All The Star Trek Movies In Order Of Good


I like Star Trek. Like, tons and tons and tons. But not all Star Trek is created equal. The following is all of the Star Trek movies from best to worst, and a short blurb as to why. From here, I'm going to watch all of these starting at the bottom and working up. The biggest reason is that there's currently a tie for third, and I need to watch them both again to pick out the winner. I'll be posting full reviews of them as I go.
The Wrath of Khan – Fantastic movie. My fifth favorite movie of all time. Great screenplay, great acting, great action, a touching plot, a compelling villain, a magnificent score. What’s not to like? It ticks every box.
The Undiscovered Country – This movie is in my top ten list as well. It’s at number eight. It’s in there for all the same reasons as Wrath of Khan, lacking only a truly amazing score to tie with it.
First Contact/Into Darkness – These two are difficult. They’re in a legitimate dead heat for a lot of reasons. Both very well written, equally compelling villains, fantastic action, real character motivation, brilliant acting. Patrick Stewart at his best as Picard and Chris Pine performing a Kirk I actually like. It’s a tough race between the two. I need to watch them both again before I can choose.
The Voyage Home – Once you get past the top four, the overall quality of the movies drops off sharply. But The Voyage Home is still a great movie, with a fantastic script and a fun little story. Its big selling point is the humor. This movie is too funny to not like.
Generations – Generations is basically the Next Gen version of The Voyage Home. It’s slightly less consistent in its use of bad physics, and that’s why it loses out.
Nemesis – By this point in the list, the movies are starting to suffer multiple issues. But Nemesis still has solid performances from Stewart and Spiner, probably the fourth or fifth most touching moment in Trek history (It’s not the wedding. Please), and a really great space battle at the end.
The Motion Picture – There are many issues with this film. In fact, it’s got like, one redeeming feature, and that is the music. You could say, “Hey, let’s watch The Motion Picture” and I’d be all like, “Sure!” because that would give me an excuse to listen to a fantastic two-hour symphony.
Insurrection – This one is a similar story to The Motion Picture. Jerry Goldsmith delivers a very nice score, there’s some nice space battles, and jokes about getting old from a legitimately ageing cast. The real problem is, Wrath of Khan did the whole getting old thing, and it did it way better.
The Search for Spock – Now we’re getting into the part of the list that I will seldom watch voluntarily. The Search for Spock has no redeeming features. It doesn’t have any terrible features either, really. It’s just so dad-gum boring.
Star Trek – It’s not a bad movie. But it’s not actually all that great as far as Sci-Fi goes, and it’s not really ‘Star Trek’ in the same way that Enterprise is totally not ‘Star Trek’. It was a ploy to get Star Trek some attention, and the only reason I can’t outright hate it is that it made enough money to justify Into Darkness, which I heartily appreciate.
The Final Frontier – Okay, honestly? This movie sucks. Completely.

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