Film Decent but flawed.
“Things are starting to feel episodic,” laments Captain James T. Kirk in a log entry at the beginning of Star Trek Beyond. It’s a clever little wink to the audience and the franchise itself, but it also has a deeper meaning. This new series of films is now on its third iteration, and the episodic feeling is hard to shake. Despite this, Beyond does quite a bit to shake up the formula and is subsequently a much better film than its predecessors. And if some flaws remain, the film nonetheless feels more connected to its beginnings than ever before.
It’s here that the film reveals its true genius: by splitting up the characters into new teams, the interplay and humor is fresh and inspired. Spock and Bones are constantly bickering, while Kirk and Chekov are finally equals on the planet’s surface and gives Chekov more screen time—which incidentally serves as a fitting tribute to the late Anton Yelchin.
The best provider of humor is the new alien character of Jaylah, played by actress Sofia Boutella. Concealed behind elaborate black and white makeup and sporting an accent, Jaylah teams up with Simon Pegg’s Scotty for most of the film, and their interactions are a highlight of the film, in part due to the fact that Jaylah doesn’t have a perfect grasp of English idioms. Jaylah is also fun in her action scenes, with Boutella bringing a real physicality to the role, and she’s sure to become a fan favorite.
The weak link is once again the villain. Underneath elaborate prosthetics, Idris Elba is menacing and strange enough as Krall at first, but his plan is a generic one involving a superweapon and his backstory is lacking. It doesn’t help that the plot waits until the last thirty minutes to reveal his origins—at least with Khan, viewers knew his past early on in the story. This hoarding of information undercuts his big reveal (which any astute viewer will have picked up on earlier), and actually makes him less interesting by removing some of the mystery. His robotic minions likewise lack any personality.
The action and effects make up for most of it. The production design here is breathtaking, with Yorktown being a standout with its snow globe-like design and soaring buildings adrift in the vastness of space. The clean lines of the Enterprise, the flash of weapons, the bright colors and utilitarian lines of the crew’s uniforms—all these things combine the realism and futurism that the original series pioneered. With previous director J.J. Abrams moving on to Star Wars, new director Justin Lin cuts down on the lens flare and makes the action scenes much easier to follow. Returning composer Michael Giacchino’s sweeping orchestral score is here paired with contemporary music.
For the first time, the film series has captured the optimism and adventure that remain key elements of the franchise. With clever nods to the original series and cast, this new film feels like Star Trek returning to its roots and reentering the final frontier.
Film A good story, a decent film, but a rotten action movie.
I liked the previous two Star Trek films in the reboot, but this one is probably my favorite. It has the courage to be a bit less of a "generic Hollywood blockbuster," ratcheting the stakes down a little from its predecessors and *shock* *gasp* threatening something besides Earth for the climax.
The story is honestly pretty good. The villain seems generic before a sweet final twist that really adds some weight and heft to his character. The cast is uniformly excellent, and the character writing, exploring the crew's relationships beyond the usual Kirk/Spock dynamic, really shines. It really does feel a lot like the best of the original series distilled. And Jaylah is a really good character. She has a personality beyond "badass lady," an arc that believably terminates in embracing the Starfleet gospel, and she doesn't end up being used as love interest eye-candy or get Stuffed into the Fridge at the last-minute to raise the stakes for the final conclusion. I'd be more than happy to see her in future films.
My only major complaint is that there's some thematic confusion between the Swarm's disdain for "unity" and their group-based tactics, but then I suppose that could be read as valuing the individual vs. using him.
Also, the science is surprisingly crunchy, especially by Star Trek standards. It mentions things like building starships in space and never intending them to land on planets, and actually contrives a pretty decent scientific explanation, from a layman's point of view, for what would otherwise be a ridiculous solution to the final battle.
All of that said... from a technical perspective, the film is a mess. The non-action scenes are actually rather well-shot and creative, which makes it frustrating that every action scene in the movie is weak at best.
The sound mixing is terrible, with important and witty dialogue often being drowned out by explosions. It may have been a problem with my theater's projector, but the lighting made it impossible to see what was going on in any scene with anything less than full daylighting. The editing is choppy, and, combined with an unfocused camera and constant jitter, it makes it impossible to tell what on Earth is going on in any given action scene in anything but the broadest strokes.
I listened to an interview on NPR in which Lin takes full responsibility for the film, claiming he had complete creative freedom and that anything one dislikes in the film is on him. That's an admirable sentiment in Hollywood, and I can see his love for the franchise in the story and script.
But I wish he'd fired his chief lighting technician, sound mixer, editor, and director of photography, and used the money freed up to buy a damn camera tripod.
It's a good movie, and I absolutely recommend it as a story. Just don't expect the action to be that great.
Film A good addition to the new Star Trek film series
A review of "Star Trek Beyond"
Star Trek Beyond was a smart sequel. Star Trek Into Darkness saw all kinds of epic action scenes, bombastic characters and blockbuster flare on a scale never before seen in the Star Trek franchise. Instead of escalating everything seen in the prequel, Beyond instead scaled things back a bit and paid more homage to classic Star Trek. There's more character development and believable interaction between the big personalities seen throughout the reboot films, and the crew of the Enterprise perhaps most importantly explore new places; you know, what the main characters in Star Trek are supposed to do.
Don't get me wrong, I liked Star Trek Into Darkness and the 2009 reboot that turned the franchise back into a household name. Star Trek always had that reputation of being a bit... Inaccessible to the average viewer. The 2009 and 2013 films were needed to help shake that reputation, and I believe that Abrams succeeded in doing that. But I think that Lin, the director of Beyond, just seems to get what Star Trek is truly about more than Abrams did. There's still cool action scenes, but they aren't meant to be the main attraction.
Let's start off with a talk about the new characters. Firstly, there's Jaylah, who has been considered to be the Star Trek equivalent of Rey from Star Wars; a strong, independent badass stranded on a horrible planet who gets embroiled in a massive sci-fi adventure. While she may not sound entirely original, she's still likeable, her design is very different to any other, and she has quirks that make her memorable (such as her habit of shortening people's names in the wrong way). Something else that separates her from Rey is the fact that she isn't a fangirl of any of the more "important" Star Trek characters of old or anything like that. When Scotty first came across her, she had no idea who he was, or who any of the Starfleet officers were.
Then there's Krall. Krall is a fairly simplistic villain; a character defined by his ideology. The culture he rules seems to also entirely conform to his beliefs. In that sense, he and his army are very much like classic Star Trek villains, but the fact that they are entirely new and unknown to the heroes makes them seem like more of a threat. The reveal that Krall and his kind are all just heavily mutated humans instead of a new alien race, however, is a little bit lame, but I can live with it.
And that's about it as far as major new characters go. But that doesn't stop more detailed character chemistries being revealed over the course of the film as the crew of the Enterprise get split into smaller groups early in the film, allowing the viewer to see interactions between characters who we haven't really seen interacting properly in the previous reboot films outside of one-liners to each other. The banter between Spock and Mc Coy was pretty epic.
Overall, Star Trek Beyond was an enjoyable addition to the "Kelvin timeline" of Star Trek films.