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I recently rewatched both these movies, which general consensus seems to regard as the joint pinnacle of Trek on the silver screen. After watching TWoK I'm personally wondering whether The Undiscovered Country might not be the best classic Trek movie, but I'll have to withhold judgment on that score until I get to it.
I've excoriated Star Trek XI for pasting Trek onto the frame of a generic scifi movie, but one thing that's clear to me after watching these two movies is that this is actually an old Trek tradition: First Contact in particular is a well-executed marriage of Trekkiness (holodecks, quoting literature, etc) with a scifi action flick, and it works pretty well. TWoK is also more than glancingly similar to other scifi movies of the 80s (particularly, in some respects, Dune and Alien). In some ways this makes me appreciate more what most people hate about Star Trek I, which is that "nothing happens." This isn't quite true; there's just very little action per se in that movie: the only time the Enterprise discharges its weaponry is at an asteroid, in the middle of the film. Granted that movie had horrible pacing and a thin plot, but I think in some ways its determined non-violence is more a part of Trek than the shoot-em-'up ethos of later films (particularly the new movie. Not that the whole "Resident Romulan" sequence at the end wasn't shot pretty cool, because it was).
( Time is a luxury you do not have. )
( Timeline! This is no time to argue about the timeline, we don't have the time! )
I have to excise the Star Trek brainworm posthaste. I think the only way to do this is to watch more faster. Argh.
I've excoriated Star Trek XI for pasting Trek onto the frame of a generic scifi movie, but one thing that's clear to me after watching these two movies is that this is actually an old Trek tradition: First Contact in particular is a well-executed marriage of Trekkiness (holodecks, quoting literature, etc) with a scifi action flick, and it works pretty well. TWoK is also more than glancingly similar to other scifi movies of the 80s (particularly, in some respects, Dune and Alien). In some ways this makes me appreciate more what most people hate about Star Trek I, which is that "nothing happens." This isn't quite true; there's just very little action per se in that movie: the only time the Enterprise discharges its weaponry is at an asteroid, in the middle of the film. Granted that movie had horrible pacing and a thin plot, but I think in some ways its determined non-violence is more a part of Trek than the shoot-em-'up ethos of later films (particularly the new movie. Not that the whole "Resident Romulan" sequence at the end wasn't shot pretty cool, because it was).
( Time is a luxury you do not have. )
( Timeline! This is no time to argue about the timeline, we don't have the time! )
I have to excise the Star Trek brainworm posthaste. I think the only way to do this is to watch more faster. Argh.