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Critics vs. fan canon
For Trekkies, “best Star Trek movie” usually means which film most fully captures the spirit of Trek: big ideas, character depth, and emotional stakes, a conversation Wrath of Khan dominates. For Rotten Tomatoes, “best” is simply which film has the highest percentage of positive professional reviews, a narrow but clear metric that happens to favor the sleek, modern franchise relaunch of 2009 over the venerable 1982 classic.
So yes, looking strictly at the Rotten Tomatoes scores, the top-rated Star Trek film really is Star Trek (2009), not The Wrath of Khan, a reminder that critical aggregates and fan hierarchies often live in parallel universes
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