All Top Tens are crap, you know.
Top 13’s? Awesome.
So, now that I revisited all of the Star Trek movies, I must do what websites that talk about movies are expected to do: Make a list. So, fine. Here’s all thirteen Star Trek movies ranked from worst to best:
There are really three moves fighting for the bottom spot, but I have to put Insurrection here. Its clash of tones, ideas, and unconvincing special effects make this a slog to end all slogs.
This really has only one thing over Insurrection, it looks good and has a surface level fun in its action scenes. Otherwise, it’s just as confused in terms of ideas and has an even, dour tone that makes the whole thing hard to sit through.
I don’t like this movie overall, but it has a few genuinely good bits when those bits are taken in isolation. They don’t really fit with the rest of the movie, though, which is some kind of bad joke of a Star Trek film.
- Star Trek (2009)
It’s a fun romp full of nonsense that breaks its own universe, but with a winning cast. It’s enjoyable popcorn fare.
An underappreciated central story with really interesting ideas gets counterbalanced by a rather rote rest of the film.
A solid adventure with two great sequences and an antagonist who wandered in from another movie.
Another underappreciated entry in the series, mostly because audiences seem to misunderstand Data’s sacrifice which I find extremely affecting.
The most ambitious of the Star Trek films could have been the greatest, but some structural issues (leftovers from when the script was a pilot for Phase II) hamper it. The rest is a marvelously intellectual visual tour-de-force.
Aside from an underdeveloped antagonist, this final (?) adventure with the rebooted crew is a wonderful combination of fun and old school Star Trek.
The loopiest Star Trek movie, but also the easiest to like. It puts its cast front and center and lets them play off each other effortlessly while telling a weird story lightly.
A wonderful twirl of complimenting themes and very strong character work make this The Next Generation action film fit very well within Star Trek canon and is a really fun ride.
The most literate of the series, and not just because Chang quotes Shakespeare endlessly. Its take on the end of the Cold War is intelligently presented while coupled with a very fun Agatha Christie type mystery. It also has the best starship battle of the original six films.
I’ve finally fallen in with the rest of the world. This is the single great film in the whole series, and it’s damn-near perfect with probably the best third act in popular film.
David Vining, Author 
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