Ranking the Star Trek Films

I saw some people were ranking the Star Trek films, so I thought I'd join in the fun.  I have a hard time ranking anything that's covers such a long span of time, because I have to weigh sentimentality versus rewatchability.  Plus some of the movies are wildly different genres, so it's like comparing apples and oranges.  But this is as close as I can get:

1) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
2) Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
3) Star Trek: First Contact
4) Galaxy Quest
5) Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
6) Star Trek (2009)
7) Star Trek: Generations
8) Star Trek Into Darkness
9) Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
10) Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
11) Star Trek: The Motion Picture
12) Star Trek Beyond
13) Star Trek: Nemesis
14) Star Trek: Insurrection

So, some specifics:

1) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - This one gets the gold because it ranks high on both sentimentality and rewatchability.  It has good pacing, it's quotable, and it stands the test of time.  Khan is still one of the best villains of any franchise.

2) Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - Star Trek struggles on the big screen, because the TV's tone and pace don't always translate into blockbuster films.  Some Star Trek films add more action, some add higher stakes drama, but Star Trek IV leaned heavy into comedy.  And somehow, it worked.

3) Star Trek: First Contact - This one might be personal bias.  I was a latecomer to Star Trek, so Next Generation is my favorite series.  This is the best of the NextGen films, and features the best of NextGen's villains, the Borg. 

4) Galaxy Quest - Yeah, the fourth best Star Trek film isn't a Star Trek film, bite me.  But it does a stellar job as both a parody and an homage, making fun of Trek and its fans without being cruel.

5) Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country - Just a good, solid movie.  This one is special to me because it's the first Star Trek film I saw in the theater after becoming a Trekkie.  (I had seen first two movies in the theater as a kid, but I didn't like Star Trek then.)

6) Star Trek (2009) - A few years ago I saw Marina Sirtis and Michael Dorn at a comic convention.  Somebody asked them how they felt about the reboot movies.  They weren't fans.  They said that the TV shows usually have some sort of message, but that the movies were just flashy action with no message.  I agree, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing.  The 2009 reboot is sleek and shiny, and not nearly as deep as the TV shows, but it does its job well.  It shows us that Star Trek movies can be summer blockbusters with broader appeal, as long as they abandon what Star Trek was all about in the first place.  I think there's a place in this world for both styles of Star Trek.

7) Star Trek: Generations - This one's just fanservice, but that's okay.  Star Trek fans are often the type of people who enjoy fanservice the most.  I'm pulling this statistic out of my ass, but there was a time when 90% of Star Trek fanfiction involved crossovers with other TV shows.  (I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I had a Star Trek / X-Men comic book.)  So having the generations meet was a no-brainer.  It's not a great movie, but it was a fun way to pass the theatrical torch.

8) Star Trek Into Darkness - A lot of people don't like this one, due to the clumsy handling of its fanservice.  They're not wrong.  It wasn't the best way to reintroduce Khan.  But if you get past that (and some other minor nitpicks), it's a fun movie.  Cumberbatch is a terrific villain no matter what you call him, and overall it's a decent film as long as you don't think about how it relates to the rest of the Star Trek franchise.

9) Star Trek III: The Search for Spock - First off, let me just say that there isn't a single Star Trek film I hate.  But around here is where my list goes from "fun to watch on a Friday night with a big tub of popcorn" to "I would leave it on as background noise while I play Sims 4 on my laptop."  Search for Spock is a utilitarian movie.  It does a serviceable job of tying up the loose ends from Star Trek II, but it doesn't do much else for me.  I do like Christopher Lloyd as a Klingon, though.

10) Star Trek V: The Final Frontier - I have to say, "What would God need with a starship?" is one of my favorite lines in a Star Trek movie.  Beyond that, there's just not much here to write home about.

11) Star Trek: The Motion Picture - I vaguely remember seeing this in the theater (I was six) and being bored.  I watched it again when I was seventeen, and it was still pretty boring, but I can imagine how cool it might have been to a Star Trek fan.  People who loved the original series, and were then starved for ten years, only to see it return on the big screen with more expensive special effects - it had to be an experience.  I like the twist - that V'ger is Voyager - but beyond that it's a slog.

12) Star Trek Beyond - I saw it once in the theater and forgot about it.  I remember some of the imagery, but I actually had to go to Wikipedia to be reminded of the plot.  And wow, it turns out I remember even less than I thought.  I do remember having fun, but it obviously isn't the most memorable movie.

13) Star Trek: Nemesis - Honestly I barely remember this movie at all.  I didn't hate it, but there just wasn't much to love.  I remember reading at the time that it was written by a Star Trek fan, who was trying to give Picard an arch enemy as compelling as Khan.  If they were going to emulate Khan, they should have used an enemy from the NextGen series, someone who has an established reason to hate Picard.  For example, Gul Madred from "Chain of Command". 

14) Star Trek: Insurrection - And finally, we have the reason you shouldn't use TV plots for movie scripts.  Insurrection is a perfectly fine story.  It feels like a dozen other episodes of the NextGen TV series.  But that's all.  I came out of it feeling like I'd just spent $20 to see something I could have seen on TV.  If it had actually been shown as an episode of the series, it would have been a decent episode.  But there was just nothing theatrical about it, nothing that warranted a big screen budget or leaving the house.  But it also proves that even the worst Star Trek movie is still a pretty good time.

Second Look: Tron Legacy

I saw "Tron: Legacy" in the theaters ten years ago, and was severely disappointed.  Yesterday I gave it a rewatch, and it was slightly better the second time.  But it's still severely disappointing.

To recap: Sometime after the first Tron film, Flynn disappears.  His son Sam goes looking for him, and gets sucked into the virtual world.  He thinks he's been reunited with his dad, but it turns out to be "Clu" - Flynn's pet program that turned into an evil dictator, leaving the real Flynn Clu-less.  Sam is made to fight in the games, and is rescued by a mysterious woman named Quorra.  She takes Sam to the real Flynn, who has been living in exile.

Quorra turns out to be the last member of a species called "ISOs", the rest of whom were killed by Clu.  Now Clu is focused on stealing Flynn's identity disc in order to do bad things.  Flynn refuses to fight because he knows it's dangerous to let Clu know where he is.  Sam and Quorra go off on their on to foil Clu's plans, but run into trouble, and are rescued by Flynn.  The three of them try to escape the virtual world together, and everyone fights on the way to the portal.  In the end (spoiler alert), Flynn and Clu kill each other, while Sam and Quorra escape to the real world.

What I liked: It's a very pretty movie.  Other than Flynn's de-aged CGI face, most of the special effects hold up ten years later.  Michael Sheen's character is over-the-top in the most delightful way - he should play the Riddler someday.  Quorra is a pretty neat character, presented as a stock "badass female fighter" character, but not so powerful that she seems like a cliche.

What I didn't like: Almost everything else.  Admittedly the original Tron isn't nearly as good as I thought it was as a kid, but at least it was cheesy enough to laugh at.  Legacy is more serious, and feels heavy handed.  But the story isn't good enough to support a serious tone.

Quorra's "last of her kind" backstory felt pointless.  The ISOs could have been taken out of the script entirely without losing much.  It feels like they just threw in an act of genocide to make Clu seem more evil, but he could have just killed a lot of the regular citizens of the virtual world and had the same impact.  Random trivia: There's actually a word for something that's the last of its species: "Endling".

In a way, the visual design was actually too good.  It didn't look like they were in a computer, it just looked like an alien planet, or futuristic Earth.  I wish they had dumbed it down a bit and given it a more jagged look.  The fashions in the virtual world just looked like modern racing gear, with some illuminated piping.  I miss the circuit-style aesthetic of the original.

Meanwhile, the CGI de-aging on Jeff Bridges was pretty bad.  Now, that would have been okay if they'd only used that special effect in the virtual world.  In fact, maybe they should have made everybody CGI in the virtual world, in order to sell that it's a computer generated world.  But they definitely shouldn't have had so many shots of young Jeff Bridges in the real world.  It might as well have been a scene from Roger Rabbit for how artificial it looked.

I also didn't like the soundtrack.  It was too generic and atmospheric.  During one major fight I noticed that the soundtrack was practically asleep.  Some heart-thumping boss battle music would have ramped up the tension.  But I really miss the techno-esque score from the original, and wish they had updated it.

The actual character of Tron - despite his name being in the title - is turned into an evil henchmen, and basically serves as this movie's Darth Maul.  He's an okay villain, but it's really a disservice to the character.

The plot is not interesting.  To be fair, the original Tron is just a Wizard of Oz remake.  Dude gets trapped in a fantastical world (complete with a different color palette) and spends the rest of the movie trying to get home.  Yeah, there's a subplot about wresting back control of his stolen copyrights, but the main story is basically an escape plot.  It's the same plot as Jurassic Park III, now that I think about it.

Anyway, Legacy has a similar plot, but it fleshes out the universe more, which ends up making it worse.  I really liked the 80s Tron universe, and would have liked to have seen more movies, games, comics, and cartoons set in that universe.  But the universe of Tron Legacy is bland and soulless, and left me cold.

What a wasted opportunity.

Bad Dialogue

I’ll be honest here, I have no idea what good dialogue sounds like.  I can’t write good dialogue, and I can’t judge it, either.  But here’s the thing, I don’t think you can, either.

A few years ago I read a book about writing, by Orson Scott Card.  At one point he gave an example of dialogue.  While reading it, I found myself thinking, “Wow, I wish I could write dialogue that realistic.”  Then, after the example, he said it was obviously an example of bad dialogue.  This means one of two things:  Either my own dialogue is so bad that I aspire to one day be as good as a bad example, or my own dialogue is actually better than I think it is, because it’s not similar to that which would be considered bad.  But either way, I’m not a good judge of dialogue, and I’m definitely not qualified to write a blog entry about bad dialogue.  But here we are.

Of course, I don’t really respect Mr. Card’s opinions any more.  Putting aside his political views for a moment, I’m really no longer sure he’s that great a writer.  Ender’s Game was brilliant, but a lot of people have one good story in them.  I’d say he’s more like how most people see George Lucas – he had a few good ideas when he was younger, then he spent the rest of his life milking them dry.  There are nearly 20 books in the Ender’s Game series now, and exactly one good one. 

Okay, I can’t really say that, since I’ve only read six of them.  But from the ones I’ve read, none of the Ender’s sequels and spin-offs match the creativity and fun that the original had.  And I found plenty of examples of bad dialogue.  But I’m getting off track, here.  I didn’t come here to complain about OSC, I came to complain about people who complain about bad dialogue.

First I want to draw a line between “realistic” and “good” dialogue.  Realistic dialogue is not good, and can sometimes render a movie unwatchable.  In real  life, people cough, they stutter, they interrupt themselves when they get a new thought, they repeat themselves, they say sieve instead of sleeve and stop to correct themselves, they skip words in response to their target’s body language, they repeat themselves, they leave sentences dangling like…

This is a realistic paragraph:  “Hey, John, did you… Oh, I see you already have… okay, so… *cough* sorry.  I was wondering if you had the – do you remember last week when I put the red rolder – I mean folder - in my drawer and – no, wait, I think it was the orange one – because it’s not… never mind, I remember Sheryl had to borrow it.”  This is exactly the kind of thing I hear around my office, and it’s awful.  If real life were a movie, half the dialogue would get put in the gag reel.

So no, people don’t actually want realistic dialogue.  For my money, there’s two kinds of good dialogue – invisible and snappy.  Invisible dialogue is just neutral.  There’s nothing distinctive about it, and you don’t notice the writing at all.  This is great for movies where the dialogue isn’t the focus.  I prefer snappy – the kind of bantering you see in Moonlighting or The Road to El Dorado.  This dialogue is in no way realistic, as very few humans are that consistently clever.  But it is entertaining, which is the reason we watch TV and movies in the first place.

It's all relative.  When adults try to write teenagers, they often use what they think is current slang.  But if adult writers think this is how teens talk, then adult viewers might too.  So you end up with teen movies where adult viewers think the dialogue is realistic, but actual teens burst into tears laughing at the same scenes.  When I was a kid in the 80s, I always thought it was funny how kids talked in some movies.  At school we would do impressions of valley girls, but we never met one in real life.  I don’t know, maybe they actually existed in Hollywood, where these scripts are usually written.  Sometimes Hollywood slang is hilariously out of date, and sometimes it actually influences viewers to start using the words. 

Voice acting is probably even harder, because adults are often doing children’s voices.  At least on a sitcom a teenage actor might point out their difficulty with a line, because it doesn’t sound like something a real teen would say.  But in a cartoon that type of situation would fly by unchecked. 

And video games probably have it the worst.  Lines sometimes have to be recorded one line at a time, because different events might trigger the same line.  It’s hard to make dialogue flow when the voice actor isn’t able to directly reply to the last voice actor’s line.  People having an actual conversation tend to match each other’s tone and volume, but video game conversations can be jumpy and erratic.  Thankfully things have gotten a lot better since the first Resident Evil, but they’re still not perfect.

I sometimes hear video game dialogue described as “full of cringe.”  If I saw someone use “cringe” that way on TV, I would dismiss that as bad dialogue.  But I see kids use the term unironically on the internet all the time.  I don’t like to pull the age card, but if you describe bad dialogue as “full of cringe”, then you’re too young to judge the quality of dialogue. 

So where was I?  Anyway, I just don’t think I can trust anyone’s opinion on whether dialogue is realistic, because actual humans range from walking dictionaries to people who randomly shout “Mandibles and Freon!” for no reason.  The only thing less realistic than movie dialogue is actual real life dialogue.  So don’t strive for realism, strive for the minimum amount of noticeable cheese.  If you’re hoping your movie is quotable, fine, just remember that meme-ability can be a blessing or a curse.  For every “I’ll be back” there’s an “I hate sand.”  And you can quote me on that.

Gullible

Transformers: The Movie came out in 1986.  About a year later, a friend of mine told me he saw a trailer for the sequel.  It showed Megatron returning and challenging Galvatron for the leadership of the Decepticons.  How is this possible, since they're both the same character?  Did it involve parallel worlds?  Time travel?  Though a similar scene did eventually happen in the comic book in 1991, this was well before that.

...and of course, my friend was lying.  But I was gullible enough to believe it.  I believed it so much, that I told another friend about the trailer.  Then later I lied and told the first friend that I'd seen the trailer too, and he just went, "Interesting."  That was when I realized he'd made it up.

But I had a tendency to believe people when they told me these things.  I had friends to lied to me constantly about video game news.  One guy told me that if you beat Metroid thirty times, you would get to play as Ridley or Kraid.  I spent several weekends playing the game from start to finish, until I'd beaten it at least forty times, before I called him and told him it didn't work.  Then he started adding details, "Well, each time you beat it, you have to complete it in under an hour" or whatever.  Eventually I called the Nintendo Power hotline and was told it wasn't true.

That same friend told me a lot of details about Metroid 2.  I mean, there was eventually a Metroid 2 for Gameboy, but he was a couple of years early and specifically talking about the NES.  He also told me that you could fight Ganon in Zelda 2, by beating the game a certain number of times and then using a specific spell in a specific room to resurrect him.

The dumbest part of my gullibility is that nobody ever actually scooped me when it came to video game news.  When I was in school, I was the guy everyone else called for video game tips.  Sometimes students I didn't even know would call me and ask me if I had codes for certain games.  And I usually did.

I read every video game magazine, and had subscriptions to most of them.  EGM, Nintendo Power, GamePro... if it was on the shelves, I read it.  I knew level select codes for games I'd never played, because I studied these magazines the way I should have been studying my high school textbooks.

So if somebody told me a bit of video game trivia I didn't know, well, where exactly did I think they were getting that information?  We didn't have the internet yet, and there weren't any video game programs on TV. 

I wish I could say I was less gullible now.  Frequenting sites like Snopes has made me a lot more skeptical of memes and fake news, but when it's a friend telling me something, I usually still believe them.  After all, why would they lie?