Nemesis gets a lot of grief. Personally, I didn’t think it was that bad, certainly better then Insurrection, IMO. It’s the weakest of the even numbered movies, but still not any worse than most of the odd numbered movies.
I’ve never quite understood all the hate for 5, either. No, it’s not great, but it’s hardly worthy of all the lame “there was no 5” crap people always try to claim. Given the choice, I’d certainly rather watch 5 than the first movie. That one just was boring as hell.
I’d say 2 is the best overall. First Contact is the best of the TNG movies.
Unless you are a Fake Defector trying to convince her that you are a real one.
Voyage Home is my personal fave, tho I acknowledge Khan’s greatness (movie and well character too). Put most everything else in the middle, and Final Frontier wayyy at the bottom.
The best is First Contact.
I like the one with Spock spiritual goofy brother an GGGOOOOODDDDDD. That’s because if you are going to use God as a character he has to be evil: that’s why most of christmas movies sucks.
Imagine this trailer: December 25 - God is coming to earth - And he is coming for YOU!.
The only really, really good one was “The Wrath of Khan.” It was a Grade-A first rate movie in every respect.
The new “Star Trek,” and “First Contact” are good movies but not great.
“The Voyage Home” isn’t very good but it’s got a good sense of humour.
The rest are terrible. I suppose you could argue some are more terrible than others, but really, it doesn’t matter. I admit to being baffled by people’s high regard for “Undiscovered Country,” which I thought was a dreadful peice of shit, every bit as bad as it predecessor.
This is quite possibly a stupid question, but what is the name of the current film? Is it just Star Trek, with no other subtitle? If so, that’s a little confusing.
Yes, just Star Trek, I guess since it’s a reboot. If (as seems very likely) there are more movies with this cast, maybe they’ll subtly retitle it, like Star Trek Ep. 11: A New Hope.
I wonder why such a compelling series (thinking solely of TOS, for the moment) begat rather less-than-compelling movie experiences? The CW on this has Paramount/the marketplace dumbing down the milieu for mass consumption. The contrary view would simply state that TOS wasn’t as good as we remembered (very lofty highs and mind-numbingly dreadful lows is what I would say to that).
Well, they got one good movie (Kahn) and a few decent ones out of it, which is probably more then most TV to film projects. Actually, if your like me and liked the first film, then I’d say that’s four enjoyable movies (I,II,IV and VI) one forgettable one (III) and one bad one (V), which is a pretty good record for any film franchise.
Probably a little bit of both. And add to that the age factor - the movies couldn’t get away from the fact that the cast was getting older and older. The best movies were generally those who dealt with this head-on (Wrath of Khan being the gold standard, as it is literally about old age and death), rather than trying to pretend that Kirk at age 50 would be capable of the same action fisticuffs as Kirk at 30. The same goes for the TNG films, but even moreso - they were throwing a 50-year old Jonathan Frakes into choreographed fight scenes he probably couldn’t have pulled off at 25.
In addition to what Tanbarkie points out, it’s just that television is a different medium. With a TV series, you get to present your audience with 12-24 episodes per season. The episodes don’t really stand alone; each builds upon the last, and the series has value taken as a whole. If you watch individual episodes of “Star Trek” or “TNG,” many of them are mediocre, some are bad, and frankly not very many of them are REALLY good. But as a whole, the series draws you in to a very well-realized universe that’s interesting, optimistic, and fantastic.
There’s not a lot of connection between the quality of the series and the quality of the movie. “Firefly” was an effective series because its whole was greater than the sum of the parts. Its movie counterpart “Serenity” was a by-the-numbers sci-fi movie without a hint of originality. “The Simpsons Movie” felt like just a really long Simpsons episode and not necessarily a very good one, despite being based on one of the greatest TV shows of all time. Conversely, “The Addams Family” was a much better movie than a TV series (though you could argue the movie was based on the comic, not the series) and “The Brady Bunch” was a hilarious movie and a tiresome TV series.
You can’t replicate that in movies; in a movie you have to deliver all the goods in two hours. It’s a substantially different way of telling a story. One of the reasons “Wrath of Khan” works so well is that they commissioned a script by a guy with little knowledge of the series whose job it was to just take the Star Trek concept and come up with a script. It’s a movie on its own, not just an attempt to extend the life of the franchise - the genius of it is that it’s its own movie even while bringing back one of the very best villains from the TV series. (In another thread, someone points out - and I am embarassed to have forgotten who it was - that the first scene with Khan is a remarkably well-written bit of exposition that allows people who never saw the “Space Seed” episode to understand Khan’s backstory, motivation, ruthlessness and madness all in a space of just two minutes or so.)
Another problem is that a movie in a franchise like ST ordinarily comes out every few years, is expensive and has to make a lot of money for the studio to want to make the next one. The production team usually feels it has to outdo the villain, SFX and stunts of the previous movie, but there’s only so much you can do before it feels forced/ridiculous/untethered from all the things that fans love about ST. A movie also has to appeal to more people than just the TV fanbase, so you’re not going to get many (if any) scripts about exploration or diplomacy, but plenty of space battles and 'splosions. There’s a place for them, sure, but in ST movies they’re far more prominent than in the typical good ST episode.
Totally disagree. If anything, Serenity could be criticized for being basically a two-part Firefly episode, but it was not a by the numbers movie and it had plenty of originality.