Star Trek Beyond Review!
Star Trek Beyond?
Star Trek Beyond: Official review. 2 and a half stars.
Star Trek Beyond boldly goes where the first two films of this rebooted series have already gone to, and then offers nothing else.
The film starts with Kirk offering a peace treating on the behalf of one alien race to other as the star ship Enterprise is on its 4th year of it's 5 year long mission in deep space. As the alien race refuses the peace offering, eventually attacking Kirk who is beamed out of danger, we are then taken on a guided tour aboard the Enterprise as Kirk, played once again by, Chris pine, records his captains log. He explains how the long voyage is taking its toll on the crew, as he states, "Its hard to tell when one day ends and the other begins."
The movie briefly touches on the idea of how deep space travel on a single ship can be a tough environment for people of all races and species.
The crew eventually gets a break from their long mission as they land on a new space station known as, Yorktown. A hub for the Federation and a small community. Later on a ship in distress comes into the space station and the alien inhabitant in that ship informs the federation that her ship was destroyed in a nebula and her crew was in danger. Kirk volunteers for the rescue mission and the action immediately begins! Fast and the Furious director, Justin Lin wastes know time in destroying the Enterprise as it flew into a trap. Swarms of two manned ships attack and board Kirk's vessel in an attempt to steal an ancient artifact that the crew has retrieved.
In what should have been emotionally impact-full moment seeing the U.S.S Enterprise destroyed, the superficial direction of Justin Lin is felt almost right away as he sacrifices depth for, "Kick Ass" action that never really feels exciting. Then again the director is only really known for directing cars going super fast. And that's all you get in this movie. Then when the camera is on the actors, instead of understanding blocking and framing and movement to really make a scene work, Justin Lin has a very simple method of just getting the basic coverage he needs. But when the action starts, most of which is CG, the camera moves in such a quick pace without once again understanding how to block or create a sequence in which you feel tension.
Those are the technical issues of course. The plot was a jumbled mess as they tried to fit so many ideas into one movie none of it paid off. Writer Simon Pegg, who also plays Montgomery Scott, said he wanted to bring back the themes of the show into this movie. Theological and moral themes while still keeping the pace fast enough for today's audience. The end result was a rushed, corny premise in which the cast uses cliche lines and phrases in almost every single scene such as, Peace, unity, and "You underestimate humanity." While the villain named Krall, spouts out evil lines like, "Unity isn't your strength, it is your weakness."
As the crew of the Enterprise is stranded and scattered on a mysterious planet, Scotty teams up with an alien warrior named Jaylah who was also stranded on that planet for years. She finds an old Federation ship that crashed landed years ago, and lives in it while she tries to fix it to escape. Her character which was held captive by Krall as she saw her family killed should have had a fulfilling journey and arch, but in the end she was just there for the convenience of our heroes, and when you think she will have a moment of redemption and revenge toward the end, she does nothing during the climax as she just stands there and watches. And the mysterious artifact that the villain wanted so desperately, which turned out to be a biological weapon, was underused and under played that there was no sense of real danger. Krall explains that the weapon was used by the "Ancient ones" who couldn't control its power and they threw it out into space out of fear. A flashback scene was needed to show the full scope and power of this weapon. Instead there was a quick moment where Krall gives it a small test run, and that was it. You just didn't care about what was going on because new characters weren't flushed out, and our returning characters were given cheesy dialogue and forced sequences that by the end you were left feeling nothing at all.
I was hoping that Star Trek Beyond was going to be a better movie than Into Darkness, instead it was worse. This film was severely missing J.J. Abrams, and if the fourth movie is just like this one, then it should be the last one of the reboot series. Sad to say.