Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

Star Trek II set up the franchise pattern of odd movies sucking and even movies rocking, but honestly, re-watching these movies, I cannot find a lot of evidence to suggest that this pattern exists. Star Trek: The Motion Picture wasn't as bad as people think, being perhaps the only attempt the franchise made to make an honest, deeply artistic, genuine science fiction movie. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is probably the best effort of the Trek franchise to date as well as one of the best science fiction movies (and sequels) of all time.

Then, we come to Star Trek III: The Search for Spock more a Star Trek II: Part II, Trek III primarily suffers because it is pure continuation of the events described in Trek II. It makes watching this movie as a stand-alone movie next to impossible, despite the prologue at the beginning updating the viewers as to what has happened...

But to update: Spock is 'apparently' dead, Kirk and the Enterprise are reporting back to Earth to find that the Enterprise is due to be decommissioned and Dr. McCoy is apparently going insane. Lt. Saavik (now played by Robin Curtis) and Kirk's son David (played by Merrit Butrick) are exploring- and finding out interesting things on the newly created Genesis Planet. As a whole, the plot works- especially when Kirk and Company are forced to steal both Dr. McCoy and entire spaceship to set things right. The forces of good triumph in the end, but there's a cost.

And as usual, the bad guys are the old classic villains, the Klingons. Christopher Lloyd lends his scenery chewing abilities as Captain Kruge and he bounces off Captain Kirk quite nicely. Not as good of a foil as Khan was, but serviceable enough.

All in all, Star Trek III is a serviceable enough entry into the Trek franchise with very little in the way of criticism to be leveled against it. I think what bothered me the most is the inability of the franchise to kill a major character and let the other characters grow and change because of that. But it hadn't been done until Trek III- and because of it, it works- for Trek III. Why they'd want to do something similar for Star Trek: Nemesis is beyond me- and it killed that movie and underlined the point that Trek needed a reinvention badly. But as the odd numbered movies go, Star Trek III is amongst the least objectionable ones.