Star Trek at the box office

I've always been interested in box office results.  Recently I've begun taking a closer look at different sets of figures: the international box office and the adjusted-for-inflation box office, which is something I previously didn't care too much about but now view as a window into comparative popularity.  This is going to be a look at how Star Trek movies look from these vantage points.  All figures come from Box Office Mojo, retrieved on 6/5/18.  (B = billion, M = million)

The first list is the US box office report:

1. Star Trek (2009) $257M
The first of the Abrams reboot series; this will be the most successful movie in two of the three lists.

2. Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) $228M
The second in the Abrams reboot series will take the top slot in one of the two remaining lists.

3. Star Trek Beyond (2016) $158M
This will be the third Abrams reboot series entry's best showing.

4. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) $109M
The obvious favorite among general audiences, it's never been as popular among fans.  We might see why in another list.

5. Star Trek: First Contact (1996) $92M
The second Picard flick and by far the most successful.

6. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) $82M
This total is going to have long legs.  You'll see why its exposure caused problems.

7. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) $78M
Its inordinate popularity with fans always seems to indicate it was more successful than the first one.  It wasn't.

8. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) $76M
Yet fans are never as excited about its sequel, even though it was about as successful.

9. Star Trek Generations (1994) $75M
This meeting of Kirk and Picard was a huge disappointment in a lot of ways.

10. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) $74M
The final full cast appearance of the original Kirk crew made up a lot of ground from its predecessor, but not quite enough.

11. Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) $70M
Surprisingly, despite its reputation the third Picard entry was about par for the course.

12. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) $52M
The first real flop of the franchise.

13. Star Trek Nemesis (2002) $43M
The second and far more disastrous was also Picard's fourth and last appearance.

Okay! 

Now onto adjusted for inflation, in which we see some interesting things develop:

1. Star Trek (2009) $316M
Still the most popular!  This is officially Star Trek as a whole at its most popular.

2. The Motion Picture (1979) $300M
Here's the biggest surprise!  Maybe it shouldn't be, being the oldest entry in the series, and therefore the greatest beneficiary of inflation.  But here we see that the first and subsequently much-maligned movie in the franchise was also its most successful for years.  Thirty years, to be exact!

3. The Voyage Home (1986) $264M
And here we see just how popular this one really was!

4. Into Darkness (2013) $250M
And here's where we see where all the fan outrage about Khan's second movie appearance comes from; it officially made more money, and thus had more exposure.

5. The Wrath of Khan (1982) $245M
Just a little more, but that's a little too much competition for some.

6. The Search for Spock (1984) $208M
When you look at the unadjusted box office, it looks like the follow-up follows more closely than in the adjusted box office. 

7. First Contact (1996) $189M
In the unadjusted box office this looks like a much more impressive hit.

8. Beyond (2016) $170M
You can see how far this one fell in comparison.  That's why it was so little talked about compared to its two predecessors.

9. Generations (1994) $165M
But it still did better than this one.

10. The Undiscovered Country (1991) $163M
Fans were so relieved to like a Star Trek movie again, they didn't really give this one its due.

11. Insurrection (1998) $134M
It doesn't look like par for the course in the adjusted box office.

12. The Final Frontier (1989) $120M
Although Final Frontier doesn't look as bad in comparison from this vantage point.

13. Nemesis (2002) $67M
Hard to make this one look good.


Okay!

Box Office Mojo doesn't have a full chart for international results (totals in parentheses include unadjusted results).  Here's what's available:

1. Into Darkness (2013) $238M ($467M total)
Here's where Wrath of Khan fans really have kittens.  It's technically the most successful Khan movie.

2. Beyond (2016) $184M ($343M total)
Surprisingly, this ranks above the first Abrams on this list.

3. Star Trek (2009) $128M ($385M total)
Still near the top, naturally.

4. First Contact (1996) $54M ($146M total)
Unsurprisingly charting high here.

5. Generations (1994) $42M ($118M total)
Here's where Generations most looks like a winner.

6. Insurrection (1998) $42M ($112M total)
And here's where you can see Picard made Star Trek more popular internationally than Kirk.

7. Nemesis (2002) $24M ($67M)
Even the least successful one was more successful than the most successful original Kirk film on the list.

8. The Undiscovered Country (1991) $22M ($96M total)
Which was the last one.  So internationally, Generations really was, comparatively, a huge hit, and original Kirk's biggest exposure, at least as far as Box Office Mojo knows.

And now you know!

A Star Trek Beyond Cheat Sheet from the TV Franchise Perspective

I'm not one of those fans who see parallels and automatically think dark, judgmental thoughts.  I see parallels as significant resonance in storytelling, affirming what has come before by addressing it and saying something new, which is the basis of all good storytelling.  That being said, Star Trek Beyond brings plots from several key episodes you might want to keep in mind:

"The Tholian Web" (original series)
As an episode straight out of the bedrock franchise material from the '60s TV show, "Tholian Web" probably needs the least amount of introduction.  Known as much for the introduction of the Tholians (not actually seen until the Enterprise two-part "In a Mirror, Darkly"), it features, like Beyond, an lost Starfleet ship, the Defiant (Deep Space Nine later featured a warship called the Defiant, too), which Kirk finds himself aboard, separated from the rest of the crew (leaving, as in Beyond, Spock and McCoy to speculate about what comes next).

"Power Play" (The Next Generation)
Another lost Starfleet ship, the Essex, comes from the same general era as Beyond's Franklin, and Enterprise's namesake predecessor to the classic franchise line of flagships.  As in Beyond, Picard is confronted with a baffling situation focused on a Starfleet captain who isn't what he appears to be.  Both "Tholian Web" and "Power Play," as well as by extension Beyond, are a nod to the classic maritime problem of the potential for ships to be lost at sea, which in the case of "Power Play" and Beyond are indicative of the early problems Starfleet encountered in that regard.

"The Swarm" (Voyager)
Aside from similarities in the name of the episode and Krall's army of killer drone ships (hey, has anyone else mentioned that parallel with our modern warfare, the drones?), the way Kirk defeats Krall's drone fleet in Beyond is similar to how Janeway overcomes her enemies in this episode, too.  (There's a nice subplot involving the holographic Doctor in desperate need of repair, and getting help from a facsimile of his creator, Lewis Zimmerman, which might be considered in metaphor as a version of Beyond's commentary on the state of Starfleet, then and now.)

Taken as a whole, these episodes don't quite add up to Star Trek Beyond, just as the movie isn't merely a conglomeration of these, or any other, episodes.  Always be wary of commentators who gloss over creative decisions like that. 

Star Trek Beyond review

Star Trek Beyond is a hugely successful continuation of the 2009 reboot series.  As directed by the experienced Fast & Furious franchise hand of Justin Lin, it resonates throughout franchise lore, and makes a profound statement anyone can appreciate.  On the latter score, that's a somewhat unique achievement in the film series, of which this is the thirteenth overall installment.

This is a movie that outlines everything you need to know about James T. Kirk, both personally and how he confronts his duties as a Starfleet captain.  His exploration of deep space has left him questioning why he's doing this at all, especially after unrewarding experiences like the one that starts out the movie, in which he fails spectacularly at bridging the gap between two alien worlds, despite the best of intentions.  He's ready to walk away, and then another crisis breaks out.  As he's always been, Kirk is at his best, and most effective, when dealing with crises.  The whole movie is about him finally realizing what he brings to the table.  It's no longer about justifying himself to Starfleet (as in the two previous movies), but to himself.

The big threat is Krall, who depicts the antithesis of the Federation mandate: he believes unity to be a weakness.  As the film progresses, we learn who and what Krall really is (something perhaps more elegantly handled in Beyond than its predecessor, Star Trek Into Darkness), and how he came to his conclusions.  It's a story ripped from the headlines, as with the best Star Trek plots.  Just as we're confronted with an Arab world bewildered by the advances of the West, we have members of our own society equally baffled by the demands of change, and the effects of war.

It's also a story of the frontier.  Star Trek is the last of the great Westerns, in some respects.  Originally conceived as a Western in space, seldom is that concept more relevant than in Beyond.  Krall's opposition to the Federation may also be correlated with the encroachment of white settlers in Native American territory, and how this frequently proved to be impossible to reconcile.  We've been so busy thinking of the Federation as the good guys, it's truly startling for anyone, other than implacable foes like the Klingon and Romulan races (who were represented as such in the last three movies, and others besides, not to mention many instances throughout the TV adventures), to present another view.

This is an expansive vision, with a rich depiction of Star Trek's vision of the future, the clash of cultures and what it means to be a part of it (from Kirk to Krall to resourceful refugee Jaylah, who helps Kirk defeat his enemy).

Idris Elba (Krall) and Sofia Boutella (Jaylah) are both wonderful additions to Star Trek's acting family, adding richly to its diversity in a number of ways, both in their casting (Elba is the first black actor to play a villain in a Star Trek movie) and their voices (Boutella's accent is equally unique in franchise lore).  And they're only part of the increased diversity in the film, from the aliens to the sexual orientation (Sulu is famously depicted as gay in this movie, yet another first for Star Trek).  In addition, the fears everyone had of Deep Roy's Keenser being turned into a Guardians of the Galaxy figure were lightly rebuffed (his colds, however, are not to be messed with!).  Shohreh Aghdashloo's presence lends further dramatic and cultural credibility to the proceedings.

Filled with wonderful character moments, some killer comedy beats, and a deep plot, Beyond joins the elite of Star Trek movies, not just as, arguably, the best of the reboot era, but one of the best, period.  It's a heck of a way to celebrate the franchise's fiftieth anniversary.

Your Star Trek Beyond Cheat Sheet

The 2009 reboot films have done a remarkable job synthesizing existing Star Trek mythology, and Star Trek Beyond is no different.  Put on your seatbelts, settle in, (prepare for spoilers), and enjoy this little primer on everything you need to know (plus a few cool callbacks) in order to enjoy this new movie from a franchise perspective:

• U.S.S. Franklin - This century-old starship Kirk and company bring back into working order to stop Krall's plans to destroy the starbase Yorktown (we'll get back to that) is taken from the early Starfleet era depicted in Star Trek: Enterprise, which features the first ship to be called the Enterprise, an experimental design that's the first to hit warp 5.  The Franklin is said to be the first ship to hit Warp 4.  It's reasonable to assume that it was a design Starfleet worked on in the run-up to the NX-01 (Enterprise), and was later added to the expanding fleet (as the NX-326, if I remember the placard correctly).
• M.A.C.O.s - Its captain, who is introduced as Krall but later turns out to be commanding officer of the Franklin, was previously a M.A.C.O., an army service that helped feed the ranks of the emerging Starfleet program (Enterprise's Malcolm Reed came from a similar background).  M.A.C.O.s were featured in Enterprise's third season, which featured the Xindi conflict referenced in Beyond.
• Xindi & Romulan conflicts  - Speaking of the Xindi conflict, Elba's character also talks about a Romulan conflict.  He's not talking about the events of 2009's Star Trek, which featured the rogue Romulan named Nero, but rather the Romulan War, which took place soon after the events of Enterprise and were the last time in the original canon anyone had contact with Romulans until the original series episode "Balance of Terror."
• Starbase Yorktown - The starbase Yorktown is named in honor of Gene Roddenberry's name for the startship in his first vision of Star Trek.  This draft came even before the abandoned pilot "The Cage," which was later incorporated into the two-part "The Menagerie;" the original vision, featuring the Yorktown, had as its captain Robert April, who was later featured in the Animated Series episode "The Counter-Clock Incident," the last episode of the series, in fact.
• The Yorktown is actually takes the design of the original vision for the space station featured in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
• Three years into the mission - It might be said that Beyond is a metaphor of the fate of the original TV series, with events coming to a head and seeming conclusion three years into a five-year mission, with the crew forced to justify its ideals in the face of an implacable foe (previously, merely cancellation).  Kirk references the episodic nature of his experiences, which is a nod to the series, which is often described as episodic in nature, one mission distinct from the next, which is to say unrelated.
• Cultural differences - The beginning of the movie features a humorous sequence in which Kirk attempts to make peace between two worlds, which proves difficult when a symbolic gesture from one world means something else entirely in the next.  Archer faced blunders of this kind in Enterprise ("A Night in Sickbay") during the formative years of Starfleet.
• Death of Ambassador Spock - Those seeing their first Star Trek movie with Beyond may not be aware of the significance of the birth and death years depicted in the movie, assuming he had a fairly short life.  On the contrary, Spock is observing the death of his counterpart from the original timeline, where they share a birth year, but Ambassador Spock lived on to the time of Picard (his journey in pursuit of Nero as depicted in Star Trek takes place after Nemesis), and his death picks up where he emerged in his own past.  His death is a nod to actor Leonard Nimoy's death in the real world.
• Absent friends - At the end of the movie, Kirk proposes a toast to his crew.  As he references absent friends, the camera focuses on Chekov.  This is a nod to the recent death of the actor who portrayed in these films, Anton Yelchin, which is referenced in the credits with the "For Anton" card.

Now, some throwbacks to prior movies:

• The destruction of the Enterprise - This is something that happened twice previously, in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek Generations.  The saucer separation happens in both Generations and Beyond.
• Abandoning ship - The ship is abandoned in Search for Spock, although it's a limited crew complement (just the main characters, due to unique circumstances), and everyone beams safely away.  The crew also abandons ship in Star Trek: First Contact, in a similar fashion to how it's depicted in Beyond.
• Getting an unlocking sequence accomplished - Speaking of First Contact, the way Kirk desperately must unlock a series of panels as he struggles against Krall in Beyond is similar to a sequence in which Picard and Worf desperately work to detach the deflector beacon and thus deprive the Borg of their main weapon in First Contact.
• Rogue villain taking on the whole Federation - This may seem somewhat unique to the terrorism era we're living in, but it's something Star Trek has been doing since at least Search for Spock, in which a rogue Klingon warrior attempts to lay claim to the Genesis Device (it might be argued that Khan is similarly engaged in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but he's pretty singularly focused on Kirk as a target).  Anyway, all four of the Picard movies (Generations, First Contact, Insurrection, and Nemesis) feature what at the time looked almost like Bond villains (Tom Hardy's Shinzon in Nemesis even unmistakably evokes recurring Bond foe Blofeld, last appearing in 2015's Spectre and portrayed by Christoph Waltz), feature this type of villain.  Nero fits this model perfectly, and might be the easiest example to spot, and he's probably best understood in that light, the one we're unfortunately experiencing with alarming frequency these days.  I'm told anarchists, a century ago, used to use dynamite like this, for what it's worth.
• The passage of time - Kirk deals with this in Wrath of Khan and its predecessor, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, although circumstances have changed considerably.  In the original universe, it's because Kirk is literally aging.  In this one, it's because he's now older than his father (George Kirk, depicted in Star Trek) was at the time of his heroic death.
• Spock considers leaving Starfleet - Not only is this a nod to the events of Star Trek and their lingering effects, but it evokes Leonard Nimoy's repeated intentions to distance himself from the franchise, both in the aborted second live-action TV series (which later gave way to The Motion Picture, where Spock does appear) but Wrath of Khan as well (Spock's death originally conceived as a way for Nimoy to gracefully exit; he returns promptly in Search for Spock).

This one's for the Star Trek vs. Star Wars fans:

• For as long as these franchises have existed alongside each other, the debate has been constant.  And while the Star Trek movies have often tried to ramp up the action Star Wars helped bring to sci-fi movies, the 2009 reboot and its increased budget made the distinction harder than ever to distinguish.  I think Beyond makes a pretty clear statement, in contrast to the recent Star Wars - Episode VII: The Force Awakens, in the similar characters of Jaylah (Beyond) and Rey (Force Awakens).  Both are living in the ruins of an old ship.  One of those ships becomes crucial to the rest of the movie (Jaylah's, which is the Franklin), whereas the other is quickly replaced by a more familiar, albeit well-loved, relic (the Millennium Falcon).  Who Jaylah is and how she helps resolve matters is accomplished in one film, while Rey's journey will likely continue for another two films (a Star Wars custom).  Where Star Wars handles the fate of empires, Star Trek is keenly concerned with the fate of ideals.  (Clearly, they both value the merits of friendship and heroic commitment.)

A Brief Introduction to Star Trek's Movies (1979-2013)

With the imminent release of Star Trek Beyond in theaters, you may be wondering, you potential newbie to the franchise, what to make of the previous twelve movies.  No doubt you've already heard quite a few definitive statements about which ones are excellent (Wrath of Khan normally gets that kind of acclaim) and which are skippable (Final Frontier).  As with everything else, Star Trek Fan Companion is here to give you the insider's look, but from the perspective of not having to be a fan...

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
This first in the series was exactly a decade in the making.  The three seasons of the original TV series concluded in 1969 (there was a short-lived animated series a few years later, plus an attempted live-action revival that led directly to The Motion Picture).  You have to keep in mind that, other than the massive success of Star Wars, which was what prompted The Motion Picture into existence, the defining mark of science fiction on the big screen was 1968's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the elegiac hard science statement about man's origins and destiny that remains a cultural touchstone to this day (both due to its director, Stanley Kubrick, and the reputation of the author of the original book, Arthur C. Clarke).

This resulted in a clash of expectations.  Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry didn't envision a sci-fi landscape like Star Wars.  His was the more cerebral approach.  He was always more interested in the human condition, what motivates us, how we react to adversity, and reacting to the state of the world as he found it (the TV show heavily commented on things like race relations and the Vietnam War).  So the first Star Trek movie was always going to be more 2001 than Star Wars.  In fact, The Motion Picture might best be understood as Star Trek's answer to 2001, rather than to Star Wars.

Its reputation, in the nearly forty years since its release, has been a response to the plodding nature of the quest to solve the riddle of what's been plowing through space.  You can consider two additional Star Trek films (The Voyage Home and The Final Frontier) as direct creative responses to how to tell this same story differently, with more of a lively atmosphere to the proceedings.  Here, though, they're dominated by the moody James Kirk, who's having a hard time dealing with the fact that history has passed him by.  Decker has replaced him as captain of the Enterprise.  The story is really about whether or not he unfairly steps over Decker to resume command of the ship, regardless of the circumstances.  It's about whether there really are things bigger than us, not as a species but as individuals.  That's why it becomes Decker's story as much as Kirk's, as he becomes intertwined in the fate of the woman he once loved, Ilia, who becomes an avatar of the phenomenon they're investigating.  There's also Spock, who wonders if there's still something for him in the world of emotions.

Echoes of echoes of the major theme, which crystalizes in the realization that the enemy is really an old Earth probe, which is looking for its creator, and has no idea that mankind is what it's been looking for.  It's lost touch with reality, and in its desperate attempt to reconnect, it's created all kinds of havoc along the way.

The Motion Picture is a creative statement that stands in stark contrast to the movie ethos Star Wars represented, and so fans have had a difficult time accepting it, even though it may be the definitive franchise statement in film.  In their rush to embrace Kirk again, fans kind of ignored that The Motion Picture perfectly captures Kirk's character, ten years later...

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
The result of this fundamental disconnect was the second movie being the exact opposite of the first one, despite sharing many of the same themes.  Once again, Kirk is aging and not sure what to do with himself, and the villain is driven by motivations he doesn't clearly understand, except as direct reaction to a situation that is beyond him.  (Yeah!  Bet you never heard Khan described that way before!)  We meet Kirk's son, David Marcus, who is exactly like him, but doesn't see it because their lives are pointed in opposite directions.  And, Spock dies.

This is the fan-friendly film that's been enthusiastically embraced since its release.  It revived popular interest in the franchise, and was acceptable to anyone whose previous touchstone was Star Wars, and like the original Star Trek series but wanted the original cast to have more life to it.  It's filled with iconic moments, none of which are more iconic than Spock's death.  Khan was the villain a story could really sink its teeth into, and again, fans could appreciate without thinking too much about.

Needless to say, I've never been a part of the Wrath of Khan bandwagon.  As depicted, genetic superman Khan is a moron.  The submarine warfare he engages in with Kirk may not be anything he was familiar with in his heyday (the Eugenics Wars of Star Trek's 1990s), but he's so consistently outsmarted that it really boils down to the surprise of his return, and nothing more, that motivates the whole story.  The Genesis Device, which serves as a handy metaphor (and deus ex machine if you don't want your friendly neighborhood Vulcan to stay dead).

Because Wrath of Khan was so important to making Star Trek cool again (at least, among fans), it's always held a special place in the franchise, as the movie by which all others are compared.  But, objectively, it really doesn't age well (Khan's minions look hopelessly dated, like the residents of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome ten years early, and eternally '80s), and its plotting is about as thin as you can get.  It's certainly memorable, but it's not the creative gold standard you've been led to believe it is.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
Its follow-up actually comes closer.  This is one of the first direct sequels in film, from the modern, post-Star Wars era.  As the title suggests, it's all about bringing Spock back to life.  By its own logic, it's completely logical, and even lyrical.  This is what it looks like when the franchise tries to tell a franchise story, which remained unique until Star Trek: The Next Generation on TV started looking into Klingon affairs more closely, which led directly to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Enterprise, which were all about telling stories directly from the franchise bible.

But because it's so directly related to Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock never gets near the same kind of love.  It appears so much more inevitable, less spontaneous, and therefor less vital an experience.  But you really can't have one without the other.  The first two Superman films are kind of like this, except Superman II remains popular because of its memorable focus on General Zod, whereas the villain of Search for Spock, a Klingon played by Christopher Lloyd (a year before his most memorable role, in Back to the Future), can't compare to Khan, even though the movie does what its predecessor, amazingly never did: have Kirk physically confront his enemy.  (Although, in brief, the choreography doesn't really do the encounter justice, which actually keeps it in-line with the lousy stunts of the original series.) 

If Spock returns, then a price must be paid.  Actually, a pair of sacrifices, one of them being David Marcus, and the other the Enterprise.  These are dramatic moments that rival Spock's death, as does the varied tone of the movie itself, rather than the heaviness everywhere on display in Wrath of Khan (in its own way, extending the legacy of The Motion Picture in that regard).  Clearly this is still Star Trek in the Star Wars vein, but Search for Spock injects so much character unique to the franchise (any scene involving McCoy), it's hard to argue that it's trying to do so, so much as carrying on the ethic of the movie (Wrath of Khan) that did.

Subsequently, I've always considered Search for Spock better. 

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
"The one with the whales" is actually the first time the movies directly reflected Roddenberry's idea that Star Trek is really all about the message.  Ostensibly the conclusion of a franchise trilogy (Kirk and crew must answer for the theft of the Enterprise in the last one), Voyage Home is ultimately Star Trek's answer to the strong environmentalist push that began in the '80s.

It's also the one where everyone learns that the levity Search for Spock served up could be expanded.  It's the one where the goofiness of the classic episode "The Trouble with Tribbes" erupts on the big screen, as the crew finds itself strangers in a strange land, future humans forced to contend with the world of the 1980s, in all its glory.  (Chekov inquiring after the location of "nuclear wessels" remains one of the best memories anyone has of these films.)

Fans tend to be embarrassed by this one, even though of the first ten movies it was the biggest hit at the box office (which meant a lot of people who weren't necessarily fans quite enjoyed it).  This notion is absurd, that Voyage Home can't be enjoyable just because it's not drenched in heavy plotting.  This is probably the first movie anyone could watch in the franchise, and totally get its appeal, no explanation needed.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
Long maligned as the worst of the movies featuring the original cast, Final Frontier is about as true to the experience of the original series as the movies ever get, and now that's twenty years removed from the TV experience.  And it shows.  Fans no longer have any need to reference the series when thinking about the films.  That's the Wrath of Khan effect for you.

Taking cues from Search for Spock, Final Frontier tries to be a grand action-filled adventure, featuring a villain who isn't as memorable as Khan (again), and the greatest peril anyone really faces being at the very beginning of the film, when Kirk goes mountain-climbing.  It also smacks in the face of expectations by playing around with franchise mythology, introducing Spock's half-brother (the villain), who isn't particularly Vulcan even though, unlike Spock (whose mother was human), he is full Vulcan. 

For all that, and for all its limitations, Final Frontier isn't that bad.  As a bonding experience between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy (something denied and/or delayed by Spock's death previously), it's a fun experience, and you can probably leave it at that.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
This allegory for the end of the Cold War is arguably the best of the original cast films meant to evoke the Star Wars aesthetic.  It's an adventure, but it also has a message, and talks very frankly about the perils of racism (not for nothing does Chekov evoke the movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, where a white girl brings home her black boyfriend to astonished parents; here the strange bedfellows are the Klingons).

It's both a story where franchise mythology counts, significantly (without needing a specific tether, as with the villainous Khan), but it's also a story that can stand on its own, and be viewed from a number of standpoints.  And as the last of the movies featuring a mature cast, it doesn't demand any awkward action beats from the actors.  Instead, they're finally allowed the dignity of positions they would have assumed years ago, if only those pesky movies with all their Star Wars demands hadn't gotten in the way. 

Star Trek Generations (1994)
Living up to the billing of finally uniting Kirk with his Next Generation counterpart, Picard, was always going to be difficult, especially when fans were bound to be upset that only one of them would come out of it alive (hint: not Kirk).  For a series of movies that had been awkwardly juggling their place in the greater film lore since The Motion Picture, this was always going to be an impossible order.

So Generations subverts all expectations, and does the sci-fi equivalent of the classic Western showdown.  This was always fitting, because Roddenberry envisioned Star Trek as a sci-fi Western.  Next Generation fans got a huge bonus from the proceedings when Data, the android who spent seven seasons desperately yearning to become more human, got emotions, even if they end up playing havoc.  Picard's emotions are running high, too, when he learns that his brother and as a result the last of the continuing Picard lineage has died, a metaphor for anyone wondering whether Star Trek dies with Kirk.  (Notably, no one ever got that metaphor.) 

Patrick Stewart, who portrayed Picard, was always noted as the most capable thespian Star Trek ever saw, and Generations was the first attempt to give him something worthy of his talents.  And yet, by the end of the movie, the emotional journey he takes ends with him simply mourning Kirk's death, along with everyone else.  Fans tend to feel cheated by Generations, and that's probably the metaphor to keep in mind.  But it's a truly magical experience, everything Final Frontier hoped to be.  Fitting, in a way.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
For a different generation (heh), First Contact is the new Wrath of Khan.  It's thrilling adventure you thought Star Trek could never produce, infused with series-specific foes (this time, the Borg).  And it's a story so focused on getting the best out of Picard, it pushes him to the breaking point (something other stories tried, but here finally happens, in the "ready room sequence" where he tries to explain his complex attitude toward his enemies, which is a story point the film builds toward from the very first scene, and absolutely delivers on).

It's hard for me to even pretend to be objective about this one, because it's been an unabashed favorite for twenty years.  So let's just move along.

Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
The "long episode" one, although I think its biggest problem is that Insurrection introduces a classic Star Trek message that's still difficult to accept, despite the fact that literally the whole history of the United States, where these movies are made, is built on the legacy of what it seeks to address: the plight of Native Americans. 

There's a certain amount of Final Frontier clunkiness built into Insurrection, which like its predecessor was envisioned as the opposite of the film that came before it.  Fans really liked First Contact.  So anything that tried something different (because, as with Wrath of Khan, part of First Contact's charm is that it adequately fills Star Wars-inspired expectations for action-heavy sci-fi films).  The studio tried to sell Picard's moral stance as a rebellion against the Federation itself (it wasn't).  And any attempt to sell fans on completely new aliens (by this point, dedicated ones had built up an idea that it had to be mythology-specific, and even on that score, Insurrection failed to directly address then Dominion War arc playing out concurrently in Deep Space Nine).

Bottom line, this was the ninth Star Trek films.  Mainstream audiences didn't care.  And fans generally didn't, either.  Not that it was the film's fault.

Star Trek Nemesis (2002)
Because Wrath of Khan was such a touchstone for fans, anytime another film even slightly evoked it, they tended to shrink back in defensive postures.  Nemesis, which casts Picard against the specter of his youth (that's a story that goes all the way back to The Motion Picture, thank you very much) in the Romulan-engineered clone Shinzon (Tom Hardy's headlining debut), is filled with too many action beats (as opposed to how this was embraced with First Contact) for fans increasingly confused as to what they want. 

Wider audiences, meanwhile, had Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings leading the charge for Hollywood, which was about to finally crack the Star Wars code (about thirty years later).  Star Trek, which had been the leading contender during that timeframe, was now an also-ran, and its contribution all but completely ignored, and outright derided by fans.

Yet the film itself is the most mature statement from the Picard era, like Undiscovered Country before it speaking to the fate of empires, but also directly to the soul of Picard himself, who had gotten this kind of treatment for three films already, but never to an extent where he couldn't cope, never so that defeat was actually possible.  The death of Data was considered the most egregious lift from Wrath of Khan, but it's serves as a perfect metaphor (Spock's death was one, too) for Picard's success, or failure, in the preceding events.  Star Trek was always about making you think about why things happened.  Look at the fallen face of Picard, as Shinzon impales himself, as Data sacrifices himself.  Words, for once, cannot express the depth of what has happened.  Nemesis concludes the cinematic adventures of Picard by deciding he's best left speechless.  It's as bold a creative statement as The Motion Picture's leisurely pace.

Star Trek (2009)
The J.J. Abrams reboot has drawn considerable ire from fans for having embraced the Star Wars conceit.  Ironic, isn't it?  These are also the most successful films in the series at the box office.  These are big adventures, but also the ones that ask the most of its characters, whose individual journeys are more important than the action around them.

Here, we explore the journeys of Kirk and Spock as never before, and find out what made them such good friends to begin with (hint: they started out despising each other).  If Roddenberry always envisioned a future where we finally put our differences behind us, Star Trek is finally where we see it happen with the characters themselves.  Tellingly, it's a message that's gone on deaf ears.  I mean, just look at the news today...

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
This delicate rephrasing of Wrath of Khan predictably enraged fans (they list this as the worst Star Trek movie!), even as it resonates deeply with everything that came before it, in the best possible way.  In the age of terrorism (which Star Trek has always explored, from Bajorans to Maquis to Xindi) and secret police in the post-Cold War world, what would using Khan look like?  As fans thought of the film itself (again, ironically), it turns out to be a bad idea, and also a good one.  I mean, without Khan, the bad guys would have gotten away with it. 

This is complex storytelling, and it's the very finest tradition of observing the mythology, and building on it.  Into Darkness proves that the new Star Trek movies aren't just the franchise version of Star Wars (but, that's been going on anyway, since Wrath of Khan) (again, ironically!), but about seeing how well these things can really be made, with all the stops finally let out.  There's a marked difference between Nemesis and Star Trek, even though they were both made in the same era.  That's not just filmmaking at work, but budget.  Now, every blockbuster is given an outrageous budget.  But the results are usually far less ambitious than Star Trek as it was always conceived.

So, let's see how they stack up:

1. Star Trek: First Contact (big on emotion, action, resonance)
2. Star Trek (the movies as fans always wanted them, and general audiences, too)
3. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (the original cast at its most dynamic)
4. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (the original cast at its most profound)
5. Star Trek Into Darkness (the perfect follow-up)
6. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (the perfect sequel)
7. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (the big vision at its most viewer-friendly)
8. Star Trek Nemesis (wrestling the deepest depths of the franchise)
9. Star Trek Generations (the epic encounter)
10. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (the fan benchmark)
11. Star Trek: Insurrection (the big vision at its most challenging)
12. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (the biggest question, the original vision)

Star Trek Into Darkness

Ever since the second Star Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan, was released, fans have been negatively comparing every single one even tenuously similar to it.  The entry was a hallmark, saved the franchise after an underwhelming reception to The Motion Picture a few years earlier, filled with action and resonating character work.  It was the first time the adventures of Kirk demanded a sequel, which it got with The Search for Spock, which spent much of its time reflecting on Khan's key moments.

Star Trek Into Darkness is the first time we get a movie that not only deliberately echoes Khan but arguably improves on it.  The big mystery every fan has been attempting to solve since the presence of Sherlock actor Benedict Cumberbatch's villain was announced turns out to be exactly what they long suspected but the filmmakers struggled to deny (much like The Dark Knight Rises last year with Marion Cotillard's Talia disguised as Miranda Tate).  Cumberbatch indeed plays a character named John Harrison, but Harrison is secretly Khan, the genetic superman created sometime in Kirk's past three hundred years earlier (previously but now only roughly our own time), awoken to create havoc once more.

That I'm writing about this directly is because I want to write about what truly energizes Into Darkness.  Many observers said the 2009 reboot Star Trek lacked the social relevance that had previously been one of the defining elements of the franchise.  If that was indeed true, then this new film does everything possible to reverse that.  The 1966-1969 original series famously did everything it could to get around network restrictions concerning the topic of the Vietnam War, and now we're getting the 21st century equivalent.  Make no mistake: Into Darkness is about the Iraq War.

The story is all about trying to decide if the right thing to do really is always the right thing to do.  It begins with Kirk's (Chris Pine) efforts to rescue Spock (Zachary Quinto) from the maw of a volcano, breaking the Star Trek rule known as the prime directive about exposing primitive species to technology years ahead of their development and thus altering the course of their future in the process.  He becomes demoted as a result, subject to serving under Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) all over again.  Pike has always been Kirk's biggest supporter, but even he sees the basic flaw in his character, in that he never stops to question whether he's right.  It's always been assumed that Kirk always is.  Into Darkness is one of those times where we all stop to question whether that is really the case.  Famously in Star Trek: First Contact, we ask the same question of Captain Picard.

Actually, Into Darkness is a lot like First Contact, which itself was a lot like Wrath of Khan.  Picard in this instance, however, might find a better parallel in Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller), the war-hungry instigator who draws the parallels to Iraq.  In Star Trek terms, Iraq is the Klingons, the alien species who are just as identifiable to the franchise as Spock's Vulcans.  Marcus uses Khan for the same reasons it might be said that both generations of President Bush wanted to deal with Saddam Hussein, because that was a problem the United States created in the first place, and they felt it was necessary to finally deal with it.  The second Bush, the argument further goes, really went to Iraq to finish what his father started.  Some of that can be found in Oliver Stone's W., if you'd like another cinematic exploration.

Do you really have to worry about any of that?  Do you have to think about all those nasty politics that have been so divisive in our culture for at least the last decade?  Not if you don't want to.  Star Trek previously explored this territory, the post-9/11 landscape (Khan is also a terrorist who attacks London early in the film), in the Star Trek: Enterprise Xindi arc, and the nature of war in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Dominion arc.  Yet Klingons have been a reliable menace for decades.  Admiral Marcus calls them a foe Starfleet is destined to clash with, and indeed fans know that to be true.  The sixth movie, The Undiscovered Country, is all about finally confronting that reality, an assassination thriller about the heavy cost of peace.

There's plenty of action, plenty of humor, and if you want to see this Khan ham it up, there's even a scene for that impulse.  Yet some of the best moments echo the best moments of Wrath of Khan, and that may be what the most devoted fans take away from Into Darkness.  The fan backlash to Superman Returns six years ago accused it of being too derivative of the Christopher Reeve movies that preceded it.  There's a small risk of a similar feeling falling on Into Darkness, but it's alleviated by all those moving parts around it, keeping events lively and engaging.  It's relevant to viewers on just about every level.  This is no one-trick pony.  There's little risk that any one element will be the one that defines it.

The bottom line is, like the best movies, there will be a different interpretation to engage every viewer.  Filmmakers love to try and please all the demographics of age and sex, but Star Trek Into Darkness is the rare movie that will cross over any one version of its events, a common experience that speaks to the very heart of the spirit its franchise has always represented.  Someone else said that it boldly goes where other Star Treks have gone before.  That is an incredibly positive interpretation, and perhaps the best thing that could be said about it.

Star Trek (2009)

And so it happened that Star Trek finally had to do what it had long avoided, had in fact, done everything to avoid, including the virtually unprecedented move of sticking with the same actors in their original roles for near-three decades, and pretty much two decades that amounted to four additional casts. After all that, the popular culture could stand nothing more from the franchise, nothing more, that is, than the reboot. And so, in the summer of 2009, that’s exactly what finally happened.

A funny thing occurred, too. The reboot actually made Star Trek popular. No, seriously. I’m not talking about a kind of grudging admittance, or even wide acceptance among niche audiences, but full-blown, mind-blowing success. It really wasn’t just the folks who had always liked Star Trek, or who might typically have been inclined to like it, who turned out to watch the new movie. What Star Trek did was become just another summer blockbuster success story.

As films like Batman Begins and Casino Royale had done before it, the reboot literally went back to the beginning, exploring the origins of James T. Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the familiar characters from the original series as the show and its six movie spin-offs had never been quite able to do, despite a fair number of allusions over the years. It opens, dramatically, with Kirk’s birth, actually, and even these glimpses of his mom and dad seem like an eternity of backstory. For those who considered themselves familiar enough with Spock, there’s plenty left to say about his upbringing as well. The movie spends much of its time exploring how much there is to say about the two characters, what kind of story is possible that builds itself around them.

What’s interesting is that, even while that is going on, the movie basically follows the same pattern, at least, of the four Next Generation films that precede it. A villain threatens to wreak all kinds of havoc, and by the end of the story, he basically needs to be blown up to resolve his threat. What’s different is the way all of it is presented. Freed up with new actors, all that struggle to make previous incarnations that have originated on television can truly embrace all of cinema’s possibilities. This is not to say that actors who first appear on television can’t fit easily into movies. Far from it. Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Denzel Washington, the list goes on of actors who previously made their mark on television who went on to become famous and lasting movie stars. But in terms of an entire cast, especially one that has spent some extended period of time doing things shot specifically for TV, there is always going to be a learning curve to figure out how to translate that dynamic to another medium. Arguably, The Motion Picture and First Contact represent the apex of two different generations of Star Trek actors doing that, and the results vary greatly.

The difference with Star Trek is that everything is freshly conceived to fit the big screen. What’s funny is that the director behind this vision has had most of his success on the small screen. Aside from his early career as a screenwriter and Mission: Impossible III, J.J. Abrams is best known for TV shows like Felicity, Alias, and Lost, which admittedly was conceived as something of a big screen project for television, which the ambitious (and expensive) pilot episode alone will demonstrate. His credentials, however, along with those of the frequent collaborators who will go unmentioned here, testify to an uncanny devotion to character, which is a key element of what has always been at the heart of Star Trek. Clearly, that’s what he focused on with this initial offering of the reboot of one of the most famous franchises in modern lore.

Recasting was probably among the biggest hurdles, and was long one of the favorite pastimes of armchair fans. Surely you recall the popular interest in Gary Sinese taking on the role of Bones McCoy. Yet one of the unexpected and great successes of Star Trek was casting Karl Urban, who was best known at that point for a minor role in the Lord of the Rings films, instead. Zachary Quinto, then known for his disconcerting role on Heroes, had been publicly campaigning for the role of Spock, so his casting was the least surprising. The most famous actors, John Cho and Simon Pegg, cast as Sulu and Scotty respectively, managed to blend in, and make the most of their limited scenes. Anton Yelchin, a young actor working to make a name for himself, achieved the impossible by replacing the beloved Andrew Koenig as the quirky Chekov. Zoe Saldana captured lightning in a bottle by appearing in Star Trek and Avatar in the same year.

Then there was Kirk. What would you say if I told you Chris Pine’s last starring role before Star Trek was with Lindsey Lohan? No, seriously. It was called Just My Luck. Sure, he was more memorable in Smokin’ Aces, and in the elongated wait (when Paramount actually determined, correctly, that Star Trek could hold its own in the summer season, and so delayed release for months), also took a turn in Bottle Shock (that’s him, as the long-haired rebel son). But Chris was basically unknown, the quintessential actor for such an important role. For every Tobey Maguire, you also have a Christian Bale or Daniel Craig, who don’t seem like obvious choices before they’re cast, but only because audiences just aren’t that familiar with them yet. Star Trek made Chris Pine a star.

It did the same for Chris Hemsworth, who plays his dad. For some other parts, name actors were easier to go with, such as Winona Ryder, Ben Cross, Bruce Greenwood, and Eric Bana, who replaced Russell Crowe as Nero. Either one was a considerable coup for the film. Granted, Crowe would have had more appeal for wider audiences, but Bana, who like Crowe is a personal favorite, still represents the kind of actor who probably would never have been available to Star Trek casting directors prior to this film. Then there was Leonard Nimoy, who represents the sole connection to any other incarnation of the franchise, and who just happens to be the most iconic face, reprising his role as Spock thanks to a time-twisting plot that plays fast and loose with everything that had come before. When the whole project plays everything as sacred, you can afford to treat it as nothing sacred, blowing up Vulcan and setting up a whole alternate reality that will serve as the new playground for subsequent films.

That’s what’s so interesting about this reboot. Clearly, for years, a lot of people became attached to the idea that Star Trek represented a continuing experience, even if each new incarnation dealt with new casts and scenarios. All of it tied together, as numerous guest appearances that cross-pollinated familiar faces continually attested. Even the maligned “These Are the Voyages…” managed to grant Enterprise, the first time the franchise attempted to look back instead of forward, this experience. Rather than starting from scratch, Star Trek’ bends the rules and keeps all the familiar experiences in play while also creating an entirely fresh starting point. All the familiar names are here, but they have different stories, just different enough that they speak to two different generations of fans, meeting somewhere in the middle.

As a fan who obviously had a lot of attachment to what had come before, I might have been seen either as an extremely easy mark for Star Trek, or as someone who should have hated the very idea of it. Personally, I hate both ideas. I don’t like each new incarnation simply because it seems I’m supposed to, but because I keep finding reasons to like them. On a certain level, yes, having a pre-existing interest does make it easier, but if a movie or a TV show rubs me the wrong way, then it rubs me the wrong way. Being a fan merely means that it’ll be that much more likely that I’ll eventually take another look, or however many it may take for me to change my initial opinions. Wrath of Khan, ironically, is especially indicative of that, in my experience.

Star Trek became one of my favorite movies from 2009 not merely because it was a new Star Trek film, but because it was a truly good film. (Granted, the number of times I saw it was definitely because it was a Star Trek film, but in 2008 and 2010, I saw certain Christopher Nolan movies frequently because they captured my imagination in similar ways, experiences I wanted to repeat, and often.) When whole sequences start to string together and I find it difficult to forget them, I know something has been particularly successful. And in Star Trek, pretty much everything works, without exception.

And so now we’re in another of those crossroads, a happy one, as it turns out. We get to wait for another Star Trek. Sometimes, that wait has been as little as a week, or even several times a week. There were four years between the end of Enterprise and the release of Star Trek, and seven years between Nemesis and Star Trek. There was a big gap between the original series and The Motion Picture, but some of it was mitigated by the animated series. For the first time since the original Kirk films, the franchise seems content to be a big screen experience, which is perhaps welcomed, after the constant succession of TV shows that represented the bulk of the backend from the last phase of Star Trek. It may play like safe to keep it in cinemas for the time being, but that feels pretty okay for now.

Star Trek Nemesis

The fourth and final Next Generation film was released in 2002 and made a very tiny amount at the box office, the least of the ten entries in the Star Trek movie series to that date, relegating the franchise to a cultural afterthought, a somewhat strange fate for a cast that had once had the potential to push it to new heights.

Fifteen years after “Encounter at Farpoint” (roughly the time equivalent of the first two original cast cinematic escapades), a lot of things had changed for Star Trek. The fifth TV series, the third since 1987, was in its second season, headed toward an abbreviated-by-modern-standards four year run. Picard and crew became the victims of an undeniable burnout. Paramount’s apparently unshakable belief in the durability of the franchise could no longer be sustained, at least without a break. Nemesis had been advertised as the final appearance of this cast, something that had worked well for The Undiscovered Country, and even better for “All Good Things…” eight years earlier. But it had been a long eight years. Deep Space Nine, though a small critical success, had failed to interest fans, even with its ambitious Dominion War arc. Voyager, which had been meant to metaphorically replace Next Generation, had only succeeded in irritating long-time viewers. And so had Enterprise. One questionable Picard film, Insurrection, had torpedoed any potential for a sustained national audience outside of a weary fan base.

Nemesis itself seemed tailor-made for ridicule. The villain, a clone of Picard known as Shinzon, was portrayed by the young British actor Tom Hardy, who in appearance and speaking pattern looked more like Dr. Evil, the comical foil in Mike Myers’ Austin Powers films, which at that time were still a treasured cultural institution. Star Trek movies were also an anachronism during a period when Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings adaptations were capturing the zeitgeist, Harry Potter was invading the cinema, and even the second Star Wars trilogy conquered popular interest (despite a distinct lack of critical acclaim). There was also a surge of interest in comic book characters, whether Spider-man or the X-Men, in whose films Patrick Stewart himself co-starred. It seemed less than relevant to care about Star Trek and its tired shenanigans.

It didn’t even matter that acclaimed screenwriter John Logan, who would soon pen both The Last Samurai and The Aviator, was two years removed from his involvement in the Oscar-winning Gladiator, had attempted to inject some new life into the concept. All fans saw was same-old, same-old. Nemesis was just another tired retread of Wrath of Khan, down to an apparently ho-hum death of a main character, the android Data, whose return was patently foreshadowed in the ridiculous subplot of a newly-discovered second “brother,” who happened to be an idiot.

I’m being purposely negative in my descriptions, not because I don’t personally like the movie, but because they represent the general opinion of an irredeemable failure, at least by most accounts. In fact, as you might have noted, Nemesis ranks fourth in my list of Star Trek films, behind only First Contact, last year’s Star Trek, and (yes), The Motion Picture. I admit to having unorthodox opinions. This is the penultimate entry in a series of articles that basically has something nice to say about every incarnation in the franchise, which is not a very common reaction.

Ironically, one of the elements I’ve already brought up could help redeem the irredeemable Nemesis for modern audiences, Tom Hardy. The actor basically disappeared after the film, and its failure contributed to a tailspin in his personal life, at least for a few years, but recently he’s been rallying, and finding some new success in the movies. I don’t say that you need to see Bronson in the same manner that I say you should give Nemesis another look, because Bronson is a movie more in the manic vein of A Clockwork Orange. Hardy portrays a notorious British prisoner whose extreme narcissus is exaggerated to comically theatrical lengths in the film. But you wouldn’t care about that, either, if Hardy hadn’t turned out so memorably in Christopher Nolan’s mind-blowing Inception this summer. There’s a lot of things that threaten to steal that show, but Hardy’s cool confidence is a leading contender. It’s almost enough to give his Shinzon a reprieve, perhaps.

And it wouldn’t just be for Hardy’s performance, either, because I believe Logan succeeds in his ambition to craft an epic story out of his villain, who is so much more than appearances, but rather a truly tragic figure who has as much to say about his own character as Picard, an element of the film that builds, as the past three Next Generation films have done before it, on the possibilities of the guest actor in a formidable cast, especially one who has been called to stand toe-to-toe with Stewart, as no one else has. It’s a tall order, especially when Ian McKellen was the last actor to do that, to fan and critical acclaim (notably in X2: X-Men United), but Hardy and Shinzon really do accomplish it.

Little-explored aspects of Picard are in the spotlight here, from the mythic rebellious streak of his youth (memorably explored previously in “Tapestry”) to his fallibility, affecting a deconstruction of the character, something that had never really been attempted before, with all the more dramatic power since all this occurs while he confronts a clone of himself from a time prior to his original assumption of a ship called Enterprise, which may be the most intriguing aspect of the story. Unlike Kirk, whose entire mature career is ably represented by the breadth of his filmed adventures, Picard was already well into his Starfleet exploits by the time we saw him for the first time. All we really got to know about him before this point is that he lost his real heart in a brawl with Nausicaans, he lost his best friend but retained an association with Jack Crusher’s widow, and had first encounter with the Ferengi. But he was apparently important enough even then to have warranted a Romulan plot to replace him with a clone they could manipulate to their own ends.

Which is exactly the fate Shinzon could have enjoyed, if those Romulans could ever formulate a coherent plan everyone could agree on, but there’s a reason why Romulans never managed to sustain a lot of galactic attention, and it had nothing to do with their latent Vulcan reserve. They simply weren’t good at staying on point (the exact opposite, as it happens, of Paramount and Rick Berman). So Shinzon becomes the victim of a government overturn, and is remanded to the custody of the lowly Remans, represented in the film by Ron Perlman, who would shortly return to cultural awareness as the star of the Hellboy movies. What’s ironic is that Shinzon’s story continues to diverge from Picard’s, since he becomes personally involved in the Dominion War (as fans had wished during Insurrection for their one-time favorite captain), the root of his later return to prominence, amassing military clout if little respect from his Romulan peers.

As Nemesis opens, Shinzon affects a coup in the Romulan Senate (the first visual cue for viewers looking for grandeur and finding the product lacking; contrast this scene with the Galactic Senate sequences in the otherwise maligned Phantom Menace), hoping to win by force respect and power for his adopted Reman brethren, a Napoleon overcompensating for his shortcomings. Hardy is surrounded not just by Perlman in most of his scenes, but by Dina Meyer (as Donatra, another formidable presence in the film, especially in contrast to Shinzon), Jude Ciccolelle, and briefly, Alan Dale, who in a few years would make a considerable presence on Lost. He and Jude had already made memorable impressions in the early run of 24.

Picard, meanwhile, is giving a toast to the newlyweds Riker and Troi (the big payoff to the unexpected chemistry Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis enjoyed during First Contact, with seeds planted for this occasion by Insurrection), the big sign of progress for the film, a bookend to Data finally receiving emotions in Generations. From there, it’s a collision course between the captain and his clone, which Shinzon is exceedingly eager to make, since he needs Picard’s blood to correct genetic issues from the cloning process and the subsequent, premature abandonment by those disappointing Romulans.

At this point, I’d probably like to emphasize that this is, in fact, a Romulan story, the first for a Star Trek film, even though Romulans had been a prominent fixture of the franchise from the very beginning. After a dominating run by Klingons through most of the preceding entries, and despite the failure of Nemesis to leave a favorable impression on audiences, it’s notable that Star Trek more or less continues the trend. In fact, if you didn’t know that Nemesis was a box office bomb, you might look at last year’s reboot as something of a sequel. Only J.J. Abrams and his brood, it seems, paid any attention to this lowly flick.

Anyway, as Picard gradually becomes aware of Shinzon’s implications, he’s given the challenge of matching wits with him. Shinzon seems to go out of his to appear untrustworthy, but what he really wants is to win Picard’s respect and trust, which is what their first true discussion together is all about. It’s here where our captain truly stumbles morally for the first time, failing to understand his clone’s sincerity, believing that all he has to do is convince Shinzon that he’ll give him what he wants, if only he’ll legitimately earn it. He fails to grasp Shinzon’s desperation, and fatally, clearly doesn’t do anymore than humor him. Everything else, every tragedy, is the direct result of this conversation.

Data, meanwhile, stumbles across B-4, an imperfect predecessor to himself, discovered by Shinzon and intended as bait to lure the noble Starfleet officers into a trap. Unlike the treacherous Lore (never actually referenced in the film, but doubtlessly intended to lurk in the back of the fan’s mind), B-4 is an obvious innocent, even moreso than Data himself, perhaps an allusion to the fact that Data himself, except for a subplot in Insurrection, hasn’t really been one for about fifteen years now (when he initially emerges in the holodeck, attempting to perfect “Pop Goes the Weasel”). B-4’s deficiencies seem like unnecessary attempts at humor to the cynical viewer, but they’re shorthand and contrast to Picard’s problem, how to confront a past that threatens to disrupt the present. It’s actually Data’s most fully-rounded arc in four films, one with a clear direction, much like Picard himself, and like the captain, a story with real dramatic consequence has tragic results that are, rather than undermined by an apparent escape hatch in his replacement by B-4, actually serves to complete the thought Shinzon couldn’t, that the path to the future is filled with purposeful struggle. When B-4 first manifests a connection to the memories that had been downloaded by his departed brother, it isn’t to suggest that he will become him, but that he now has the same potential his brother had been exploring all his life. What Shinzon wanted was the same kind of possibility Picard’s life embodied, the quintessential Star Trek quest for the next horizon.

You can see it on Picard’s face, both when he sees Shinzon dies in front of him, or when he watches Data sacrifice himself, that life isn’t easy, even when you seem to have everything going for you. Nemesis is an incredibly nuanced and powerful exploration of the things this cast had been attempting to do from the very start. It does feel a tad derivative at times, trying too hard to feel like a typical action movie, and while it probably succeeds better than any other Star Trek film until the one that follows it, that still doesn’t make it feel entirely natural. Director Stuart Baird undermines a lot of the film’s impact by displaying a consistent lack of connection with the material. For the final appearance of the Next Generation cast, the experience is helmed by someone who doesn’t understand the significance of characters like Guinan, putting in an insignificant appearance, or even Wesley Crusher, who is virtually cut from the movie entirely (you can still glimpse him at the wedding reception). Still, he does have the good sense to recognize the dramatic appeal of a cameo for Kate Mulgrew as Janeway, one of my favorite parts of the film.

Of all the Star Trek films, Nemesis most deserves a second look.

Star Trek: Insurrection

December 1998 fell in the middle of the final season of Deep Space Nine, the fifth of Voyager, and apparently far from much interest in a new Star Trek movie. Despite the considerable success of First Contact two years earlier, Insurrection arrived to minimal interest, and a very different tone from its predecessor, ensuring that even those who had gotten into the concept of Next Generation feature films would find this one easy to overlook.

To get this out of the way, yes there are problems with Insurrection. Even though he’s the director, Jonathan Frakes can’t seem to come up with a realistic substitute to the beard he shaves off halfway through the film, but not before he’s done shooting scenes prior to that development. Worf becomes the butt of Final Frontier humor. Okay, that’s pretty much it.

Otherwise, I’ve always really liked this one. Dismissed almost from the start as just another TV episode expanded beyond its limits, Insurrection was arguably the first victim of Star Trek overload that finally sidelined the franchise in 2005, seven years after its release. A number of sequences are truly exceptional, from the opening scenes that reveal a duck blind mission on an alien world and Data running wild all over it, to Picard and Worf’s thrilling chase to reclaim the android, to the captain’s final confrontation with the villainous Ru’afo, there’s a lot that works dramatically, and compares favorably to anything that was seen in First Contact.

The two films are very different in a lot of ways. First Contact deals with matters that carry a lot of weight with audiences, both those familiar with the Next Generation cast already and those who quickly realize how personal all of this is to Picard. Insurrection deals with matters that are entirely new to everyone involved, which realize their potential in how Picard gradually accepts their importance despite his apparent professional detachment. I think if you still don’t get it, more than a decade later, that’s your best approach.

As embodied by the most significant Starfleet admiral in franchise history, Dougherty (Anthony Zerbe, in a performance that brought him back into some significance, and no doubt led to his casting in The Matrix Reloaded five years later), the establishment is the story here, which is strange, because that’s not really what Star Trek had ever been about, even though both Kirk and Picard were positioned as the captain of the flagship. Gene Roddenberry deemphasized a lot of what seemed to be important in modern culture throughout the franchise, often without drawing any attention to it. Kirk was a prime example, because although he ostensibly represented not just Starfleet but the entire Federation, he was more typically depicted as the master of his own fate, and that he participated in almost every mission personally helped establish that he pretty much controlled his own missions, no overhead necessary. On the rare occasion, especially in the later films, where he was forced to acknowledge superiors, it was always a pretty dicey situation, where he would pretty much scoff and do his own thing anyway.

Picard was always a little different. He was always the consummate professional. Even in First Contact, he made the most tactful Kirk maneuver of his career, pretty much duplicating Kirk’s decisions in Search for Spock, with the audience being allowed to decide, as Kirk faced the hard way in The Voyage Home, that it was all obviously worth it. Insurrection was different. Admiral Dougherty was right there, dictating move for move, treating even our beloved Data as if he were just another officer, hardly worth noting at all (which of course for at least seven TV seasons the audience had been told otherwise, certainly in “The Measure of a Man”). Eventually, because Picard always does the right thing (Nemesis would finally find a situation where the right thing isn’t necessarily the right thing), he decides he can’t just sit back and let things happen, follow orders that are against his moral code.

Insurrection is in many ways a story of familiar things being turned on their head. The basic plot itself had already been the basis for at least one Next Generation episode (the filmmakers were well aware of this, just in case you were wondering), and the conclusion is the third in a series of four movie endings to see Picard basically beam in, confront the villain directly, and leave on the coattails of a massive explosion.

What seem like weaknesses are actually strengths. I can’t stress enough that just because something is familiar that it can’t work, especially if the context is actually different. In essence, what repetition actually represents is a chance to challenge the audience, to remind viewers that life presents a continuing series of challenges that we can either face or run from, basic cause and effect, really. In Generations, Picard has to prevent Soran from blowing up a sun, and the ramifications are directed at a moral question of whether or not that particular villain has the right to effect millions of live simply for his own gratification. That’s pretty much the same as what the captain does in Insurrection. Bet you never even got that. In First Contact, he prevents retribution, just as he does in Nemesis. Both if you actually watch each of these sequences, even if the setups are similar, you’ll note that the impacts are all calculated to individual yields. It’s been said that these scenes are all stolen from James Bond flicks. But in Star Wars, something always blows up, to some degree. Death Star, Luke Skywalker’s mind (I didn’t say this couldn’t be funny), Death Star, the Trade Federation blockade, interstellar war, the Republic. Always some fantastic ending, something making way for something else. Or James Bond, where the villain always gets his comeuppance.

At least with Star Trek, sometimes the villain learns something. Without Ru’afo to incite them, some of the Son’a finally reunite with the Ba’ku (though in Deep Space Nine, we later learn that some of them continue to side with the Dominion).

For existing fans, part of the disappointment was no doubt that Picard was doing any of this at all while the Dominion War was going on around him. They saw it as a huge waste of time. The film addresses this. As captain of the flagship, Picard is subject to every whim and need of the Federation, whatever it might be. Since we never saw Kirk engaged in an actual war scenario, it’s probably easy to just assume that he would have taken his Enterprise into battle and kept fighting until the war was won, probably in a single afternoon (he outwitted Khan in a matter of hours, didn’t he?), just another thing that separated him from his successors. But for Picard, who valued simple exploration (and always harbored his archeological interests), probably didn’t relish conflict (not to mention “Best of Both Worlds,” or First Contact), and probably began to wish his skills for diplomacy might be put to better use. The most effective comic scene in the movie is when he’s called to attend a ceremony to greet the latest members of the Federation, which he clearly finds to be a waste of his time, but will do what he has to, because that’s what Picard does.

It isn’t until he learns any number of dirty secrets surrounding the Ba’ku and the Son’a, and Starfleet’s interests in their world, that Picard begins to have second thoughts. It doesn’t hurt that he meets a Ba’ku named Anij (Donna Murphy, who would, six years later, establish better footing in genre film history with Spider-man 2 as the wife of Doctor Octopus), who allows him to embrace what he has long denied himself, a less cluttered acceptance of life’s challenges. He begins to confront Dougherty about all the inconsistencies surrounding this mission, about an emerging and contradictory perspective that the admiral has long been denying, simply because it’s inconvenient.

To have the captain star in a story like this is pretty remarkable, since the captain is supposed to be the hero, not the reactionary. This is the second time in three films that Picard has been the reactionary, and so it’s no surprise that once again, audiences don’t particularly like watching him this way. He once again tackles the action role, a bit more directly, but far more late into the game, than in First Contact. It isn’t until he volunteers to thwart Ru’afo personally that he truly gets into the spirit of it, and that’s why the ending works for me, how it isn’t just another variation of something we’ve seen, but something that feels necessary and right, a rousing conclusion.

Zerbe and Murphy are worthy successors to James Cromwell and Alfre Woodard in themselves, but where the casting really became interesting was F. Murray Abraham as Ru’afo. Like Malcolm McDowell and Alice Krige before him, Abraham embraces his role, but gets a lot more chances to, well, flesh it out. This is where the film really demonstrates that it’s the third in a series, since it seems to relish its take on the best parts of its predecessors. Like McDowell’s Soran, Ru’afo has a personal mission that drives him to distraction. Like Krige’s Borg Queen, he drips with creepy visuals. With Abraham’s considerable presence, he steals every scene he’s in. The story is only allowed to unfold the way it does because with Ru’afo, you don’t need to know the backstory until it becomes important. Once you learn that the Son’a are actually members of the Ba’ku race, you realize that Ru’afo’s obsession is far beyond any idea of revenge, and so the story becomes something else entirely. You almost wish you could see another film right after, the Year One where Ru’afo first realizes his ambitions are never going to be satisfied with these smug settlers with all the time in the world, and nothing much to show for it.

Yes, you could actually begin rooting for the villain. But the Ba’ku themselves are pretty interesting, too. The opening credits, the first extreme contrast from First Contact, take their time, quietly exploring a rural village and its flourishing culture. We learn later that technology exists here, but only as a means to an end. These people are busy with what interests them most, not with getting hurriedly to the next big thing. When Picard arrives and doesn’t understand, because that’s sort of what he’s all about, hurriedly jutting off to the next big thing, you want Anij to sit his butt down and explain to him that he doesn’t understand how much he actually has in common with them. He yearns for simplicity more than anything else. Insurrection, which by fan estimations, should have been about the Dominion War, tries to make the case that we just need to get out of the way of ourselves.

Maybe not the best message, especially for a franchise audience finding little to spark some renewed interest. Star Trek is probably fairly unique in being a phenomenon that people fought to save, but then started taking for granted, ultimately deciding to reject it because those darn creators kept trying to stick to the message. Wiz! Bang! Where are all the explosions!?

Riker and Troi, meanwhile, finally get back to the message themselves, that they had undeniable chemistry, that they tried hard to ignore, and finally avoided as best they could. When someone asks, Well, whatever happened to Troi’s relationship with Worf? I would say, that whole thing was what Worf needed at the time, a new family to replace all the turmoil he’d experienced, losing a mate and gaining a son, and struggling to feel comfortable in Starfleet while maintaining his Klingon ideals…Anyway, Worf didn’t need that anymore. Perhaps the fact that he was hardly ever integral to the story in the Next Generation films says more about his character, that all the problems he had in TV episodes didn’t really represent what he, essentially, was always looking for, and ultimately found. Each time he had an excuse to find his Next Generation friends again, it was always at a point where he needed it. Watch Deep Space Nine and see where he was each time a new movie was released. 1996, he was still settling in. 1998, he was still recovering. 2002, c’mon, do you think he was going to be an ambassador forever?

Plus he has that great Gilbert & Sullivan duet with Picard. Which brings us back to Data. It might seem trite to pair him with a kid (even Michael Welch, whose pedigree would only increase after his debut here, whether as a de-aged Jack O’Neill in Stargate SG1, or co-starring in Joan of Arcadia and the Twilight films), backward development for a character who had come so far, just in the last two films alone. No matter that Insurrection puts all sorts of new context to him. Bringing his quest to be more human back into the picture by having him hang out with a kid was something he rarely did even around Wesley Crusher, and only when some child was traumatized enough to think he himself was an android. As strange as it seems to say so out loud, Data rarely socialized. He had a certain circle of friends, but he pretty much kept to himself when he wasn’t on-duty. You don’t realize while you’re watching Insurrection, but it’s pretty remarkable to see him making a concerted effort like that, with someone else. He didn’t exactly ask Dr. Crusher in Generations to help him understand humor. He just pushed her out of the boat.

Suffice it to say, but I found a great deal to admire about the film. It’s not the strongest entry, but that’s sort of the point. It’s a strange way to make a motion picture, but at that time, Paramount had a film franchise to continue, and it thought something like Insurrection made sense. Well, it does, actually. Maybe you’ll think so, too, with another viewing.

Star Trek: First Contact

As it has been since 1996, First Contact is my favorite Star Trek film. (Here’s the official order, for those who like to keep score: 1)First Contact, 2) Star Trek, 3) The Motion Picture, 4) Nemesis, 5) Generations, 6) The Search for Spock, 7) The Voyage Home, 8) The Wrath of Khan, 9) Insurrection, 10) The Undiscovered Country, and 11) The Final Frontier.) Of the whole series to date, it’s the one that most succeeds in simply being a film. I get chills watching it.

It should come as no surprise that most of them come from watching Patrick Stewart in it. As I discussed earlier, clearly the dude was cast in Star Trek because he can act, and it wasn’t the small screen for which he was meant. He was going to be the consummate Star Trek film actor, and by god, in First Contact, he fulfills that potential, from one sequence to the next, working as many levels as he can possibly fit in, against as many actors as possible. Clearly, he meets his match in Alfre Woodard (Lily), and the ready room scene where the two collide over the best course of action against the Borg claiming Picard’s own ship, that’s cinema gold. I don’t care if no one else ever actually agrees with me, that this is literally one of the finest scenes ever caught on film. I don’t care if most critics consider, even after more than twenty years, Patrick Stewart’s part in Star Trek to be an unnecessary and ill-fitting diversion from the stage. They never really appreciated him before. And they still don’t really appreciate him now. Even most filmmakers today hardly recognize the extent of his talent. I like him as Professor X just fine, and Conspiracy Theory is an unexpected delight. But it’s as if, apart from TV work specifically developed for him, no one understands what this guy can do. I consider his Scrooge, which he developed over years of performing a one-man show, to be definitive. Likewise his Ahab (even if the hair was a little dodgy). And yet his one true film highlight comes in the middle of a movie most people will never take seriously enough.

First Contact was the unabashed success of the Next Generation films, and rightly so. It may have been another apparent rip-off of Wrath of Khan, but if so, then it was the one that really got it right. The Borg, especially as embodied by the new Borg Queen (Alice Krige) were lightyears more interesting, compelling, and articulated than Khan, not to mention more relevant. They spoke directly to the character of Picard, both in terms of past experience, and his unwillingness to admit defeat.

This wasn’t like Kirk, cheating no-win scenarios, just because he was the dashing hero. Kirk won his biggest victory by unwittingly sacrificing his closest friend. Picard admitted defeat. It’s in First Contact that the character is completely reinvented, or perhaps brought back to his never-before-seen roots, as a young risk-taker unafraid of consequences, who once lost his heart because he refused to back down from an unwinable fight. Throughout seven seasons on television, he remained mostly a passive figure, content to fall back on his skills at negotiation. He lost a valuable officer in Ro Laren because he refused to take an active role. In the films, he finally accepts that responsibility again, and it’s a revelation. In fact, it’s downright scary. Once he finally opens up, Picard almost isn’t even likeable. You can see, if you want to, the echoes of Nemesis in First Contact, when he slaughters Borg drones without hesitation, even drones that are recently assimilated from his own crew. All the compassion he was shown, even when transformed into the pitiless Locutus in “Best of Both Worlds,” he directs only to Data, perhaps the only being capable of truly understanding the turmoil that is always bubbling beneath the surface. The android has emotions he can turn off in the blink of an eye. The captain probably wishes he did, too.

What you might not get from Picard himself is portrayed aptly by Zephram Cochrane (James Cromwell, in his signature Star Trek role), the historic wonder boy who turns out to be all too fallible indeed. In fact, he’s hardly likable at all. So Riker, in his most memorable appearance anywhere in the franchise, learns. Maybe it’s not hard to notice the first officer this time, because the actor behind him, Jonathan Frakes, is also behind the camera. Like Leonard Nimoy before him, Frakes proves adept at directing, finding new and interesting things to do that help illuminate all the strengths, both old and new, of everyone he’s known for years. Where some people see a lot of Alien in this movie, I see familiar things made relevant in new context, which is all any piece of fiction can possibly hope to do. There are no new stories, and there really aren’t any old ones, either. Stories just are, combinations of familiar elements told in unfamiliar ways. If you want to, you can view First Contact as the perfection of a familiar effort, making Star Trek films. This was the eighth one. How often are the best films in any series that deep into the pile? (Okay, okay, so the Harry Potter series has a good shot at that, because there’s a lot of meaty character work to resolve in the final half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and these films have already proven that they’re best when they center on character and the spectacle possible in bringing it out.)

Because the film spends so little time trying to explain things, it works incredibly well, because it’s allowed to just have fun. Riker and Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton, finally sporting pretty much his own eyes), not to mention Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), they still playing the support team, but this time, they’re commanding it, trying to guide the unruly Cochrane into completing his historic mission, the first human warp flight. Worf (Michael Dorn) has his best and most essential appearance of the franchise, too. Viewers who didn’t know he was technically a part of the Deep Space Nine crew when he showed up in the Defiant, the ship that was built to battle the Borg, and put up as much of a fight as he could, in a sequence only sparingly demonstrated, saw an awesome battle and a good reason to bring him back aboard the Enterprise. He and Picard have their most meaningful conversations, or should I say confrontations, the kind of scenes the TV show could never have done, but should have always been happening. To say that Worf was a castrated Klingon on the small screen would have been putting it lightly, but it was also completely indicative almost all of his appearances. First Contact gave him an excuse to cut loose.

Even Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) has at least one good moment, when she summons the Emergency Holographic Program (Robert Picardo, proving that in a short time, at least one aspect of Voyager was already a proven part of franchise lore) to stall some incoming Borg. You get everything you need to know about her, Crusher’s medical and professional sense, in just that one scene. It’s what everything about her had always been trying to say, and there it was. Gates even gets to show off her theatricality, which had always failed before.

We get a couple of minor Starfleet officers to make an impact, too, from the established (Reg Barclay, portrayed to perfection once again by Dwight Schultz, in his only film appearance) to the new (Neal McDonough, making a lasting impression as the short-lived Lt. Hawk, and Michael Horton, as the recurring Lt. Daniels). Picard brings Dixon Hill to the big screen, too, and that works like gangbusters. Ethan Phillips joins Picardo in a Voyager cameo. Anyone who already loathed Neelix must still have enjoyed that one. (Tim Russ, in one of his many pre-Tuvok roles, had sort of started this tradition by appearing in Generations as a bridge officer aboard the Enterprise-B.)

The final act has its own iconic moment, too, when the audience learns the aliens who spotted Cochrane’s flight are actually Vulcans. It’s a huge surprise, a fitting one, and helped set up an entire later series (Enterprise). Jerry Goldsmith’s lush and somber score helps make the film tremendously memorable, hitting the same frenetic notes at the right times as the rest of the movie itself. I need to reference the new uniforms as well. Not since The Motion Picture and Wrath of Khan had such a change in wardrobe made such an impact, both on the films they happened in and on the franchise itself. The red jackets Kirk sports for six out of his seven appearances speak about an era just in themselves. The black jackets Picard assumes in First Contact (which are quickly made the standard attire in Deep Space Nine) help bolster the image that this is Star Trek finally embracing the medium of film.

It’s not hard to see how First Contact affected the rest of the Star Trek franchise, from 1996 to 2005, the kind of profound impact that happens surprisingly infrequently. For that reason alone, it earns a place in history. But it is also a darn good film. I would volunteer “great.”

Star Trek Generations

Three years after The Undiscovered Country and just a few months after “All Good Things…” concluded their TV adventures, the Next Generation crew ascended to the big screen in what was deemed by Paramount an inevitability. To assist in the transition was Captain Kirk, who would at last share time with his successor, Jean-Luc Picard. It was to be the biggest moment yet in franchise lore.

The whole idea of it is probably still controversial to this day, far more than anyone realized at the time. The studio basically assumed that, after six films that covered more than a decade, Star Trek was now as much in the movie business as it was television. It calculated that, even with a third series having launched the previous year, the fans would want something to replace the departing flagship, with the same philosophy applied to both stages. If Kirk were no longer making films, then Picard was the next logical choice.

I would tend to argue that Picard should have been in the movie business long before he broke in, if that were really so inevitable. Though it would have robbed audiences of the sublime sendoff for the original crew, The Undiscovered Country, Next Generation films might have seemed viable and lucrative as early as 1990, at the end of the new cast’s breakthrough third TV season, when everything was finally clicking into place. Just imagine what “The Best of Both Worlds,” already one of Star Trek’s most famous moments, could have done with a considerable budget.

Humor me a moment. The original crew, back in the 1960s, was cast for television. None of the actors, not even William Shatner, ever got much of a film career, before or after their three seasons serving on the bridge of the Enterprise. By the time they became movie stars, they were all aging. By the time of their last film together, none of them could ever hope to be featured in their own films again. The six Star Trek films are little each of their highest marks of achievement, and they are marks that would never have been achieved without Star Trek.

The Next Generation cast, however, was in a far different situation. I’m not suggesting that there was no success outside of Star Trek for the original crew, since Shatner and Leonard Nimoy obviously had some other high profile successes during this period of their careers, but that they were to a fault confined pretty specifically to a single beast. They were victims, as Nimoy himself realized early on, of their own limited success, a stroke of luck. The Next Generation cast had a single advantage: they knew exactly what they were getting into. In a lot of ways, this meant the casting job itself could afford to be a little more expansive. Thus, Patrick Stewart.

Not to begin and end with Stewart, because Wil Wheaton is still to this day more independently famous than he is, but the casting of Patrick Stewart was the singular genius of Next Generation, more than anything a clear sign that this show knew exactly what it wanted, and would eventually figure out exactly how to do it. Jeffrey Hunter was no William Shatner, after all. NBC wanted a complete overhaul after viewing “The Cage,” and so was brought in dashing James Kirk to replace wooden Christopher Pike. Yet, as with my earlier assertions that Next Generation was basically Gene Roddenberry’s belated vindication of The Motion Picture, he once more got the more cerebral version of Star Trek that he always intended, and in turn, finally cast that central character perfectly. It didn’t have to be a Brit to work, but Patrick Stewart was so perfect, so unexpected, that he probably sold his version of Star Trek entirely by himself.

All of this is to get back to how and why Star Trek Generations came about, and the manner of which it destroyed the franchise as it had come to be known. I would argue that, having finally gotten exactly what he wanted, Roddenberry, had he lived to see it, would have once again have found himself thoroughly repudiated.

With the casting of Stewart, Star Trek was given in an instant exactly the thing it had been searching for since the 1970s, before The Motion Picture was even conceived: credibility. Stewart himself wouldn’t have guessed it, since he had been struggling throughout the decade he landed the role of a lifetime to make the transition from noted Shakespearean actor to Hollywood success. He landed bit parts in Dune and Excalibur, for instance (as to the latter, so did Liam Neeson, and look where that got him at the time). He was an aging, balding veteran with nothing to sell but his air of authority, and that’s not exactly a formula for success. But Star Trek was exactly the vehicle for that persona, even if Star Trek itself didn’t know it. The franchise was stuck in a singular pursuit of success with the same stagnating cast at the time. Only when given a shot to entirely recreate itself could it find exactly what it was looking for.

In other words, ever since The Motion Picture, Patrick Stewart was exactly what Star Trek had been seeking.

But he became locked up by a television show, and the early seasons are ample demonstration that the fit simply wasn’t comfortable. Even in his best hours Stewart always felt out of proportion. What the third season did was elevate the material to his level, is all. What I’m arguing is that it would have been just as well to transplant to his natural medium of film at that moment than continue what was suddenly a success on television. Audiences and ratings are not my concerns here. The material is. Clearly, with the Borg the creators had already discovered something that would be properly stimulating, and intriguing, enough to carry a film in exactly the way the original crew had been searching for a decade, but in a way that was actually natural.

Again, I don’t mean to knock the original cast or its films, because I’ve already spent a good deal of time talking about their merits, but merely to suggest that everything those experiences had been attempting to do out of necessity, the new cast could pull off naturally. To paraphrase Shinzon, they were a cast bred for film.

But to actually do something is different from the theory of it. Perhaps it was waiting the extra four seasons, perhaps it was because no matter how much the cast fit the bill, the audience never thought it was as necessary as the studio did, the Next Generation cast ultimately failed to meet expectations. Pretty spectacularly. Generations itself proved as much, first one out of the block.

The problem ended up being, the setup was too perfect. Patrick Stewart had already proved for seven seasons that he was a dynamic and confident lead actor, so his sudden appearance on the big screen felt redundant and uninspired. In 1994, the hunger for the next Star Wars had completely evaporated, was transforming into something else entirely, a need for blockbusters to definitively prove their own worth, no more hangers-on need apply. It was no longer good enough to be cinematic or ambitious, but rather to demonstrate something that hadn’t been seen before. Star Trek was certainly no longer new.

It wasn’t even enough to do what the franchise had never done before, what had been the implicit promise ever since “Encounter at Farpoint” in 1987, the meeting of the captains, which Generations was all about. The culture was backing away from excessive commitments, which the 1980s had mined more thoroughly than any era since serials, but Star Trek was asking for exactly that, dangling a payoff just when nobody cared anymore.

In fact, a lot of critics suggested that what Generations amounted to was a glorified serial, its moments stolen beat for beat from some earlier, antiquated time. It was like, Kirk and Picard meet. So What?

Maybe it didn’t help that what everyone realized by the end of the film was that Generations wasn’t so much a momentous occasion so much as itself the end of an era, signified by the death of Captain Kirk, merely aiding in the big rescue instead of driving it. More than any of his own films, Kirk’s last film appearance was all about how human this larger-than-life figure had really become. He was giving up the franchise and his own legend at the same time.

Replacing him? Some dude who moped, even cried, crawled around in dusty rocks. Instead of Spock, the iconic Vulcan whose death was as famous as his life, this new captain was supported by a neurotic android who spent the entire film in an insane frenzy.

So let’s finally get to Data (Brent Spiner). No character after Picard better represents the Next Generation cast. Unlike the captain, however, Data was tailor-made for television, given a clear direction with an ambiguous destination that was never meant to be reached. He was the puppet who wanted to be a real boy. Just as Picard had been made to be the mirror opposite of Kirk, so too was Data the opposite of Spock. He was the outsider fans were allowed to love. Pop goes the weasel.

Data’s greatest TV virtue was turned into his greatest cinematic sin in an instant. Generations gave him the emotions that had been denied him quite deliberately for seven seasons, limiting what Spiner could do, and at the same time providing a steady and reliable personality. Now the android was free to do everything the actor could, which must have seemed like the best way possible to mark a transition, to make a distinction between mediums. Instead, it was a disaster. The only scene where it truly works is the first time everyone realizes how naturally Data and Picard work together, a moment in an impressive set called stellar cartography, when Stewart and Spiner are allowed to do what they do best, act, in the very example of what separates this cast from its predecessor.

Everything else just confuses the audience. Everything that attempts to make a movie out of this cast that has been making movies for the past five years, one hour at a time, feels like an effort. I’m not saying this because that’s the way I feel. I loved and still love Generations. But that’s the reaction of the audience, whether it has ever been voiced that way or not. It’s just as well that Shatner didn’t get his elaborate skydiving sequence finished, because the parallels with The Final Frontier would have been too obvious.

Generations has lots of things in common with The Undiscovered Country, naturally. It still doesn’t feel dated, because it was shot with so much care by director David Carson, to disguise all the elements that had just been seen on television in far more grand scales, all the mood lighting, that it pretty much stands as the Motion Picture effort of the Next Generation films, something that works so hard to look the part that it somehow fails to feel it, too. Klingons play a key role, led by the Duras sisters familiar to TV audiences and anchored by Brian Thompson in another of his thankless Star Trek roles, but they’re almost beside the point. If Soran (Malcolm McDowell) didn’t need co-conspirators, they wouldn’t have been in the film at all.

It’s in Soran, however, that the film really starts to find a pulse. McDowell is such a familiar character actor, and is so well-known for A Clockwork Orange, that his work in Generations will probably be overlooked forever. Yet more than Shatner, Stewart, or Spiner, he’s what keeps everything together. Never mind how he’s the subtle link between generations, an unassuming if egomaniacal individual who pretty much does his best to keep to himself throughout the entire movie. That much pretty much sums up Khan, too. At times, when anyone wants to try and explain what they don’t like about the movie, beyond the “meaningless” and “insulting” death of Kirk, they’ll say it’s the first Next Generation attempt to steal the formula from Wrath of Khan. They’ll completely emasculate Soran, just that easily.

Yet McDowell is the casting coup of Patrick Stewart, repeated, for Generations. He doesn’t have a lot to do, and he really doesn’t need to do a lot, because his character is the idea floating through the story, just as the Nexus is floating through space. He is the embodiment of time, the very thing he spends most of his dialogue talking about. McDowell and Soran are a match made in heaven. You believe Soran because you’ve never known quite what to believe about McDowell, what it is that makes him relevant, despite a long career and very little to show for it. You can call him the stand-in for Star Trek itself in the film, the cynical heart of an earnest production. He doesn’t want immortality. He simply wants what he once had a tantalizing taste of, a sense of infinite possibilities. He never knew what he wanted until he stumbled into it, and then couldn’t shake it until he got it back. He just didn’t realize what it did to him.

In that sense, as the film itself cleverly insinuates, Generations does give Picard back to the Borg, exactly as the next film does, as every audience member had been wanting since “Best of Both Worlds,” but was constantly denied except for little gifts here and there. If the original crew got its fill of serialized storytelling in its string of six films, then the new crew had been teasing it for seven seasons, but hardly ever actually capitalizing on it.

Next Generation was always about episodic material, but tinged with a real sense of the material world, and that’s what Generations attempted to emulate, notably with its strange idea of a realm where your heart’s desire could be magically obtained, where doing the right thing means being counterintuitive in the most obscene sense possible.

Isn’t that Generations in a nutshell? I like to argue that people sometimes stumble into exactly what they need, and sometimes still, simply don’t realize it. They want something else, so reject what they actually get, even if it’s exactly what they need. I don’t think Kirk is ever any better, any more relevant, any more real, than when he’s pining for that lost love, Antonia, riding a horse and trying to figure things out, only to snap out of his funk and realize, as he always does, that he’s capable of doing exactly what needs to be done, regardless of the consequences. Picard, likewise, is a man who has a lot of history the audience was simply never allowed to explore, but who always rises above his circumstances and grasps the noble truths he seeks to uphold, the wisdom he embodies, if not always actually lives up to. More than anything, he is a living conduit of tradition, which makes him entirely appropriate as the second captain of the franchise, and the man to pin this movie on, the one looking over the next horizon (which of course he literally does at the end of the film).

Pointedly, I would say, the Next Generation movies, right from the start, take a little more exclusive look at storytelling than the six preceding entries. They never look at Federation presidents and deliberations. These kinds of moments are avoided entirely. Picard and Stewart are capable of embodying every kind of authority necessary, both in their reactions to the guest characters this captain always interacts with directly as well as the cast that was assembled around him all those years ago. Perhaps it’s telling, the role Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) plays here, the only time she makes a meaningful appearance in the four films, the sage voice, the only one, Picard needs in moments of reflection.

In 1994, after my first experience, the first Star Trek I saw in a theater, I had arrived late and felt throughout it a feverish anticipation. I made it bigger than it really was. But even later, when Generations came back down to earth, it never lost its grandeur, its simple grace. It was, to my mind, an unqualified success. It was a completely different beast from the original crew films that had come before. It did feel more natural, perhaps for the reasons I’ve speculated about in this piece, perhaps because it was a matter of timing for me personally.

It’s almost like a cross between The Motion Picture and The Undiscovered Country: competent, timid. Generations exists in a bubble. It’s separated from the three films that follow it visually, but also in the sense that the possibilities of the big screen haven’t been fully embraced yet, like a Next Generation version of an original crew film. Picard is less an authority here than reactionary. There’s little doubt that he’s the lead character, but Patrick Stewart has yet to fully understand the new possibilities. He’s still acting like someone on TV.

But even for that, I love it.