lunabee34

wendelah suggested I make a poll ranking the movies; I can't figure out how to make a poll that's easy to just glance at the results and see without crunching the numbers afterwards (which this is a no math zone, my friends; NO MATH!), so I decided to just make a regular post.

Trek movies ranked four ways:

TOS movies ranked, most favorite at the top

The Voyage Home
The Undiscovered Country
The Search for Spock
The Final Frontier
The Wrath of Khan
The Motion Picture

TNG movies ranked, most favorite at the top
First Contact
Generations
Nemesis
Insurrection

Reboot movies ranked, most favorite at the top
Star Trek (2009)
Star Trek Beyond
Star Trek into Darkness

All the movies ranked, most favorite at the top
The Voyage Home
First Contact
The Undiscovered Country
The Search for Spock
Star Trek (2009)
Star Trek Beyond
Star Trek Into Darkness
The Final Frontier
The Wrath of Khan
Generations
Nemesis
The Motion Picture
Insurrection



I adore the TOS movies, all of them, even V. Maybe even especially V.

When I was younger, I didn't like The Motion Picture much. It's so different tonally from the series and from the rest of the movies. It is entirely bereft of humor. This is Serious Business, y'all. All those long, silent tracking shots of the ship designed to appeal to Kubrick's audience in 2001 made no sense to little me, and it alienated me as a kid. It took me awhile to warm up to the movie. Now I love it. Now I see the tracking shots as glorious ship porn, and I get a little thrill in my heart every time the Enterprise (whichever Enterprise) shows up on screen--but that's a reaction I had to develop over time by watching the crew react with pride and love to the sight of their ship, by watching the Enterprise be destroyed and resurrected over and over again. I wasn't ready to react that way to The Motion Picture when I first saw it. I also really love the story line in retrospect; what an amazing idea that ties in to our real world space program. What if that olive branch we sent out into the universe so long ago actually got answered? Also, I am not sure if this ever gets confirmed in canon, but I really love the idea of the race that V'Ger comes in contact with and who transform it into sentience being the beginnings of the Borg; I've even seen ideas that somehow contact with V'Ger turns that race *into* the Borg. Really nice way to take the whole damn thing full circle.

Wrath of Khan is the undisputed fan and critical favorite, but it's never been mine. As a kid, the scene where the parasites crawl into the crewmen's ears really freaked me out, and I avoided watching it for that reason. Now I love it. I love that the humor and tone of the TV series returns. I love the Shakespearean dialogue. I love the emotional intensity ratcheted up to eleventy million. I love Kirstie Alley as Saavik. And, of course, this movie gives us the iconic scene between Kirk and Spock, the moment for so many of us that encapsulates how much they love each other. I know that Shatner gets slammed a lot for overacting, but he is absolutely phenomenal in the reactor scene. Tears come to my eyes just thinking about it.

The Search for Spock begins my favorite TOS story arc. It's really hard not to see III and IV as a two-parter rather than as distinct movies. This is the movie that fully and explicitly articulates that the crew of the Enterprise will do absolutely anything for each other, that they are not just friends but family, and that they will defy any order and any obstacle to help one of their own. This is where I get my love of team and leave no man behind. DeForest Kelley shines in this movie; he gets to be the main focus and the star for once, and he does a fucking amazing job with the material. I love all the characters, but Nichelle Nichols is another standout; Uhura's encounter with Mr. Adventure remains one of my favorite moments in Trek.

The Voyage Home is my favorite Trek movie. It's the first I remember seeing in the theater. It's so joyful and funny, and I will never get tired of watching the crew of the Enterprise save the universe. Spock trying to figure out how to be Spock again, and Kirk's relief and frustration with him are so finely done. To be plain, this movie makes me happy. Every single character gets a moment in the spotlight (the doctor gave me a pill and I grew a new kidney! how quaint! etc etc etc), and at the end of the movie when the whole universe commends them, I'm clapping right along with them.

Okay, so The Final Frontier got pretty widely panned. I think it might be most fans' and critics' least favorite TOS movie, but I love it hard. It's got such great character moments in it--the crew chilling out on shore leave, the biggest fears of the command crew, what does God need with a starship? I remember seeing this in the theater; my parents are scrupulously honest, so they must have paid for two fares for each us, but we watched it two times in a row, back to back. They brought a cooler into the theater which I have no idea how they got away with that, but I know they didn't hide it, so the theater must have just let them do it. LOL I loved everything about this movie as a kid--the cat lady with three boobs, Uhura sexy dancing in the desert, Scotty knocking himself out on the support beam. Now that I'm older, I can see why my mom was irritated with the movie and didn't like it as well as the others; I mean, it's definitely not on the level of The Voyage Home. I get the disappointment, but I just have such a deep fondness for the whole damn thing, especially the Klingon plot.

Undiscovered Country is amazing. What a high note to end on. We revisit Kirk's trauma from Wrath of Khan in a very moving way, and it gets tied to bigger interstellar politics that takes the individual and personal and turns it global and much more high stakes. We get to see our heroes as flawed, not as tolerant as we (and they) would like to believe they are, a little more damaged than maybe we thought--and then they transcend those flaws. Once again, we've got the theme of leave no man behind and move heaven and earth for family. I cannot think of Sulu coming in guns blazing and risking his future in Starfleet without getting a lump in my throat. That final scene of them on the bridge is such a lovely way to close the curtain on TOS.

The TNG movies are such a mixed bag. Insurrection is just a bloated TV episode that should never have been made into a movie. As much as I like isolated moments in Nemesis, I don't think it's a very good movie either. Generations is okay, but it really rests on the gimmick of Kirk's character bridging the gap between old and new, and it doesn't do anything magnificent for me.

First Contact, on the other hand, is not just a good TNG movie, it's a damn good movie period. The cast is stellar--damn, are Alfre Woodard and Alice Krige good in this. The Borg are sufficiently scary, the movie is intense and suspenseful, and it's got enough humor to temper all that intensity. Watching this in the theater was a delight after Generations did not live up to my expectations, and it has continued to be a delight on each subsequent rewatch.

I realize I am a bit of an outlier in that I really freaking like the reboot movies. I have already waxed rhapsodic, like thousands of words rhapsodic, about each of them: 2009, Into Darkness, and Beyond. I know that most of you do not share my squee, so I will just leave those links here and welcome anything you'd like to say about them (positive or negative).

Your own rankings and blathering on any and all of the movies welcome!!