Who saw this in cinemas back in 96?

Who saw this back in the day? What were your memories - the anticipation of seeing it in the weeks/days before, the actually seeing it and how much a big deal was it where you were back then, the crowds, audience etc and after coming out of the cinema what were your thoughts and in the days/weeks that followed….


Remember reading rumours in magazines and on this new thing called 'surfing the internet' (I remember seeing the FC one sheet movie poster for the first time slowly taking form on the net) that it would be set in the Renaissance and would be called Star Trek 'Resurrection' and would feature the Borg which made all kinds of sense. was obviously a step up from VII and felt epic and exciting action packed with a Wrath of Khany type feel (2nd improved film, sequel to an ep featuring popular villain, Moby Dick, revenge theme, more militaristic tone) and also felt like part of the Alien invasion genre that was in full flow in 96 (ID4, XFiles), with the added bonus of a new more Enterprise looking like Enterprise, cool new uniforms (again like II) and redesigned Gigeresque Borg.. In many ways FC was sort of the 'TMP' of the TNG movies - TNG re-imagined for the big screen like the way TOS was for TMP (and again for TWOK). remember being abit underwhelmed by the ending of Data making out he was on borg side, then switching. i dunno what i was expecting (Ent destruction again?) but it just felt like abit of a cop out to me back then (nothing wrong with it though really).


as usual I bought all the memorabilia – official magazine (titan not starlog now), Marvel comic (not DC now), novel, poster, making of book and other stuff. There were even First Contact chocolate bars! and I bought a few! (and ate them. Caramel inside, hey they wernt bad!)