Review #1721: Star Trek Beyond.
Cast:
Chris Pine (Captain James T. Kirk), Zachary Quinto (Commander Spock), Karl Urban (Lieutenant Commander Leonard McCoy), Zoe Saldana (Lieutenant Nyota Uhura), Simon Pegg (Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott), John Cho (Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu), Anton Yelchin (Ensign Pavel Chekov), Idris Elba (Captain Balthazar Edison / Krall), Sofia Boutella (Jaylah), Joe Taslim (Anderson Le / Manas), Lydia Wilson (Jessica Wolff / Kalara), Deep Roy (Keenser), Melissa Roxburgh (Ensign Syl), and Shohreh Aghdashloo (Commodore Paris) Directed by Justin Lin.
Review:
I'm sure you remember the interest generated from a new version of Star Trek. J. J. Abrams directed the first of what is generally known as the "Kelvin timeline" features, doing so in 2009 that was written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (who had gotten their start in television with Hercules: The Legendary Journeys). They managed to bring the series back to the silver screen with a reboot that tried to honor established continuity in the original 1966 series while staying fresh with current perspective. In that sense, I think it did a fine job. Four years later, a sequel followed with the same collaborators (albeit with Damon Lindelof as co-writer). The funny thing about that movie is that it is the most profitable of all the Star Trek movies, and yet it reeks of something that would be made purely to squeeze as many hack ideas as possible for such an average movie, complete with trying to pawn ideas from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan but with no sense of actual stakes. Three years later, the idea was to have Orci as director (his planned first feature), since Abrams was now slated to direct for another certain space feature, but somehow it went awry, leading to a different direction. Justin Lin started as a director while attending UCLA Film School with Shopping for Fangs (1997), although his most notable contributions are to The Fast and the Furious film series, as he has directed five of the films in the series. At any rate, Simon Pegg and Doug Jung (a duo in which each wrote mostly for television) were tasked to write the script.
Technically speaking, it is a worthy successor to the last two films. Of course, it is also as of this year the last one to be made, because somehow making a big-budget movie doesn't always result in a certain amount of money bags (of course, paying the actors is tough, too), and it is only now that plans are starting to move for a film in 2023. Perhaps it is a coincidence that Star Trek only returned to television after the release of this film (albeit in streaming form, the most pathetic of broadcasting methods). It continues the trend of trying to aim Star Trek for a crowd that is interested in special effects and action with a sliver of plot, which I suppose makes it essentially a shinier version of when filmmakers did so with Star Trek: First Contact (1996), just with certain choices of music included. I suppose every incarnation of the series in film form also has to show the Enterprise take a beating just so one can build it all up again, so there is that. Of course, the important part is that one has a good time with the adventure, and I believe there is an interesting one to see here, despite the fact that it is the main cast that really shines more so than the villain (again though, how many times is that not the case?). This is a movie that seems quite a bit familiar with its themes of finding one's meaning in continued exploration (i.e. instead of a mid-life crisis about being old, it is now a young-life crisis about seeing the stars again and again). As such, the movie feels the best way to do that is to split the crew into their own little pairs (i.e. Pine with Yelchin, Quinto with McCoy, Cho with Saldana, and Pegg with Boutella). In that sense, some of those pairs work out better than others, depending on how much effects are present. In that sense, Pine is easily the most effective, having molded fully into the role with confidence (without as much of the hammy "curiosity" from William Shatner, if you will) that maneuvers well with resourceful charm that has evolved well from seven years prior. Urban was always quite interesting as McCoy, and he generates a few interesting moments when paired with Quinto in terms of snappy banter that isn't just a familiar re-hash. Quinto might not have as much to really do, but his little scenes involving reckoning his fate as now being the one living Spock is interesting at least. Saldana suffers the most from the split, in that being paired with a bunch of scenes involving the villain doing vague dealings about his motivations isn't really that interesting for the former and barely interesting for the latter (again, the familiarity with these characters go to a certain point when compared to when the movie tries plot for a few minutes). Elba gets to be caked in a whole bunch of makeup while having an okay motivation that honestly could do with better material beyond a twist that could probably be seen coming with a reasoned guess-maker at the hand watching. Maybe he was meant to be a second side of the whole "I have nothing better to do with my time in space" coin with Kirk, I guess. Boutella is okay in terms of curiosity within accompanying makeup and action shots, but since this film already scrounged up introducing an interesting secondary character to play off one of the castmates for more than one film (i.e. Alice Eve not being in this one), why bother?
Honestly, the movie almost plays itself too corny with certain sequences near the end without having as many stakes as it could have - do I really need to have "Sabotage" in the background for an action shot? Its testing about the villain isnt even that clever, really, since the last one also had a Starfleet adversary that liked things better when it was militarized. As a whole, it definitely keeps interest on a moderate level when it comes to action (credit to hiring a car chase director for this, huh?) and most of its acting chemistry, since these folks have done well with capturing a majority of the charm from the old cast. However, it begs for more to explore than just cursory stakes, and I just cant see myself giving generous praise for being just fine. It needs something more than a few pretty sequences to really soar farther than just average, particularly when this is the 13th of these features; being in the top half of that list is fine, but when it is because it is the middle of quality, one could certainly make improvement.
On that note, the anniversary of Star Trek is upon us again. Live long and prosper.
Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.
