Star Trek The Motion Picture: 10 Reasons It’s Underrated

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is one of the most underrated films in the entire franchise. It’s the first one, and is almost instantly overshadowed by the second. It’s a severely flawed movie in many ways, with long, dull stretches of not really very much happening. But it’s also got some amazingly good things going for it; things that make it, in many ways, one of the best of the Trek films and arguably one of the best pure sci-fi films ever made.

First, some background. The movie was made because of Star Wars. That’s it. That’s the only reason. Star Wars happened and Paramount said, “Holy crap, look at the buckets of cash that’s making! We want in on that!” Star Trek was already in development to be a new series called Star Trek: Phase Two, something I think in retrospect we can be thankful never happened.

The movie was quickly cobbled together, an amazing director was hired, and filming began. Then said amazing director, Robert Wise, who had worked as an editor on a little indie film called Citizen Kane, was given about three weeks to edit the movie. The end result was something less than perfect, but later he was given a chance to reedit it, and turned out something far better, and very much worth seeing.

The following is ten reasons why it’s under-rated

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