directed by Justin Lin
written by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung
I may be in the minority, but I quite honestly liked JJ Abrams' resuscitation of the Star Trek film franchise better than his record-shattering sequel to the Star Wars saga. I can even go as far as to say I enjoyed the much-maligned Star Trek Into Darkness which is now described as a poorly-realized remake of the well-loved Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The decision to watch Star Trek Beyond, even with a new director at the helm, was a bit of a no-brainer.
In this new film, Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and the crew of the USS Enterprise are halfway through their five-year mission to explore deep space, and feelings of boredom and monotony have started to set in, at least as far as Kirk is concerned. The crew dock at the space station Yorktown to fill up on supplies, and Kirk finds himself at a bit of a crossroads, with a chance at a juicy promotion that would mean leaving the Enterprise, while his First Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto) learns sad news that influences a decision on his part that will also entail him leaving the Enterprise. This is all put on hold, though, when the Yorktown receives a mysterious distress call from an uncharted nebula. The Enterprise responds, and disaster ensues, with the mysterious and brutal Krall (Idris Elba) attacking them. Kirk, Spock, Bones (Karl Urban), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Sulu (John Cho), Chekhov (the late Anton Yelchin), and Scotty (Simon Pegg, pulling double-duty as screenwriter here), will have to summon all of their skills to deal with this unique and formidable threat, though they will have help from the fierce and clever Jaylah (Sophie Boutella). There is more, however to Krall than meets the eye.
While Lin's hyperkinetic approach to narrative, honed on several Fast and Furious movies did not really rock my world the way Abrams' did seven years ago, I found the film enjoyable enough and that whatever over-the-top excesses Lin may have indulged (Kirk's motorcycle riding comes to mind as well as a couple of others) were tempered by the script Pegg co-wrote with Doug Jung, which endeavors to preserve the Abrams vibe and even maintain a sense of connection to the original series of films. The opening scene, in which Kirk basically laments how monotonous his mission has come to feel, and the quieter moments, like Kirk and McCoy toasting over an empty glass of Chekhov's vodka (which proved to be oddly prescient given Yelchin's death just a month before the film's release), provide moments for the characters to shine. Also, while there is still quite a daredevil in him as evidenced by his motorcycle scene, this Kirk is a bit less brash than he was in the first couple of movies, having benefited quite a bit from his experience as a starship captain.
As always it's a challenge to give screen time to the ensemble, but Lin and his writers have managed this quite handily by having the characters pair off midway through the film, Kirk with Chekhov, Scotty with the newbie Jaylah, and most notably Spock with Bones. Karl Urban's take on the character popularized by DeForest Kelley is one of things I quite like about this new iteration of the franchise.
Elba's Krall is an improvement over Benedict Cumberbatch's Khan from the last film and Eric Bana's Nero from the first in the new series, and while neither set a particularly high bar to hurdle (particularly Bana), Elba vests this role with as much menace as he can muster, and his performance is especially impressive considering the amount of makeup he has to act through.
I really like the fact that the whole reboot concept has allowed audiences to see the world of the 1960s television series with updated visual effects, and the Yorktown sequence is particularly rewarding in this regard; the cityscape in space is a wonder to behold, and while computer-generated imagery is a dime-a-dozen these days, here it was put to particularly good use.
I still liked 2009's reboot the best, but this film, to my mind at least, does a good job of keeping the franchise going.
7.5/10
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