The Best And Worst Star Trek Movies
Over the past two weeks I watched all eleven Star Trek movies — some of which I hadn’t seen in years — both in preparation for the new Star Trek (11) movie, and to get a clearer perspective on the entire franchise. As a result I feel pretty confident in the following — albeit highly personal — ranking from best to worst:
1. Star Trek 2: The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek 2 is easily the best of the Star Trek movies because it gets to the heart of Trek — the characters, and the core friendship between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, with an exciting adventure of space battles. There’s also Spock’s heartbreaking logic of self-sacrifice in order to ensure the survival of others. It feels wrong to our human sensibilities. The heartbreak is that Spock made the right choice in order to save his friends, but we wish he hadn’t.
2. Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country
After getting short shrift through the previous five movies (!), Sulu becomes integral to the plot as captain of the Excelsior. Plus, two great scenes: Spock performs a mind-meld on the Vulcan Valeris (Kim Cattrall), and a final battle between the Enterprise and a cloaked bird of prey, where the camera moves in on Kirk’s final “fire!” command.
While never reaching the epic heights of Star Trek 2, The Undiscovered Country repairs a lot of the damage caused by Star Trek 5 and sends the original series crew off into the sunset on a high note.
The new Trek is an entertaining blend of Star Wars and Star Trek, which could have easily, royally sucked. Instead, two hours of giving the prime directive and canon the finger has effectively blown away all the weak Trek of the past decade. Before Star Trek (11), I was a cynical fan thinking a new Trek adventure was folly, and the entire universe was better off left in the past. Yet despite my complaints above, the movie won me over, and I now look forward to more adventures. That feat alone earns extra star for the time being. Star Trek (11) is the Iron Man of 2009. Highly recommended.
4. Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home
I really enjoyed re-watching this one. I’m a sucker for movies set in San Francisco, and the comedy is inventive and contains genuine heart. To all the serious Trekkies who consider the cornball nature of this installment a travesty — double dumb-ass on you.
First Contact is a fun ride, improving on Generations considerably, and is one of the better Trek movies, mostly achieved through the parallel threads of monkeying around on Earth and battles aboard the Enterprise. However, I must mention a comparison between this trip back in time and the original crew’s in Star Trek IV. The most notable difference is planning — Picard’s crew executes theirs with capable purpose to save the future, while Kirk’s team is essentially clueless, has trouble adjusting to the ways of the past, and comically stumbles toward success almost by accident, despite themselves. They save the future solely through personality. I actually prefer the old generation’s approach — it’s much more entertaining, and much more — human. Assimilate that.
6. Star Trek 3: The Search For Spock
While occasionally amusing, Star Trek 3 feels like a connect the dots exercise — point A being Spock’s death and point B bringing him back to life. It also seems oddly determined to undo the “damage” done by Star Trek 2, as if the movies had to return to a place where movies could run in a non-sequential order. Then there’s the plain fact that the whole ride isn’t very entertaining — an amazing lack of tension as the crew boldly voyages toward a foregone conclusion.
7. Star Trek 1: The Motion Picture
That Star Trek: The Motion Picture was a box office success and launched a film franchise is hard to believe in retrospect. The jab “Star Trek: The Motionless Picture” is all too true. There are many reasons: in the late seventies, Paramount was working on Star Trek: Phase Two, a new television series that was prematurely aborted. A one-hour television episode V’Ger story was hurriedly expanded into a feature film after the unexpected success of Star Wars. The rest of the movie’s running time is filled with a large, nebulous cloud of pointlessness.
The entire premise of Generations seems flawed from inception: Why kill Kirk? That, combined with the new crew’s near total lack of personality, presents the 24th century as a really dull place I could barely stand to visit for even two hours, let alone a five year voyage. No wonder Soran wanted in on that nexus.
Star Trek 9 isn’t anywhere near as terrible as the travesty that is Star Trek V — everyone acts in character and the plot works out exactly like you’d expect from Trek — which creates a different sort of problem. Despite twice as many locations and characters than either Star Trek 1 or 7, it actually makes the future seem like a real snore — and that’s bad sci fi.
It’s a shame the Next Gen crew had to go out this way. It’s like a flip-flop of Insurrection — while the look is much more epic and cinematic, the plot is much weaker, essentially a lesser copy of Star Trek 2. While nowhere near as terrible as Star Trek V, I’d sooner watch any of the other episodes than this dull one.
11. Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier
Star Trek V’s biggest head scratcher is how Shatner, who spent so many years playing Captain Kirk, seems out of touch with the characters, and serves up a stock adventure plot that could be another Beastmaster. Skip this awful and often unintentionally funny installment entirely and voyage to the far superior Star Trek 6.
Final Notes
Overall, I found my opinion lining up with the general observations that even numbered Trek movies rule while the odd numbered ones blow.
Some may take issue with ranking of Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home over Star Trek 8: First Contact. This is a gut reaction to which movie I’d sooner watch again, for reasons mentioned above. I also rank Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country high because it is the best send-off one could ask for and thankfully revived the franchise after the utter craptitude of Star Trek 5.
Star Trek (11) is in a similar position as The Undiscovered Country, tasked with reboot after several dull entries, and which I feel it was largely successful. But while I gave the movie itself 5 stars in my review, I err on the side of caution and place it third for the time being.
couldn’t agree more, but I would have flopped First Contact and Voyage home.
I pretty much agree with this list, but I would put Insurrection and Nemesis below Final Frontier.
In general I think we feel the same about all the movies though. The best 2 really stand out, and the worst 3 really stand out. The stuff in between… kinda depends on my mood at the time.
Yeah those last three are all pretty bad. I might swap Final Frontier with Nemesis someday, as Final Frontier is actually kind of funny-bad in spots (meaning I could watch it again) while Nemesis is so boring / deathly serious while being bad.