TMP was the only one out of all eleven films that tries to be more than an action movie (and it fails for being just a bad movie, but at least it aimed for some high-concept sci-fi instead of a villain-based action piece). TVH, of course, is also not "villain based action", but it's a comedic romp, and while it's lots of fun, it's hardly deep or impactful beyond that. I will say that several of the movies do a good job with character development, specifically. But in the end, the core of almost every Trek film is "beat bad guy, stop threat, save day."
Die Hard,
First Blood, and
Enter the Dragon are examples of action movies.
The Voyage Home is not an action movie at all.
Of course it isn't. Which is why I said it wasn't in my post. But it's a comedic romp, which is still not anything like TMP in terms of concept, plot, or pacing, and THAT was my point.
The Wrath of Khan has quite a bit of action in it, but it also spends a lot of time focusing exclusively on character interactions and development. To say that the only theme of TWOK is to defeat Khan is really to miss the point entirely. It's about facing mortality, most prominently Kirk aging and Spock sacrificing himself to save the ship. The climax of the movie does not come when Khan dies, but when Spock dies.
Didn't say it was the only THEME. That would be a silly thing to say, since the movie explores other themes. You'll also notice that I acknowledged that several of the movies did a good job with character development. I said it's at the core of the movie, and what I meant was that it's at the core of the
plot. I thought this was pretty clear from what I said about TMP, but I'll explain in more detail. TMP had a high-concept sci-fi
premise. It also had a slower, more deliberate pace. Now, it was perhaps TOO slow, and the movie has lots of problems and is overall not one of the good ones, but what I was getting at was that I wish more of the Trek films had attempted something like it in terms of concept and plot. That's what I'm referring to: regardless of how much character development there is, regardless of how many other themes are explored, the core plot of EVERY Trek movie except TMP and TVH involves a villain.
The Search for Spock has little action.
I don't think you are using the term "action film" the way it's generally used. I think a better term for these Star Trek movies would be science fiction adventure films. Others can address the rest.
On this, you may be correct. I think I was using the term carelessly. The key part, for me, is perhaps not the "action" part, but the "villain-based" part. "Sci-fi adventure" is, no doubt, more accurate. My overall points remain, though, which are A) that I wish at least ONE other Trek film had attempted to do something like TMP in terms of concept, pacing, etc, and B) that
none of the movies can touch the very best of the television shows when it comes to depth, complexity, and thoughtful storytelling (again, except TMP, which hits many of the right notes in terms of concept, but is just no fun to watch).
As for TWOK, I didn't "miss the point". I just didn't think it was all that great of a movie. I get what themes they were trying to explore, I get what the movie was all about, I definitely see what they were
going for... I just didn't think it worked out very well.
I don't get the criticism that the TNG movies "felt like episodes." Other than INS (and ironically the popular FC, which DID strike me as a plot they could have used for a two-parter, albeit with a lower budget), this doesn't strike me as very accurate.
I think Generations and Nemesis are both very cinematic and at least LOOKED pretty great, despite whatever other problems they may have had.
I agree that the plot of FC, the core storyline, could have worked as an ep, but the surrounding production values and cinematic style felt very movie like to me. Maybe that's partly why the criticism seems so vague: unless one is personally well-versed in filming technique, a movie feeling too much like an episode can be just that: feel. Hard to quantify.
And in that vein, I also thought NEM "felt" very big, very cinematic. It got that right. It had a boatload of flaws that bogged it down into being one of the worse Trek films, but that wasn't one of them.
Star Trek was about the idea that there were no bad guys or aliens but others with different reasons for what they have to do. Think Balance of Terror. No better, no worse. Kirk points out that the Gorn might have had a good reason to destroy Cestus Three, and the climax to me was when he decided not to kill him, today! That shows a radical departure in his thought processes and ability to learn and change and regognize that one sees things as others see you - the reverse side has a reverse side which may be more powerful, who knows. Popular opinion could be wrong and the single metron child noted that complimenting Kirk for not being a good soldier drone of the state.
This is partly what I'm talking about. The shows did things like this, presenting "threats" that weren't necessarily as simple as they appeared, and "bad guys" who had some complexity to them, and maybe weren't really
just "bad guys." Excepting General Chang from TUC, I felt that the main villains in all of the Trek movies that had them were pretty stock. Decently written and well-acted, in most cases, but very much just "bad guys" who are out to do bad things because they are evil.
The music of the TOS movies were better, or shall I dare say just different and more to my personal taste. They weren't afraid of risk taking as Berman was terrified of. I'm sure when he gets older he is going to save string too.
Berman's inexplicable fear of strong musical scores was really limited to the shows, not the films. Dennis McCarthy, who scored a bunch of TNG and DS9, created a MUCH more powerful, more grand score when he was allowed to stretch his legs; his GEN music blows away just about everything he ever did for the shows. And Goldsmith's scores for the latter three TNG films are also anything but "sonic wallpaper" (the term that is - rightly - thrown around when discussing the music from the Berman-era TV shows). I personally liked the TNG film scores better than the TOS ones, except for TUC which I thought was very good as well.
Hit a guy with a pot...?
Oh, come on, she did
way more than that. In one movie, she complained about an EMH, and in another, Data threw her into the water.

And yeah, "The Picard & Data show" IS one of the biggest flaws of the TNG movies. NEM in particular suffers from this. INS does to some degree, though I personally thought that the best scenes in that movie by far were the ones featuring either the whole cast (the stuff at the beginning, before the "truth" about the Ba'Ku is revealed), and later, the parts featuring Riker, Geordi, and a couple of guest cast Starfleet officers (the space battle sequences on the Ent-E... except for that stupid "manual steering column" bit, oy). I think it and NEM - while they both have BIG fundamental problems with their plots - would have at least been more enjoyable if the entirety of the main cast had been used more, and more effectively.