Star Trek II, III and IV are in my opinion the best Trek films. Because they indeed boldly go where no Trek had gone before. Trek II kills off Spock and gives Kirk a son. Trek III destroys the Enterprise, kills Kirk's son and the entire crew become fugitives. Trek IV doesn't even feature the Enterprise. Yes, there are reset buttons, but they are not used within one film. Trek II kills off Spock for good. The entire next film is devoted to the reset button of bringing Spock back, it's not just a handwave. And only until the very end of Trek IV, Spock's character is completely brought back. Trek III destroys the Enterprise and the crew becomes criminals. And only the next film deals with that. And while they first introduce David and then kill him off, it has a lasting impact on Kirk's character and is picked up again in Trek VI. Speaking of Trek VI, it gets an honorary mention because it has Sulu being Captain of the Excelsior (meaning he's removed from the Enterprise bridge for the entire film). In the TNG films, only Generations came close to be as daring, with killing off Kirk, Picard's family and destroying the Enterprise. But while Kirk and Picard's family stay dead, it's never mentioned again. At least the new Enterprise looks different than the old one. And after that, every film ended with the crew back in the saddle, heading off with the Enterprise. No big changes, no lasting impacts on the characters. Nemesis tries to be daring, but chickens out everywhere. Data dies but his Katra is still in his clone. The Enterprise gets almost destroyed but is repaired at the end. Riker and Troi "leave", but only until the very end of the film. If you removed that side plot about Riker and the Titan, it wouldn't change anything about the rest of the film. Why is it that in the earlier films, they had more courage to do something fresh and new, and in the newer ones, they always chickened out? Even in the Spoiler: Abramstrek films Abramstrek films, you have the same pattern: some bigger stuff happens, but at the end the crew is back on the bridge and the ship heads off, and whatever happened in the films has no lasting impact. Vulcan gets destroyed, but that is only slightly picked up again in the next film. Kirk "dies", and the reset button is pushed immediately. Amanda and Pike dying has no more impact on the characters than Picard's family or Kirk dying.
Hmm, good points. I do sometimes wonder if Trek V suffers slightly for being "the one after the Genesis trilogy". It's the first movie where nothing outrageous truly happens. The first movie where, with the Enterprise relaunched and all the crew back in their usual places, it's almost back to being 'business as usual'. That can't help but leave the movie feeling a little deflated after some of the (almost) franchise shattering events seen in the previous three movies. TFF kind of lacks impetus because TVH wrapped everything up again so neatly.
Am I remembering incorrectly in that there was a strong belief at the time that IV could have been the last movie? I was very little at the time, but I feel like some were saying that.
II and IV are both great, TSFS is merely good. TSFS suffers from too obviously just being an "undoing some plot elements of TWOK" movie. They destroy the Genesis pkanet and show that the device doesn't work, kill off Kirk's son, and bring back Spock. Unlike any of the other Trek movies, it doesn't stand on its own as a complete story, but it's still very solid and has a lot of great moments. TVH was actually a very bold risk in the movie series at that point, making a comedy with no real villain after the previous two movies. TWOK is great, but has some story flaws.
Great question. I think with the later stuff they were trying to be safe – didn't want to rock the boat with the characters. But who really knows? The ST2-4 story arc is still the height of Trek for me.
As others have said, studios can play it safe, sort of it worked last time so lets do it again. However the reverse is also true, well that didn't really work, lets try something different this time.
The Genesis Trilogy and TUC feel tightly connected, as if it's one cohesive storyline that we see develop over time. TMP and TFF are disconnected and more stand-alone. You can omit them in a sequential viewing and not really miss anything in the broader scheme of things. As for the TNG movie franchise lacking courage, totally agree. After the success of First Contact, TPTB should have mapped out a clear strategy for wrapping up the TNG saga with a story that spanned more than a single film. They had the wind at their backs and instead settled for a safe approach with the uninspiring INS and the hurried and poorly thought out NEM.
I think that with the II through IV-era TOS films, there was an impetus to do something different because they were dealing with a past-its-prime cast that had been brought back from a TV show that was pushing 20. They were dealing with the fact that the characters had aged, that Kirk had been promoted out of the job that he loved and had passed up the opportunity to have a family because of his career, etc., as a natural outgrowth of this situation. If the TNG films played things safe, it was because TPTB just wanted to keep the TV series rolling on the big screen. The current reboot film series is basically giving TPTB more freedom to do what they increasingly tried to do with the TOS and TNG films...more action and more comedy. They have a fresh young cast and ideally would want to milk as many films out of them as they can, so long as the films turn enough profit. The new series is too young for major life-altering shake-ups. They're still telling the story of how these characters establish something resembling the status quo of the old series...life-altering shake-ups wouldn't have as much gravitas with characters that we've only known for a few hours.
was NEM really rushed? In calendar years, it had the longest gap between movies when it was released until STXI.
True, but it's not like they worked on the NEM solidly for four years after INS came out. There might have been a wide time gap between films, but NEM feels like the implementation of a rough draft. From broader narrative and thematic execution to simple editing, NEM feels hurried and disinterested in itself.
Every Trek Film was treated as if it could have been the last. TMP certainly could have been the last. I still remember a Starlog magazine I got where they said Trek's future was 'doubtful' due to TMP. So if each film could have been the last, they had to have a lot of important stuff happen to the characters to try to finish their arcs (kind of like in 3rd Indy movie). This sense of the TOS films being open-ended didn't really start to kick in when Trek V was in production, and that probably got green-lit due to the unexpectedly large box-office of Trek IV. Trek IV was the first film that really crossed over to the mainstream in a big way. The comedy and the time-travel to modern-day made it more accessible. But Trek V started to seem ho-hum because by then we knew TNG was on the way to give us Trek every week. By the time Trek VI came out, I was quite surprised to know they were even doing another, because Trek V did so poorly, TNG was on TV, and the cast were really pushing plausibility. I felt bad that the movie franchise dried up so quickly after TNG debuted. I really think the original cast were kind of wasted by only doing a movie every 2-3 years. I would have wanted to see them do another series rather than TNG. But the upside is, as the thread says, the films did have to cover a lot of ground and be suitably epic.