Am I alone in just chalking up Picard's behaviour in some of the Next Generation films to a midlife crisis?
The real-life behind-the-scenes reason for this is that, when it came time to make the TNG movies, Patrick Stewart had much more influence and story input than he did during the run of the TV series. What may have been a request to the writers on TNG became a demand in order to agree to doing another movie. And the whole thing might be an example of why it's not always a great idea to give an actor authority on story decisions for their character. For example, it was Brent Spiner's idea to kill Data in
Nemesis, and not only did it not go over well but it took 3 seasons of
Picard to dig their way out from that decision.
Reportedly, Stewart pushed for the movies to feature a version of Picard that was more an action hero, instead of the cerebral speech-maker from the TV series. He wanted Picard to be the one that was in the middle of fights, carrying a phaser, and the driver of the action within the stories. That's why
Generations, First Contact,
Insurrection, and
Nemesis all feature "final fights" where Stewart is face-to-face with the villains, or Picard driving a Starfleet dune buggy in the desert, or Picard having the love story with the Baku woman.
In their review for
Picard season 3, Mike and Rich over at
Red Letter Media made the argument that Matalas not only tries to retcon some of the choices made in seasons 1 and 2, but also attempts to correct some of the decisions made during the movies as well.