i decided to revisit Star Trek Beyond to see if my opinions were changed now that it’s been out on BluRay for awhile. Here’s a fresh look:
After the last Star Trek movie called Star Trek: Into Darkness, many fans were upset by the extremely dark tone of the film, not to mention the role reversals mirroring Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. J.J. Abrams’ choice to take a more cynical perspective of the future instead of Gene Roddenberry’s vision of hope left moviegoers extremely disappointed.
The initial trailer for Star Trek: Beyond released by Paramount which reflected director Justin Lin’s previous work on the Fast and the Furious franchise had longtime fans up in arms. People were calling this latest film The Fast and the Federation. Things did not bode well for this third installment in the rebooted Star Trek franchise.
Movie trailers can be very misleading, and thank goodness this was the case of Star Trek: Beyond. It was not Fast and the Federation. It turned out that writer Simon Pegg, who plays Montgomery Scott aka Scotty, crafted a pretty decent tale which delivered on several fronts set against the backdrop of Jim Kirk (played by Chris Pine) and Spock (played by Zachary Quinto) who were at crossroads in their lives; Jim was questioning his motivation for joining Starfleet. Did he have something substantive to offer, or was he just trying to be like his father?
Spock was questioning what we was doing on the Enterprise any more; should he be more true to his Vulcan roots and help preserve his race? Spock was also on the outs with Lieutenant Commander Uhura (played by Zoe Saldana); between Star Trek: Into Darkness and this film, they had a falling out and ceased being the galactic supercouple of the franchise.
These questions hardly had time to be articulated at length before once again, the Enterprise was yet again attacked and destroyed by what seemed to be a never ending swarm of killer drones, forcing the the crew to abandon ship and head down to the nearest planet. Before we move on, can we make a request that Paramount stop destroying the Enterprise as a plot point? Pretty please?
Moving on, the survivors of the crash, including a very badly injured Spock try to make sense out of what happened. It’s there that Scotty meets an ally; a female rogue warrior called Jayliah, who’s the last of her crew that was attacked by the evil Krall (played by a totally unrecognizable Idris Elba), a nemesis of the federation. With Jayliah’s help, well, you can probably guess what happens from there.
Looking back on the film, it was pretty formulaic, and the really true emotional moments of the film didn’t happen in the film, but at the end as they dedicated the film to the late Anton Yelchin as well as the late Leonard Nimoy. Rumor has it that the next film will concentrate on Daddy issues with Chris Hemsworth signing on to reprise his role as Kirk’s father. Star Wars Episodes I-VII have all dealt with Daddy Issues. Why not Star Trek?