Its existence, 10.5 years after the show ended, was clearly inspired by the success of George Lucas’ Star Wars and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, yet its narrative and visual template is obviously fashioned more from Stanley Kubrick’s slow-burn mind-melter 2001: A Space Odyssey. Robert Wise’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture remains an oddity. Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $300.2 million (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) Getty Images
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Final Frontier is not good (unfinished effects don’t help), but it’s an interesting bad movie.ĭECEMBER 7: Actors George Takei, James Doohan, Grace Lee Whitney, Nichelle Nichols, Stephen Collins, DeForest Kelley, Majel Barrett, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Persis Khambatta, Walter Koenig pose for a portrait during the filming of the movie "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" which was released Decemin the United States. The ensuing conflict, a rebel Klingon ship attempting to take out Kirk for glory notwithstanding, is more about a battle for the souls of our Star Trek heroes, one that counteracts the myth of Kirk as a glorified he-man cowboy. This intimate odyssey, with Kirk, Spock and McCoy kidnapped by Spock’s half-brother who wants to pilot a starship to essentially meet God, revels in the interior pain and personal pathos of its three leading men. I’m not pretend that William Shatner’s infamous box office bomb is “good, actually.” But, especially after almost 35 years of “Kirk stops a bad guy and saves the Earth” plots, there’s a lot to admire in this unapologetic head trip of a sequel. Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $119.9 million Intentional or not, this admittedly rip-snorting and crowd-pleasing action-adventure played like a skewed endorsement of the 2000 presidential election.Ĭanadian actor William Shatner and American Leonard Nimoy on the set of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (Photo by Paramount Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images) Corbis via Getty Images Cheer as Chris Pine’s unqualified, hotheaded cowboy Kirk usurps the command in a glorified coup from Zachary Quinto’s experienced, cautious egghead Spock just because the franchise as we know it demands it.
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Alas, the film never slows down, while the whole “things must play out as we know they must” mentality turns this Star Trek origin story into a kind of manifest destiny propaganda. Abrams directs the hell out of this movie, the camera almost never stops, and the new cast is instantly iconic despite playing characters previously defined by an established cast. There’s a lot to appreciate in this unapologetic “ Star Trek as Star Wars” time-rewriting reboot, and it’s no secret as to why it became a monster domestic smash in summer 2009. Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $314.8 million Christopher Lloyd makes a fine Klingon baddie, and the production values are beyond reproach, but The Search For Spock is one of the more generic Star Trek adventures. That said, the first third has a certain creepy mind-horror vibe, but once Kirk and friends steal the Enterprise and head off to the (dying) Genesis-created planet to fetch Spock’s body it becomes a two-fisted action flick, closer to the whole Stagecoach in space pitch that was probably intended. Oh, and it also walks back one of the more interesting developments of The Wrath of Khan, arbitrarily killing off Kirk’s just-discovered son and negating that bit of character development. It’s not boring and it’s not “bad,” but the entire film exists just to walk back the shocking finale of its immediate predecessor.
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Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $208.5 million Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (1984) (Photo by Paramount Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images) Corbis via Getty Images All in all, the Next Generation crew deserved a much grander farewell.Īmerican actors Merritt Butrick and Robin Curtis on the set of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, directed by Leonard Nimoy. The nature-versus-nurture stuff (concerning a young clone of Picard played by a very skinny Tom Hardy) is intriguing, but it’s oft-charted territory for this franchise, and the film pulls a “Disney death” with Data. That it’s not the “worst” Star Trek movie is mostly because it wears its $60 million budget on its sleeve and it’s never boring. Alas, the generically action-packed and occasionally patronizing (Troi gets “mind-raped” just so Riker can righteously kill Ron Perlman’s secondary bad guy) Nemesis turned off Trekkers and didn’t work for general audiences who were saving their money for The Two Towers opening just five days later. Stuart Baird’s late 2002 release was a Star Trek movie for folks who think Star Trek isn’t cool.
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Inflation-Adjusted Domestic Box Office: $67.9 million