I saw that the Star Trek movies are on HBO Max.

[agent817]

I mean the older ones, not the 2009-2016 series with Chris Pine, although I could watch those as I remember enjoying Into Darkness and Beyond.

Anyway, should I watch these? It seems that people are generally mixed on the odd-numbered entries in this series, like The Motion Picture, The Search for Spock, The Final Frontier, and then when it gets to The Next Generation films, people have knocked Generations. Not sure about First Contact or Insurrection, but I remember some people knocked Nemesis. I also heard that there was supposed to be a film after Nemesis, but that movie flopped.

I have seen The Wrath of Khan before, which was good. I can't say that I know what the general consensus says about The Voyage Home or The Undiscovered Country.

So where do any of you stand on these films? I might watch them soon, but I shall see. Or should I just watch the TV shows like TOS, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, or Voyager?

[Mighty Attack Tribble]

The Motion Picture 3/10
Hate it. It's a series of half-baked ideas and stupidly long model shots that serve little purpose beyond showing off the huge SFX budget that moves with all the pace of a sloth drowning in molasses.

The Search for Spock 6/10
Enjoyable, but a step down from Wrath of Khan. Christopher Lloyd plays a Klingon, which is fun.

The Voyage Home 5/10
Wonderful if you like fish out of water (no pun intended) comedy. I do not, thus I don't like this one.

The Final Frontier 5/10
Takes a huge, steaming piss over established canon, and isn't much more than two hours of William Shatner self-fellating. It does have some of the best Kirk-Bones-Spock camaraderie in the franchise, though.

The Undiscovered Country 9/10
Outstanding political thriller. If Wrath of Khan is the best TOS movie, then this is half a point behind.

Generations 7/10
Underrated. Malcolm McDowell absolutely kills it at the villain, and Patrick Stewart delivers.

First Contact 9.5/10
The best Trek movie. End of story.

Insurrections 5/10
A bland, by-the-numbers feature-length episode of TNG. If the Jonathan Frakes/Marina Sirtis commentary track where they spend most of he time mocking the movie is available, check it out.

Nemesis 3/10
Tom Hardy nearly committed suicide because of the harm this movie did to his career. That sums it up perfectly.

[Limity (BLM)]

Being a die hard and life long Trekkie, this is actually a really hard question to answer. I know which are my favorites and why, but that doesn't really work for someone brand new to the franchise.

Like my favorite is Star Trek 3, but so much of that is because the characters really resonate with me, having grown up with them. Is it as good of a movie for someone that is brand new? Probably not.

Since you've already seen TWOK, I'd go with First Contact being your next movie. It's the most accessible, and most solid.

[tirtefaa]

The TOS movies are pretty good, except for the 5th one.

I don't like the TNG movies at all, even First Contact wasn't my cup of tea.

[Deleted]

I'm currently watching every Trek episode and movie ever.

I started in June 2021 with the original series. At this point I've seen all the classic stuff aside from having like 10 episodes left of Enterprise. And when it comes to newer stuff I've seen Picard and Lower Decks.

I highly recommend doing a deep dive like I did. It seems overwhelming, but having seen it all now I can't imagine skipping any of it.

[Push R Truth]

I'd make sure to watch all the "old cast" Trek movies once in order for sure. They are one long over-arching story that do end with a nice little bow with The Undiscovered County.

Even if you are a Trek Virgin and have never seen a single episode... the first movie is basically a super long episode with a real budget and it does a great job introducing most everybody and everything. It's overly long with shots and uses filler for extra time, but it does the job. It's by far the one movie of the original series that you can watch just once and never again.

[Ryushinku]

The neat thing is, 2-3-4 (Khan, Search and Voyage) flow into each other as a thematic trilogy.

And since 5 is skippable - it has its moments, but it is skippable - you finish instead with 6 (Undiscovered) as a good coda to the whole thing.

As for the TNG films, yeah, watch First Contact, possible Generations first if you haven't seen much TNG stuff, and leave it at that.

[Stone Cold Eleanor Shellstrop]

I like all the original 6 six movies but for different reasons.

TMP: I like that the movie is a big sci-fi conceit. It's big on visuals and vibes and shorter on characters and story. I appreciate it as something that doesn't neatly fit within the franchise as it was thought of at the time, as well as something that doesn't fit within the tastes of what pop culture audiences wanted in a post-Star Wars world.

TWoK: It's fine. I'm not sure how this movie, out of all of them, got pegged as the best movie. The ship-to-ship combat is fun, but I think the memed moments that endure as being capital D-dramatic are those that the movie goes out of its way to undercut. It's on the lower end of the originals for me.

TSfS: This movie succeeds because of Christopher Lloyd's Kruge and, to a lesser extent, the reinvention of the Klingons into 1980s Cold War analogues from the 1960s ones.

TVH: The time travel doesn't make a lick of sense, but whatever, a goofy sci-fi conceit that puts the franchise even more explicitly into talking about the real 1980s as a pre-text for what happens in the series narratively.

TFF: Some good scenes, a silly, but fun premise that is really an episode of the TV show made into a movie. I would have preferred more story about the Federation, the Klingon Empire, and the Romulan Star Empire trying to hash out negotiations than what the movie is actually about.

TUC: Easily the best of the TOS movies. It's brisk, but meaty. It adds shades of grey to the Federation out of which shows like TNG and especially DS9 will make plenty of hay. One of the main 7 gets a major push. Chang is a wonderful ham of a villain. I wish it was this movie that took hold in the pop culture consciousness rather than TWoK, alas.

If I had to rank them, I'd go 6, 4, 3, 2, 1, 5.

[Limity (BLM)]

Jan 17, 2023 17:48:22 GMT -5 Ryushinku said:

The neat thing is, 2-3-4 (Khan, Search and Voyage) flow into each other as a thematic trilogy.

And since 5 is skippable - it has its moments, but it is skippable - you finish instead with 6 (Undiscovered) as a good coda to the whole thing.

As for the TNG films, yeah, watch First Contact, possible Generations first if you haven't seen much TNG stuff, and leave it at that.

I remember when that dawned on me some years ago, the trilogy of 2, 3, and 4. More cohesive than many other planned film trilogies.

5 is a good example of my quandary in recommending which Star Trek movies to watch for a person new to Trek. I'm so steeped in the franchise that I can find plenty to enjoy in 5 just with the characters, and easily disregard everything else. Same with Generations, I can disregard its flaws with ease, because as a fan I can still find plenty to enjoy about it.

[prettynami]

Love the Star Trek movies! I think they have been strangely consistently good until the rough patch of the TNG movies.

My personal rank would be (Favorite Part): 6 (That thrilling ending! The incredible pacing throughout!), 3 (Directly impacts so much of the series and that stealing the enterprise scene!), 2 (The space battles and those sexy new uniforms), 4 (Nice light hearted change of pace), 1 (The Vygr parts are visually spectacular and it really feels like a great high budget TOS episode come to life), Generations (Stewart's best work as Picard), 5 (I liked Sybok and in particular the scene with him, Kirk, McCoy, and Spock), First Contact (Interesting lore wise and Picard has a few good scenes)........ Nemesis then Insurrection (These last ones are so so so bad though).

[Limity (BLM)]

Jan 17, 2023 22:40:24 GMT -5 prettynami said:

Love the Star Trek movies! I think they have been strangely consistently good until the rough patch of the TNG movies.

My personal rank would be (Favorite Part): 6 (That thrilling ending! The incredible pacing throughout!), 3 (Directly impacts so much of the series and that stealing the enterprise scene!), 2 (The space battles and those sexy new uniforms), 4 (Nice light hearted change of pace), 1 (The Vygr parts are visually spectacular and it really feels like a great high budget TOS episode come to life), Generations (Stewart's best work as Picard), 5 (I liked Sybok and in particular the scene with him, Kirk, McCoy, and Spock), First Contact (Interesting lore wise and Picard has a few good scenes)........ Nemesis then Insurrection (These last ones are so so so bad though).

I'll rewatch that stealing the enterprise scene at least once a month. It's amazing how good it is, especially as the action of it is essentially an old beat up car going 5 mph backwards out of a parking garage. The music, Kirk's preamble, the music, the whole crew united and working together, the music, his immediate response of "warp speed!" in the face of Stiles's threat. Oh, and the music.

[agent817]

I started watching TOS on Paramount+, but I am not sure if the movies are tied to the show.

I am thinking about jumping to the films soon. It was said that the films with the old crew (Kirk, Spock, Bones, and the others) are an overarching story. I think I could binge on the six films and then go into the TNG films.

[Mighty Attack Tribble]

Jan 18, 2023 0:24:41 GMT -5 agent817 said:

I started watching TOS on Paramount+, but I am not sure if the movies are tied to the show.

I am thinking about jumping to the films soon. It was said that the films with the old crew (Kirk, Spock, Bones, and the others) are an overarching story. I think I could binge on the six films and then go into the TNG films.

Only Wrath of Khan has a direct link to TOS, being a sequel to the episode "Space Seed", while The Motion Picture is completely standalone.

II-V all follow in smooth fashion, with each movie picks up either directly from where the previous one left off, or shortly after. VI pretty much ignores V altogether, but that's not unusual – V was more or less considered unofficially non-canon until just last year, when a controversial character introduced in V was brought back in Strange New Worlds.

[YAKMAN is ICHIBAN]

Jan 18, 2023 1:55:37 GMT -5 Mighty Attack Tribble said:

Jan 18, 2023 0:24:41 GMT -5 agent817 said:

I started watching TOS on Paramount+, but I am not sure if the movies are tied to the show.

I am thinking about jumping to the films soon. It was said that the films with the old crew (Kirk, Spock, Bones, and the others) are an overarching story. I think I could binge on the six films and then go into the TNG films.

Only Wrath of Khan has a direct link to TOS, being a sequel to the episode "Space Seed", while The Motion Picture is completely standalone.

II-V all follow in smooth fashion, with each movie picks up either directly from where the previous one left off, or shortly after. VI pretty much ignores V altogether, but that's not unusual – V was more or less considered unofficially non-canon until just last year, when a controversial character introduced in V was brought back in Strange New Worlds.

I somehow never got around to watching much of TOS until last year and finally watched Space Seed

Jesus tapdancing Christ is Khan genuinely uncomfortable to watch with his abusive manipulations of that one female crew member.




Personally my favorite is The Voyage Home. I won't say it is the best, but it is the most fun since it leans into the comedy. Double dumbass on you!

[Hit Girl]

I love the first six.

All the TNG movies were shit.

[thechase]

Jan 18, 2023 12:33:12 GMT -5 Hit Girl said:

I love the first six.

All the TNG movies were shit.

I like Insurrection,  it feels the most like a TNG story

[schma]

I found insurrection was better with other people as it was somewhat comedic. The first time I watched it was meh. The next time I watched it with a group of friends and had a much better time. I barely remember nemesis. I really liked first contact. Many of the original 6 I need to go back and watch again.

[thechase]

First Contact is great too. Peak of TNG mania at the time, great score, endlessly quotable.

[Lizuka #BLM]

I think the only ones of the originals I've actually watched are Wrath of Khan and First Contact but they're both pretty good. Wouldn't mind trying to make the time for the others at some point. .... Other than probably the Motionless Picture.

[tafkaga]

Voyage Home and Undiscovered Country are easily the best TOS movies imo, though I'll admit that to having a soft spot for the first film too. I think Kirk was weird in the first three movies, and didn't find his legs as a character until the 4th movie. That's why I kind of don't hate The Final Frontier, just because the Kirk-Spock-McCoy stuff is so good.

First Contact is the only really good TNG movie.