To be clear, Iā€™m not looking to debate whether this is the best Trek film. Rather, Iā€™m asking why so many people see it as such.

I enjoy TWoK well enough, and certainly it is a good film overall. But consider: it is much more militaristic than any Trek before and more than most Trek since, and relatively violent compared to TOS; there is no exploration of strange new worlds; tonally, it is quite different from most Trek stories. (To be clear, Iā€™m not suggesting that these qualities are required for a ā€œgoodā€ Trek film ā€“ Iā€™m just noting a few obvious ways that TWoK is unusual.)

In terms of TOS episodes, TWoK is probably most like a combination of ā€œThe City On The Edge Of Foreverā€ and ā€œBalance of Terrorā€ ā€“ which, to be fair, are beloved classic episodes, in part because they are somewhat exceptional compared to the rest of the series. So perhaps that gives us some clue as to why the film is so beloved.

In general, TWoK is ultimately about mortality. For all that the film professes to be about Khan, he really is just an Act of God (in the natural disaster sense), creating an unstoppable force that Kirk must humble himself against. The film is really about Kirk learning to confront death ā€“ heightened by the contrast of the new life of Genesis and in his newly-rediscovered son. And that is something that the film did which was new: able to plumb the depths of Kirkā€™s emotional journey at greater length thanks to the larger screen and the longer format.

But, againā€¦ itā€™s a great film, but I donā€™t know that itā€™s obvious to me that Kirk learning to deal with the no-win scenario particularly epitomizes what ā€œStar Trekā€ is (whatever the hell Star Trek actually ā€œisā€). In that respect, The Voyage Home seems like the most obvious candidate ā€“ whatever Star Trek ā€œisā€, to me TVH ā€œfeelsā€ more like it than does The Wrath of Khan.

So, why has TWoK earned such a place of acclaim?

(PS: I could write a similar post about First Contact, whose popularity also confuses me.)

  • Scrof@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    My favourite was The Motion Picture, it was the most Star Treky of the bunch for sure with awesome high concept sci-fi without a dumb blockbuster feel.

    • unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Same. Really the only Trek movie I like. Tried to do too much with graphics in 1979, but I think the remasters finally captured what was intended. The 2022 version on YouTube is amazing.

      Itā€™s really the only Sci-Fi Trek movie, and the only one that got better as it aged.