The Star Trek films are truly fascinating. There are three different and distinct eras of films but there are deep connections to what came before them in some way. These different eras are not just different in terms of the casts but also in the vision and tone of what Star Trek looks like. It was a very unexpected pleasure to go back to the beginning and watch them all in order.
14. Section 31 [2025]
There is a whole CBS/Paramount+ Star Trek world out there that presumably several dozen people are watching or something. I am sure it is no worse than what Disney is doing with Star Wars, but I literally never see any comments about the current state of Star Trek. The only thing I have watched from this world is the first season of that dire Picard show. Between that and this television movie, I have no choice but to assume this whole Star Trek CBS situation is just horrific. I would love to hear that there are pockets of goodness! But even the Patrick Stewart films at their nadir had more juice than whatever the fuck this was trying to be. If you want to point to one specific aspect of this film to explain how bad it is, you need to look no further than the tone. It feels like a Marvel ripoff in terms of the lack of sincerity and quippyness. There is a way of pulling that off, but it is getting harder and harder to do so after Marvel overdid it to the nth degree.
13. Insurrection [1998]
After the greatness of First Contact established that a more serious/urgent tone worked best for the Next Gen crew, it was disheartening to see the team mostly abandon those ideas for this next film. They even had a decent early concept of Data being all screwy and needing help. A movie about needing to rescue or fix Data that could have been a race against the clock would have worked perfectly. They mostly drifted away from that though and the film just felt very lackadaisical and relatively whimsical all things considered. It just feels too much like an episode of television whereas the last film felt more like a film. Alas, poor Ricard.
12. Nemesis [2002]
I have a real fondness for this film for a couple of reasons. First, it utilized the more serious and urgent tone that was so successfully utilized in First Contact. Secondly, the film cast a young Tom Hardy in the villain role. Watching Hardy before he was a thing doing his damndest to make something of this mediocre film was frankly compelling as hell. Is this film good? No. But it has got things going for it that do not make it a total failure or anything like that.
11. Into the Darkness [2013]
The sequel to the 2009 film does the Khan prequel story in the new timeline. It has many of the same strengths and weaknesses of the first Abrams film. It is easy to watch and the cast is charming as all hell. The pace is condescendingly fast but that means, yes, it is rarely dull. There is a new problem though: it is just the wrong kinds of dumb. While the first film felt like it rather smoothly paid homage to the series fans know while also establishing this series would be something new, Into Darkness felt beholden to the original Star Trek in exceedingly dumb and unhelpful ways. This film redoing the Spock death in particular but with Kirk, complete with Spock this time screaming KHANNNNNNNN was, frankly, humiliating for all involved.
10. Generations [1994]
I know I had seen some Patrick Stewart Star Trek stuff before I sat down in 2023 to watch this film, but I sincerely remembered nothing (besides the miserable season one of Picard). My major takeaway from my first exposure to The Next Generation crew since I was a child was frankly underwhelming. The biggest issue was an idea that probably sounded great on the surface: using this film as a transition from William Shatner to Patrick Stewart as the new top dog. The problem was that Shatner was the master of presenting himself as a movie star and Stewart was still doing a small screen performance. It led to a situation with a film where the only effective story was this being a goodbye to Captain Kirk. Was it the ideal end to Kirk? Absolutely not. No Spock. No Bones. But it was done well despite the less-than-ideal circumstances, and Shatner nailed it.
9. Star Trek III: Search for Spock [1984]
Search for Spock was the first Star Trek film that did not fully work for me (it did not end up being the last). It was a little too slow. It contained some interesting ideas about life and death but everything felt half-hearted. It was missing some undefinable spark. It feels like a movie you make when you know you are gonna make a bunch of movies whereas the first two movies felt significant on their own. It felt like a placeholder containing strong elements from the first and second films but never captured the magic of either one.
8. Beyond [2016]
J.J. Abrams thankfully stopped directing the Star Trek films at this point, and they managed to recruit Justin Lin – the man behind the camera seemingly most responsible for keeping the Fast and Furious franchise in the “good” territory. The dynamite cast is back in full. The surprisingly consistently solid look for the film is as sharp if not better than that. But for some reason, this film never manages to escape fine/solid territory.
There just is not enough emotion to this cast. The supposed arc for the main characters was that Kirk and Spock were already getting angsty about leaving the Enterprise, and it’s just like, you’re in your thirties, guys. It’s not like this is original cast coming back twenty years later to make some movies. Could they think of nothing that might not resonate more?
Then on a more fundamental level, a lot of the enjoyment and pleasure from Star Trek films comes from the villain. They stick Idris Elba in some goddamn awful makeup here, and he just gives one of the most lifeless performances of his career. This film is not a failure or anything. It is just merely there.
7. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country [1991]
I kind of get why fans like (or even love) The Undiscovered Country so much. It is a fun final adventure with the whole squad (mostly) together. There are even some interesting ideas in here with Kirk and company forced to (somewhat) confront their biases against the Klingons and who stands to benefit from dividing the galaxy between the different races. I think I just prefer my original Star Trek films a little bit more offbeat.
6. Star Trek [2009]
When I first saw this film, I had seen very little Star Trek of any variety in my life. It was never my thing. And I really dug this film! It was fun and breezy and never stopped moving; it was impossible for me to be bored during it!
Cut to the present. I have now gone back and watched all the Shatner/Stewart films, and I found this film, if not boring, certainly disinteresting at points. The film felt cynically designed to avoid any sense of “downtime.” There is just a constant go-go-go with the editing of this film that eventually just makes you numb.
Having said, I still largely enjoy this film. The cast is just so darn likable and help to compensate for the film’s problem. You can turn on this film and just have a good time even if there is something soulless about the whole exercise.
5. First Contact [1996]
First Contact was the second Star Trek film with the Next Generation crew, and it was a **significant** step up in quality compared to the first one. It just simply had a better and more appropriate tone. The New Gen crew works better in more serious and urgent stories, and that is exactly what this was meant to be. If the first Next Gen crew film felt held back by trying to emulate the original crew’s style, this film seemed to fully embrace its own natural strengths. This is far and away the best film from the Patrick Stewart years.
4. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan [1982]
Wrath of Khan is (as I understand it) widely considered one of (if not) the best Trek films, and I have enjoyed for many years and long before I got emotionally invested in the world. Now that I have more context, I cannot help but see it as a response to The Motion Picture. While that film was purposefully obtuse in so many ways, Khan was a much more direct and accessible story. Deciding which one is better almost seems counterproductive. Both are extremely effective, and they establishment a fantastic precedent for the franchise: they try to make each film stand on its own two feet and feel different from the others.
3. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier [1989]
Okay, as I understand it, this movie is one of the least-liked with the original cast. But hear me out. It’s an insane, ego-trip movie, and if you cannot find that equal parts fascinating and entertaining then I don’t know what to tell you. The powers that be decided to just let William Shatner cook and boy did he ever. What is the point of franchise filmmaking if you do not allow your star to get control of the reins. The Final Frontier literally ends with the characters CONFRONTING GOD. GOD. Due they back off of it a little? A little. But it’s still GOD. No other Star Trek film had the guts to go for what Shatner did here!
2. Star Trek: The Motion Picture [1979]
After a decade since the show had been cancelled, the cast gets reunited for the most expensive motion picture ever made up until this point. The movie is shockingly abstract given what I expected. The characters slowly reunite on the Enterprise ship to save Earth from some unknown entity that is heading right to the planet. The enemy is kept mysterious on purpose, and the movie seems to be more about being with the crew again and basking in the impressive special effects. The concluding sequence is all about asking philosophical questions about being alive and what does it even mean to be consider alive. You could not say that the movie was profound in any way, but there was something definitively jarring about how this all played out. It was a far more interesting film to come from such a project than you will ever get today.
1. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home [1986]
This film has two incredible qualities that makes it a genuine contender for the best Star Trek film. First of all, the film is primarily about the Enterprise crew hanging out with each other and doing fish-out-of-water gags….in 1986. The magic of the original Star Trek is really about how much you felt like you were a part of the crew, and this is the movie that captured that best of all. The second great aspect of this film is that the plot was insane in just the exact right amount. The crew has to time travel to 1986 Earth to steal humpback whales and bring them back to the 23rd Century so that they can interpret and respond to some signal from a probe that threatens the existence of all of Earth. Just remarkable.
The Reel World 