10 Reasons You Need To Revisit Star Trek: The Motion Picture

While Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan deserves credit for revitalizing the franchise, it also established a regrettable standard for future films. Almost every subsequent movie in the series was built around an angry villain with a destructive weapon. You mad, bro?

Looking back on what followed, one of the more appealing elements setting The Motion Picture apart from most of its peers is the film's lack of a real villain. Although there's the obvious threat of annihilation, it's always presented as a problem to be solved instead of an obstacle waiting to be blown up. The Klingons already tried that approach. Look where it got them.

Bringing back one of Kirk's most memorable foes worked for The Wrath of Khan. Nobody would dare say otherwise. He was a fitting nemesis who played off our hero's nagging self-doubt and looming sense of mortality. Shinzon? Not so much. You can only hear "deploy the weapon" so many times before it loses all meaning. More like deploy the remote so I can turn this thing off!