Rank the Films Openings

[Vger23]

Each film has sort of a teaser opening, not too dissimilar from the television episodes.

Rank each film's opener, least-favorite first, and give a brief reason for your ranking.

This is NOT a ranking of the movie...just that opening teaser scene that sets the tone for the rest of the film.

10. Star Trek: Insurrection
Watching cloaked Data go berserk and run around a village knocking over potted plants and splashing hippies....the first sign that this wasn't going to be a great film.

9. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
There's nothing particularly wrong with TSFS's opening, but there's nothing particularly right either. It's just a rather dull, brooding opening to what is otherwise a great Trek film. The Enterprise fly-by is the worst model shot in the film, and Kirk's log (although appropriately so) just sounds flat and depressing. I remember the TV version editing this out completely and going straight to the Merchantman scene...and the film lost almost nothing as a result.

8. Star Trek: First Contact
This is a very entertaining film, but the opener is pretty blah. Although the pull-back from Picard's eye to the enormity of the Borg cube is impressive, the "dream within a dream" jump-shock moment is blah. "Yes I know....The Borg" wasn't nearly as dramatic as it may have seemed in the script.

7. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
The Saratoga tracking a giant whining space fece was.....intriguing I guess, but didn't really inspire me to be excited for what was to come.

6. Star Trek: Nemesis
A really cool opening music queue, the first Trek film not to feature opening credits, and the horrific assassination of the entire Romulan Senate was a pretty badass way to open a film.

5. Star Trek Generations
This one has a little bit of an unfair advantage, as it is a longer sequence than the others and features a true prologue with Kirk, Scott, Chekov and the crew of the Enterpri-B. But, it's a roaring opener filled with heart, humor, action and some truly nice dialogue.

4. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Really wonderful location shooting right out of the gate, combined with that mysterious shot of Sybok slowly emerging from the sandstorm set up a pretty fantastic opening. The secret of this unique mind meld power, the scene bathed in a pounding heartbeat noise, with the revelation that this is an emotional Vulcan all made for a truly unique and engaging opener.

3. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
I saw this in a theater that had awesome sound (for the time) and I remember being awestruck during the Praxis explosion (immediately after the opening credits) and the awesomeness of the subspace shockwave hitting the Excelsior. Great teaser that effectively set up what was to follow without any wasted motion.

2. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
The Kobyashi Maru simulation is now legendary. We get the new uniforms, a Vulcan woman in the center seat, and a lost-cause battle against the Klingons with plenty of pyrotechnics and main cast "deaths" in about 5 minutes flat. Then we get the superhero Admiral Kirk reveal as the viewscreen slides away, revealing the truth. Very cool stuff, and brilliant way to distract from Spock's actual death.

1. Star Trek: The Motion Picture
This is still the best of the best. That opening image of the dark, mysterious Intruder Cloud with the blaster beam noise echoing ominously, followed by the long, uninterrupted shot of the new Klingon Battecruisers approaching the mysterious entity...all while Jerry Goldsmith's iconic Klingon theme pounds away at you...brilliant and captivating stuff. The awesome Klingon bridge and make-up redesign, Epsilon IX, the first glimpse of the Klingon language......Then watching them be digitized one by one using fantastic visual effects. Iconic.

 

[Lord Garth]

Ehhh...
10. TSFS --> It's basically the end of TWOK. Makes sense that they'd have to start with this. But the tiny screen slowly growing and turning from blue-scale to normal-scale is kind of "eh". Then we get the opening credits, which are okay. Then Kirk's log. Nothing wrong with it per se, but there's no bang. I like when the Klingons make their grand appearance in the next scene better.

9. INS --> The Space Amish doing their thing, then Data does crazy antics!

Middle of the Road
8. NEM --> Super quick intro with the title card, though I like the music and the inverted E's. Then we cut to what looks like a municipal meeting in the Romulan Senate. Old business, new business. It feels like a local town meeting I'd record for the public access station I work at, or C-SPAN. Then they get hit with a clean bomb. So much for new business.

7. GEN --> Champaign bottle for the Enterprise-B. New-Age music.

Dead Center Middle of the Road
6. TVH --> The Dedication to the Challenger. It's not flashy or anything, but it doesn't have to be. It honored the teachers who tragically lost their lives attempting to journey into space. The music is Holiday-ish but I keep in mind this came out in a late November and ran in the theater through the holidays, so it's seasonally appropriate. Then we get told about the Probe. And it's amazing how different they made the bridge set look for the Saratoga by changing the lighting the way they did.

Now we start moving into the intros I really like...
5. FC --> I like the music even though the credits haven't aged well. But what remains timeless is the nightmare of Picard in the Borg Cube.

4. TFF --> Opening in a desert is something different. So is Kirk's rock climbing. Both these things overpower the so-so opening credits with the recycled TMP theme.

3. TWOK --> The James Horner theme, then the Kobiyashi Maru. That's all that needs to be said.

2. TUC --> I love Cliff Eidelman's score. I don't care what anyone says. And I like the early-'90s two-toned color scheme for the font on the credits. And it may not seem like much today, but back in 1991, watching Praxis explode, seeing the Excelsior get caught up in it, and just being amazed by the CGI still stays with me.

1. TMP --> The Overture (capitalized intentionally), the opening credits, V'Ger, the Klingons, and Epsilon 9. It doesn't get any better than this. Then it keeps going with Spock on Vulcan and Kirk on Earth. All very epic. None of the other films have this type of scale.

 

[Admiral Archer]

I can only do my top 4 for now (I honestly don't care about the rest all that much) but here they are:

4. NEMESIS - Honestly, this is probably lower on the list, but Goldsmith's Romulan theme was the perfect juxtaposition to his Klingon theme in TMP over 23 years earlier. Plus the visuals of the two worlds Romulus and Remus, plus the added senate assassination, all make for a very powerful opening to what would be otherwise the worst Star Trek film.

3. TWOK - This is tough, because objectively speaking this is the best intro of all Star Trek movies, simply because the whole thing was an incredibly clever ruse to trick audiences into thinking the leak of Spock's death was only half true - see, it's just a simulation! You did asked me for my personal preference though, and subjectively I cannot imagine what it was like seeing this for the first time, as the first time I saw anything of this movie it was when I caught the movie on TV, during the battle of the Mutara Nebula and Spock's actual death scene (bummer for me).

2. FIRST CONTACT - Maybe this is just 8 year old me speaking, but this was a magical intro. We finally see, with a epic big movie budget, the massive scale of the borg collective, as well as a detailed look at just what they did to Picard. Who doesn't wince when the needle bends his iris as it goes into his eye? Plus the dream afterwards where that mechanical thing bursts out of his face makes me jump to this day.

1. THE MOTION PICTURE - Other than personal preference, this is an incredible scene to open the movie with. It was our first look at Klingons in over 10 years, and as they say, the more things change the more they stay the same. The Klingon Battlecruisers are immediately recognizable in design, yet somehow so much more impressive. That twisting overhead pan shot or whatever as the camera spins over the bridge of the lead Klingon ship is an effect I've spent as many years trying to duplicate using modern day effects as what took place between TOS and this film. And the Klingons themselves are so much cooler. Yet it truly speaks volumes that these incredibly awesome aliens in their incredibly awesome ships are no match whatsoever to the blue cloud intruder that they face. And when you see the lead cruiser's captain's response to one of his ships being totally disintegrated, you know this is a Star Trek adventure on a whole other level from TOS, and a story which deserves the title of "The Motion Picture" because it couldn't be done justice any other way.

 

[FormerLurker]

TUC deserves special honors. It starts with a bang.