By The rebooted Star Trek franchise hasn’t really had a bad movie. J.J. Abrams put together two highly entertaining pieces of cinema back to back. However, if you’re a Star Trek fan Into Darkness was concerning. An action packed film, the movie felt more like Star Wars than Star Trek and played heavily on nostalgia instead of forging its own path. While entertaining, Into Darkness put a bit of a shadow over the franchise’s future.
Consider that shadow gone in a poof of prolific Justin Lin action sequences and a return to the focus on what made Star Trek great: the crew of the Starship Enterprise.
Star Trek Beyond
Director: Justin Lin
Rated: PG-13
Release Date: July 22, 2016
While many Trek fans will probably balk at this idea, Justin Lin was the exact right man to helm a Star Trek. We’ll never be returning to the all out, slow-pan-around-a-star-ship, philosophical, socially aware, political format of Star Trek of yesterday because that’s not what makes money, but we can have a strong mixture of action and heart. Lin brought that to the Fast and the Furious franchise in spades, turning a crappy series into something spectacular that people want to see. He did this not just through action, but by turning a cast of characters into a #family. That’s what he’s done with Star Trek Beyond too.
The crew of the Enterprise is finally on their five year mission. In fact, they’re three years into it and, as Captain Kirk’s (Chris Pine) captain’s log tells us, they’re all getting a little bored with the daily grind of exploration. Kirk is questioning whether he wants to be a captain anymore and Spock (Zachary Quinto) is shocked to find that his elder self has passed. Luckily they’re docking for resupplies at the newest and largest Star Fleet space station, but before they can settle in an alien shows up requesting help to rescue her crew from an uncharted part of a nearby nebula. The crew of the Enterprise jumps into action and promptly gets the ship torn to shreds, crash landing on an alien planet run by an evil alien named Krall (Idris Elba).
The separation of the crew after the crash landing and the relatively small scale of the story overall delivers a Star Trek that is far closer to the original series in tone than either of the previous two films. The removal of larger political pictures and the Enterprise itself means the focus lands squarely on the crew and that works wonders for finally delivering a Star Trek where you feel the crew is anywhere near the family that the crew of the original series was. Spock and McCoy’s (Karl Urban) relationship is especially fleshed out while Sulu (John Cho), Scotty (Simon Pegg), Chekov (Anton Yelchin) and Uhura (Zoe Saldana) actually become characters instead of plot devices. It’s clear that screenwriters Pegg and Dough Jung along with Lin have a far better understanding of what makes Star Trek special than Abrams and crew did.
That doesn’t mean that the movie turns its back on the new Trek formula. This is still an action movie first and a space drama second. Lin, of course, is really good at action. Again, though, the fights feel more personal and well executed than the previous films. The action is possibly even more over-the-top, and yet it feels more grounded. More importantly Lin keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout every sequence. By the time the now obligatory Beastie Boys song comes on its hard not to be cracking a massive smile no matter how much of a dour original Trek fanboy you are (and I am a big one).
It’s even more refreshing that Beyond finally pulls the rebooted franchise out of the shadow of its predecessors. Into Darkness‘s misguided attempts to recreate Wrath of Khan made the crew seem trite and the story not hit when it was supposed to. Beyond is finally its own story, defining its own crew and creating its own feeling. While it still makes a nod here and there to the original films, it is finally telling its own story — even if that story isn’t all that groundbreaking.
I must also champion the film for finally ditching the under armor uniforms that made it look like they were all on the way to bro out at the gym for a bit. The new costume design is spot on and feels much more like something the crew of a starship would wear. The redesign (yet again) of the Enterprise is pretty stellar as well.
For all the fun (and it is really fun) of the movie it isn’t really pushing any new boundaries. The story may be new and the cast finally feels like it’s gelling, but the plot is paper thin overall. You don’t really have time to catch your breathe and think about it while you’re watching, but Beyond doesn’t go very far beyond in terms of pushing ideas or themes. Maybe, in this case, it doesn’t have to. It’s focus on the characters overrides its need for a strong plot line and it clearly cares more about hashing out the crew as people than making a profound social statement.
That focus on the crew means that this is by far almost every actors best turn in the role. Pine seems especially comfortable as a more laid back, experienced Captain Kirk while Urban’s McCoy becomes less homage to the original and more something of his own. Yelchin finally gets a chance to turn Chekov into something else than a funny accent and nails it, and it’s a shame we won’t get to see him take the character any further.
Star Trek beyond feels like a very big budget episode of the television show, and while that was a insult for Star Trek: Insurrection, here it is a compliment. The original series and all its progeny had a sort of magic to them, and it stemmed from a crew that felt like a family. That, it turns out, was missing from this new Star Trek thanks to Into Darkness‘s attempts to replicate instead of create. Thankfully, Beyond brings it back and turns the franchise into something you definitely want to see live long and prosper.
