the Broomhandle Mauser, introduced in 1896.

Replace it with something that looks like a hairbrush or pen and it looses
the ominous feel.

Movies only have an hour and a half to create a story and mood.
They don't have time to retrain on emotive movie symbolism.

Goes without saying my friend.

But we can pretend until the curtain comes down.

They even have the light phaser which is about the size of 2 Bic lighters.
The phaser rifle, however, looked kind of like a light machine gun with a phaser attached to the end & the pulse cannon looked like a cross between an RPG & a shotgun .
So, they went back to the gun look fir the heavier weapons.

He bids one of the enemy Borg attackers to "Assimilate This!"

It was, however, the first movie with only the TNG cast.
Generations had that whole cast, but Kirk, McCoy, & Chekov were also in it.
Another thing I liked in that scene was Picard releasing his mag boots to jump all the way to the other side of the deflector dish. Good FX. Obviously a boom harness, but it looked cool.
Also, in Insurrection, Worf used one of those shoulder held pulse cannons to take out the drones. Back to the conventional gun shape.