star trek movie reviews

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Total Recall

Every star trek movie ranked from worst to best, with star trek beyond hitting theaters, we count down every big screen voyage of the enterprise..

TAGGED AS: Sci-Fi

These days, cancellation isn’t necessarily the end for a television series; between DVD sales, the Web, and the ever-expanding cable dial, if a show has a fervent enough fanbase, odds are someone is going to come along to take advantage of it. Such was not the case 50 years ago, however – not that it mattered to diehard Star Trek fans, who so impressed Paramount with their passion for Gene Roddenberry’s characters that the studio brought the property to theaters a full decade after the show was unceremoniously dumped by NBC. Nearly four decades later, as we prepare to greet Star Trek Beyond , the franchise’s 13th feature, your pals at Rotten Tomatoes thought now would be the perfect time to take a fond look back at all the Enterprise voyages that got us here — from the beloved classics ( The Wrath of Khan ) to the ones that never should have made it off the holodeck ( The Final Frontier ). Where does your favorite rank? Read this week’s Total Recall to find out!

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) 23%

After churning out three consecutive installments that pleased fans as well as critics, the Star Trek  franchise was due for a fall – and it got one in the form of 1989’s The Final Frontier . William Shatner directed the fourth sequel, and helped come up with the storyline (which puts the crew of the Enterprise at odds with a God-like being who has nefarious plans for the galaxy), so he’s taken much of the blame for what’s regarded by many as the weakest film in the series – blame that, to his credit, he’s publicly accepted. But to be fair, Frontier  had bigger problems than Shatner; for starters, the 1988 writers’ strike left Paramount rushing to push out another Trek  before the series lost its momentum – and with a budget almost $20 million lower than that assigned to the first film 10 years earlier. Whatever the causes, Frontier  was a failure; although it easily recouped its budget, its grosses didn’t come anywhere near The Voyage Home ’s, and neither fans nor critics were charmed by the film’s comedic elements (including the infamous Yosemite camping scenes) or its thinly veiled attacks on televangelists. “Of all the Star Trek  movies, this is the worst,” wrote Roger Ebert – and for a time, it seemed likely that it would also be the last.

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  Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) 38%

If 1998’s Insurrection found the Star Trek  franchise suffering from what seemed like audience fatigue, 2002’s Nemesis — the final picture to feature The Next Generation ’s crew – represented the onset of a full-on malaise. After over a decade of films that performed solidly at the box office and ran the critical gamut from great to respectable, Nemesis came as a profound letdown – not only with critics, who gave it the worst reviews the series had seen since The Final Frontier , but with the moviegoers who stayed away in droves; its $43 million domestic gross was almost as embarrassing as the fact that it made less than Maid in Manhattan  its opening weekend. In the hands of new director Stuart Baird, Nemesis presented a more action-heavy Trek than audiences were accustomed to; unfortunately, this shift in direction alienated hardcore fans, and the script – partially inspired by an idea from Brent “Data” Spiner – failed to take advantage of its departing cast. In the words of USA Today’s Mike Clark, “As spent screen series go, Star Trek: Nemesis  is… suggestive of a 65th class reunion mixer where only eight surviving members show up — and there’s nothing to drink.”

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) 53%

With a full decade between it and the end of the original series, you might think 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture  would have plenty of time to work out all the kinks – but alas, as the movie’s dismal Tomatometer (and decades of fan gags about “ The Motionless Picture “) can attest, all of Trek ’s time off didn’t translate into an auspicious big-screen debut for the crew of the Starship Enterprise. The problem with the first Trek  film – aside from a dialogue-heavy storyline whose biggest villain was a cloud – actually had nothing to do with the franchise itself; instead, it was a series of corporate shenanigans, including an aborted attempt at a second Trek  television series, that left director Robert Wise with a patchwork script and neither the time nor the money to realize his vision. Although The Motion Picture  didn’t meet commercial or critical expectations (the Chicago Reader’s Dave Kehr called it “blandness raised to an epic scale”), it performed well enough to justify a sequel – and, in the bargain, kicked off one of the longest-running series in movie history.

Star Trek Generations (1994) 48%

After seven years and 178 episodes, Paramount felt the time was right to give the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation  its cinematic debut – and since some members of the Enterprise’s original crew were either unwilling to return (Leonard Nimoy) or not well enough (DeForest Kelley), the seventh Trek  movie seemed like the perfect spot for a changing of the guard. With a behind-the-scenes crew that included a number of Next Generation  vets – including producer Rick Berman, director David Carson, and screenwriters Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga – 1994’s Star Trek Generations  should have been a slam dunk, especially given a plot that put TNG ’s Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) face-to-face with James T. Kirk for the first time, but alas, it was not to be. Though it did well enough at the box office, slightly improving upon The Undiscovered Country ’s worldwide tally, Generations  received a mixed reception from writers like the New York Times’ Peter M. Nichols, who simultaneously criticized it as “predictably flabby and impenetrable in places” and praised it for having “enough pomp, spectacle and high-tech small talk to keep the franchise afloat.”

Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) 55%

After handling screenplay duties for Generations  and First Contact , writers Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga disembarked from Star Trek ’s film voyage – but at this point, the Trek  creative universe had expanded to the point that producer Rick Berman had plenty of new collaborators to choose from. He settled on Michael Piller, with whom he’d created the Trek  TV spinoff series Deep Space Nine , and together – along with Jonathan Frakes, who returned to direct and reprise his role as Commander William T. Riker – they put together Insurrection , a story that introduced new wrinkles for familiar characters (such as LeVar Burton’s Lieutenant Commander Geordi LaForge briefly acquiring the ability to see without optical implants) while still holding true to the core themes of the series. Unfortunately, at this point, audiences were so used to seeing one Trek  TV series or another that they needed something truly extraordinary to hold their attention on the big screen – and Insurrection , as evidenced by a gross that fell short of First Contact ’s, wasn’t it. Still, even if critics didn’t find it to be the most compelling entry in the series, they weren’t completely dismissive; as Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “[It] lacks the adrenalized oomph of its predecessor, but no adventure of the Starship Enterprise is without its gee-whiz affability.”

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) 79%

Leonard Nimoy a.k.a. Captain Spock, only agreed to return for The Wrath of Khan  because his character died in the last act; fortunately for the franchise, he later had such a change of heart that not only did he come back for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock , he directed  it – and did an admirable job of continuing the series’ resurgence, piloting the third chapter to a respectable $76 million domestic gross and generally favorable reviews from critics like Time’s Richard Shickel, who praised Nimoy for “beaming his film up onto a higher pictorial plane than either of its predecessors.” Though further odd-numbered entries in the series would famously come to represent Trek  at its worst, Star Trek III  cemented Gene Roddenberry’s creation as a viable ongoing concern for Paramount – and set the stage for the film series’ fourth chapter, thus clearing the path for  Trek ’s eventual return to television in 1987 with Star Trek: The Next Generation .

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) 83%

It might have suffered a cinematic black eye with 1989’s The Final Frontier , but the Star Trek  franchise still had at least one thing going for it at Paramount – namely, the 25th anniversary of the series, which the studio was eager to capitalize on, even if it wasn’t willing to commit more than the $27 million spent to film the previous installment. Fortunately, the sixth Trek ended up in the hands of a director who knew how to make the most of minimal budgets: Nicholas Meyer, whose work on The Wrath of Khan was still, at that point, the critical apex of the series. Working from a Cold War-inspired story suggested by Nimoy, Meyer assembled The Undiscovered Country , whose 83 percent Tomatometer and nearly $100 million worldwide gross were not only fitting for a quarter-century celebration, but what ultimately ended up being the final voyage for much of the original cast. With series creator Gene Roddenberry passing away just prior to Country ’s release, and the future of the franchise in question, not a few critics were left feeling nostalgic – like Hal Hinson of the Washington Post, who wrote, “If, indeed, Star Trek VI  turns out to be the last of the series, it couldn’t have made a more felicitous or more satisfying exit.”

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) 84%

After leading the franchise to fresh heights of blockbuster glory, Star Trek  director J.J. Abrams was the natural choice to man the controls for the next installment in the series — and although the result, 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness , didn’t quite match the lofty standards set by its predecessor, it proved the Trek resurgence was no fluke. Continuing to explore the alternate timeline established by Abrams’ first chapter, Darkness  carried the rebooted mythology forward while weaving in some fairly major callbacks to iconic events and characters from the original films — including the nefarious Khan Noonien Singh, whose quest for vengeance against the Federation sends the crew of the Enterprise on a race against (and across) time. “ Star Trek Into Darkness  banishes, at least for the moment, the lugubrious mood and sepulchral look that too many comic-book movies mistake for sophistication,” wrote the Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday. “All hail an action film that isn’t ashamed to have fun and to be seen doing it.”

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) 82%

Having explored the outer limits of space, Star Trek  spent much of its fourth cinematic installment in decidedly more familiar environs – namely, the America (specifically the San Francisco bay area) of 1986, thanks to a storyline, conceived by returning director Nimoy, that had the crew of the Enterprise traveling 600 years back in time to retrieve a humpback whale in order to… well, it isn’t important, really. What mattered – at least to the folks who helped Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home  to a $133 million worldwide gross – was that it lived up to Nimoy’s goal of showing audiences “a great time” with a feature that played up the lighter side of a franchise whose humor was often overshadowed by its big ideas. Weathering a number of pre-production storms – including William Shatner’s refusal to come back without a raise and the chance to direct the next sequel — Voyage  triumphantly emerged as what Roger Ebert referred to as “easily the most absurd of the Star Trek  stories – and yet, oddly enough… also the best, the funniest and the most enjoyable in simple human terms.”

Star Trek Beyond (2016) 86%

The original Star Trek movie series was never really known for its blockbuster action, but director/producer J.J. Abrams took things in a far more fast-paced direction when he rebooted the franchise — and that continued after he handed the reins to Justin Lin for 2016’s Star Trek Beyond . Continuing to display the flair for thrilling set pieces he demonstrated during his tenure with the Fast & Furious  saga, Lin sent the crew of the Enterprise hurtling to a distant planet where they found themselves pitted against the alien warlord Krall (Idris Elba) with an axe to grind against the Federation and a dark secret hidden in his past. It’s a setup with plenty of room for pulse-pounding space battles, and Lin didn’t disappoint — but he also left room for the thoughtful progressivism that had always been a hallmark of the earlier films, adding up to a fun Starfleet adventure critics hailed as a tasty bucket of popcorn sci-fi that doubled as a worthy celebration of Star Trek ‘s 50th anniversary. The end result, wrote Katie Walsh for the Tribune News Service, is “everything you want a post-modern Trek  movie to be: funny, poppy, self-referential — and with Captain Kirk punching bad guys in rubber masks.”

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) 87%

Sequels that expand upon their predecessors are exceedingly rare – but then, 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan  is no ordinary sequel. After ponying up the then-princely sum of $46 million for the first Trek , Paramount was looking for two things: One, a scapegoat for the first film’s $136 million global gross (which ended up being series creator Gene Roddenberry, who was exiled from the decision-making process for Khan ), and two, someone who could head up a cheaper second installment. That someone was Harve Bennett, a Trek  novice who quickly immersed himself in the original series in search of a compelling villain for the sequel – and found him in Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban), a superhuman with a thing for mind-controlling eels. Khan ’s thrifty aesthetic may have inspired Bennett and director Nicholas Meyer to cut corners wherever possible – including reusing sets from The Motion Picture  — but the movie didn’t skimp on storyline, much to the delight of fans and critics, both of whom rank the series’ second chapter at or near the top of the franchise. “Here comes a sequel that’s worth its salt,” wrote Janet Maslin of the New York Times, concluding “It’s everything the first one should have been and wasn’t.”

Star Trek: First Contact (1996) 93%

After three decades, seven films, and four television series, most franchises would have long since exhausted their options – but as 1996’s First Contact  proved, the creative horizons of the Star Trek  universe were capable of expanding longer and wider than perhaps even Gene Roddenberry could have suspected. Now firmly in control of the franchise, the Next Generation crew – both onscreen and off – was able to expand upon themes and characters touched on during its own series, specifically the nature of the endlessly assimilative cybernetic Borg collective. Having already proven a worthy adversary during TNG ’s run – particularly during the classic episode in which they assimilated Picard himself – the Borg now propelled Trek to the best reviews (and some of the highest grosses) in its history. A sequel that both paid tribute to longstanding Trek  traditions ( TNG  vet Jonathan Frakes directed, proving Leonard Nimoy wasn’t the only member of the Enterprise crew who could successfully pull double duty) and broke them (Paramount ended decades of parsimony by breaking out $47 million for the budget), First Contact  earned the praise of critics like Time’s Richard Corliss, who wrote that “it stands proud and apart, accessible even to the Trek -deficient” before decreeing that “this old Star , it seems, has a lot of life in it.”

Star Trek (2009) 94%

After bottoming out with 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis , the series entered a state of suspended animation for over half a decade — and if it hadn’t been for the reboot mania that gripped Hollywood during the early 21st century, there’s no telling how long it might have stayed there. As it happened, fanboy-friendly director J.J. Abrams — then riding a hot streak as one of the creators/producers of the hit series Lost  — was handed a set of jumper cables and the keys to the franchise; the result, 2009’s Star Trek , managed to hit the reset button on Trek (along with the requisite hot young cast) while incorporating enough familiar touches to keep longtime fans feeling at home. In the end, Abrams’ Trek earned some of the most positive reviews in the history of the franchise, and its $257 million gross firmed up the future of a film series that had seemed thoroughly uncertain just a few years before. “With Star Trek  Abrams honors the show’s legacy without fossilizing its best qualities,” enthused Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek. “Instead, he’s whisked it off to a planet where numbing nostalgia can’t kill it, and where the future is still something to look forward to.”

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All 11 'Lord of the Rings' Books, Ranked

10 mcu movies that are almost perfect, the 10 most linear action movies, ranked.

Star Trek has had an unusual road to its fandom. It began as a short-lived television series, and yet it’s a highly influential and long lasting franchise that has spawned four sequel series and thirteen motion pictures. These two formats can be incredibly different, both in terms of tenor and tone, despite taking place in the same universe with the same casts. It is, to quote Mr. Spock, “fascinating.”

Some make the case that this is a story that deserves to be told on a cinematic canvas, while others argue that Trek is best served as an episodic series. Some pay great homage to the feeling of the original series, while others feel like they should have aired on television. It’s a rich, diverse film franchise where even the failures are intriguing.

So let us boldly go, and start with the weakest entry in the series thus far:

13.) Star Trek Into Darkness

I must politely disagree with my colleague Chris Cabin on the merits of Star Trek Into Darkness . While it’s not as bad on a second viewing, it’s still suffering the growing pains of not knowing what Star Trek really is.

That’s the conundrum with the J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek movies: if you want to take them as simple action movies, they’re serviceable enough, but that’s a waste of a world and disrespectful of what Trek is about. If you’re not a Trek fan, I doubt you’ll care, but imagine if someone made a Star Wars movie and tried to take the mystical force and turn it into something scientifically measurable (oh wait). It’s fine to update Trek with new uniforms, a new ship design, a new score, etc. That’s the artistry, but that’s not the core of what makes Star Trek tick.

Star Trek is about science fiction, and J.J. Abrams isn’t interested in that. He’s interested in making Space Adventure! and he does a poor job of telling the story. It may stimulate the lizard parts of your brain with the bright colors, canted angles, lens flares, and set pieces, but it’s bad storytelling that tries to steal from a far superior picture.

I understand that for Kirk, this is a learning experience film for him, and he has to overcome his cockiness and irresponsibility (you wonder how someone who responds to breaking the Prime Directive with “Big deal,” should ever be a captain in Starfleet -- assuming you care about Starfleet), but it’s such a drag, and the character is so deeply unlikable that you’re almost rooting for him to fail. It also fails as a friendship tale, as there’s little chemistry between Pine and Quinto, so the big “Khan!” moment comes off as laughably terrible.

Rather than boldly build a new world, Into Darkness steals from the old one, and does so poorly. For some it may pass as mindless entertainment, but it’s mindless to waste Trek in such a vicious, vacuous manner.

12.) Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Someone give William Shatner a participation trophy. Watching Star Trek V , it’s like Shatner saw the lighthearted success of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and wanted to redo it for his directorial contribution to the franchise. Unfortunately, Star Trek V is constantly silly and nonsensical rather than fun and upbeat. It starts out from a promising position, but quickly falls into lethargy, and missing the point of what makes a Trek movie with The Original Series cast work so well.

When it comes to movies with the TOS cast, the best thing to do is keep the focus on the cast. Unless you have a villain like Khan ( Richardo Montalban ), a villain who is rooted in the old show and who’s utterly captivating on his own merits, then your greatest strength is the camaraderie of the old cast working together.

Unfortunately, Final Frontier shortchanges the original cast on two fronts. First, it invests far too much in its villain Sybok ( Laurence Luckinbill ). While I like that Sybok isn’t an outright evil person, he comes off like an overly familiar camp counselor. He’s not creepy so much as he’s irritating, and then there’s his whole spiel about tapping into a person’s pain, which then in turn somehow brainwashes that person into being completely loyal to him.

That leads to the film’s second major failing: separating Kirk ( William Shatner ) from his crew. If that’s the route they were going to take, then they really should have carried more major stakes with it. Instead, it feels like a cheap shortcut that in turn deprives supporting characters like Uhura ( Nichelle Nichols ), Sulu ( George Takei ), and Chekov ( Walter Koenig ) of character arcs and motivations. The movie also had an opportunity to delve into Spock’s loyalty to Sybok, but that plays more as ambivalence than a source of real conflict between the characters.

Caught between a weak villain and ignoring its greatest asset, you have a film that’s trying so hard to be goofy and constantly missing the mark. While it’s endearing in the odd way that Shatner is trying so hard to please his audience, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s missing the mark, and comes up with jokes like Scotty ( James Doohan ) hitting his head after saying he knows the ship like the back of his hand. So when we finally come to the comical “Why would God need a spaceship?” it’s just the summation of all of the film’s flaws rather than its final error.

11.) Star Trek: Insurrection

On the one hand, I can respect that the Star Trek: The Next Generation movies were in a difficult position. Unlike the TOS movies, which were set in the 23rd century and didn’t have to worry about how their events would affect the TV shows, TNG was right in the prime of other Trek on television even though their own show had ended. Rather than be audacious and tie into what was happing in the TV series (which, granted, is a big ask for any movie), the TNG films were largely content to tell standalone stories that only briefly acknowledge the larger Trek universe.

That’s how we get something as tepid and forgettable as Insurrection , a movie that could have delved deep into its interesting premise, and instead looks like a cheap, two-parter that went unaired because it’s the cure for insomnia. Insurrection had the opportunity to take on an interesting question: what happens when the Federation is wrong? It’s an issue that had popped up repeatedly during the series, but Insurrection could have tackled it on a massive scale, and even incorporated the weakened Federation brought low by Deep Space Nine ’s Dominion War.

Instead, rather than question what the Federation means and how important it is to the crew of the Enterprise (a crew that always agrees, which is nice, but doesn’t invite conflict), the plot to remove the peaceful Ba’ku (who look like they were pulled out of an L.L. Bean catalog) to profit the greedy Son’a and the Federation is the work of a couple of bad apples rather than something endemic to Starfleet. The lines are clearly drawn from the beginning, and rather than challenge the audience to question Starfleet and the loyalty of the Enterprise crew, the characters ditch their uniforms without much fuss and go help the Ba’ku.

10.) Star Trek: Nemesis

Again, it starts out from an interesting place—nature versus nurture, and who would Picard be if his life had been one of torment rather than one in Starfleet? Unfortunately, the film is so hard up to make its villain, Shinzon ( Tom Hardy ), unequivocally evil that there’s no dramatic pull. It’s not simply enough for Picard to see a dark mirror that reaffirms his righteousness. The film also doesn’t challenge Shinzon to find the good in himself. Had they pushed Shinzon in that direction, it would have made him a more tragic figure rather than the moustache-twirling villain who wants to destroy Starfleet with a super-weapon.

Nemesis also suffers from the same problem as all of the TNG films in that in cannot get enough Data. For some reason, even though you have a rich, diverse case with Next Generation , the movies treat Picard and Data as the main characters and ignore everyone else. This kind of thinking is how you get to disgusting things like Shinzon mind-raping Troi ( Marina Sirtis ) just because, and then doing nothing with that assault other than using it later for a plot device to let her empathically guide the photon torpedoes.

The movie also wants to get away with killing Data, but not having any of the emotional impact of actually killing Data. Data has to live, so his “sacrifice” is rendered meaningless because he has B-4 back on the Enterprise as a backup.

9.) Star Trek: Generations

This film seems to exist so it can pass a torch that never needed passing. Looking back on Star Trek: Generations , it’s a story that seems more suited to fan fiction than something that actually serves Star Trek of any generation. The original series cast had already gotten a great send-off with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , and it’s a bit of a bummer to see an incomplete cast some back for a second encore. Additionally, the Next Generation cast was already well-established and had a full series under their belt. The producers should have trusted them to carry their own story.

Instead, the movie tries to play to two audiences and ends up serving neither. Buried beneath all the dreck and talk of the Nexus and Data obnoxiously showing off his new emotion chip, there’s actually a compelling story about the cost of duty to Starfleet. Kirk and Picard are united by what they’ve personally sacrificed for Starfleet—and how they lost out on having families because they chose to be explorers instead. If you must have Kirk and Picard share the screen (and you really don’t), then this is solid thematic ground to walk.

But Generations bungles it completely with how tonally scattershot it is and the atrocious structure of the narrative. It’s a movie where you kill off Captain Kirk, an incredibly beloved and revered character, and then your next scene is the crew of the Enterprise-D playing dress up on the holodeck. They then keep Kirk out of the film until the third act, so there’s no real time for Picard and Kirk to build a bond before they have to take down Soran ( Malcolm McDowell ). And then Kirk gets killed by a bridge.

8.) Star Trek: The Motion Picture

The biggest problem with The Motion Picture is that it lost Star Trek ’s sense of identity. The film is trying to ape 2001: A Space Odyssey , and so it thinks that what the audience wants it a slow, meditative motion picture, and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it loses Trek ’s greatest strength. It’s the opposite end of the spectrum from Star Trek Into Darkness —it’s not that Star Trek needs to be a non-stop action thrill ride, but it also shouldn’t be something understandably derided as “The Motionless Picture.”

There’s no good reason why the docking sequence should take as long as it does, and it feels like half of this movie is just people looking at the view screen. While I understand Star Trek taking a chance and going with something unexpected, The Motion Picture doesn’t play to the strengths of the original series or its cast.

It’s particularly frustrating that the movie pushes The Original Series crew to the background to play up new characters Decker ( Stephen Collins ) and Ilia ( Persis Khambatta ) to the point where it feels like The Motion Picture is their story that just happens to include The Original Series cast along for the ride. It doesn’t move the characters we know forward, and while the V-ger reveal is kind of neat, it elicits more of a shrug than any contemplation.

7.) Star Trek Beyond

I both kind of love and kind of dislike Star Trek Beyond . On the one hand, I knew I had a fun time while I was watching it. It felt like it was embracing classic Trek in a way we hadn’t really seen since Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country . But that being said, it’s almost impossible to remember this movie because beyond showing its love of classic Trek , it doesn’t have much in the way of a personality.

The plot of Star Trek Beyond finds the gang stranded on an alien planet (The Enterprise is destroyed. Again.) where the natives are ruled by a mysterious leader Krall ( Idris Elba ) who wants to unleash a powerful weapon against the Federation. This crash-landing allows the group to pair off in ways that hadn’t really been done before and allows for unique pairings like Spock and Bones that give the movie a lot of its power. The strongest asset of the new Trek movies has been the casting, and that really gets to shine here.

Unfortunately, the film fails to leave much of an impact because it never makes any bold choices. You can feel that this is a movie caught in a post Star Wars world where as the first two rebooted Trek movies could simply be Star Wars substitute, Beyond is wrestling with what it means to try and get out from under the shadow of the mammoth sci-fi franchise. Sadly, it never really finds an answer to that question, so while it makes for a fun, enjoyable picture with a better script than 2009’s Star Trek , it also lacks the necessary punch to make it more than disposable summer fare.

6.) Star Trek

J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek is a movie I really enjoyed when I first saw, but it has not held up well on repeat viewings. On a surface level, it’s really shiny and fun, and Abrams has the wherewithal to give his Trek an interesting new aesthetic (lens flares and shaky camera aside). It’s a fun compromise between the iconography of the original (they use communicators instead of com-badges) and an energetic, clean art design that sucks you into this new world.

The problem with Trek 2009 is that its story falls apart if you so much as glance at it the wrong way. For starters, like Into Darkness , it could not care less about what makes Star Trek special. It’s a movie where a suspended cadet gets promoted all the way to first office because the captain likes the cut of his jib. It’s a movie that doesn’t have a sci-fi bone in its body beyond trying to make sure that the original continuity remains intact while also forging an alternate reality. It’s a movie where they build the Enterprise on land rather than in space just so there can be a shot of Kirk looking at it in Iowa.

But even if those Trek concerns don’t bother you, there are still the larger story problems. For example, Spock strands Kirk on a planet where Kirk could easily die, but it’s okay because Kirk conveniently runs into Spock Prime ( Leonard Nimoy ) and Scotty ( Simon Pegg ), the only two people who can help get him back to the Enterprise. Or there’s the moment when Kirk confronts Nero ( Eric Bana ), and there’s no emotional baggage to it even though this is the man responsible for the death of Kirk’s father.

The success of Star Trek is that you don’t really notice its myriad of problems until you start looking for them, because Abrams made such a tight, lighthearted action flick that keeps barreling forward at breakneck speed. At the time, it felt promising because you would think that with four years between Star Trek and its sequel, there would be time to really nail down the story, and Abrams’ direction would remain intact. Oh well.

5.) Star Trek: First Contact

Star Trek: First Contact is an odd sort of movie. It’s the first time the Next Generation crew is really on their own, and they’re pulling from one of the strongest elements they ever contributed to Star Trek lore, the Borg. It’s a good setup and it also rewards those who saw the Next Generation series while not being so esoteric that it would alienate those who never saw the show.

And yet it’s still not quite Star Trek . It’s not a movie about anything. Say what you will about Generations , Insurrection , and Nemesis , but for all their faults, at least they’re about something (legacy, duty, and destiny, respectively). First Contact is an action-horror film, which is something you wouldn’t necessarily expect a Star Trek movie to be, but director Jonathan Frakes makes it work within the context of a new genre.

It’s just unfortunate that there’s no consideration of anything beyond Picard facing his old demons. Once again, outside of Picard, only Data really gets to shine, but at least they give Worf ( Michael Dorn ) more to do than Insurrection , which literally makes the character go through puberty because that’s the best they could come up with. The Borg are a compelling villain, and while you may have to cringe a bit with lines like “Assimilate this,” at least First Contact is fun, which is more than you can say than the other TNG films.

4.) Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

This is where on this list that Star Trek actually starts to feel like Star Trek . One of the great things The Original Series did was to tell narratives that reflected real-world tensions. Out of all of the Star Trek movies, The Undiscovered Country is the only one to mirror real world events. In this case, the script cleverly draws a parallel to the closing of the Cold War with the coming peace treaty between the Federation and the Klingons because the Klingon Empire is about to go bankrupt.

It’s also a story that’s rooted in the films that came before, as Kirk must wrestle with making peace with the people he holds responsible for the death of his son. It’s an issue that hadn’t been dealt with since The Voyage Home , but it adds personal stakes rather than keeping the issue nebulous. It also makes The Undiscovered Country a personal journey for Kirk, where he has to learn the importance of not only forgiveness, but also accepting a new status quo where the Klingons and the Federation can live in peace.

Undiscovered Country also gives almost everyone something to do. Kirk ( William Shatner ) and Bones ( DeForest Kelley ) are on trial on Kronos and are part of a prison break while everyone else (minus Sulu, who gets the short shrift in this picture despite finally becoming a captain) is busy playing detective up on the Enterprise. It’s a well-balanced story, and while the film tries too hard to turn Chang ( Christopher Plummer ) into the next Khan (the climactic battle has Chang shouting like he really wants to get his Shakespeare Quote-a-Day calendar out of his system), it’s still a fun dynamic that actually feels like a Star Trek story at its core.

3.) Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

There’s shorthand that claims that every even-numbered Star Trek is good and every odd-numbered Star Trek is bad. That’s a claim that should have been thrown out the window at Star Trek III , a film whose greatest flaw is following the classic Wrath of Khan . This is a movie that does nothing wrong, perfectly builds on what came before, and is a true test of the friendship among the Enterprise crew.

It would seem at first glance that a movie dedicated to undoing Spock’s sacrifice would be an ill-conceived idea, but director Leonard Nimoy absolutely makes it work by making this all about how the Enterprise crew works together outside the bounds of Starfleet. It turns them into a crew on the run, and they in turn sacrifice everything to save their fallen crewman. That’s a great story, and one worthy of Trek .

It also feels like Star Trek without feeling like an extended Star Trek episode. While other great Star Trek movies would echo what the series did at its best—whether it be traveling to unique locations, creating parables to real-world conflicts, or recreating the feel of a naval battles— Search for Spock is unique by building off Wrath of Khan , putting the crew of the Enterprise at odds with their duty to Starfleet, and plunging them into uncharted territory. And, Kirk has to make the ultimate sacrifice when he loses his son at the hands of the Klingons. How anyone could see Search for Spock as inferior Trek is beyond me.

2.) Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

This movie is just pure joy from start to finish. I’m sure it may have been tempting to try and do more of the same: send Kirk and the crew out on an interstellar mission to fight some intergalactic foe with some destructive weapon on the line. Instead, they go back in time to save the whales. It’s a plotline that sounds so silly that it shouldn’t work, and yet it does. This could have been, on a smaller scale, an episode of The Original Series , but it carries that charm and successfully transfers it to the big screen.

Voyage Home almost plays more like a sci-fi comedy (a dispiritingly rare hybrid) and watching the crew of the Enterprise as fish-out-of-water is constantly entertaining. The Original Series gave us the crew as outsiders on a fairly regular basis, and The Voyage Home harkens back to that feeling while still giving the audience the comfort of being more familiar with the world the characters are seeing.

It’s also got a good message! Yes, it’s a bumper sticker message to save the whales, but how many blockbusters give a crap about endangered species? It equates saving the whales with saving the world, and that’s a fine sentiment to have. Additionally, it helps bring the crew together and creates the stakes that could get the crew reinstated after stealing and destroying the Enterprise. It’s both a palette cleanser and a bold direction for the franchise.

1.) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Is it the obvious choice? Yes, but it’s also the right one. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan isn’t just great Star Trek . It’s great filmmaking period. It’s everything someone could want from a summer blockbuster while also staying true to what makes Star Trek unique, especially from the original Enterprise cast. It’s a movie with deep thematic resonance, high emotional stakes, and a rewarding experience for those who had been Star Trek fans for decades.

It was a stroke of genius to make Khan the villain, not because he’s a lifelong nemesis for Kirk (Khan only appears in the episode “Space Seed”), but because he represents the sins of the past. Khan is a bad guy, but he’s not wrong that Kirk basically just abandoned Khan’s people on a planet and never bothered to check up on them afterwards. For a film about a man struggling with getting old, it’s important to take time to check on what Kirk did wrong as a young man, whether it’s stranding Khan on Ceti Alpha V or refusing the learn the lesson of the Kobayashi Maru. Wrath of Khan puts Kirk through a crucible of his past follies and makes him pay for it.

The movie also earns its emotional climax following a rousing space battle that would never happen today because it’s too “slow” (it’s basically a naval battle in space, which is what TOS would do sometimes). “I have been, and always shall be, your friend,” is a gut-wrenching line because you feel the history behind it. It doesn’t betray Spock’s Vulcan-side, nor does it lean too heavily on his human side. It’s a profound, honest moment where we see Kirk, finally faced with a no-win situation, lose his dearest friend. It’s a moment that only Star Trek could pull off, and it elevates Wrath of Khan beyond where most blockbusters have gone before.

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Star Trek Movies Ranked From Worst to Best

Forget the "odd numbered are bad, even numbered are good" superstition about this franchise. We finally sat down and ranked every Star Trek movie.

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You’d think there wouldn’t be all that many surprises in a ranking of the various Star Trek movies. Official fan doctrine tends to elevate a select handful of them to the very top (and rightfully so, because when this franchise is great, it’s really great) while dismissing, fairly or unfairly, others. But the reality is, there’s such a wide array of tones across Star Trek films that one fan’s skippable entry is another fan’s favorite (well…most of the time).

We chose a panel of our most decorated Starfleet experts to vote on the highs and lows of the Star Trek movie franchise. There’s probably a few surprises in here, but one thing we hope we managed to do, if nothing else, is dispel the “odd number/even number” superstition about these flicks.

13. Star Trek: Into Darkness

It’s hard to imagine any entry in the entire franchise straying further from what Star Trek is all about than Into Darkness . A laughably grim, mean-spirited film that tries awfully hard to conceal its weird “Space Seed”/ Wrath of Khan ambitions beneath some clumsy mystery-boxing and an almost absurd amount of violence, Into Darkness is more akin to a lesser Fast & Furious sequel than it is about “boldly going” anywhere other than into vague nods to absurd conspiracy theories.

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If JJ Abrams’ previous Star Trek (which we’ll get to below) was Trek-as-action-movie, proving that with some gorgeous production values and a talented cast that the franchise could once again compete on the big screen, then Into Darkness is Trek as pop culture ouroboros, foreshadowing the backwards-looking fan apologia of his The Rise of Skywalker by six years. Not even the brilliant cast, stunning special effects, and another great Michael Giacchino score can save this one, with the core crew reduced to delivering performances akin to SNL caricatures and a big “reveal” that everyone saw coming three months out. – Mike Cecchini

12. Star Trek: Nemesis

It’s true, even in a generous appraisal, Nemesis seems unlikely to be anyone’s favorite Star Trek movie. It’s yet another example of how studio execs learned all the wrong lessons from The Wrath of Khan , that amping up the action, and having a genuine, capital-V villain is the key to box office success. Here, a shadowy villain with a vendetta against Captain Picard (hmmmm…where have we heard that before) stages a coup against the Romulan leadership.

It’s not great, and so obviously derivative in its central villainous conceit (despite the twist) that it comes off as a little desperate. It’s notable primarily for being many folks’ first introduction to Tom Hardy as the young Jean-Luc Picard clone, Shinzon, the introduction of the Remans to Trek lore, and Ron Perlman under some cool Reman makeup. We wouldn’t go so far as to say that Nemesis is better than you remember if you were particularly allergic to it out of the gate, but without the weight of expectations surrounding it, and especially now that it’s no longer the final voyage of the beloved Next Generation crew, perhaps we can be a little more forgiving of it. – MC

11. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Ah yes, the one where they meet “God.” The deck was always stacked against The Final Frontier , coming as it did not only on the heels of the beloved Trek trilogy of The Wrath of Khan , The Search for Spock , and The Voyage Home , but also in the same summer that delivered bona fide classics in Tim Burton’s first Batman and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (not to mention other high-profile blockbusters like Ghostbusters 2 and RoboCop 2 ).

The film’s antagonist, Sybok, might be easier to swallow were he not Spock’s half-brother, a needless addition in a high-concept but ultimately convoluted film. William Shatner’s story and directorial ambitions never quite hold together here, with the film further hampered by some of the worst special effects of the entire film series. Still, there’s a hint of TOS -y weirdness to the concept of this one, but it’s not enough to make it feel like anything other than the most disposable entry in the otherwise sterling run of original crew films. – MC

10. Star Trek Beyond

Although 2009’s Star Trek was an undeniable hit, it’s easy to understand the skepticism that greeted 2016’s Star Trek Beyond . Not only did it follow up the misguided Into Darkness , but it also swapped out JJ Abrams with the even flashier, but far more competent, Justin Lin. Beyond certainly does have some of the things that made viewers tire of the Kelvinverse, including a battle sequence inexplicably set to The Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” and nods to classic storylines. But it also had a lot more of what people say they want in Trek : characters exploring, building relationships, and maintaining hope. 

The exploration comes in the form of Jaylah (a variation of J-Law, based on the original plan to cast Jennifer Lawrence in the part), played with undeniable energy by Sofia Boutella. The stranded Jaylah forms a bond with Simon Pegg’s delightful Scotty, but the real pleasure of the film comes from the pairing of Spock and McCoy. The tension between the two has been a hallmark of the series since Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelly were in the roles, but Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban find new ways to antagonize and grudgingly respect one another, grounding even the biggest blockbuster moments of the movie in good ol’ Star Trek hang-out fun. – Joe George

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9. Star Trek: Insurrection

It is time to reevaluate Insurrection . On release it got a bum rap for being essentially an extra long episode the TV show, but in 2023 that’s no bad thing. Yes, there are moments we could live without (flying the Enterprise by joystick, the phaser bazooka, Data’s inflatable arse) but it is also, bafflingly, still the only Star Trek movie about landing on an alien planet and meeting the people who live there (apart from Beyond , maybe, if you squint).

But mainly, this film is really the last time (with the possible exception of upcoming Picard season 3) we get to see the TNG crew being a proper crew , with actors who’ve known each other a decade just hanging out and really enjoying playing off each other. It is much more fun than you remember it being. – Chris Farnell

8. Star Trek: Generations

When reviewing movies, it is always important to review the film you’re watching, not the film you wish you were watching. But that is so hard to do with Generations , even now. The film fans wanted to see in 1994 is still the film we miss now – Picard and Kirk in a buddy movie, their leadership styles clashing as they take on a galactic scale threat together.

Instead, they take on a member of the Enterprise’s bartender’s species while both captains are worrying about how they don’t really want to be captains anymore, and while it might be appropriate Kirk dies after a fist fight on some desert rocks, it still feels anticlimactic. It has some nice moments, but we’re always going to mourn what could have been. – CF

7. Star Trek (2009)

What if Star Trek was just a regular movie? In 2009, the J.J. Abrams reboot film accomplished the impossible: It tricked the general public into thinking of Star Trek as a brand-new phenomenon. On paper, almost nothing about the 2009 reboot movie should work, and it’s hard to imagine a film like this working today, either. Had this come out a few years earlier, or later, it probably wouldn’t have been as successful. But, in an era where the MCU hadn’t quite gotten going, and origin stories ( Batman Begins ) were all the rage, Star Trek scratched an itch the zeitgeist didn’t know it had.

What works about the 2009 reboot is also connected to what doesn’t work. Instead of being an outright remake or reimagining (like the 2003 Battlestar Galactica ) screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci split the difference; this version of 2258 predates The Original Series but is also an alternate dimension from it. Thinking too hard about the mechanics of all of this will certainly ruin your enjoyment of the movie (WTF is red matter anyway?) but what has aged well is the focus on the characters. Perhaps more than any other Star Trek movie, the TOS crew feels like a team of outer space superheroes. And, after seven feature films in which Captain Kirk (William Shatner) was moving through various midlife crises, it was refreshing to have Chris Pine remind us that at heart, Jim Kirk is forever young. – Ryan Britt

6. Star Trek: The Motion Picture

A lot of Star Trek movies want to be The Wrath of Khan , but they could all stand to be a bit more The Motion Picture .

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is, at heart, a pure science fiction movie – possibly the only Star Trek movie that can claim to be, taking its cues from 2001: A Space Odyssey rather than Horatio Hornblower . It is slow moving film, even in the newly released (and much improved) cut , but that’s not necessarily a flaw. In a movie series that is all too often about vengeful madmen and their personal vendettas, The Motion Picture is about voyaging deep into the unknown, and finding ourselves when we get there. – CF

5. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

Arguably the most overlooked of the classic Trek films, The Search For Spock , is, nonetheless, perhaps the most formative Trek movie of them all . It was here that one of the Trek actors — namely Leonard Nimoy — became deeply influential behind the camera. This tradition would carry on for the rest of the TOS film series, and into The Next Generation , too. As a director, it’s easy to say that The Voyage Home was Nimoy’s better film. And yet, if you’re looking for a grab-bag of what made Trek great in the ‘80s, look no further than The Search For Spock .      

For aesthetics alone, it was in this film that Star Trek started to feel like the Star Trek we think of today. Designed by David Carson and Nilo Rodis at ILM, this film gave us the beautiful Spacedock, a design so perfect it reappeared not just in other TOS films, but in T he Next Generation , too (with an influence that extends to both Lower Decks and Picard ) The USS Excelsior appeared here for the first time, as did the immortal Klingon Bird-of-Prey. We also got Christopher Lloyd playing Klingon Commander Kruge, one year before he played Doc Brown in Back to the Future . After negotiations with Kirstie Alley didn’t work out, Nimoy recast Robin Curtis as Saavik. Curtis is the only actor in Star Trek history to play a Vulcan and be cast by Leonard Nimoy, and, in some ways, her take on the character was probably closer to being truly Vulcan than Alley’s take.

On top of all of this, the absence of Spock for most of the film, allowed the rest of the TOS cast to shine in a way they never had before. Based on his experience on Mission: Impossible , Nimoy was inspired to make The Search For Spock more of an ensemble piece than any previous Trek project. The final result is a movie in which the entire classic crew is showcased beautifully, and brings the Star Trek family closer than it ever had been before. – RB

4. Star Trek: First Contact

If you’re trying to explain why Star Trek was such a big deal in the 1990s, the best cultural artifact is easily the 1996 film First Contact . Released on November 22, 1996, just two months after the 30th anniversary of The Original Series , the second feature film focused on The Next Generation crew was a confluence of everything that was happening in Trek at that time, but also, a retroactive origin story about how it all started. Today, various MCU movies check continuity boxes like this all the time, but First Contact was unique because it somehow spanned three ‘90s Trek shows by not only featuring the TNG crew front and center but also referencing Deep Space Nine and Voyager .

Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart have never been better, but the guest cast for First Contact is the real proof of just how big this film was. Alfre Woodard’s Lily is the perfect audience surrogate for the poor soul who knows nothing about Trek (“It’s my first ray gun”) while James Cromwell reboots the father of warp drive, Zefram Cochrane, with charming (and drunken) panache. To top it all off, Alice Krige’s Borg Queen recontextualized the greatest Trek villain of all time, with a performance that is both understated and unique. In 1996, Trek traded “boldly go” for “let’s rock and roll!” and it worked perfectly. – RB

3. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

It’s funny: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country – the final big screen voyage of the entire original series cast – never seems to get the same type of discussion or analysis as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , Star Trek: The Motion Picture , or even Star Trek V: The Final Frontier . Which is too bad, because it’s right up there with The Wrath of Khan as one of the finest of the bunch.

It’s no coincidence that it was directed and co-written by Nicholas Meyer, the same filmmaker who was in the center seat for Khan , and just as he did with that film, Meyer here crafts a character-driven space opera filled with excitement, suspense, Big Themes, and some of the best moments ever written for William Shatner’s Kirk and Leonard Nimoy’s Spock. Both men grapple with age, irrelevance, and their own flaws – Kirk’s bigotry on one hand, Spock’s hubris on the other – as they try to determine who wants to sabotage a peace process between the Federation and the Klingons and start a galactic war.

Highlights include a superb climactic battle against the rogue Klingon ship (commanded by an awesome Christopher Plummer ), Sulu (George Takei) in action as captain of his own starship, and a scene in Spock’s quarters between the Vulcan and Kirk that is both poignant and meta (“Is it possible that we two, you and I, have grown so old and so inflexible that we have outlived our usefulness? Would that constitute… a joke?”). By the time the Enterprise literally sails off into the sun at the end, you almost don’t want this to be this cast’s sign-off. But it was, and they went out like a nova. – Don Kaye

2. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Star Trek has always been goofy. Yes, yes, Star Trek can be lots of things, including exciting and romantic and philosophical. But it has always been goofy, with giant Spock heads and Worf assuring us that he is not a Merry Man. So it makes sense that the most popular Trek movie of all time would also be one of its silliest. But whatever you might think about a story that sends the original crew back to 1980s San Fransisco to save the whales, The Voyage Home always laughs with the characters, not at them. 

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Finally embracing his connection to the Trek world and stepping back into the director’s chair, Leonard Nimoy brings the same affection for his co-stars that marked Search for Spock . From that affection, Nimoy brings out the best in the cast, giving them delightful scenes in which Scotty talks lovingly into a computer mouse and Chekov seeks nuclear “wessels.” But as much as the movie shares the attention, the biggest chunk, as always, goes to William Shatner, who more than meets comedic task. That twinkle in his eye when he corrects Catherine Hicks’s marine biologist Gillian Taylor (“No, I’m from Iowa. I only work in outer space”), reminds us why, after all the jokes and horror stories, Kirk is still the captain. – JG

1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Can you honestly say you were surprised that this is Number One? More than 40 years and a dozen movies later, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is still the gold standard for what this franchise could and occasionally did achieve on the big screen. Conceived in the wake of the successful — but financially and creatively bloated — Star Trek: The Motion Picture as a smaller-scale adventure more in line with the TV show, The Wrath of Khan fulfilled its brief and then some, acting as both a sequel to a classic original series episode while addressing head-on the aging of the cast and the canon itself.

With Trek creator Gene Roddenberry kicked “upstairs” to an emeritus position, The Wrath of Khan proved that sometimes an established IP gets its best entries from people who have no previous attachment to the material. Executive producer Harve Bennett, writer-director Nicholas Meyer, and producer Robert Sallin were all new to Star Trek , yet ended up crafting a movie that felt in tone, pace, and theme like an expanded, outstanding episode of the TV show – a feeling missing from the first film.

Star Trek II also featured the return of arguably the original series’ greatest villain, the genetic superman Khan Noonien Singh, played once again with over-the-top relish by Ricardo Montalban. His obsessive, at-all-costs pursuit of vengeance against Kirk gives the film real stakes, as does the discovery that Kirk – the man who could never settle down and always fled to the stars – has a son he hadn’t seen in decades, who wants nothing to do with him. And then there’s Spock: his climactic self-sacrifice, capping one of sci-fi cinema’s most exciting space battles, never fails to be moving (even if the studio forced Meyer to slightly pull his punch at the very end). This is grand sci-fi, and even grander Trek , and somehow we think it will retain its place at the top of the heap for as long as Earth sails through space. – DK

What are your favorite Star Trek movies? Let us know in the comments!

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From Khan to Beyond: All the Star Trek movies, ranked from worst to best

Star Trek is inarguably television’s greatest space adventure, captivating audiences with exciting, inspiring, and thoughtful stories since 1966. However, like most culturally significant pop culture franchises, Trek also has a long history on the big screen, supplementing its over 800 television episodes with 13 feature films. These large-scale adventures are often the gateways through which new fans find their way into the Star Trek universe , attracting mass audiences on a scale rarely enjoyed by their counterparts on TV.

13. Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)

12. star trek v: the final frontier (1989), 11. star trek into darkness (2013), 10. star trek: insurrection (1998), 9. star trek iii: the search for spock (1984), 8. star trek: the motion picture (1979), 7. star trek: generations (1994), 6. star trek beyond (2016), 5. star trek iv: the voyage home (1986), 4. star trek: first contact (1996), 3. star trek (2009), 2. star trek vi: the undiscovered country (1991), honorable mention: galaxy quest (1999), 1. star trek ii: the wrath of khan (1982).

However, as one might expect from a long-running film series that has had multiple casts and behind-the-scenes shake-ups, the Star Trek movies vary wildly in quality. The conventional wisdom amongst fans is that even-numbered Trek movies are much better than odd-numbered ones, an adage that still holds up if you slot in the loving parody Galaxy Quest as the unofficial tenth installment, which, of course, we do.

“A Generation’s Final Journey Begins,” boasted the theatrical poster for Star Trek: Nemesis , the fourth feature film to include the cast of the hit series Star Trek: The Next Generation . It’s also where their final journey ended, at least on the big screen. Nemesis failed to satisfy critics, casual filmgoers, or Trek devotees, opening at No. 2 at the US box office behind J.Lo vehicle Maid in Manhattan and plummeting the following weekend thanks to the debut of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers .

Helmed by an allegedly indifferent director in Stuart Baird and edited to within an inch of its life by producer Rick Berman, Nemesis is a dreary, lifeless slog with none of Trek’s usual heart. There are a few highlights, such as the young Tom Hardy’s performance as Captain Picard’s villainous clone and the light-hearted fun of Riker and Troi’s wedding, but for the most part, Nemesis is just a bummer. It’s no wonder why, decades later, the streaming series Star Trek: Picard would spend its first season trying to rehabilitate it, and its third season outright replacing it as a farewell to the cast of The Next Generation .

During the original run of Star Trek in the 1960s, lead actors William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy had a “favored nations clause” incorporated into their contracts, stating that each actor was entitled to any raise in pay or perks received by the other. This clause remained intact during the franchise’s big screen revival in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, so when Nimoy won the job of directing the third and fourth Star Trek films, Paramount couldn’t refuse Shatner the same privilege. The result was a troubled production and a critical disaster, and if not for Star Trek: The Next Generation finding its footing on television that very same year, it could well have damaged the franchise beyond repair.

The blame doesn’t all fall on Shatner’s shoulders; The Final Frontier faced a number of obstacles, such as a writer’s strike and an unqualified special effects team . Its story is ambitious, sending the Enterprise crew on a mission to the center of the galaxy to meet a being who claims to be God Himself, and there are some truly charming moments of camaraderie between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. For the most part, however, The Final Frontier is a mess, teetering precariously between “so bad it’s good” and just plain bad.

2009’s Star Trek reimagined the brainy space procedural as a shiny, fast-paced action adventure, grabbing mainstream attention on an unprecedented scale. The Next Generation and its spin-offs were well-regarded, but now, suddenly, Star Trek was … cool? Consequently, its sequel was granted a colossal $190 million production budget and preceded by a great deal of hype.

Upon its release, Star Trek Into Darkness couldn’t quite live up to either. It fell short of its predecessor at the box office and flummoxed fans and critics with a contrived, overblown story that retreads the beloved Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan while also stealthily promoting the 9/11 truther movement . It’s a thematically muddled “dark middle chapter” to a trilogy that, thanks to co-writer Roberto Orci’s subsequent departure from the franchise , was jettisoned in favor of Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond . And, honestly, we’re better off without it.

Do you ever hear a cinephile refer to a real film that, as far as they’re concerned, “doesn’t exist?” We’re not talking about movies that are loathed and willfully forgotten, like Norbit or The Last Airbender , we mean films that were so promptly forgotten that they provoke no feeling whatsoever even from those who saw them, like Transcendence or The Huntsman: Winter’s War . If not for its place in one of pop culture’s most recognizable franchises, Star Trek: Insurrection would surely fall into this category.

The third film starring the Next Generation cast feels like a very expensive two-part episode of the television series, but not a particularly good one. Its dilemma, which sees Picard fighting to keep Starfleet from exploiting a cosmic fountain of youth, is theoretically compelling but poorly thought out. Most of the highlighted character moments come in the form of funneled-in comic relief, and its attempt to recast this gang of affable middle-aged nerds as rebellious action heroes simply doesn’t work. Like all Star Trek products, it has its loyal defenders, but were it not for its place in the franchise’s canon, we doubt anyone would give it a second thought.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was an instant classic that dug more deeply into the original show’s beloved characters than ever before, expanded the canvas of their lives, and delivered a powerful, emotional ending. So, it’s stunning that its immediate follow-up, The Search for Spock , willfully undermines it at nearly every turn. The Wrath of Khan ’s iconic, tear-jerking death scene is undone; the feeling of hope and rejuvenation implied by its ending is evaporated in the sequel’s very first scene; its three new characters are killed off, recast, and totally absent, respectively.

Despite this, The Search for Spock isn’t actually retrograde, in fact, it’s a surprising lateral move for the characters, who have always been driven by their duty to Starfleet, to put their lives and careers on the line for an unsanctioned mission to rescue their lost friend from a forbidden planet. The concept is exciting and there are warm and wonderful moments of character throughout, but the execution by TV-minded writer/producer Harve Bennett and first-time feature director Leonard Nimoy feels a bit small and underwhelming.

If The Search for Spock is an ambitious story with an underwhelming production, then The Motion Picture is the reverse case. Academy Award-winning director Robert Wise took a screenplay adapted from what was meant to be the pilot to a new Star Trek TV series and, with the aid of an astronomical budget, tried to make it into his own 2001: A Space Odyssey .

The result is a film in which characters silently gawk at the crazy light show they’re seeing out the Enterprise’s viewscreen for minutes at a time. Plot isn’t everything, but when a movie is 132 minutes long but only really has enough story for 90, that laser light show had better be damned compelling. And, heck, it is pretty spectacular, especially if you have the privilege of seeing it on the big screen, but the runtime is so bloated that its character beats, including one of Leonard Nimoy’s best performances as Spock, get totally lost. Even in its more polished “Director’s Edition” form, The Motion Picture is Star Trek at its slowest and most sterile. However, if you’re in the mood for something trippy and meditative, it’s still worth a watch.

Whereas the classic Star Trek gained an obsessive fanbase in the decade following its cancelation, Star Trek: The Next Generation was a legitimate phenomenon in its own time, outshining the original series in terms of both commercial and critical success. With the original cast growing more expensive and less profitable on the big screen, it was practically a given that the Next Gen crew, led by Patrick Stewart, would eventually take their place in the Star Trek film series. Star Trek: Generations , whose production overlapped with that of TNG ’s series finale, sees Kirk passing the torch to Picard in a crossover adventure that fans had been imagining for seven years.

Since there was probably no way for the film to meet the audience’s expectations for a Kirk/Picard team-up story, writers Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga attempted to subvert them all together and deliver a more personal story about death, loss, and legacy. Audiences found the long-awaited crossover underwhelming at the time but taken on its own merits and judged more as a Next Generation episode than as a blockbuster event, Star Trek: Generations is actually one of the more interesting films in the franchise, and the only one that allows star Patrick Stewart to exercise the full extent of his acting range.

When the first teaser trailer for Star Trek Beyond premiered online, die-hard Trekkies went into full panic mode. “It’s bad enough that Paramount hired the Fast & Furious  guy to make Star Trek ,” the nerds cried, “but now they’ve got Captain Kirk riding a dirt bike? Star Trek is ruined forever!” It surely was not, in fact, we’d argue that Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond does a better job capturing the sense of fun, friendship, and wonder of the original Star Trek than any other feature film, save for the next entry on our list. At the same time, it also steps out of the shadow of the franchise’s dense mythology after J.J. Abrams’ two nostalgia-driven adventures.

With no legacy cast or famous villains in their way, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldaña, and company finally get to have their own Star Trek , one in which all of their iterations on the Enterprise family feel like fully formed adults without sacrificing the youthful vigor that attracted new fans to the rebooted Trek films in the first place. It’s delightful, both as its own film and as an accidental bookend to the Kelvinverse Trilogy.

Star Trek is often serious business, an arena for complex characters to confront difficult ethical dilemmas that help audiences to confront the adversity and inequity they encounter in real life. But, it’s important to remember that Star Trek can also be very silly and that many of its most memorable moments are born from its dalliances in farce. The Voyage Home is a wry fish-out-of-water comedy in which the crew of the Enterprise (who, following The Search for Spock , are now fugitives from Starfleet) travels back in time to 1980s San Francisco in order to kidnap a pair of humpback whales in the hope that one of them might be able to talk a powerful space probe in the 2280s out of destroying the Earth.

The story has blockbuster-level stakes, but they all but disappear for a solid hour of the film in favor of a charming light adventure that prioritizes Trek’s memorable cast over flashy effects or high drama. Thanks to a clever script and terrific comedic chemistry between William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy (who also directs) and guest star Catherine Hicks, The Voyage Home is a total crowd-pleaser and was even the franchise’s biggest box office hit before the 2009 relaunch.

1996 could be considered the apex of Star Trek ’s cultural relevance. The franchise was celebrating its 30th anniversary, both Deep Space Nine and Voyager were on television every week, and there was an absolute deluge of books, PC games, and other merchandise available. The cherry on top was Star Trek: First Contact , the second film to feature the cast of The Next Generation and the only one to catch fire with general audiences.

A dark action-thriller that has as much in common with Aliens as it does with The Wrath of Khan , First Contact pits Captain Picard and the crew of the new Enterprise against their most famous enemy from their television hay day: the Borg. At the same time, First Contact serves as a sort of origin story for Star Trek itself, as its time travel plot takes our characters to an event in our future that is pivotal to their history. It’s a terrific “gateway Trek,” an approachable popcorn flick that explains the franchise’s values and aspirations for a better future within the context of a relatively dark and creepy action movie.

Though rejected by Trek traditionalists for its mile-a-minute pace and cranked-to-eleven characterizations of young Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the classic Enterprise crew, J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek reboot was a massive popular success that breathed new life into a franchise that had completely run out of gas by the early 2000s. Not everyone may be a fan of just how far it pushed Trek into the realm of “big dumb action blockbuster,” but the truth is that, after 18 continuous years under the same creative management, Trek desperately needed a refresh.

Abrams and writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (the latter of whom remains at the helm of the franchise to this day) radically changed the visual aesthetic and the tempo of Star Trek from classical to classic rock, and in so doing restored an element that had long been lacking in the film series: Joy. Emotionally intense and startlingly sincere, Star Trek more than earns its place near the top of our list of Trek ’s best theatrical outings.

Being an episodic drama from the 1960s that got canceled during its third season, the original Star Trek never really got a “series finale.” As was commonplace in television at the time, when Star Trek ended, it just stopped. Thanks to its revival on the big screen, Trek got a new lease on life, a grand legacy, and — 25 years after it first appeared on television —a proper ending. The Undiscovered Country reunites the entire classic cast one last time, along with writer-director Nicholas Meyer, the man behind the No. 1 entry on our list, to tell the tale of the final voyage of Kirk’s Enterprise, one that provides closure to the crew’s growth over the course of the five preceding films.

In proper Trek tradition, it’s also an incisive political allegory about the end of the Cold War (one of The Original Series ’ most common subjects) and the difficulty of putting aside old prejudices and embracing change. The Undiscovered Country doesn’t paint our Starfleet heroes in the most flattering light, which provoked the ire of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, but that’s the entire point: to see characters who we’ve grown up with confront their own learned hatreds so that those who come after them can live in a better world.

While not technically not a Star Trek movie, Galaxy Quest is a loving parody that captures the essence of classic Trek as well as any film in the canon. The story of a band of washed-up actors who are abducted by aliens who believe them to be the gallant space travelers they played on TV, Galaxy Quest skewers sci-fi fandom and tropes while also telling a heartfelt story about friendship, compassion, and imagination. I

t’s no wonder that this film has been adopted by Trekkies as an unofficial yet essential part of the Star Trek movie canon. Should you choose to include it, slot it right here on our rankings, beneath…

The phrase “ad astra, per aspera” meaning “to the stars through hardships,” has been adopted by many a starry-eyed enterprise (including Starfleet itself), but it also applies perfectly to the production of Star Trek II . Produced with a third of its predecessor’s budget by an inexperienced director who had only twelve days to rewrite its script , The Wrath of Khan could very well have been a disaster. Instead, it’s almost universally considered to be the best Star Trek film and one of the most enduring science fiction films of all time.

Functioning as a sequel to the classic episode Space Seed , Khan pits William Shatner against a worthy, equally hammy foil in Ricardo Montalbán, and their tête-à-tête is pure movie magic. The submarine-style battle at the film’s climax is one of the franchise’s strongest action sequences, but it’s Admiral Kirk’s inner journey that gives The Wrath of Khan its soul, as he confronts the cost of a life spent cheating death and hopping galaxies. Star Trek is not always literature, but The Wrath of Khan is a genuine work of art, a treat not just for Trekkies or genre fans, but for all lovers of cinema.  

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Planet of the Apes is one of the most unlikely film franchises in Hollywood history. The 1968 original is a social sci-fi thought experiment best remembered for its shocking twist ending. But rather than simply becoming one of cinema’s most ubiquitous spoilers, the revelation that the Planet of the Apes was Earth all along opened the door to a variety of new stories about power, oppression, compassion, hubris, societal self-destruction, and redemption. Now, over half a century later, the saga of a world whose evolutionary ladder turned upside down is still in top form, delivering its most intriguing and compelling installments yet. They may not all be winners, but from Chimpan-A to Chimpan-Z, nearly all of them are interesting.

10. Planet of the Apes (2001) Yes, despite the existence of four, increasingly cheap sequels from the 1970s, the Tim Burton remake is still the worst Planet of the Apes movie. Though the special makeup effects applied to Helena Bonham Carter, Tim Roth, Michael Clarke Duncan, Paul Giamatti, and company are marvelous and the production designers clearly put their hearts into designing the ape city and culture, it’s all in the service of an awful script and loathsome characters. It is a remake of a famously thought-provoking sci-fi classic, and yet it is brainless. It is an adventure movie starring first-rate actors as very convincing talking apes, and yet it is joyless. There’s no need to even get into specifics about the plot or the weird twist ending — this one’s a stinker. 

From Darth Vader to Emperor Palpatine to Jabba the Hutt, Star Wars has been given us several iconic villains. But for all its many well-known villains, there are still those who have been all but overlooked by general audiences. Such a lackluster reception may be due to limited appearances or questionable story choices regarding their character.

In this massive franchise, there are many characters who should get more recognition from audiences, and these seven prove themselves to be the unsung villains of the Star Wars universe. 7. Darth Bane

This is sure to be an unusual year for Hollywood cinema. With the regular cadence of franchise blockbusters disrupted by the Hollywood strikes of 2023, there are fewer surefire bets at the box office. And some of the studios’ supposedly safer gambles, like Madame Web and Argylle, have already fallen flat upon release. Of course, this doesn’t mean there hasn’t been anything worth seeing in theaters or streaming at home. In addition to a few standout franchise entries, the year to date has seen a number of terrific smaller-scale dramas, horror flicks, and indie comedies, many of them by debuting filmmakers. With luck, the relative lack of competition for audience attention will allow one or more underdogs to make a big cultural splash.

10. Abigail

Every Star Trek Movie Ranked

One of the most beloved and influential science-fiction franchises of our time, the Star Trek universe continues to captivate audiences and expand into new worlds – from the Original Series, to the Next Generation, to the J.J. Abrams -led reboots, to the plethora of live-action and animated Enterprise outings on the small screen in recent years.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the all-time classic and many a Trekkie’s favourite, Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan , we’re boldly going where many have gone before, and wrangling the 13 big-screen Star Trek adventures into a definitive order of quality. Here’s Empire’s list of the best Star Trek movies, ranked from worst to best:

13. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

After two films directed by Nimoy, Shatner stepped up for Star Trek V , but it was a troubled production, beset by rewrites, re-shoots and industrial action. The results are, let's say, uneven: a collision of separate stories that don't really mesh, with some jarring tonal shifts. On one level this is a classic Roddenberry concept about exploring the universe and investigating its creation, but that sits alongside Klingon-Romulan-Human politicking and moments of comedy: Kirk and Bones ribbing Spock round a campfire, or Scotty knocking himself unconscious because he doesn't know his way around the new Enterprise. An impressive Dune -like desert sequence gives way to a knock-off Mos Eisley bar scene. Spock suddenly has a renegade brother we've never heard of before. And yet, while the separate parts might not add up to a cohesive whole, there's enough going on that some of it works. Fundamentally, this is a film where Captain Kirk meets God and is unimpressed . That might just be the ultimate Kirk moment, and getting there is worth a couple of hours of janky runaround.

12. Star Trek: Nemesis

A fairly catastrophic failure both critically and commercially, Nemesis did what no Trek film had done before: killed the franchise stone dead for almost a decade. It's still fun to hang out with the Next Generation crew, but that cozy familiarity aside, this is a disappointing experience. It's visually murky, bogs itself down with a leaden plot about Romulan intrigue, has its limelight hogged by Brent Spiner, and suffers from one of the weakest villains in the series: Tom Hardy 's Reman rebel leader Shinzon. This was one of Hardy's earliest roles, and it probably isn't his fault, but he's less than stellar in it and looks borderline ridiculous, sporting a prosthetic nose. His introduction is set up as a huge reveal moment - "Oh my God, it's Picard !" – except he looks nothing like Picard, and the only visual clue that he's Picard's clone is that he's bald. The action periodically delivers and Data's sacrifice – while not a patch on Spock's – gives it a little heart, but as the Next Gen crew's last hurrah, this one saw Picard and the gang go out with a whimper, not a bang.

11. Star Trek Into Darkness

The continuing mission of the rebooted Enterprise has all the pleasure of the 2009 film in its interplay between the principals, and some great San Francisco spectacle. But Into Darkness ' great weakness is its villain: in this instance, Benedict Cumberbatch inheriting the role of Khan from Ricardo Montalban. The problem is exactly the same one that Spectre had with Blofeld: Khan only means something to the audience. He doesn't mean anything to the characters on screen. This Enterprise hasn't even met him in Space Seed. So, the films whole agenda – it's a remixed Star Trek II with another Khan, hold on to your hats! – doesn't work. This Khan is just another bad guy doing generic bad guy stuff. His being Khan is ultimately neither here nor there. "I'm not Harrison, I'm Khan." – are you? Who's that then? If you need a Zoom call with your future self to explain the stakes, you've got more problems than you realise.

10. Star Trek: The Motion Picture

The frequent goofiness of the Original Series sometimes obscured the fact that it was often dealing in strong sci-fi concepts and attempting serious philosophical musing. There was even a high-falutin' pretension to some of the episode titles, like season 3's 'For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky'. So, while in a post- Star Wars world, a straight-up space adventure might have seemed the no-brainer way to approach a Star Trek movie, you can see how Gene Roddenberry would have been more attracted to trying to do Kubrick's 2001 . Years in development, and at one point conceived as a new TV series before flipping back to film again, Robert Wise's film has been dubbed the Slow-Motion Picture by wags, and there's no denying its ponderousness. But where it achieves what it's aiming for is in the sequences designed to inspire absolute awe in the viewer – the early reveal of the new Enterprise in space dock, or Spock's solo float through the unbelievably vast V-Ger ship. It isn't to everyone's taste, it arguably doesn't make the best use of its cast, there's not much action and the new uniforms look awful. But there's a tone and ambition to The Motion Picture that's unique in Trek.

9. Star Trek: Generations

The long-heralded meeting of the generations kind of delivers on its promise, but instead of being great, it's only… fine. Part of the problem with Generations is its set-up, which shunts Kirk off into the time-defying Nexus. The plot device that gets him across the generations leaves all his own crew behind, meaning that the Original Series cast get cameos at best. Nimoy isn't in it at all. So, it's essentially a Next Generation movie with Shatner in it – less Enterprise meets Enterprise, more Picard meets Kirk. There are some Klingon shenanigans (hello TNG stalwarts Lursa and B'Etor), a wry Malcom McDowell is a solid principal villain, and the Enterprise is destroyed (again). But it never feels like the event it should, and Kirk's death, which ought to have been momentous, is badly fumbled; compare it to Spock's death in Wrath Of Khan and it's simply a shrug. Shatner was miffed enough that he brought Kirk back from the dead in a series of novels.

8. Star Trek: Insurrection

Of all the Star Trek films, Insurrection feels the most like a standard episode of the TV series (in this case, the Next Generation). The budget is obviously bigger, the screen wider, the effects more impressive, but strip those elements away and the story would barely have played any differently on the small screen. It's much lighter in tone than its immediate predecessor, First Contact , and therefore feels less consequential. But still enjoyable for all that. Largely a character piece focused on Data – as the Next Gen films increasingly were – it involves the Enterprise crew accidentally breaking Star Fleet's sacred Prime Directive of non-interference while on an observation mission on the peaceful backwoods planet Ba'Ku. The consequences draw the attention of the Son'A: Clive Barker-ish mummified aliens who keep themselves alive with frequent transplant surgery and are led by an unrecognisable F. Murray Abraham . The stakes are on the low side, but the set-pieces deliver. And you get to see Riker and Troi in the bath, if that's your thing.

7. Star Trek III: The Search For Spock

Star Trek III can't help but feel smaller and less urgent than the extraordinary Wrath of Khan , and while clearly we want Spock back, this does feel like an entire film in the service of undoing Star Trek II 's most unforgettable moment. It's less flat-out and simply less fun than its predecessor, and that seems to be a deliberate choice: while not at Motion Picture levels of heaviness, it still seems to be aiming for more weight again. Leonard Nimoy directs – the first of many Trek cast members to make the transition to the other side of the camera – and he's clearly great at getting performances, but less sure-footed with pacing and action. And there's a lot of spoken exposition. The villains, too, don't seem as threatening, just a brigade of ornery Klingons, led, rather oddly, by comic actor Christopher Lloyd. You can argue that he wasn't Doc Brown yet, but he was the Reverend Jim. Even the destruction of the Enterprise doesn't quite have the impact that's intended (although maybe that's a function of our having seen it destroyed again so many times in the years since). Still, it's never less than enjoyable, particularly in the Bones Behaving Oddly strand that largely drives the story. This is amiable, watchable Trek , and sometimes that's enough.

6. Star Trek Beyond

After the misfire of Into Darkness , the clear mission here was simple: forget fan-pleasing that pleases no one, and deliver a straight ahead brand new Star Trek adventure with the characters we know and love, untethered from any weight of continuity or dour intertextual engagement with past glories. Beyond is a breath of fresh air and, creatively, a huge success, benefitting from the gonzo energy of multiple Fast & Furious movie director Justin Lin . Simon Pegg 's Scotty emerges as perhaps the film's MVP (odd that, considering he co-wrote it), and is given an amusing double-act with newcomer alien scavenger Sofia Boutella ("Beats and shouting!"). And Idris Elba is a solid villain, although you might wish the new series would play a different bad guy card than 'grudge against Starfleet'. Still, it's all such a blast that it's hard to mind too much, especially during the air-punching callback to the 2009 film's use of the Beastie Boys' 'Sabotage'.

5. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Aka 'the one with the whales'. A family-friendly, fish-out-of-water comedy adventure, almost entirely set on (at the time) present-day Earth, intent on delivering an environmental message and with no real villain to speak of. An Enterprise crew who don't even have an Enterprise… Star Trek IV shouldn't work, but somehow it's one of the best, and certainly most beloved, films of the series. Maybe that's about its accessibility: it's Trek enough for fans, but un-Trekky enough to tempt the unconvinced. The comedy is great (particularly thanks to the revived Spock, whose befuddled weirdness goes barely remarked in 20th century San Francisco); the extended cast all get decent stuff to do (think Chekov's side-mission to find a 'nuclear wessel'); and Shatner gets a love interest that doesn't play as creepy. The whole film is like a warm hug. Is it Star Trek ? It seems from this evidence that Star Trek is whatever Star Trek says it is.

4. Star Trek (2009)

Star Trek 's big comeback was a reboot and an origin story, re-casting the Original Series crew and telling the story of their first mission aboard the Enterprise, not long out of Star Fleet Academy. The surprise is the extent to which it's also Star Trek 11 : smartly setting up a branching timeline that allows it to remain canonical even as it contradicts the Trek that's gone before. It has its gagh and eats it too. Leonard Nimoy cameos as the Spock we already know, and the new cast ( Chris Pine , Zachary Quinto , Karl Urban , Zoe Saldana , Simon Pegg) do a great job at making their iconic roles feel both familiar and fresh. It's an energetic, colourful, pacy film, revelling in joyful nostalgia and a deep love for these characters. It's just a pity that, with the focus on building the team, Eric Bana 's villain ends up a bit sidelined. Even while he's destroying planets, he's somehow no Khan.

3. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

The near-disaster of Star Trek V almost killed the franchise, so VI was returned to the safe hands of Nicholas Meyer, who'd previously snatched The Wrath Of Khan from the jaws of The Motion Picture . It doesn't quite hit Khan levels of excellence, but it does give the series its best villain since Montalban, in Christopher Plummer 's raging, Shakespeare-quoting Klingon general: a monomaniacal Ahab whose white whale is Kirk. Epic in scale, taking place across multiple ships and planets, the film's main plot hook is nevertheless a more intimate murder mystery, so there's room for character moments and effective storytelling. The obvious advancing age of the principals is explicitly acknowledged (adorably, the climax of the film genuinely rests on whether a portly old man can run up some stairs). And the wider context of peace negotiations between the Federation and the Klingon Empire serves to bridge the gap between The Original Series and the just-starting Next Generation , making this arguably a more effective handover than Generations. While some of the principal cast would return for guest appearances, either in subsequent films or on the small-screen Next Generation and Deep Space Nine , The Undiscovered Country feels valedictory, the last true hurrah of the original Enterprise crew.

2. Star Trek: First Contact

With the Borg the stand-out villains of The Next Generation – they even assimilated Picard in a fantastic end-of-season cliffhanger – their progression to a big-screen face-off was almost inevitable. The results in First Contact make it one of Trek 's nailed-on classics. The implacable Borg's Giger-ish design and body-horror vibe don't necessarily quite gel with the Star Trek ethos, but the film balances those elements with some wide-eyed Roddenberry-ish wonder in a plot about humankind reaching for the stars: specifically the first Warp flight. Some have questioned the introduction of the Borg Queen – they were a terrifying hive mind but now they've got a leader? – but logic aside, she's an undeniably great character, played with insidious relish by the otherworldly Alice Krige. The scenes where she's tempting Data are hugely compelling, circling around one of those big sci-fi ideas that Trek loves and addresses so well: an android choosing to be human.

1. Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan

The film that ensured Star Trek 's future. A major regrouping and rethinking following The Motion Picture , it's thrilling, breathlessly action-packed, and emotionally hefty. The Motion Picture really only had a mystery, but The Wrath of Khan gives the Enterprise crew a truly credible – even frightening – adversary in Ricardo Montalban's aggrieved superhuman, and there's no greater illustration of how genuinely high the stakes of this film are than one of the main cast having to die: the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. It's a straight-up, knock-down brawl across the galaxy, weaving in lore from deep Star Trek cuts but never alienating a non-expert audience (it's a sequel to a season 1 episode, but you don't really need to have seen 'Space Seed' to get immediately on board). There are new crew members - notably Kirstie Alley's Vulcan Saavik - but The Wrath of Khan proves that the legacy players are far from done, even as the film sweetly acknowledges their lengthening teeth (and faltering eyesight). And there is, of course, that Shatner moment ("KHAAAAAAAAN!"), reminding us that, while there are other space adventure franchises, there are some things that are just uniquely, gloriously Trek . Of all the films we have encountered in our Star Trek travels, this was the most… human.

All 13 ‘Star Trek’ Movies Ranked From Worst To Best

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'Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan,' 'Star Trek: Generations,' 'Star Trek: First Contact' and 'Star Trek'

Today marks the 30th anniversary of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country . The Nicolas Meyer-directed political mystery thriller was intended to both rejuvenate the franchise after the underwhelming Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and give the original cast an honorable send-off before what everyone (correctly) assumed would be new movies starring the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation . Since then, we got four Next Generation -specific movies from 1994 to 2002, and then the Bad Robot-produced “reboot” trilogy in 2009, 2013 and 2016.

This past September marked the 55th anniversary of the first televised episode of Star Trek . That means it’s been five years since we all argued that Paramount should have held off on releasing Star Trek Beyond until September 2016 (instead of late-July 2016) to capitalize on that anniversary. It’s been five years since the last theatrical Star Trek movie and five years of false starts and bluffs concerning a theoretical Star Trek 4 (or Star Trek 14 if you count them as one continuity). Anyway, to mark the occasion, I’ll eventually use the usual science, math and dark magic to rank the movies (again, because I’ve never done so before).

As always, these rankings will not be your rankings because what fun would that be?

1998 Brent Spiner, Donna Murphy, Patrick Stewart Star In The New Movie "Star Trek: Insurrection." (Photo By Getty Images)

Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)

Budget: $70 million

Domestic Box Office: $70.2 million

Worldwide Box Office: $117.8 million

Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $135.3 million

The core dilemma of this glorified two-part Next Generation episode is an intriguing one, essentially “prime directive” versus “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” However, the circumstances of the specific plot, 600 members of a small community essentially hording science that could eradicate illness and premature death for everyone, don’t work as a parable for colonialism. The film holds up Picard’s righteous absolutism as unquestionably heroic, even while a measured compromise would be ideal. Beyond that, there’s a kind of lackadaisical attitude and what feels like the cast getting a wish list (Geordi gets to see with his own eyes, Riker and Troi get horny again, Picard gets a love interest, etc.). Insurrection plays like late-2000’s Adam Sandler where everyone gets to vacation on the studio’s dime.

Star Trek Nemesis

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)

Budget: $60 million

Domestic Box Office: $43.25 million

Worldwide Box Office: $67.3 million

Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $67.9 million

Stuart Baird’s late 2002 release was a Star Trek movie for folks who think Star Trek isn’t cool. Alas, the generically action-packed and occasionally patronizing (Troi gets “mind-raped” just so Riker can righteously kill Ron Perlman’s secondary bad guy) Nemesis turned off Trekkers and didn’t work for general audiences who were saving their money for The Two Towers opening just five days later. That it’s not the “worst” Star Trek movie is mostly because it wears its $60 million budget on its sleeve and it’s never boring. The nature-versus-nurture stuff (concerning a young clone of Picard played by a very skinny Tom Hardy) is intriguing, but it’s oft-charted territory for this franchise, and the film pulls a “Disney death” with Data. All in all, the Next Generation crew deserved a much grander farewell.

American actors Merritt Butrick and Robin Curtis on the set of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, directed by Leonard Nimoy. (Photo by Paramount Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (1984)

Budget: $18 million

Domestic Box Office: $76.4 million

Worldwide Box Office: $87 million

Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $208.5 million

It’s not boring and it’s not “bad,” but the entire film exists just to walk back the shocking finale of its immediate predecessor. Oh, and it also walks back one of the more interesting developments of The Wrath of Khan , arbitrarily killing off Kirk’s just-discovered son and negating that bit of character development. That said, the first third has a certain creepy mind-horror vibe, but once Kirk and friends steal the Enterprise and head off to the (dying) Genesis-created planet to fetch Spock’s body it becomes a two-fisted action flick, closer to the whole Stagecoach in space pitch that was probably intended. Christopher Lloyd makes a fine Klingon baddie, and the production values are beyond reproach, but The Search For Spock is one of the more generic Star Trek adventures.

Star Trek (2009)

Budget: $140 million

Domestic Box Office: $257.7 million

Worldwide Box Office: $386.8 million

Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $314.8 million

There’s a lot to appreciate in this unapologetic “ Star Trek as Star Wars ” time-rewriting reboot, and it’s no secret as to why it became a monster domestic smash in summer 2009. J.J. Abrams directs the hell out of this movie, the camera almost never stops, and the new cast is instantly iconic despite playing characters previously defined by an established cast. Alas, the film never slows down, while the whole “things must play out as we know they must” mentality turns this Star Trek origin story into a kind of manifest destiny propaganda. Cheer as Chris Pine’s unqualified, hotheaded cowboy Kirk usurps the command in a glorified coup from Zachary Quinto’s experienced, cautious egghead Spock just because the franchise as we know it demands it. Intentional or not, this admittedly rip-snorting and crowd-pleasing action-adventure played like a skewed endorsement of the 2000 presidential election.

Canadian actor William Shatner and American Leonard Nimoy on the set of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (Photo by Paramount Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

Budget: $30 million

Domestic Box Office: $52.2 million

Worldwide Box Office: $70.2 million

Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $119.9 million

I’m not pretend that William Shatner’s infamous box office bomb is “good, actually.” But, especially after almost 35 years of “Kirk stops a bad guy and saves the Earth” plots, there’s a lot to admire in this unapologetic head trip of a sequel. This intimate odyssey, with Kirk, Spock and McCoy kidnapped by Spock’s half-brother who wants to pilot a starship to essentially meet God, revels in the interior pain and personal pathos of its three leading men. The ensuing conflict, a rebel Klingon ship attempting to take out Kirk for glory notwithstanding, is more about a battle for the souls of our Star Trek heroes, one that counteracts the myth of Kirk as a glorified he-man cowboy. Final Frontier is not good (unfinished effects don’t help), but it’s an interesting bad movie.

Star Trek Beyond

Star Trek Beyond (2016)

Budget: $185 million

Domestic Box Office: $158.8 million

Worldwide Box Office: $335.6 million

Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $168.2 million

The first half-hour of Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond are so damn good, so concerned with the shared humanity of our newly established cast (including Kirk burning out as he turns the same age his father died at), that it’s heartbreaking when the action takes over and the picture goes on autopilot. The Enterprise goes down in flames, and the crew is split up in a forest planet, but only the begrudging friendship between Spock and McCoy registers. Still, the action is beyond reproach, and the final 20 minutes snap back into gear as the core bad guy (a mostly disguised-in-makeup Idris Elba) shows his humanity and Kirk realizes the error of his thinking. The warm-hearted epilogue works as what could be a fond farewell to this newer iteration of the original crew.

DECEMBER 7: Actors George Takei, James Doohan, Grace Lee Whitney, Nichelle Nichols, Stephen Collins, DeForest Kelley, Majel Barrett, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Persis Khambatta, Walter Koenig pose for a portrait during the filming of the movie "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" which was released December 27, 1979 in the United States. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

Budget: $35 million

Domestic Box Office: $82.2 million

Worldwide Box Office: $139 million

Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $300.2 million

Robert Wise’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture remains an oddity. Its existence, 10.5 years after the show ended, was clearly inspired by the success of George Lucas’ Star Wars and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind , yet its narrative and visual template is obviously fashioned more from Stanley Kubrick’s slow-burn mind-melter 2001: A Space Odyssey . The film was among the most expensive ever, and you can see that in every widescreen moment of this long (especially if you watch the superior 143-minute director’s cut) sci-fi epic. My fondness for it lies with its heady and grandiose ambition, in terms of raw cinema and in terms of big sci-fi ideas before the film franchise became (mostly) about killing the bad guy and saving the day. It puts the Trek in Star Trek .

Star Trek Into Darkness

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Budget: $190 million

Domestic Box Office: $228.7 million

Worldwide Box Office: $467.4 million

Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $257.7 million

No, it’s not the worst Star Trek movie ever made and it’s actually pretty great for most of its runtime. J.J. Abrams’ second Star Trek delivers Benedict Cumberbatch as a new-universe Khan and overdoses on nostalgia in the final reel, but the film still does the work to make the climactic events make sense to the characters as they exist in this story. Kirk keeps his ego in check, or at least he uses it mostly to help others this time out, and he refreshingly realizes the grief-driven error of his “vengeance > due process” thinking well before the finale. Big, pulpy and generally exciting, the film works as both an obvious post-9/11 “drones and militarized governments are bad” parable and a “why old exploratory Trek is better than new blockbuster Trek ” metaphor.

Canadian actor William Shatner with actor and director Leonard Nimoy on the set of his movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. (Photo by Paramount Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

Budget: $24 million

Domestic Box Office: $109.7 million

Worldwide Box Office: $133 million

Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $267.7 million

Maybe director Leonard Nimoy and friends agreed with my above-noted thoughts on Star Trek III , because they did a 180 next time out.

Leonard Nimoy’s deliciously goofy fish-out-of-water comedy, a 180-degree turn from Nimoy’s Search For Spock , blends the tropes of movie- Star Trek (the Earth is in peril and only the Enterprise can save the day) and Gene Roddenberry’s aspirational notions (the world can only be saved by a creative and non-violent scientific solution). The crew goes back in time to 1987 San Francisco to literally save the whales, and the result is a quirky, funny and just plain delightful. It also works as a “20 years of Star Trek ” memorium. It was sold (and embraced) as a Star Trek movie for novices, but the action-lite and violence-free adventure only works because it’s such fun seeing these specific actors (especially co-stars James Doohan, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nicols and George Takei) playing these specific characters in this ridiculous situation.

'Star Trek: Generations'

Star Trek: Generations (1994)

Budget: $38 million

Domestic Box Office: $75.7 million

Worldwide Box Office: $20 million

Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $169.3 million

David Carson’s frankly underrated effort is a successful blend of “stop the bad guy” (Malcom McDowell’s going to blow up a planet!)  and “explore existential sci-fi/fantasy concepts” (Could you willingly escape a Nexus whereby you lived out the best moments of your life?). The prologue is a terrifying and tragic event whereby Captain Kirk dies saving lives (rather than having to live with taking them), and that he “comes back” in the Nexus doing battle alongside Captain Jean-Luc Picard before dying again doesn’t negate the impact of the initial in-universe demise. The rest of the film is a warmly humanist adventure with the Next Generation crew dealing with the fallout of said Nexus and working as a grand adventure for die-hard fans and merely periodic viewers. It’s my favorite “odd-numbered Trek .”

Mexican actor Ricardo Montalban on the set of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, directed by Nicholas Meyer. (Photo by Paramount Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Budget: $12 million

Domestic Box Office: $78.9 million

Worldwide Box Office: $95.8 million

Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $245.9 million

Nicholas Meyer’s metaphorical U-boat actioner, using old sets from The Motion Picture and coming it at 1/3 the cost, set the template (in terms of tone, production design, costumes and action-centric plots) for the cinematic franchise. I do find irony in many of the folks decrying the blockbuster-ization of the Bad Robot reboots holding up this clear “action spectacular” course correction from The Motion Picture as the definitive Star Trek . That said, this is still a spectacularly entertaining grudge match, with Ricardo Montalbán reprising from a first-season episode and turning Khan into the most iconic pre- Die Hard action movie villain this side of Darth Vader or Goldfinger. The Moby Dick parables aren’t subtle, but they make a surprisingly small-scale and intimate outer-space chess match feel like the biggest adventure ever told.

1996 Patrick Stewart stars in the new movie "Star Trek: First Contact".

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

Budget: $46 million

Domestic Box Office: $92 million

Worldwide Box Office: $150 million

Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $190.5 million

Jonathan Frakes’ kick-ass actioner opened 25 years ago when the Star Trek brand was at its peak mainstream popularity . Picard gets his own Ahab-like quest to destroy the Borg at all costs. That gives way to terrific action scenes and “acting with a capital A” moments for Stewart (and co-star Alfre Woodard) while Data (Brent Spiner) finds himself captured by the Borg Queen (Alice Krige). Meanwhile, much of the cast is on Earth in the days before first contact, trying to convince a now-skeptical pioneer (James Cromwell) to take his recorded place in history. This plot offers both comic relief and plenty of time on concepts more aspirational than vengeance and the ends not justifying the means. First Contact is probably the biggest Star Trek movie that still feels like a Star Trek movie.   

FILM 'STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY' (Photo by Ronald Siemoneit/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

Budget: $27 million

Domestic Box Office: $74.9 million

Worldwide Box Office: $96.9 million

Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $163.1 million

The Undiscovered Country ended the original franchise arguing that victory lay not in total destruction of a given side but in a brokered peace and mutually-assured survival. It offered the seemingly easy-to-digest (and all-too-logical) notion that the biggest obstacles to peace weren’t one side or another but elements in both sides benefiting from continual conflict no matter the collateral cost. It ended the initial adventures of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the crew on the idea that Kirk’s most heroic act wasn’t discovering uncharted worlds or stopping an evil plot but forgiving those whose “kind” had murdered his own son and shaking hands with the enemy. The undiscovered country is technically (so says Shakespeare) death, but this optimistic adventure posits that it’s merely genuine, authentic peace and between worlds and the salvation it would bring.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country remains my favorite Star Trek film. It’s a jolting of-the-moment political drama, using the war between Klingons and humans as a metaphor for the end of the Cold War and the consequences of institutional racism without relying on a yellow highlighter. Heck, it was the first of many big blockbusters ( GoldenEye and Mission: Impossible come to mind) dealing with the legacy of career “action heroes” when the lifelong enemy turned overnight into a reluctant ally. This Nicolas Meyer-directed installment is also a crackling closed-room murder mystery with several dynamite action sequences (including the initial homicides, shockingly bloody for a PG movie, and the climactic showdown against Christopher Plummer’s cloaked Bird of Prey). And the epilogue, including Kirk’s final course heading, still brings a tear to my eye.

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Star Trek movies, ranked

See where all 13 films fall on the franchise list.

13. Star Trek Generations (1994)

Every Star Trek movie has problems. There are nonsense villains, unconvincing pseudo-science, lead-actor ego-stroking, and aimless plotting. There is the shockingly frequent feeling that Starfleet, that great galactic exploratory organization uniting all the cosmos in common cause, is a curiously underfunded goon squad whose security apparatus depends solely on the presence of one Enterprise or another. But only Generations is truly inessential — and only Generations squanders both Captain Kirk ( William Shatner ) and Captain Picard ( Patrick Stewart ), opting to stage the meeting of two pop culture icons as an opportunity for tragically literal horseplay. At least Generations coughs up the impressive Enterprise-D crash scene, one last cool model effect before the franchise (and Hollywood) went full CGI.

Read the full deep dive into Generations here .

12. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)

Spock ( Leonard Nimoy ) dies in Wrath of Khan , and that death scene gets replayed four different ways in the sequel — a recognition of just how powerful the scene was, but also an admission that nothing in Search for Spock comes halfway close to measuring up. This is by far the busiest original-cast Trek film, with several different story threads — the Enterprise heist, Spock-ified McCoy ( DeForest Kelley ), the demise of the Genesis Planet, whatever Christopher Lloyd 's Klingon is supposed to be doing, the sidelong assertion that Starfleet has been entirely taken over by douchebag jocks — and there's a world-buildy attention to unnecessary detail, including an in-depth exploration of Vulcan mysticism at its most Fellini-esque (and least convincing). It's not a movie — it's a bunch of Wikipedia articles, strung together with atrocious outfits and the worst hero-villain climactic fight scene in a franchise full of awful hero-villain climactic fight scenes.

Read the full deep dive into Search for Spock here .

11. Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)

There was always a goofy generosity of spirit powering The Next Generation , a sensibility that fell by the wayside in the cast's first two big-screen outings. Insurrection tries to transfer that lighthearted spirit to the big screen. Picard dances to mambo; Riker ( Jonathan Frakes ) flirts Troi ( Marina Sirtis ) into a bathtub; Worf ( Michael Dorn ) grows a zit; Data (Brent Spiner) goes bad, but gets distracted into a Gilbert & Sullivan singalong with Picard. It's a soft-touch comedy. But Insurrection is held back by its central conceit — a New Age-inflected "Fountain of Youth" planet populated by hippie-artisan white people — and its back half becomes an unconvincing guerilla-action romp.

Read the full deep dive into Insurrection here .

10. Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

The fan outrage over J.J. Abrams ' reboot-sequel has overshadowed what is, ultimately, a very expensive-looking not-terrible action movie, with a borderline-surreal plot full of un-shocking "twists" and bizarre exposition. (If you can follow the thread about the Klingon Empire, you've probably given this film more attention than it deserves.) The reduction of Zoe Saldaña 's Uhura to frustrated girlfriend status is actually more disturbing than the film's shameless trailer-baiting "Carol Marcus Strips For No Reason" moment, and the whole Starfleet-Conspiracy angle was much better covered in The Undiscovered Country . But at least this most expensive Star Trek movie is pretty to look at.

Read the full deep dive into Star Trek Into Darkness here .

9. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

Barely finished and tonally inconsistent, the only film directed by William Shatner is a fascinating curio, by turns a goofball Marx Brothers-ish farce and a freshman-year theological inquisition. The dissonance is outrageous — in a typical chunk of time, the film forces McCoy to face the death of his father, recreates the birth of Spock, and then sends them both rocketing through the Enterprise with help from some jet boots. The cosmography feels like it was sketched on a whiteboard — the Great Barrier at the Center of the Universe! — but Final Frontier is some kind of magnum opus for Shatner. I challenge you to find a better Captain Kirk line than this: "I've always known I'll die alone." Wait, here it is: "What does God need with a starship?"

Read the full deep dive into The Final Frontier here .

8. Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

The best villain in the whole franchise is Alice Krige's Borg Queen, a seductive tyrant who swans through the best scenes in First Contact , tempting Data to the dark side. She's a blast of fresh air in a movie that tries hard to add '90s thrills into the franchise, with decidedly mixed results. This is the first true action movie in the series, and the Borg invasion of the Enterprise-E produces some nifty set pieces. But, no matter how cool the Borg look, they're monotone villains from a technophobic era, and they haven't aged well — and neither have the comedic stylings of James Cromwell, Irascible Rockstar Explorer Scientist.

Read the full deep dive into First Contact here .

7. Star Trek (2009)

The first scene of J.J. Abrams' Trek reboot is a colorful blast of in medias res action, inventing Chris Hemsworth out of thin air in a burst of funny-sad self-sacrifice. Then the film begins…and a l-o-o-o-o-o-ong origin-story first act brings everything to a screeching halt. The new cast is game for anything, and Abrams pushes them into everything , with Chris Pine giving what amounts to an Olympic-level athletic performance as a roguish Kirk and Zachary Quinto practically Hulk-ing out as an unrepressed and romanticized Spock. Like First Contact , 2009's Star Trek has some eye-popping set pieces (that space jump!), but the film dead-ends into an oddly plotty final act. Bless Eric Bana , who seems to be having lots of fun playing a different villain every time he shows up.

Read the full deep dive into Star Trek '09 here .

6. Star Trek Beyond (2016)

Here's a big idea for a Star Trek movie: Make it feel like a midseason episode of a Star Trek TV show. That's the thinking behind the first act of Beyond , which finds Kirk and Co. in year three of a five-year mission. For the first time in the film franchise, the rhythms of life onboard don't feel unnecessarily magnified. The crew has an easy rapport, their missions have an intriguing regularity, and things are beginning to feel a bit, well, episodic. They visit the Yorktown space colony, one of the niftiest future locations in any space movie of the 2010s. Director Justin Lin has better action chops than any previous Trek director, and it shows in the first Enterprise assault, a clever hive-mind attack that cuts the starship off at the head. Then the crew crash-lands — and the film crashes with it, descending into a muddled second act. New baddie Krall is all-but-ruined by a curious plot decision that forces Idris Elba to play "vaguely-defined evil" until nearly the end of the film. Beyond wants to ask tough questions about the franchise — but it settles for all the easy answers, descending into precisely the kind of referentiality that everyone loathed in Star Trek Into Darkness .

5. Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)

Cut to the bone by a filmmaker who barely seemed to know what Star Trek was, the final film to feature the Next Generation cast is a frustratingly non-final final act for a crew that deserved (and still deserves) a true send-off. (And that Troi brain-rape scene is the lowest point in the franchise.) But there are ghoulish delights in this vampiric B-minus B-movie. A very young Tom Hardy gnashes on scenery as Shinzon, the Picard clone with a whisper-scream. This is Patrick Stewart's finest performance in any of the Star Trek movies, shaded with wonder and sadness — and it's a heartbreaking showcase for Brent Spiner, who double-roles as Data and the loopy android B-4. It all ends with the finest ship-to-ship showdown in the series, an outer-space brawl-smash between the Enterprise-E and Shinzon's flagship.

Read the full deep dive into Nemesis here .

4. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

Slow as hell, beige as dad-khakis, the first Star Trek film is also an intermittently eye-popping gonzo cosmic ride. Special effects maestro Douglas Trumbull worked on the movie practically out of spite — he wanted out of his Paramount contract — but his team oversaw some of the wooziest visuals to ever appear in the Star Trek franchise, with the interior of mega-ship V'Ger rendered as a Freudian techno-organic trip to the cosmic beyond. Characters, psh. Everyone looks bored (besides DeForest Kelley, rocking a memorable beard and then the kind of deep V-neck that got outlawed after 1979). What The Motion Picture very much lacks in character and story, it makes up for with pure sound and image: Jerry Goldsmith's glorious score; the trippy special effects; the pajama uniforms; the sheer volume of extras this runaway production could afford. If you think Star Trek needs to be a fast-paced action movie, this is probably your least favorite film. But, at the risk of sounding like the kind of goofball hippie The Motion Picture seems built for, there are some very groovy chill vibes in this very silly movie.

Read the full deep dive into The Motion Picture .

3. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

Okay, but now let's start talking about awesome movies. Nicholas Meyer steered right into the skid of flagrant topicality with his second Trek directorial effort, rendering the end of the Cold War via onscreen diplomatic negotiations between Starfleet and the Klingon Empire. Meyer always had a cockeyed perspective on Kirk — his films flavor Kirk's heroism with melancholy and rage — and the film springs off the idea of William Shatner playing an aging soldier, watching the times pass him by. Shatner and the whole original Enterprise crew are all giving career-best work here, the dinner scene being a showcase for everyone involved. What's even more impressive — coming from the man who made Wrath of Khan — is that this is still the only Trek film that doesn't try to cough up one single super-bad-guy villain. Undiscovered Country 's Klingons are clever, witty Shakespeare scholars — some good, some nefarious — and even the bad Klingons are only as bad as their Starfleet co-conspirators. The film gets less ambitious as it goes along, but it wraps up with a heartwarming epilogue, sending off the original Star Trek cast on a humane high note.

Read the full deep dive into The Undiscovered Country here .

2. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

KHAAAAAANNNN! Nicholas Meyer's hotblooded debut as a Star Trek filmmaker ignores The Motion Picture and reconceives the utopian series with a naval inflection. It also gives Kirk an identity crisis: Middle-aged and shipless, the Admiral looks a little lost. The film reactivates Kirk by bringing back an old nemesis: Khan, Moby Dick -quoting barbarian genius played with muscular relish by Ricardo Montalban . Montalban gives an ecstatic performance, and his spirit pervades the filmmaking: Meyer stages the ship-to-ship combats with shadowy space-submarine tension and cleverly shoots his tiny sets with a depth of field that makes Khan feel like an epic in miniature. "I feel old," Kirk says at the beginning. "I feel young," he says at the end. You know how he feels.

Read the full deep dive into The Wrath of Khan here .

1. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

A delightfully unserious film about deeply serious things, Leonard Nimoy's masterpiece is a light-footed character comedy. There's a mysterious alien intelligence destroying the Earth — saving the future means saving the whales. The crew travels back in time, and then something quite lovely happens: They go exploring. Shot partially on location in San Francisco, Voyage Home reimagines its space heroes as a comedy team, with Kirk as a hilariously out-of-his-depth "expert" ("Double dumbass on you!") and Spock as a holy-fool Harpo who's not above going for a swim with a humpback whale. The peculiar magic of The Voyage Home is difficult to graph. Co-writer Nicholas Meyer crafted some of the funniest dialogue in the series, and one-off guest-star Catherine Hicks is an energetic addition to the main cast.

And the supporting cast! McCoy gives an older lady a new kidney; Scotty (James Doohan) talks to a computer; Uhura ( Nichelle Nichols ) begs onlookers to point her toward Alameda; Chekov (Walter Koenig) pronounces "vessels" funny. Lighthearted, leisurely-paced, with nary a gun fired or a photon torpedo exploded: There may never be another franchise movie like this — hell, there may never be another movie like this — which makes the blithe miracle of The Voyage Home all the more impressive.

Read the full deep dive into The Voyage Home here .

Related Articles

All 13 Star Trek movies , ranked from worst to best

Fight me...

Star Trek has (arguably) always worked better on TV than in theaters, but it's still one of the biggest sci-fi feature film franchises of all time

Here's our ranking of every Star Trek movie from worst to best.

The Best Star Trek Movie According To Rotten Tomatoes

To date, there have been six feature films based on "Star Trek," four based on Star Trek: The Next Generation," and three set in a rebooted timeline (called the Kelvin timeline by fans). Those 13 films were all released theatrically from 1979 to 2016, averaging one film every three years or so. Up next, "Star Trek: Section 31" is slated for release on Paramount+ sometime in 2025, and it will be the first "Star Trek" TV movie. There has also long been talk of making a fourth film in the Kelvin timeline, but that movie's fate is currently a question mark; I'll believe it when I see it.

The longstanding general consensus is that the odd-numbered "Star Trek" films are bad and unsuccessful, while the even-numbered films are amazing hits. "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," for instance, was something of a disappointment at the box office, but "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" is held by many to be one of the best in the franchise. "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock," despite being an emotionally intense adventure, is often seen as a stopgap film used solely to bring Spock (Leonard Nimoy) back from the dead. It was followed by "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," a popular comedy film that was very financially successful. And so on.

Critical consensus, however, breaks that pattern handily, at least as far as approval ratings on Rotten Tomatoes go. The highest-rated film in the "Star Trek" franchise is an odd-numbered film. The #1 film's approval rating is only slightly higher, however, than a celebrated even-numbered "Star Trek" film from the 1990s. Although the "Star Trek" shows are most notable for their sense of diplomacy and willingness to tackle heady, philosophical problems, the highest-rated films in the series are the most violent, action-oriented ones.

Star Trek (2009)

With a 94% approval rating, based on 356 reviews, J.J. Abram's 2009 "Star Trek" movie is the best reviewed of all the "Star Trek" films on RT. Some Trekkies may find this fact disappointing since Abrams' film is a massive departure for the franchise. Rather than continue with any extant "Star Trek" lore, Abrams created an alternate timeline wherein he could reintroduce Kirk, Spock, and all the rest as younger, hotter, more tempestuous versions of themselves. This was high-octane "Star Trek," full of fights and explosions and death and drama. It's more like "Star Wars" than "Star Trek." Many of the details of Abrams' films — the ships, the characters' personality traits — were derived merely from what a non-Trekkie might know about "Star Trek" through cultural osmosis; Abrams infamously admitted that he knew little about "Star Trek" when he took on the project.

One might understand why Abrams' film was such a hit. A mass audience unfamiliar with "Star Trek" could get excited about a clean "restart," now unthreatened by the decades of lore that came before, while long-term Trekkies could attend out of morbid curiosity. A full-bore reboot of a major entertainment franchise is also a surefire way to generate a lot of ink in the entertainment press, assuring that "Star Trek" would be talked about for a full year leading up to its release.

It certainly didn't hurt that dazzlingly attractive actors played the familiar Enterprise crew. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, John Cho, Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin, Karl Urban, and Simon Pegg portrayed the leads roles, and most critics, even those who didn't like the film, admitted that the casting was pretty spot on. The only major criticisms were that the plot was thin, sacrificed in favor of fast pacing and endless action.

Make it so, numbers two and three

With a 93% approval rating, Jonathan Frakes' 1996 actioner "Star Trek: First Contact" came in as the second highest-rated "Star Trek" film on RT. That film, like Abrams', was violence-forward, featuring the kind of plot one finds in typical Hollywood action movies. In the film, an unthinking species of cyborgs called the Borg travel back in time to the year 2063 to stop humanity from launching their first faster-than-light starship and ushering in a utopian age of exploration . The characters, although not well-suited to action — AT ALL — fire weapons and make action-y quips in ways they never had before. This film, mind you, was based on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," a series even more thoughtful and diplomatic than the original.

The action proved to be palatable to a mass audience, however, and "First Contact" was a huge hit. Critics certainly liked it. The only people who complain about "First Contact" are snotty old-school Trekkies like me, who whinge about how unlike the TV show it was.

Third highest-rated, with an 87% approval rating, is Nicholas Meyer's celebrated "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" from 1982. That film was slower and more thoughtful than the films above, but is certainly more action-packed than "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," which was infamously sluggish. It also featured an amazing Ricardo Montalban as the hammy title villain, a character that is difficult to resist.

It was "Wrath of Khan" that introduced the notion that "Star Trek" movies needed a "supervillain" character, and one motivated by revenge. This notion has hamstrung several "Star Trek" movies, leaving their stories uninspired. Four "Star Trek" films in a row had vengeance-bent supervillains at their core: "Nemesis," the 2009 film, "Star Trek Into Darkness," and "Star Trek Beyond."

The lower decks

The lowest-rated "Star Trek" film, as Trekkies might predict, is "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier," which has a shockingly low 23% approval rating. That film, as mentioned, was directed by William Shatner and felt sloppy and slapped-together. The special effects are terrible in "The Final Frontier," and the story is badly written. One must admit, however, that the central concept is an excellent idea. In the film, the Enterprise is hijacked and taken to a place in the galaxy where God — the actual physical manifestation of God — lives. "Star Trek" has always been a humanist series, eschewing faith and religion for science and reason. To have "Star Trek" characters facing a real deity would cause an interesting philosophical conflict.

With a mere 38% approval rating, 2002's "Star Trek: Nemesis" is the second lowest-rated of the franchise. That film tried the "supervillain" story, forcing the crew of the Enterprise-E to face off against a bitter clone of Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart). The story is convoluted and not interesting, and none of the cast looked like they wanted to be there. Also, "Nemesis" came immediately after 9/11, and it seemed that the world was more keen on stories of destruction and vengeance; the diplomatic world of "Star Trek" couldn't exist at that time. It's no wonder "Nemesis" and the TV series "Star Trek: Enterprise," which ran concurrently, both failed.

And third-worst-ranked, with a 48% approval rating, is "Star Trek Generations" from 1994 . The first film to be based on "THe Next Generation," the film was all too obsessed with "passing the torch" from Captain Kirk to Captain Picard. Never mind that Picard had already led seven successful seasons of "The Next Generation," and should have had a story of his own. It's clunky, not very creative, and weirdly stodgy.

Screen Rant

The 10 best star trek movies (according to metacritic).

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I Don't Care If Modern Star Trek Breaks Established Canon

Star trek reveals trelane's final words, as the original series god finally dies, after 57 years, star trek settles the truth about trelane's godlike species.

The  Star Trek   movies have had their ups and downs over the decades but most fans wouldn't trade any of them for anything. The overall franchise has such a wide, and still-ongoing, history, however, that new entrants can be left wondering what the best movies really are with so many long-standing debates surrounding so many of the movies.

RELATED:  10 Things You Didn’t Know About The Canceled Movie Star Trek: The God Thing

With this in mind, let's look at the top 10 movies according to critical scores accumulated by review aggregate site Metacritic to hopefully provide a good jumping-off point for any prospective fans looking to get into the movie side of things.

Star Trek: Generations (55)

The first movie of the  Next Generation  crew was somewhat of a stumble but not enough to deter producers from making three more movies with the cast or to rank it with the lowest moments of the movie franchise.

The relatively straightforward story bridges the gap between the new Enterprise crew and the old one, specifically their captains, and, like most  Star Trek  movies, it's stood the test of time thanks to its emphasis on character.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (56)

Though not without its rough edges , Leonard Nimoy's movie debut as a director would prove to be a big success and enabled  Star Trek  movies to continue and grow into a still-existing franchise.

RELATED:  10 Of The Best Star Trek Fan Theories About Spock (That Were Confirmed)

Full of its own big twists and turns in the story after the game-changing ending of the previous movie,  Search for Spock  not only expands the famous characters and their universe but views them through a new lens.

Star Trek: Insurrection (64)

Though often either maligned or forgotten by fans, its high critical score supports the notion that  Star Trek: Insurrection  is one of the franchise's hidden gems.

A relatively small scale, but heavily moral, story evokes some of the best qualities of  Star Trek  as an overall brand with the often unfinished-looking effects failing to subtract from the plot's most compelling, and fun, aspects.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (65)

The final movie of the original series crew took the beloved team out on a high note with this hugely relevant political conspiracy thriller centering on the imminent collapse of the antagonistic Klingon empire whilst drawing parallels with the dissolution of the USSR.

RELATED:  Which Star Trek Original Series Character Are You Based On Your Zodiac?

Christopher Plummer's memorable villain goes a long way in making  Undisocvoered Country  what it is but the direct influence of the movie's proficiency with satisfyingly tieing up narrative loose ends is something that can be clearly seen in blockbusters as big and recent as  Avengers: Endgame .

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (67)

Often cited by movie fans in general as not just one of the best  Star Trek  sequels but one of the best sequels of any kind ever,  Wrath of Khan  provided a perfect ending for the core relationships of the original series crew.

Of course, the movie's success meant that it was more a new beginning than an ending but the fact that the emotional impact of the story isn't diminished by this or by time is the strongest indicator that it's undeniably one of the brand's finest accomplishments ever.

Star Trek Beyond (68)

Though not the financial success of the previous two entries in the latest movie incarnation of the original Enterprise crew, Star Trek Beyond is a fun and funny, romp that stays firmly in touch with the franchise's roots in social and political commentary.

RELATED:  10 Biggest Technological Advances That Changed The Star Trek Universe

Whatever is lost by J.J. Abrams jumping ship and taking his breathless plotting to the  Star Wars   franchise is more than made up for by the return of the actual character traits of the classic crew members as well as a few new memorable faces.

Star Trek: First Contact (71)

Providing a satisfying confrontation and resolution to the long-running Borg plot from The Next Generation ,  First Contact  is a more linear action movie than most  Star Trek  stories.

Despite old story threads and a common time travel element, the movie's 'ship in a bottle' battle for the Enterprise with the cybernetic foes, coupled with an origin story for the earliest days of Starfleet, makes for a widely-loved cocktail of the franchise's most unique qualities.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (71)

After a string of heavy emotional losses in the previous two movies, Leonard Nimoy's third part in the  Star Trek  trilogy arc lightens the mood to great effect.

RELATED:  5 Reasons Why Voyage Home Is The Best Star Trek Sequel (& 5 Why It Will Always Be Wrath of Khan)

Forcing the original series crew to travel back in time to the 1980s to literally save the whales,  Voyage Home  delivers the  Star Trek  movies' most direct and unabashed message in what may still be its most accessible adventure ever.

Star Trek Into Darkness (72)

Though certainly not without its detractors (the movie was once voted as the worst in the franchise by a group of  Star Trek  fans at a convention ), J.J. Abrams' second movie in the so-called Kelvin timeline was a big success with both critics and general audiences at the box office.

Much of the controversy surrounding stems from the fact that, much like Abrams' following  Star Wars  movie, it's essentially a more hollow remake of a much older entry in the franchise– Wrath of Khan ,   in this case–but the director's flair for quickly moving action plots was far from fatigued with sci-fi fans at this point.

Star Trek (82)

J.J. Abrams' reboot of the movie franchise uses the classic time travel plot device to weave an origin story for the original Enterprise crew that incorporates the history of the original show and its movies.

Its most distinguishing feat, however, is that it bases it around an original story for the series. It may not be much of an original plot compared to movies in general but its action-adventure tropes, in conjunction with a lack of any kind of idealism or philosophy at all, made it a huge hit with a much wider audience than the franchise is used to.

NEXT:  10 Things You Didn’t Know About The Canceled Movie Star Trek: Planet Of The Titans

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The new 15-disc collection includes all of the following:

• 4K Blu-ray Disc and Blu-ray Disc
• Bonus Features Blu-ray Disc
• 4K Blu-ray Disc — Theatrical Cut and Director’s Cut
• Blu-ray Disc — Theatrical Cut and Director’s Cut
• Blu-ray Disc — Theatrical Cut only

Standalone 4K / Blu-ray combo pack releases of Star Trek II, II, IV, V,  and  VI also arrived this week:

There will certainly be debates over “correct” color timing and lighting levels between the 2009 and the 2021/2022 editions of the original Star Trek films : each film does seem to have an issue with somewhat brighter-than-expected lighting levels, especially in space scenes, which seems to be a side effect from creating the remastered Blu-rays from 4K HDR sources.

A NOTE ON SCREENCAPS: At present, it is rather difficult to produce representative screencaps from 4K discs and maintain the full HDR color presentation for online publication. The remastered Blu-rays, which are based upon the 4K presentations, are what we can produce and share for this review.

We’ve watched the 4K discs on a proper HDR television display, and can say that those of you who will primarily watch the films on 4K discs on 4K HDR-capable displays (or on streaming services which present the full 4K HDR presentation) will probably not notice much of an issue on that front — but “downgrading” the new scans to 1080p for the standard Blu-ray discs have left some scenes feel a bit over-brightened, losing some of the shadowy moods one remembers from countless viewings over the decades.

That said — the primary problem with those first Blu-ray editions are the tragically-overused Digital Noise Reduction (DNR) and edge-enhancement (or “sharpening”) techniques used when bring the movies to HD for the first time.

For the 2009 editions, all six films were put through DNR processing to “scrub out” the natural film grain that was part of the original presentation, and then each were artificially sharpened to restore the detail lost because of the DNR pass — resulting in a strange mix of heavily-shadowed, chiseled faces, waxy skin features erasing the actors’ natural complexions, and elimination of much of the costumes’ and sets’ surface detailing.

Probably the most impacted by the DNR/sharpening effect was Star Trek VI , which in some scenes left the cast looking like clay sculptures brought to life — such as the below shot from Spock’s briefing at the beginning of the film — but the other films are impacted as well in varying degrees, as we’ve illustrated from  The Motion Picture.

In the new 2022 editions, because the films have been rescanned from the original picture, those 2009-era modifications are not even part of the discussion anymore — restoring the look of each picture to something much closer to the original theatrical presentation.

While some have commented that the 2022 versions seem to be “blurry,” well, that’s because the slightly soft nature of each film were shot that way in the original production!

Because the heavily DNR’d/over-sharpened 2009 editions have been the default way fans have seen these movies for the last 13 years, on both Blu-ray and streaming services, many have little-to-no experience with the films’ original presentation — seen on LaserDisc, VHS, and DVD up until 2009.

Take this close-up of George Takei from  Star Trek VI for example: compared to the original HD master used in the 1999 DVD, the new remastered version is a nice upgrade in color and clarity, while still keeping his face looking appropriately detailed.

…but as soon as the false-detailed 2009 image is added into the mix, it’s clearly an overcorrection which makes Takei’s face look pitted, adding ten years to his age!

The theatrical presentation of  Star Trek: The Motion Picture   features a lovely balance of lighting, color, and texture adjustments (again, without the DNR seen in the 2009 edition) which gives the film more depth — while at the same time toning down strange color casts like the purple lighting seen when McCoy is beamed up to the Enterprise for the first time.

Here are a collection of comparison screencaps between the 2009 Blu-ray and remastered presentations:

Unfortunately, if you are looking to pick up the theatrical cut of The Motion Picture on 4K disc, it’s only available in the multi-film box set — though a standalone Blu-ray of the film is available.

For  Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , the picture quality is identical to the remastered Blu-ray released in 2016, and all bonus features from that first release have been included — and both the theatrical cut and Nick Meyer’s director’s cut of the film are included on 4K and Blu-ray discs using seamless branching.

Here are some 2009 vs. 2016 comparison screencaps we first presented at that time, which include a few comparisons to the original DVD picture illustrating color adjustments.

The remastered editions of Star Trek II are available in the 6-film box set, as a standalone 4K + Blu-ray release, or as a standalone Blu-ray.

The new look for  Star Trek III: The Search for Spock is full of welcome color corrections, which in some cases rewinds the clock all the way back to the original theatrical presentation. While the Blu-ray disc version still has a few overly-bright issues from the HDR-to-HD down-conversion, overall this film has never looked better, especially when viewed on a full 4K display.

From the start, the title sequence through sky above Genesis has been restored to the original picture width from the theatrical presentation — for some reason, the 2009 Blu-rays pillar-boxed the opening credits, adding black bars to the side of the screens and compressing the picture to fit. The text and framing have now been restored to the original look.

(All screencaps labeled “1984” are from a scan of a 35mm Star Trek III  theatrical print.)

Fine details in the Enterprise’s helm console can be made out in the 2021 remaster, including the label on Sulu’s panel which reads THRUSTER IGNITION — while the overall teal-tinted cast has been corrected (blacks and greys are black and grey; skin coloration is must more natural-looking).

Also notable are changes to the  Enterprise bridge set during the final conflict with Kruge; the dark, moody scenes were color-shifted red in for the 2009 Blu-ray release, and have been corrected back to the original blue tones for the modern restoration.

The remastered edition of  Star Trek III is available in the 6-film box set, as a standalone 4K + Blu-ray release, or as a standalone Blu-ray.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home  fares nicely in the remastered presentation, as the popular “one with the whales” gets its missing film grain restored and thankfully loses the  2009-era slight blue-green cast from its color timing — evident in shots like the Yellow Pages advertisement and the opening debate in the Federation Council chambers.

Outdoor location shots now also look much more like the natural lighting under which they were filmed; Gillian Taylor’s drive-by now reflects the cloudy, overcast San Francisco weather visible in the sky above the actors, rather than the oversaturated coloring seen in the 2009 edition.

In sunny scenes, like Kirk and Spock’s visit to the Cetacean Institute, white fabric like Spock’s robe now carry a warmer tone reflecting the sunlight above the location, rather than a colder blue tone scene in the previous release.

The remastered edition of  Star Trek IV is available in the 6-film box set, as a standalone 4K + Blu-ray release, or as a standalone Blu-ray.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier also gets a nice new presentation, with a correction to many blown-out highlights and the restoration of more natural-looking colors in a number of scenes — most notably during the Yosemite camping sequences and during the encounter with the Sha Ka Ree “god” near the end of the film.

While some of the blue tones still remain during Sybok’s final moments, the contrast has been dialed back down to near-original levels, allowing viewers to actually see what’s going on during the climactic encounter at the center of the galaxy.

Below, we’ve compared the HD master used for the 1999 DVD release with the 2009 and 2022 Blu-ray editions — the soft blue tones reflecting the Sha Ka Ree “god” remain, but the overall lighting levels have been reduced for a less-blinding experience.

The remastered edition of  Star Trek V is available in the 6-film box set, as a standalone 4K + Blu-ray release, or as a standalone Blu-ray.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country   arrives with two versions of the film on 4K: the original theatrical cut, which was also available in the previous 2009 Blu-ray (and what most people have seen on streaming services to date), and the longer director’s cut last released in the 2004 Special Collector’s Edition  DVD.

(Both cuts of the film are presented in the same 2.39:1 aspect ratio, which is Nick Meyer’s preferred choice; previously the director’s cut was released in a taller 2.00:1 ratio.)

As stated above, this film suffered the most impact from the 2009-era noise-reduction/artificial-sharpening process, and as such benefits the most from the new scan for 2022’s remastered presentation. Gone are the craggy facial features and overly-dark shadowing caused by those filtering tools, and restored are natural skin and costume textures scrubbed away in 2009.

Magentas are dialed way back, most notably seen in the Rura Penthe surface scenes and during the Excelsior’s encounter with the Praxis shockwave. In addition, red colors in this Blu-ray edition of the film — notably in the Starfleet uniforms and Klingon ship environments — do seem to be pushed a bit too far into the orange spectrum, this again may be due to the HDR down-conversion to the 1080p Blu-ray presentation.

(Unfortunately it’s not easy to get representative screencaps from 4K discs and maintain the full HDR color presentation for online publication, but after having watched the film on a proper 4K HDR display, the orange ‘push’ was not noticeable during that viewing.)

This film also seems to be impacted the most by the HDR-to-HD lighting issue, as many scenes in Star Trek VI (on both 4K disc and Blu-ray) appear to be brighter than even the original 1999 DVD picture. The comparison between the three versions illustrates the thankful return to non-DNR’d picture quality in 2022, yet is still brighter than even the ’99 edition.

In what is perhaps the biggest misstep of the entire package, the director’s cut of  Star Trek VI — which features Rene Auberjonois as Colonel West , West’s reveal as the assassin at the end of the film, and a few other cuts and edits throughout — is only available on the 4K disc, and  not included on the remastered Blu-ray disc.

Unlike the  Star Trek II director’s cut, these are not just a few trimmed scenes — there are multiple shot changes, different audio cues, and video overlays (the derided flashbacks during the Valeris mind-meld sequence) which require more space on the Blu-ray disc than that storage medium is capable of holding.

Even with seamless branching, both cuts of Star Trek VI won’t fit on a single standard Blu-ray disc, but they will both fit on the large BD-100 disc used for the 4K presentation.

The real solution, of course, would be to have included a second Blu-ray disc to hold the director’s cut in the packaging — but it seems Paramount chose not to do so, perhaps because of the extra cost.

It is still part of the iTunes streaming release ‘bonus features’ however, so if you’ve purchased the film there (or redeemed the included digital code), you’ll be able to watch the Star Trek VI director’s cut in high definition on that service — as well as on Vudu where it is listed as a separate entry from the theatrical edition.

Here are a collection of comparison screencaps between the 2009 Blu-ray and remastered presentation of the Star Trek VI theatrical cut:

The two remastered editions of of Star Trek VI is available in the 6-film box set or as a standalone 4K + Blu-ray release. The theatrical cut is also available as a standalone Blu-ray. 

A few minor quibbles aside, the new  Star Trek — The Original Motion Picture 6-Movie Collection is the best way to revisit the big-screen adventures of Captain Kirk and his crew — and these new editions of each film are taking over the old 2009-era presentations on streaming services to bring them to the forefront of viewing options.

Illustrated below from iTunes ( picture by @StarTrekVHS on Twitter ), the remastered editions of each  Star Trek film are identified by the rainbow-colored artwork on many streaming services like Vudu (though not on Paramount+, naturally).

While there’s been no formal announcement, the four films starring the  Next Generation cast are expected to get the 4K upgrade next; if things follow the last two years, we should hopefully see them get their own 4K UHD Blu-ray box set by September 2023.

Our coverage of the new  Star Trek home media releases will continue later this week, as we dive into the new  Star Trek: The Motion Picture — The Director’s Edition 4K edition, and break down all the different versions of the first Star Trek film now available on disc.

• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture
• Star Trek: The Original Series
• Trek Merchandise
• Trek Movies

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Star Trek movies, ranked worst to best

Journey into the strange new worlds of the Star Trek movies, ranked worst to best. Live long and get some popcorn.

We're leaving the Neutral zone and taking a stand with our list of the best Star Trek movies.

Star Trek is going through a bit of a retro renaissance at the moment, thanks to a successful first season of Strange New Worlds, which takes place before Kirk ever took over as Captain of the Enterprise. It’s put many a Trek fan in the mood for more classic Trek action. You could cherry-pick the adventures of Kirk and Co. by watching the best Star Trek: The Original Series episodes or if you’re feeling more cinematic, pull from this list of Star Trek movies ranked worst to best. 

Some viewers will be tempted to skip to the top of the list — we get it, your time is valuable, so why bother with the losers? — but there’s something worth experiencing about each and every entry on this list. Even the misses have something interesting to say about Trek in general or the Enterprise crew specifically. This list includes all the Trek films, not just those of the original crew, so you can explore the Kelvin timeline as well as the Next Generation. And if you want to see how all the timelines fit together, check out our guide to watching the Star Trek movies in order too.

Here, then, is the definitive ranking of the best Star Trek movies. Don’t bother arguing with us: We know we’re right. If you’re still in the mood for intergalactic cinema, check out our list of the best space movies or see how the Alien movies ranked . 

13. Star Trek Into Darkness

• Release date: May 16, 2013
• Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana

How this film managed to make Khan a boring antagonist is a mystery that will baffle scholars for years to come. No shade to Benedict Cumberbatch, but he doesn’t have the charisma necessary to persuade viewers to overlook the plot holes and bizarre character choices that make Into Darkness unwatchable. The sacrifice that is so poignant in Wrath of Khan falls flat because the relationship between Kirk and Spock – roles reversed for the climactic moment – barely reaches the level of roommates, let alone dear friends. And don’t get me started on Carol Marcus in her underwear. 

12. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

• Release date: June 9, 1989
• Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley

Final Frontier ’s core idea is actually pretty good: Spock’s half-brother hijacks the Enterprise so he can fly it into the middle of the Milky Way and meet God. Unfortunately, a writers’ strike grounded the script before it got off the ground. What remains is a muddled mess that still may have been watchable were it not for William Shatner. He’d been promised a turn in the director’s chair and this was what he did with it. If you’ve ever wondered if the stories about Shatner’s unbearable ego were true, look no further.  

11. Star Trek: Insurrection

• Release date: December 11, 1998
• Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner

Even hardcore Star Trek fans forget what Insurrection is about. Not because it’s confusing, but because it’s the cinematic equivalent of a filler episode. Starfleet decides to relocate a small (but immortal? Ok) population so that the Federation can claim their planet’s unique natural resource for itself. Feeling betrayed by Starfleet’s apparent disregard for the Prime Directive, Picard gets very, very annoyed. Nothing about this movie is particularly good or bad. It’s all just kind of there . Watching Insurrection will neither ruin your day nor make it any better, so do as you will with it. 

10. Star Trek: Nemesis

• Release date: December 13, 2002

Before he was Bane, Venom, or Mad Max, Tom Hardy was Picard’s clone, Shinzon. He kills the Romulan senate, lures Picard and crew to Romulus under the pretense of peace negotiations, and oh, yeah, he has an android that looks just like Data. The plot is a hot mess of mistaken identity, telepathy, and revenge that never has stakes – or characters – worth caring about. Even the movie’s most emotional moment, when Data sacrifices himself to save Picard, is immediately undercut with a “Just kidding! I downloaded my brain into the android who looks just like me!” Troi and Riker got married, though, so that’s nice. 

9. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

• Release date: June 1, 1984

On the plus side, it has Christopher Lloyd as a Klingon. On the minus side... is everything else. After his sacrifice saves the Enterprise from certain destruction, Spock’s casket is shot into space, eventually settling on the Genesis planet. Thus begins a “how do we get Spock’s consciousness back into his newly reborn body” reverse-heist film that is crammed full with awkward moments. Spock going through puberty? Yikes. Klingons murdering Kirk’s son? Oof. Also, the entire film looks bizarrely cheap. You could generously call it an homage to Trek ’s humble beginnings, but it’s very strange after the lush visuals of Khan . At no point is a viewer not acutely aware that this movie had to happen to get Spock back on the Enterprise, and it almost isn’t worth it.   

8. Star Trek: Generations

• Release date: November 18, 1994
• Cast: Patrick Stewart, William Shatner, Malcolm McDowell

Generations was intended to pass the torch from the cast of The Original Series to that of The Next Generation , with Kirk and Picard teaming up to defeat not-quite-a-villain-he’s-just-sad-really Malcolm McDowell. The shoehorning of Kirk, Scotty, and Chekov into a film set a century after they were zipping around the universe is less than elegant, more than gratuitous. Generations spends so much time waving goodbye to the old crew that it never really gets going as a film, but it did its best with an impossible task. 

7. Star Trek Beyond

• Release date: July 22, 2016
• Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban

I’d put this here just for the line about the “beats and shouting,” if I’m honest. Featuring an unrecognizable Idris Elba as its villain, Krall, Beyond isn’t overly concerned with nuance. It’s fast and loud, the very definition of style over substance. Does the scene set to the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” make any sense? Not a lick, nope, but damn, does it look cool. This is the Trek film you watch when you want to sit back, turn your brain off, and enjoy a lot of colorful, exciting fight and/or chase scenes. Now that I think about it, “beats and shouting” is a pretty apt description of Star Trek Beyond . 

6. Star Trek: The Motion Picture

• Release date: December 7, 1979

The ponderous pacing and pure 70s-ness of the costumes makes The Motion Picture a slog, but at least it’s a spectacular slog. The plot is pure Trek : An energy cloud housing a living machine is headed for Earth, destroying everything in its wake. The Enterprise is the only ship within intercept range of the cloud, because how else is Kirk going to have an excuse to take over command? The Motion Picture shows its age more than most of the other films of the franchise, but was a perfect vehicle to move the Enterprise and her crew from the small screen to the theater. It has interpersonal conflict, heroics, hubris, and a brilliant reveal about V’ger’s true nature.

5. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

• Release date: November 26, 1986

Aka “The One With the Whales”, Voyage Home leans heavily on humor to great effect. It eases off the sci fi, instead going for a classic fish-out-of-water scenario. An alien probe is trying to communicate with Earth, but the only creature that could respond, the humpback whale, is long since extinct. The crew of the Enterprise travel back to 1980’s San Francisco to snatch a mating pair of humpback whales and return them to the future, preventing the unanswered probe from destroying the planet. The ecological message wasn’t exactly subtle, but Voyage isn’t preachy. Chekov asking anyone if they know where the “nuclear wessels” are, Scotty cooing “Hello, computer” into a mouse, Kirk yelling “Double dumbass on you!” to an angry driver – it’s all immensely charming and genuinely funny.

4. Star Trek

• Release date: May 8, 2009
• Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg

Is it a great Trek film? Maybe. Is it fun to see Kirk and Spock’s origins stories? Absolutely. Watching baby Spock beat the snot out of someone at school is highly gratifying, as is seeing the father whose shadow Kirk can never quite escape. The story does a good enough job twisting the timeline so that the reboot won’t be hamstrung by everything that came before it, and Leonard Nimoy is a delight in his final turn as Spock. Star Trek embodies the spirit of unfettered adventure exhibited by The Original Series while simultaneously making the crew into more than just set dressing there to push buttons and open hailing frequencies. And “Hi, Christopher, I’m Nero” is straight up one of the greatest line reads in all of Star Trek . 

3. Star Trek: First Contact

• Release date: November 22, 1996

Jonathan Frakes (aka Commander Riker) directed this absolute treasure of a movie, and his deep love of Trek comes through in every scene. This is a Trek movie for Trek fans, with nods to TV series Deep Space Nine and Voyager in what is essentially the conclusion to Picard’s arc in the legendary The Next Generation episode “Best of Both Worlds.” The Enterprise follows the Borg back in time to prevent them from disrupting First Contact, the event that introduced Earth to the universe. Picard must face the Borg queen (silkily played by Alice Krige) even as Data is tempted by her promise of humanity. The Earth-based subplot about getting First Contact back on track explores a different aspect of humanity, namely how people step up when they’re called to lead. 

2. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

• Release date: December 6, 1991

Some of the entries on this list are little more than over-inflated episodes, but this... this is a movie. Not a film, thank you very much, a get-more-popcorn-and-shut-the-heck-up-until-the-credits-roll movie . The Klingons desperately need the Federation’s help after their moon explodes, and Kirk – whose son was murdered by Klingons just a few films ago – has to serve as liaison. That’s the set up for a murder mystery that will see Kirk and McCoy imprisoned and Spock turning the Enterprise upside down to find the true culprit. Christopher Plummer is having an absolute blast as a Shakespeare-quoting Klingon who has no interest in peace. Fun fact: This is one of two Trek films directed by Nicholas Meyer. The other one is... 

1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

• Release date: June 4, 1982

First, and most importantly, yes, that is Ricardo Montalban’s real chest. Secondly, if you’re only going to watch a single Trek film, this is the one. Picking up the threads of The Original Series episode “Space Seed”, Khan is a retelling of Moby Dick as the genetically superior Khan chases his white whale, Admiral James T. Kirk. Montalban and Shatner are at the top of their games, effortlessly owning every scene they’re in, yet providing the perfect counter for each other. Director Nicholas Meyer, who also wrote Khan , shows exquisite patience in the film’s climactic showdown, drawing out the tension as Kirk and Khan hunt each other in the Mutara Nebula. The other Trek films are great space romps, but Khan feels deeply, deeply personal as you watch these great men spit and claw at each other with unfathomable rage. 

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Susan Arendt is a freelance writer, editor, and consultant living in Burleson, TX. She's a huge sci-fi TV and movie buff, and will talk your Vulcan ears off about Star Trek. You can find more of her work at Wired, IGN, Polygon, or look for her on Twitter: @SusanArendt. Be prepared to see too many pictures of her dogs.

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Classic franchise gets new life; OK for older kids.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that although this slick, upbeat sci-fi adventure isn't much more violent than the earlier Star Trek movies, there's a heightened feel that gives Star Trek a little bit more edge. While the action is (mostly) bloodless, it's also intense; expect lots of fights, battles, and hand-to-hand…

Why Age 12+?

Some language throughout including "arse" (in the context of kicking), "damn," "

The sci-fi military-style action violence is plentiful but not especially bloody

Characters drink beer, wine, and hard liquor, sometimes to excess.

Some suggestive talk and kissing; two female characters are seen in their underw

The movie is set in the 24th century, but somehow Nokia and Budweiser manage to

Any Positive Content?

Even with its sci-fi action and occasional flirty sexuality, the movie has posit

Almost every character in the film puts aside something -- regret, pain, selfish

Some language throughout including "arse" (in the context of kicking), "damn," "ass," "hell," "oh my God," "bulls--t," "goddamn," and "whore." One clear (though not particularly noticeable) use of "f--king" in the lyrics of a Beastie Boys song played during a scene.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

The sci-fi military-style action violence is plentiful but not especially bloody. At one point, an entire planet (with a population in the billions) is destroyed. The crews of various starships are pummeled by explosions, struck with torpedoes, sucked out of hull breaches into space, and generally assaulted. A character is impaled with a sharp-ended staff; another falls to her death; another receives several harsh pummelings. Some fistfights. Humanoid aliens are shot close-up; a monstrous beast threatens a character.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Some suggestive talk and kissing; two female characters are seen in their underwear. An underwear-clad couple makes out on a bed, though it initially seems like they're having sex. There's a joke about "farm boys having sex with animals."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

The movie is set in the 24th century, but somehow Nokia and Budweiser manage to make appearances.

Positive Messages

Even with its sci-fi action and occasional flirty sexuality, the movie has positive, welcome messages about individual responsibility, collective accomplishment, institutional tradition, and working for the greater good.

Positive Role Models

Almost every character in the film puts aside something -- regret, pain, selfishness -- for the ultimate mission, with teamwork as its own reward. Zoe Saldana's Uhura is a strong female role model. Good cast diversity.

Parents need to know that although this slick, upbeat sci-fi adventure isn't much more violent than the earlier Star Trek movies , there's a heightened feel that gives Star Trek a little bit more edge. While the action is (mostly) bloodless, it's also intense; expect lots of fights, battles, and hand-to-hand combat. At one point, the villains destroy an entire planet of humanoid aliens. Some of the comic relief scenes have a flirty, playful sense of sexuality (Kirk has always been a ladies' man), but that's balanced by the mature depiction of a relationship. There's also a bit of language ("bulls--t," etc.) and some drinking. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (84)
• Kids say (128)

Based on 84 parent reviews

What's the Story?

Re-starting the Star Trek franchise from its very foundations, STAR TREK begins as a time-travelling bad guy comes from a far-flung future to the early days of the Trek universe. Seeking to avenge a future tragedy, unstuck-in-time villain Nero ( Eric Bana ) attacks the very foundations of the Federation, including Vulcan and Earth. The only ship that can stop him, the Enterprise , is in the hands of untested Starfleet officers Spock ( Zachary Quinto ), McCoy ( Karl Urban ), and a rebel who just barely made it on board, James T. Kirk ( Chris Pine ).

Is It Any Good?

Rocketing at warp speed without ever slowing down, J.J. Abrams directs this reboot as a smart, speedy thrill ride that doesn't indulge in nostalgia for its own sake. Star Trek welcomes newcomers while still delivering every moment fans might want from of the crew of the Enterprise . Quinto and Pine are both excellent in their own right and also have a real chemistry between them, while Zoe Saldana turns the thankless role of communications expert Uhura into a vital part of the story.

The film isn't perfect -- there are a few minor missteps -- but at the same time, it's also lovingly made, speedily paced, and completely aware of its job: to entertain audiences without leaning too heavily on speeches or sadness, opting instead to deliver action, adventure, and (perhaps a little too much) comedy. Still, in an era when too many summer blockbusters think they can get away with being dumb by claiming to be "fun," it's a pleasure to see a movie as well-made, clever, and charming as this actually seem to want to earn our money by putting on a real show.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the enduring appeal of Star Trek -- what makes people become such faithful fans? Why do you think the studio decided to make a new version? How does it compare to the older movies and TV shows?

Talk about revenge, which is a major theme in the film. Ask kids whether it's ever justified to hurt others in the name of revenge. How much of the movie's violence can be traced back to that motivation? How much impact does it have compared to the violence in other action movies? Why?

There is a good amount of diversity in the cast, both mirroring and improving on the original series . Why does having diverse media role models matter?

How do the characters in Star Trek demonstrate teamwork ? Why is this an important character strength?

Movie Details

• In theaters : May 8, 2009
• On DVD or streaming : November 17, 2009
• Cast : Chris Pine , Eric Bana , Zachary Quinto
• Director : J.J. Abrams
• Inclusion Information : Gay actors
• Studio : Paramount Pictures
• Genre : Science Fiction
• Topics : Adventures , Space and Aliens
• Character Strengths : Teamwork
• Run time : 126 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : sci-fi action and violence, and brief sexual content
• Last updated : June 17, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

What to watch next.

Star Trek: The Original Series

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Star Trek Into Darkness

Star Trek: Generations

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• Space and Aliens

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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

The Next Star Trek Series Has Officially Started Production

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Production has officially begun on the next Star Trek series - Star Trek: Starfleet Academy .

The news was announced via an August 26 X post from the official Star Trek on Paramount+ social media account. The post, featuring images of the cast and crew of the upcoming series, was captioned with the message, "School is in session, cadets! Today marks the official start of production as the [ Star Trek ] Stage welcomes [ Starfleet Academy ]."

School is in session, cadets!

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Blu-Ray Review: The Final Season's Not Quite Starry Sendoff

The Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Blu-Ray checks all the boxes, but it's not as grand as the Paramount+ show deserves for its final outing.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is being helmed by showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau, the former of whom will be directing the first two of the series' planned ten episodes. Among the cast of Starfleet Academy are Academy Award-winner Holly Hunter, who will portray the series' captain and chancellor of the eponymous school, as well as Academy Award-nominee Paul Giamatti, who will take on the role of the first season's recurring antagonist. The series' roster of cadets is currently comprised of George Hawkins, Zoë Steiner, Bella Shepard, Kerrice Brooks, Sandro Rosta, and Karim Diané, who will be joined by returning Star Trek: Discovery actor Oded Fehr as Admiral Vance and Star Trek: Voyager star Robert Picardo as The Doctor.

The Plot of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

As the official synopsis for the series describes, " Star Trek: Starfleet Academy introduces viewers to a young group of cadets who come together to pursue a common dream of hope and optimism. Under the watchful and demanding eyes of their instructors, they discover what it takes to become Starfleet officers as they navigate blossoming friendships, explosive rivalries, first loves and a new enemy that threatens both the Academy and the Federation itself." It is currently expected that production on Starfleet Academy will run through to 2025, setting the series up for what Kurtzman has noted could be a 2026 release date .

This Live-Action Star Trek Character is Quietly Crushing it In Star Trek: Prodigy

Star Trek: Prodigy introduces a new generation of fans to a new generation of characters, but one live-action legacy hero is crushing her role.

At the time of Star Trek: Star Fleet 's confirmation back in 2023 , Kurstzman and Landau released a joint statement inviting audiences to "Explore the galaxy" and "Captain your destiny." The statement continued, "For the first time in over a century, our campus will be re-opened to admit individuals a minimum of 16 Earth years (or species equivalent) who dream of exceeding their physical, mental and spiritual limits, who value friendship, camaraderie, honor and devotion to a cause greater than themselves... Today we encourage all who share our dreams, goals and values to join a new generation of visionary cadets as they take their first steps toward creating a bright future for us all. Apply today! Ex Astris, Scientia!"

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy does not currently have a planned release date.

Source: Trek Movie , Twitter

The Star Trek universe encompasses multiple series, each offering a unique lens through which to experience the wonders and perils of space travel. Join Captain Kirk and his crew on the Original Series' voyages of discovery, encounter the utopian vision of the Federation in The Next Generation, or delve into the darker corners of galactic politics in Deep Space Nine. No matter your preference, there's a Star Trek adventure waiting to ignite your imagination.

“Risky Business” Remains One of the Most Daring Films of the ’80s

There’s a long-held belief about Hollywood history that, from basically the moment “Heaven’s Gate” nearly bankrupted United Artists in 1980 to the moment “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” kicked off the indie boom of the ‘90s, studio executives had an almost pathological aversion to any movie with artistic ambition. There’s at least some truth to this, and seminal texts like Peter Biskind’s 1998 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls have cooked those kernels of truth into a full-blown mythologizing of ‘70s and ‘90s Hollywood, while the ‘80s remain largely dismissed as a creative wasteland.

The Criterion Collection has tacitly supported this version of film history, with precious few studio films from the 1980s included among their more than 1,200 releases. So when 1983’s “Risky Business”—the movie that made Tom Cruise a star—received a Criterion release last month, it felt like a choice worth a deeper consideration. Why this movie? When I first saw “Risky Business” as a teenager in the ’90s, it struck me as just another teen sex comedy (and one without many jokes, at that). But now, seeing it for the first time as an adult, I was floored by a masterpiece of American cinema that has just as much artistry and insight about its cultural and political moment as films by Robert Altman, Alan J. Pakula, and Hal Ashby had a decade earlier. 

1983’s “Risky Business” is the third major ‘80s teen movie released by the Criterion Collection, following 1982’s “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and 1985’s “The Breakfast Club.” And like those other two, “Risky Business” feels almost more like a documentary of American teenage malaise in the Reagan Era than it does any other kind of film. And the Reagan Era is all over “Risky Business,” as the characters are each initially defined purely by their ability to shill a product, and contribute to the insatiable death march of American Capitalism. 

“Risky Business” was to be the second film from David Geffen’s new production company, following Robert Towne’s “Personal Best,” which was a notorious commercial flop the year before. So to help the film’s commercial prospects, Geffen candidly demanded the lead role of Joel Goodson be given “to someone I’d want to fuck.” Enter Tom Cruise, who had gained some notice in 1981’s “Taps” and was in the middle of filming Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Outsiders” in Oklahoma when he was hired for the role that changed his life forever. Joel Goodson, a high school senior from an affluent Chicago suburb, is left alone when his parents leave town for the week, and his friend Miles tries to hire a prostitute for him. “Sometimes, you just gotta say ‘What the fuck,’” Miles tells Joel (a line that becomes a recurring motif in the film). 

Joel is initially resistant, preferring to use his week of freedom to immortally dance in his underwear while rocking out to Bob Seger. But he finds he can’t shake the idea that’s been planted in his head, and temptation gets the better of him. Enter Lana (Rebecca De Mornay), a call girl who rocks Joel’s world even more than Bob Seger and then promptly steals his mother’s most valuable possession (a large glass egg) when Joel doesn’t have enough cash on hand to pay her. Some hijinks ensue, there’s a chase with Guido the Killer Pimp while Joel is driving his dad’s Porsche, and eventually the Porsche (which Joel was explicitly told not to touch while his parents were gone) ends up in Lake Michigan. How does Joel get the money to fix the car? By teaming up with Lana and her friends to become a pimp himself, and use his house as a brothel for the entire high school. 

One of the subplots writer/director Paul Brickman wove into the film was Joel’s membership in his school’s “Future Enterprisers” club, and his need to develop a product that he could sell and report profits on. (The best he and his friends could come up with was a notepad that lights up when there’s an important message). Joel’s presumed success as a Future Enterpriser would, in turn, help get him into Princeton, and his father has already set up an interview with a local alum. Of course that interview ends up happening on brothel night, and the alum has such a memorable evening that he reports back with the words “Princeton could use a guy like Joel.”

For most teen sex movies, the sex is almost always about the seemingly insurmountable achievement of a teenage boy getting laid. But there’s no achievement in paying for something with your parents’ money, and “Risky Business” doesn’t pretend otherwise. Rather, “Risky Business” treats its sex as transactional—and a rare case where the woman also gets what she wants out of the deal (unlike nearly every other teen sex movie)—but also as an act of actual pleasure. To that end, the film’s two sex scenes are crafted with even more overt eroticism than an Adrian Lyne movie.

In the first one, our introduction to Lana is played to near mythic proportions. Joel wakes up from a dream state as Lana walks in the room and asks if he’s ready for her. And what ensues may not rip any bodices, but it sure does blow some French doors open. Then for the second scene, which takes place on the Chicago El, Paul Brickman edgelords us through Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” building the sexual tension and longing as Joel and Lana patiently wait for the train to empty, one passenger at a time, before getting down to (risky) business. 

The real MVP of these two sequences (other than Brickman’s sublime direction) is the German electronic band Tangerine Dream, who composed the score for the film (as well as classic scores for other great films, like Michael Mann’s “Thief” and William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer”). It’s unfortunate that the film is so widely remembered for that “Old Time Rock & Roll” needle drop, because Tangerine Dream crafted one of the best and most sumptuous film scores of the ‘80s— particularly on “Lana,” which soundtracks the first sex scene .

“Risky Business” was Paul Brickman’s directorial debut (after writing a few films in the late ‘70s, including the first “Bad News Bears” sequel), and it should have launched a major filmmaking career. Instead, Brickman only ever directed one more feature, 1990’s “Men Don’t Leave.” Several things likely contributed to him leaving Hollywood behind, including the financial failure and critical drubbing of 1983’s “Deal of the Century,” which Brickman wrote and William Friedkin directed. But it seems like the biggest factor may be how he was forced to compromise on the end of “Risky Business,” a historical wrong that Criterion’s new edition of the film finally makes right. 

In the film’s theatrical ending, which was mandated by the studio, Joel is headed off to his Princeton destiny, but he and Lana talk about still seeing each other in the meantime, and they joke about negotiating a price for another night together while walking through the park. But in Brickman’s original ending, included as a bonus on the Criterion release, Joel and Lana speculate over their future as the film ends on a pensive shot of the two in a melancholic embrace, knowing those futures won’t involve each other. 

The difference between these two final images is night and day, like imagining “The Graduate” without the final shot of Benjamin and Elaine on the bus. That particular ennui—of achieving your dream and being thrust into the future you strove for—is the entire point. And it had been telegraphed from the film’s first moments, as we hear Joel, in voiceover, saying “The dream is always the same,” and describing a panic dream about meeting a beautiful woman and then being unable to hang onto her, as he hopelessly navigates the fog of an endless path that he can’t deviate from. That, in a way, is the ultimate fear of all the main characters in the three ‘80s teen movies in the Criterion Collection. 

The metaphors in “Risky Business” don’t require much dissection; participation in Reaganomics makes pimps and hookers of us all, and some of us turn out to be preternaturally gifted at said pimping and hooking. But the way Brickman’s story strips these themes down to their core is almost breathtaking in its economy. The tacit currency of the Reagan Era was who you screwed and how well you screwed them. In “Risky Business,” screwing is the literal currency, and Joel Goodson proves to be so good at facilitating it that it propels him all the way to the Ivy League. (That Joel is recognized and rewarded for this while Lana is left behind is made more obvious in Brickman’s original ending.) 

“Risky Business” turned Tom Cruise into an overnight star, and the reductive version of that story is that the underwear dance is what did it. Of course there’s some truth to that, but that scene doesn’t matter if the movie isn’t a ubiquitous hit, and the movie isn’t a hit if Cruise isn’t perfect for every other aspect of playing Joel Goodson, too. Brickman found Cruise at an ideal crossroads moment, when he still possessed the vulnerability and hesitancy of a normal human, but was learning how to tap into a particular swinging-dick energy that he made his own. Cruise quickly carried that persona to megastardom, while Brickman and De Mornay never really enjoyed the careers they should have—an outcome that feels almost too on the nose.

As the film ends, we see other members of Joel’s Future Enterprisers club deliver their final presentations, telling us how much their product cost and how many hundreds of dollars in profit they made over the course of the semester. Then, over the final shot of Joel and Lana, we hear Joel in voiceover: “My name is Joel Goodson. I deal in human fulfillment. I grossed over eight thousand dollars in one night.” It’s the perfect note to end not just one of Hollywood’s greatest films of the 1980s, but also one of its greatest films about that oft-maligned decade. You are the product you deal in, and your worth is the profit you generate. Well, as long as you’re the affluent kid who looks and acts like Tom Cruise. 

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See Spock Imprisoned By Sela In Preview Of ‘Star Trek: Defiant’ #18

| August 27, 2024 | By: TrekMovie.com Staff 3 comments so far

This week IDW continues off the new “The Stars of Home” arc with part 2, for the ongoing Star Trek: Defiant series. Defiant is written by Chris Cantwell with art by Ángel Unzueta. We have a preview and the covers for issue 16.

Star Trek: Defiant #18

With Spock rotting in a Romulan cell aboard Sela’s ship, the rest of the  Defiant  crew readies the farmers of Antara for an invasion by General Revo and his relentless Romulan army. This leaves Worf, B’Elanna, and Ro with two crewmates down, and despite how hopeful the planet’s population is, what are three failed Starfleet officers and lowly resistance fighters to a heavily armed and technologically advanced Romulan strike team?

Cover A by Angel Unzueta

Cover B by Elizabeth Beals

RI cover by Declan Shalvey

Credits/Setup: 

Five-page preview: 

Defiant  continues on Wednesday

Star Trek: Defiant #18 arrives on Wednesday, August 28. You can order issue 18 or upcoming issues at TFAW . Or pick up individual digital editions at Amazon/comiXology .

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