All 13 Star Trek movies officially ranked

Star Trek First Contact

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Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

Production Budget: $46,000,000
Worldwide Box office: $150,000,000
Total Profit: $104,000,000
Return on Investment: 226.1%

Most fans won’t argue that Star Trek: First Contact is without a doubt the best of The Next Generation movies, it goes without saying really, Star Trek: Generations was good, Star Trek: Insurrection was a good effort, Star Trek: Nemesis was the end of the line, but First Contact was the best of the bunch and with 226.1% return on investment it’s easy to see.

Since The Best of Both Worlds fans had been waiting for another true confrontation between the Borg and their former human representative, Locutus of Borg. The events of his transformation into Locutus had lead Captain Picard to question his place not only in Starfleet, but within the universe, in one of the beloved episodes of the series, Brothers,, he returns home to Chateau Picard in France and through a series of battles with his brother learns again who he is. As it happened, however his entire family had been killed in a fire just one movie earlier and his support system was largely depleted, but there was no man better to lead earth against the Borg, and no ship more advanced then the all new USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E.

What came was what fans wanted, time travel, Borg, a large battle and a few cheeky lines from the now emotional Data. The addition of the Borg Queen was somewhat specious, if they had needed Locutus it was possible they had at some point need another representative, but for Picard to never have mentioned her was questionable. Within the narrative of the movie it certainly made sense, a single voice trying to lure Picard back to the collective was more effective then it would have been to have the faceless voice of the many calling to him, this change took it from scary to personal, and personal can be scary on a whole different level.