Popular film criticism has pointed to Star Trek’s biggest problem over the past four decades
By Chris SnellGrove | Being published
Star Trek has a mix of good and bad movies, giving rise to the old nerd adage that only the bad ones count. Accordingly, fans like to argue about what turns good movies into stinkers, but one famous film critic finds Trek’s biggest problem more than four decades ago.
In his review of Wrath of KhanRoger Ebert declared that Ricardo Montalban’s Khan “gives the star everything he needs…
Darth Vader of Star Trek
Ebert continued to wax poetic about Montalban’s status, calling him the “Drith Vader of Star Trek” and repeating that such an over-the-top villain “needs movies to be likable.” At that time, the critic was mostly responding to the fact that Star Trek: The Motion Picture (I was accused of thanking the “immovable image” by the haters) had no real villain, just a strange energy cloud that later became a space point from Earth. Over the years, however, Ebert’s thesis has been well proven, and you can often trace how good a trek movie is from the quality of its villain.
Obviously, we can all agree that Khan is a great route, too Wrath of Khan It’s surprising in large part because of how cool Montalban is in the role. Ebert’s argument explains why Star Trek III: The Search for Spock A wide lilluster: Christopher Lloyd Kruge Kruge Kruge is great at sitting and singing a beautiful scene, but his shyness starts and ends with him pointing out a nuisance to people. Simply put, that just can’t be compared to Khan, the guy who hijacked the monarchy and nearly destroyed the business twiceincluding an attempt where he would kill Kirk and himself without Sheer Over.
Granted, Star Trek IV: Voyage Home Is the anomaly in the main villain has no personality and is a big space situation that wants to bring some whales to the group discussion. However, the real transfer of this fourth Trek film is that it brought our killer characters to the present day. This, along with the zippy memorm of the fimp, is enough to please a general audience that usually doesn’t enjoy science fiction type shows.
The Klingon that saved the franchise
Ebert’s thesis is back in full swing with Star Trek v: the final frontierwho suffers from the fact that the villain (Spock’s secret brother, no less) is the leader of a camp with mind-reading powers that makes him seem like a legitimate threat. Fortunately, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered World ended the Tos movies on a high note with Christopher Plummer’s General Chang, the Klingon Villiin in the entire franchise. Whether it’s trading Shakespeare-themed barbs at the dinner table or wrecking Kirk’s ship with a ship that can catch fire while he’s at it, in fact oozes Evil.
The TNG movies got something to begin with Star Trek: Generations Because even a talented character actor like Malcolm McDowell couldn’t overcome a bad script. His main villain (Dr. Soran) was a major killer just to return to his happy place, which is as sad as it is strange when it comes to the motivations of the alliance. Star Trek: First Contact they turned things around by offering to give the borg’s favorite fang, a bdsm baddie who was just waiting for the one weapon he used to make the galaxy tremble in fear.
Tng movies are starting to suck like the vacuum of space
Later The first is communicationit is not surprising that Star Trek: Rebellion failed. How excited are audiences to actually get a villain obsessed with plastic surgery? Later, Star Trek: Nemesis tried to bite Wrath of KhanVillain style by making the villain a cleepy clone of picard and having two games playing cat and mouse in space. But this is also insanely disappointing, and the only scary thing about this bad movie is that Bald Tom Hardy looks so skinny that he already wants to repeat a few plates of scarf fajitas.
That brings us to the kelvinverse movies, the first of which completely followed ebert’s advice in the book. Star Trek . Even though he has a very small figure, he is probably the most memorable part of the film, which is the sure sign of a great villain.
Amazing, Star Trek: Into Darkness It failed to fulfill Roger Ebert’s franchise advice, although it did bring in Khan. Benedict Cumberbatch does his little British heart here, but he can’t change the fact that the script turned Khan into a generic epuftillain without any emotional connection to Kirk or anyone else. In comparison, idris Elba’s villain in Star Trek Beyond It’s more compelling because of his connection to starfleet, although that movie would have been better if that connection wasn’t revealed at the last possible moment.
The worst of Star Trek is revealed
For many years, I was one of those Star Trek fans who cried for the movies and always focused on the plot, and I grew to appreciate movies like A moving image again The conclusion for what they were: Big-BudgebIstad TV episodes. But there’s no denying that Ebert was right and that a Trek movie wouldn’t be able to achieve smash, blockbuster success unless it had a villain as cool as Ricardo Montalban’s Khan. If Paramount can make it happen with the next big movie (the first movie since the integration with skydance), then it is worth saying that the real villain of the biggest sci-fi franchise in the world is not Khan, or Nero Queen, or Nero.
Instead, it’s to the stupid managers who can’t figure out how to repeat the successful movie of their movie studio we reached 40 years ago!
