Actually, half-true. Moore and Braga actually decided for themselves, without studio interferance to introduce the Borg Queen, feeling she added a "necessary dramatic angle" that wouldn't be possible with just mindless drones.
Why First Contact is NOT a good trek movie (rant alert).
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Actually, half-true. Moore and Braga actually decided for themselves, without studio interferance to introduce the Borg Queen, feeling she added a "necessary dramatic angle" that wouldn't be possible with just mindless drones.
Am I the only one who doesn't have a problem with the Queen?
She was not a single individual. She was the Borg. She was the hive mind, the mind of every single drone, together. A wonderful concept that doesn't change anything about the Borg.
She was not a single individual. She was the Borg. She was the hive mind, the mind of every single drone, together. A wonderful concept that doesn't change anything about the Borg.
And who's to say they didn't try again and succeed? If we're to assume that time travel now creates alternate timelines...
I had absolutely no problem with her in FC. It was Voyager that kind of ruined her, but I still didn't have a huge problem with her there either.
What was really, really bad is how all the other Borg start sparking and dying once the Queen bites the dust. Great hive design there, guys...
Well, it was a temporary hive they pieced together in Main Engineering. I doubt the same would happen on a cube.
Another reason that "First Contact" is such a dismal movie -- in spite of featuring the Borg, Patrick Stewart, Alfre Woodard, James Cromwell, Alice Krige, a strong Jerry Goldsmith score, some pretty neat-o special and visual effects, and a few nice character moments -- is that it repeats a sin begun by Nicholas Meyer: that is, of a main character nauseatingly quoting from a classic piece of literature, and doing so badly, heavily truncating, and also simplifying, and hence, botching, the words, reducing great prose to excrement. And, as with Nicholas Meyer, it's Herman Melville's "Moby Dick". Coincidence? I think not.
Picard's version? "And he piled upon the whale's white hump a sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race. If his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it." The Herman Melville version? "All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it." Yeah, really.
Picard's version? "And he piled upon the whale's white hump a sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race. If his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it." The Herman Melville version? "All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it." Yeah, really.
At least First Contact isn't boring.
No harm in trying to have literary references. It's better than having 5 minutes of a camera panning around a model ship, and constant cutting to reaction shots of a bald woman every time a special effect starts to look like it might get interesting.
Speaking of which . . .
I forgot the hyphen between "Moby" and "Dick". (And for your own reference: it's "pseudo", not "psuedo").
It's time I read that damn whale book again.
For some reason, I kept thinking-- at the time-- that the Queen was a byproduct of either Locutus or Hugh "infecting" the Borg with a sense of individualism.
<snip>
You included a whole chunk which wasn't even remotely relevant to the Picard quote. Once removed, it's clear the chief difference is the Melville quote is a trifle wordier and includes a reference to Adam. I'd agree that if you quote from classic literature you shouldn't fudge like that, but it's not quite as severe as you wanted to suggest.
So a guy from the 24th century quotes a line of a 500 year old book from memory not exactly word for word.
I call the press.
Jesus. Don't sum of you people get your panties in a wad? You're awfully touchy for a single critique of a fairly unremarkable blockbuster movie. And it seems none of you knows the first thing about classic literature, or cares a jot for the butchering of the English language.
The sentence you snipped out is critical to that passage. It highlights the emotional profundity of Ahab's quest, and taps into why human beings behave in the ways they do, objectifying their failings by displacing them onto others. And that Picard should go on to quote a single sentence -- the shorter of the two sentences -- incorrectly is galling, and manifestly stupid. Just another example of Hollywood ruthlessly dumbing down everything in its path for a mass audience, in its eternal pursuit of the almighty dollar.
The sentence you snipped out is critical to that passage. It highlights the emotional profundity of Ahab's quest, and taps into why human beings behave in the ways they do, objectifying their failings by displacing them onto others. And that Picard should go on to quote a single sentence -- the shorter of the two sentences -- incorrectly is galling, and manifestly stupid. Just another example of Hollywood ruthlessly dumbing down everything in its path for a mass audience, in its eternal pursuit of the almighty dollar.
But is not part of what Picard quoted. You can with equal legitimacy quote the next couple of sentences. Picard's quote is sufficient for the context of that scene and by giving the preceding sentences you're exaggerating what would otherwise be a fair point, that the quote has been streamlined and simplified (dumbed down, quite so).
Yeah, I know the feeling. I also memorize everything I ever read word for word, and my quotes are 100% accurate. What a dumb movie.
I reckon you also wrote down the original Melville version from memory without having to look it up.
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To be fair, First Contact holds up better than most other movies from 1996.
