Of the three Star Trek reboot movies (including Star Trek Beyond), I think the first one is easily the best. When going to see it, there was this anticipation of what J.J. Abrams was going to do with this franchise. What we got was a welcome, modernized re-imagining of Star Trek with a healthy dose of heart. Star Trek: Into Darkness stepped away from that to retread some old ground and retell an old, but fan favorite story. Star Trek Beyond steps even further away from the heart in the 2009 Star Trek film and delivers a films that feels like an episode of the TV series, except with a bigger budget.
The premise is this: the Enterprise crew answer a distress call in an uncharted nebula, then plot twists occur. It’s a basic story.
I feel like there were an inordinate amount of jokes in this movie. Which is fine as long as you throw in the requisite amount of drama to buttress that. They did not. I walked away from this movie entertained, but ultimately feeling like this was a pointless movie. There was no real overall progression or meaningful character development with the crew.
Some additional notes:
Interesting that Sulu is now officially gay married and has a kid. I’m sure George Takei is happy about that.
Lot of dead red shirts in this movie. Kind of odd how little the primary cast feels so little for these dead extras. Also promotes that TV show feel rather than the feature film feel.
Villain had an interesting plot twist, but not enough to make him matter.
Inclusion of modern music and calling it classical was a nice attempt at a joke that fell flat with my audience.
Special effects were on point. Nice job.
Score: 5.8/10 Ultimately, this was an entertaining movie. In my opinion, there were no narrative reasons for this movie to be made. Clearly a film made just for the money, not because there was a story that needed be told.
Elliot's View 