Ranking the 12 Trek films

[CRAMBAM]

I think I would rank em as follows:

TWOK
TSFS (highly underrated)
TVH
TUC
STID
Star Trek 2009
FC
TFF
TMP
INS
NEM
Generations

Generations remains a distant last for killing Kirk. It's so dumb, and so offensive to me as a Trek fan, it would be impossible to make a worse movie.

Final Frontier, TMP, INS and NEM are just bad movies. Reasonable minds can differ on the order.

FC is the best of the TNG movies, but it was overrated and just a high budget TNG episode that was trumped by BOBW.

If you are going to make a sequel, make it better.

ST09 had a LOT of flaws, but it was a good movie. It was not a great movie.

STID was much better than ST09. Best Star Trek movie since 1991.

TUC, TVH, and TSFS for me, also fairly interchangeable in rankings. All good movies and good Star Trek.

TWOK is in a class by itself. That movie had more heart than STID, better dialogue, and better overall emotion.

And STID was a really good movie. I wouldn't even call that an insult. TWOK did more with $11 million than STID did with $200 million, and they did a very good job.

I don't see how they will ever top TWOK.

[Deleted]

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek (2009)
Star Trek Into Darkness
Star Trek: Generations
Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: Insurrection
Star Trek: Nemesis

[TrekBeatTK]

I watched one film a day for the past 2 weeks in preparation, so here's how I feel about their rank at this time:

TWOK
TVH
TSFS (agreed, underrated)
FC
TUC
TMP (also highly underrated)
Nemesis
TFF
Star Trek
Generations
Insurrection
STID

Wrath of Khan is not without a few flaws, but it probably still the best. I always debate how far to put First Contact.

Search for Spock's biggest flaw is that the Genesis Planet sets look like sets. It's necessary given the budget and the fact it had to come apart at the end, but it's a failing. But it's still got a lot of good character moments (too bad Uhura disappears halfway through). I saw it before I saw WOK actually.

If you take away the bad costumes and the poor pacing, TMP has so much good going for it. It's good Trek and good sci-fi, and though it doesn't all work, I find I still appreciate its successes more each time than the flaws. And its model work is phenomenal, particularly for the time.

Nemesis is basically tied with TFF for me. It suffers the same as other films (and STID) in trying to replicate TWOK. It was poorly directed and it's script needed tightening, but there was still good stuff in it.

Generations never feels like a feature; just like its own finale to the series. I don't have the same attachment to Kirk and don't fault it as much for killing him (though it was lame). Picard is weird and out of character the whole movie too. It's just badly scripted when it comes to the Nexus. And yet, it is a kind of send-up to what TNG was on TV.

Insurrection is a kind of hot mess with good ideas that don't all gel. At someone's suggestion I've begun reading Michael Piller's unpublished book about the making of it, and it's really interesting. Several ideas from his original treatment ended up in Nemesis in some way. Honestly, this might have worked better as a miniseries than as a 140-minute feature.

And this is just a gut reaction, but STID made me angry, and that immediately puts it last. I already had problems with the previous film killing of Amanda for no reason and promoting Kirk at the end for no reason. And while it looked like some of this was getting corrected early on, it feels like Abrams and his writers seem to think that chain of command just doesn't exist anymore and they can just assign anyone any rank to any post whenever they want. It's lazy and stupid. And the big plot twist(s) were so dumb. Say what you will about Rick Berman, but this movie would NEVER have been made on his watch. Enterprise was a better respecter of continuity, and boy is that saying something.

-TK

[CRAMBAM]

The only reason TSFS gets a somewhat bad rap is because it's an odd numbered movie, and they want it to fit into that odd movies are bad pattern.

It was a very good movie.