and alluring - should have been more Krige and less Cromwell. Patrick Stewart is fine as always, and the scenes with Alfre Woodward are strong. Have to admit I didn't see the final reveal coming - should I have?

 

[jayembee]

I always had a problem with the plot. I realize that the Borg think "resistance is futile", but they've already discovered that where the Federation is concerned, it's not. Seems to me that instead of flying their Cube into Federation space and fighting their way tooth and claw to Earth, and then traveling back to First Contact Day, it would've made more sense for them to travel back into the past while still in their home space, and then travel to Earth and assimilate it. Easy-peasy.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Traveling to the past was a spur of the moment plan - the Borg didn’t expect the Federation to defeat them and was wholly unprepared for Picard’s expertise in knowing what systems to target. Like Picard says in the movie…they realized the attack was doomed and the cube was lost so they traveled back in time.

Arrogance is part of the character of the Borg collective. They’re like an army that invades another country so convinced of their own superiority that they refuse to even consider the possibility that it wouldn’t work.

 

[jayembee]

I dunno. Up to that point, there was nothing to suggest that the Borg had time-travel technology. It seems to me that they thought that time travel was the key to winning this time, since they previously lost without having the ability to travel back in time (apparently, since they didn't try at that time). Granted, they were arrogant enough to think they'd win regardless, but they're also smart enough to understand that the path of least resistance is better.

It just seemed to me that the Borg didn't go with the better strategy for the simple reason that if they did, there'd be no movie.