Rotten Tomatoes Is Completely Wrong About The Best Star Trek Movie

Rotten Tomatoes might be the go-to place for movie reviews, but the critic aggregate site is completely wrong about which Star Trek film is best. The site functions by aggregating many mainstream reviews of movies and assigning a percentage score based on how many critics liked or disliked the film.

As a result, plenty of great movies have low Rotten Tomatoes scores because they are divisive. The Star Trek movie franchise has been running since the late 1970s, but not every installment has gotten glowing reviews. While some were downright bad, others earned lackluster write-ups because mainstream critics pooh-poohed sci-fi at the time.

Rotten Tomatoes’ Highest-Rated Star Trek Movie Is The 2009 Remake

Coming in at a whopping 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, the 2009 reboot of Star Trek is the highest-rated movie in the entire franchise. J.J. Abrams brought a fresh and new approach to the classic characters and, by setting the film in an alternate universe, was able to play around with the canon without disrupting classic Star Trek.

Box Office Mojo reports that Star Trek is the second-highest grossing movie in the franchise with $385 million.

The movie itself is a decent action romp with plenty of humor and heart, and an appearance from Leonard Nimoy tied everything together too. The Kelvin universe was off to a great start, and 2009’s Star Trek was a breath of fresh air after the franchise disappeared following the cancelation of Star Trek: Enterprise four years earlier.

What’s more, it served as an excellent starting point for new fans who were too young to remember the heady days of the original Captain Kirk and his Enterprise crew. Abrams’ Star Trek also earned a 91% audience score, meaning the movie was well-made and entertaining in equal measure.

The Wrath of Khan Is So Much Better Than Its RT Score

Despite being the third-best Star Trek movie according to Rotten Tomatoes, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is by far the best film in the entire franchise. The 1982 classic put the franchise back on course after the lackluster release of The Motion Picture, and established the visual language of the original movies.

With its intelligent literary references and rich moral story, The Wrath of Khan not only pushed the boundaries of the Star Trek franchise, but science fiction in general. Furthermore, it allowed the beloved heroes to grow and change as they aged, which only made the plot more compelling overall. It took big risks, and those risks paid off.

The Wrath of Khan‘s 87% Rotten Tomatoes score is impressive, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. It earned overwhelming praise, but it was also hampered by reviews that looked down upon the film as frivolous genre cinema. Star Trek has always proved that sci-fi can be complex, and the second film is the best representative of the entire franchise.