The Best Movie Ever | Star Trek

Fifty years ago, a television series called Star Trek debuted, ran for three seasons, and then left the airwaves. And for most shows, that would have been that. A brief run, followed by a gradual skulk back into the shadowy pop culture consciousness. Instead, the utopian sci-fi series grew in popularity, spawning new television series and an enormously successful motion picture franchise… the thirteenth of which, Star Trek Beyond, opens this weekend.

Also: ‘Star Trek Beyond’ Review | Officially Out of Darkness

And thirteen films later we find ourselves wondering, what’s the best Star Trek movie ever? As always we have our crack team of film critics sharing their opinions. Crave’s William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold, and Collider’s Brian Formo are each only allowed to pick one film to hold up as the very best of the Star Trek movie series, and as usual, they couldn’t agree on a thing. (Heck, one of them even picked an odd-numbered movie, which in some circles amounts to Star Trek sacrilege!)

Find out what they picked and come back next Wednesday for another all-new, highly debatable installment of Crave’s The Best Movie Ever!

Witney Seibold’s Pick: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

Paramount Pictures

Something Star Trek has always heavily flirted with – the J.J. Abrams-produced films perhaps notwithstanding – is the vastness of the universe. Previous sci-fi films and TV shows would deal with space travel, but Star Trek was the first to really insert just how vast, how wide, how ineffably enormous the cosmos really is. The makers of the more recent shows (i.e. the ones since 1987) have even stayed abreast of the latest advancements in physics and technology to ensure that something like a warp drive would sound at least halfway reasonable, and those vast distances could be traversed with ease. That way the people aboard a ship like the Enterprise could go boldly and deeply into the vast inky void and encounter an infinity that man’s imagination cannot hold. 

Robert Wise’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, clearly taking its tonal cues from 2001: A Space Odyssey from a decade previous, used glorious music, and a lot of long, long, long glory shots of gigantic spacecraft to convey a sense of cosmic majesty. The slow, slow pace ensures an almost contemplative mood. When the Enterprise encounters a massive, massive cloud headed right for Earth, they head inside and discover an abstract phantasmagoria of freaky images and unknowable technologies. Here is a thing so very alien that we cannot even ponder its geography, much less its purpose. 

Of course, its purpose is eventually revealed to be something surprisingly human and relatable, and we witness a giant galactic orgasm of some sort. The crew has done their best to understand it, but more importantly, they have used the most fundamental part of our humanity – our capacity for love – to make sense of it. These are the fundamentals of Star Trek, and make for a slightly-more-than-casual musing on our place in the universe. Infinity, for this one film, brushed against us. 

Brian Formo’s Pick: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Paramount Pictures

I may not know much Star Trek lore but I know a good movie when I see when and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is one of the best blockbusters ever and the best movie in the Star Trek canon. It’s got everything you’d want from an adventure: humor, strong character bonds, big stakes, a rousing score, some spiffy explosions and battles, and a pass-the-Kleenex third act that highlights personal sacrifice. 

On top of all that, though, what elevates Khan is that the entire plot concerns a mistake in judgement made by our hero and point of reference, Captain Kirk (William Shatner). Sure, Khan (Ricardo Montalban) is full of wrath but the reason for that titular wrath is completely valid. Years prior, Kirk abandoned all of Khan’s people on a planet and never once sent anyone to check up on their well-being on Ceti Alpha 5. Instead of having the villain who wants to blow everything up for purposes of unchecked planetary power, The Wrath of Khan gave us a villain who has a rightful disdain for someone very much crafted to be a hero, thus coloring the blockbuster world a little bit different by showing the audience his youthful miscalculations.

In addition to shading some shadowy areas of our protagonist, The Wrath of Khan greatly intensifies the Kirk-Spock (Leonard Nimoy) dynamic. “I have been, and always shall be, your friend” is one of the most emotionally earned and validated lines in the history of franchise films. And that moment is allowed to blossom because director Nicholas Meyer isn’t in a rush to get to more action. The action is in the characters—including actions past, present, and future—and The Wrath of Khan nails that awareness.

William Bibbiani’s Pick: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

Paramount Pictures

The most beautiful thing about the Star Trek universe is how malleable it is. It’s a backdrop against which you can set serious science-fiction, badass space battles, smart political intrigue and light-hearted comedies about saving the whales. All that matters, really, is that your Star Trek movie or television episode has something to say about our current struggles, because otherwise what’s the point?

The sixth installment of the motion picture series, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, is one of the most exciting allegories in movie history. The ongoing conflict between the Federation and the Klingons was coming to an uneasy end, just like the real-life Cold War that inspired it, but even though Star Trek takes place in a nearly utopian future it’s still nearly impossible to ignore ages of animosity. The crew of the Enterprise and a Klingon diplomatic envoy meet for one of the most uncomfortable dinner scenes in motion picture history, and then the Klingon diplomat is assassinated. What’s worse, it looks to all the universe like Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy are the culprits.

The falsely accused heroes, the suspenseful investigations, the unthinkable consequences… Star Trek VI plays like a Tom Clancy novel in space. It’s a consistently thrilling motion picture, punctuated by just a handful of excellent action moments (the climactic space battle with Christopher Plummer’s Shakespeare-spouting warmonger in particular is a humdinger). It excites us by challenging Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a peaceful future, and in the end it inspires us by stating, unequivocally, that that vision could become a reality. It’s just going to be difficult as hell.

Previously on The Best Movie Ever: