Ranking Trek: Movie Edition

Last week I did Star Wars movies and Monday I did Trek shows, so now let's rank Trek movies!  Because, why not?

13.  Star Trek (2009):  I get other people like it, but like Thor: Ragnarok it's one of those "fun" movies that I thought was just so, so stupid.  From building starships on the ground to Spock dating to promoting a failing cadet instantly to captain of the flagship, so, so much of this movie just didn't make sense, especially in context of the Star Trek universe.  I called it Star Trek for Star Wars fans and I stick by that.  This was incidentally the same kind of logic-defying storytelling that JJ Abrams then brought to two Star Wars movies.

12.  Star Trek: Into Darkness:  What makes less sense than building massive starships on the ground?  Starships underwater!  Then this desperately wanted to be Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but had done absolutely nothing to earn it.  When Kirk is dying to save the ship and Spock is talking to him you don't get the same feels as in Wrath of Khan because these two actors barely know each other.  Almost as pointless (and much more sexist) was the unnecessary Alice Eve in her underwear scene.  In this case the Nimoy cameo was also really pointless and forced.

11.  Star Trek: Generations:  After the Next Generation series premiered, people probably wondered:  what happened to Jim Kirk?  This movie attempted to answer that and also to pass the movie torch from the classic crew to the Next Generation crew.  The end result is one of those movies that felt more like an extended episode.  Malcolm McDowell plays a dull villain with some harebrained scheme that only Picard and Kirk can thwart by working together.  Though it's like one of those comic book team-ups where it probably wouldn't have been necessary in a regular book.  I mean, in a regular TNG episode, Picard probably could have done that himself.  And they probably could have saved the ship before it was destroyed.  Besides that, inconsistent uniforms (aren't uniforms supposed to be, you know, uniform?) and a chubby Shatner make this not really a good way to honor the classic crew or the new crew.  But the "Tuesday" bit was hilarious; it's something my siblings and I still reference from time to time.

10.  Star Trek:  The Motion Picture:  This was supposed to mark the new era for the franchise after the show and animated series were cancelled.  Instead it was a disappointment coming out on the heels of Star Wars.  It was slow, basically Gene Roddenberry's 2001: A Space Odyssey.  And featured Shatner with more costume changes than Padme in Episode I, ridiculous Atari 2600-style video games in the never-to-be-seen-again rec room, and the threat turned out to be old US satellites.  Um...really?  But it did have that great Jerry Goldsmith theme song that was later used on TNG and...

9.  Star Trek V:  The Final Frontier:  This probably gets an undue amount of hate because Shatner directed it.  The plot isn't really that ridiculous given some of the other movies that came before it.  But there was a lot of goofiness that would probably now be considered "fun."  The jet boots were pretty neat, though.

8.  Star Trek:  Insurrection:  This isn't really a bad movie.  It's just that it's one of those where it feels like an overstuffed TNG episode.  Essentially an alien civil war with some Federation corruption thrown in.  It just wasn't a big enough story to really compete with some of the more memorable movies.

7.  Star Trek Beyond:  The best of the reboot movies isn't a very high bar to me.  There was fun and less of the ridiculousness from the Abrams movies.  Idris Elba is cool, though the thing where he absorbs people and becomes more human was weird.  The "Sabotage" bit was funny, though really unrealistic that people in the 23rd Century listen to late 20th Century rap.  I mean, how often do you listen to lesser 18th Century composers--not Mozart?  It's the movie where Chris Pine is most Kirk-like and most of the other characters are more like their inspirations than the Abrams movies.

6.  Star Trek:  Nemesis:  The final Next Generation movie, this was not really as bad as people say.  The idea of a Romulan clone of Picard out to kill him and Earth gave it a little of the Star Wars operatic vibe.  It was a decent send-off for the TNG crew.  And the secret origin of Tom Hardy!

5.  Star Trek III: The Search for Spock:  Since Spock was the #1 or #2 character for most fans, of course they couldn't keep him dead.  So this movie brings him back to life with a story that deepens the familial bond among the crew as they defy Starfleet to steal the damaged Enterprise and rescue their friend.  It's kind of ridiculous that Spock would somehow regenerate exactly as he was thanks to the "Genesis effect;" I mean on an alien planet that's rapidly evolving, wouldn't he turn into some other form of life or something?  Or not.  Christopher Lloyd is a worthy adversary for the crew as the Klingon commander trying to steal Genesis for himself.

4.  Star Trek IV:  The Voyage Home:  The conclusion of the trilogy within the Trek movies that follows the crew from Vulcan to Earth to stand trial.  After that the movie takes a ridiculous turn as they almost casually go back in time to 1987 to steal humpback whales from an aquarium to take back to the future to tell a probe to go home and stop fucking things up.  Um...what?  When I saw this (several times) as a kid, I just went with it, but as I get older, it makes far less sense.  There was a fairly unsubtle environmental message and a lot of 80s-ness that hasn't aged all that well.  And yet it does have a goofy charm.  And in terms of the movies, it's really the best romance Kirk gets to have.

3.  Star Trek VI:  The Undiscovered Country:  Another not-all-subtle environmental message and a commentary on the end of the Cold War mix with a decent thriller to send off the classic crew.  There's a good supporting cast including Christopher Plummer, David Warner, and Kim Cattrall.  And Worf's grandpa or great-grandpa or something shows up as Kirk and McCoy's lawyer.  It ends with a decent space battle, the key to which is engineered by Uhura.  Agents of the Federation and Klingons working together to stoke the flames of war, are not too different from our time either.  Overall it's the movie that should have been Kirk's last appearance in Trek.

2.  Star Trek:  First Contact:  After the disappointing Generations, Berman and company decided to swing for the fences with a big, violent story.  And who better for villains than the baddest asses in the TNG universe:  the Borg?  Only now the Borg are going back in time to what's now our century in order to kill the creator of warp travel for Earth ships.  And only Picard and the sweet new Enterprise-E can stop them!  It then largely becomes like a zombie movie as more and more of the crew is assimilated into the Borg collective while many of our heroes have to hole up and try to survive.  Picard and Data get the best character arcs (of course) while Riker, Geordi, and Troi are largely underused on the surface.  There is a decent space battle early and a good supporting cast including James Cromwell and Alfre Woodard.  It was easily the best of the TNG movies.

1.  Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan:  I suppose you could say this was also Star Trek for Star Wars fans as this brings the space opera with both barrels.  What it does really well is take a battle for a weapon that could destroy and reformat all life in the universe into a small-scale personal battle between Kirk and Khan.  It features what I'd say are the best space battles in the series, not because of the size or number of ships, but because of the tension and intimacy.  The battle in the nebula is harrowing and that first ambush of the Enterprise is gut-wrenching, especially what happens to Scotty's nephew.  And those ear worms...nasty!  God, I still have to look away from the screen when Khan is inserting those things in Chekov and that other guy's ears.  And of course the dramatic final moments of Spock, sacrificing himself to save the ship.  The only thing bringing it down a little now is the 80s hair band look of Khan and his people.  Still, it's easily the best of the franchise because it found a way to tell a big story in a personal way we could all relate to.

Whatever Noah Hawley comes up with for the next reboot movie (or re-reboot?) is unlikely to challenge the first couple of movies on the list, but maybe it'll crack the top 5.  Probably not.