[DarkHorse]

DarkHorse's Movie Reviews: Star Trek Edition (TM)

Star Trek: The Special Effects Nightmare

Somewhere in here was a decent plot, lost in hours of meaningless fly-by sequences.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Kicked @ss start to finish. The best villain ever in the ST universe. Best part; none of the characters were played for cheap laughs.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

Not too bad, but weak plot-wise as they were forced to write an entire movie to resurrect Nimoy's career after he decided he didn't want to be dead after all. At least they still didn't play any characters for cheap laughs, although Klingon Captain Ignatowski was stretching credibility somewhat.

Star Trek IV: The Beginning of the End

Horrible. Ridiculous. And to make matters worse, they resurrected the recurring thorn-in-the-side of Time-Travel (TM), the universal schtick of trying to make a movie interesting by introducing ludicrous plot devices that cause infinitely more problems than they solve. And here we first see our beloved characters played for cheap laughs. Unforgivable.

Star Trek V: Get Shatner Away From The Script!

Even worse than IV. What on Earth were they thinking!?!

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

A serviceable attempt to right the ship. Still playing characters for cheap laughs, but at least the overarching theme (cold war ends) was timely for once and fairly well done. Shakespeare spouting Klingons (how would they have even known about the Bard?) was again stretching credibility, but Captain Sulu to the rescue! That was a good touch, and fun to watch the Excelsior kick some butt. Extremely hokey ending, though.

Star Trek VII: Generations

Had it's moments, but this Nexus thing struck to much of Time-Travel (TM) hokiness. And Shatner...is still Shatner. The juxtaposition of Shatner and Picard was a little unnerving, at best; one guy who takes his role seriously, and one guy apparently unable to take anything seriously makes for some diluted chemistry. Ominous trend of playing Cmd Data for cheap laughs begins. How dare you screw with my favorite character!?!

Star Trek VIII: First Contact

Ugh, more Time-Travel (TM) hokiness. However, silly impossible plot devices aside, there was still some butt-kicking action here and there, and decent acting (for once) from the supporting cast. Still playing characters for cheap laughs, though. (EDIT: and Zephram Cochrane was from Alpha Centauri, not Earth; Paging Continuity Dept: Please come in, Continuity Dept)
And another thing... what's with this Borg Queen silliness? The coolest thing about the Borg, the thing that made them the second best Trek villain since Khan, was their utter alien-different-ness. They reeked of cool, just because they were here to kick your butt, then assimilate it, AND they were relentless, AND the best part: you couldn't just shoot there leader and declare victory like so many slovenly enemies out there. Now comes the movie, and voila, kill the Queen and they all die. Now they're just normal follow the leader villains. That kinda smacked of hokiness.

Star Trek IX: Insurrection

This was so dull I don't even remember enough about it to review it. I vaguely remember it sucking.

Star Trek X: Nemesis

Haven't seen it yet, may never due to the reviews.

Thanks for joining me for this review session. Hope you enjoyed it!

[ January 01, 2003, 18:08: Message edited by: DarkHorse ]