Star Trek: Beyond Review

            So here is yet another dark confession that I have to make to my fellow nerds:  I like the J.J. Abrams Star Trek films.  They aren’t masterpieces by any means but they are solid enough summer blockbuster fare and watching the films is a decent way to spend a couple of hours.  The first film was an okay origin story and was, if we’re being honest, the shot in the arm that the franchise needed to bring it into the modern blockbuster environment.  It featured a great cast, fantastic special effects, cool action and a decent plot involving time travel and an insane Romulan.  The second film was…forgettable.  Even if you ignore the fact that the film was more or less a remake of Wrath of Kahn, it’s not a particularly memorable one.  Like the first film, Into Darkness had good acting, action and special effects but you’ll be hard pressed to remember a thing about after the credits roll outside of comparisons that you’ll inevitably make to Wrath of Kahn.  This latest film is more or less a successor to that format.  It’s a decent enough summer block buster and is a pleasant way to spend a few hours but is not something that you’ll be remembering in the long term, even if it is more true to the franchise’s roots.

            The story takes place a few years after the end of Into Darkness with the crew of the Enterprise well into their five-year voyage.  After arriving at a space colony known as Yorktown at the edge of the frontier, the crew of the Enterprise is contacted by a scientist fleeing from an uncharted nebula and asks Kirk and company for help to retrieve her crew.  After arriving at the planet she claims her crew is on, they are soon attacked by a swarm of tiny ships that quickly destroying the Enterprise and capture the majority of its crew and leave the rest stranded on the planet.  Outnumbered, outgunned and without a ship it’s up to Kirk and company to rescue the crew, find a way off the planet and prevent their leader from obtaining the final piece of an ancient weapon that recently came into their possession. 

            An accurate description of this film and all of its predecessors is that, for better or for worse, they all have a tendency to feel like feature length episodes.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but because of this the films end up feeling a bit…well episodic.  You have characters, plotlines and villains that are introduced in each film and they go through their own little arcs and storylines that are resolved by the time the credits roll.  Generally speaking, you never see or hear about these new characters ever again and the storylines have little overall effect on the status quo of the series.  Ultimately this is what this film feels like.  It probably isn’t going to have any long term repercussions on the lore of the series but the plot on display is satisfying in the context of being the latest chapter of these characters’ lives.  For the most part the film is well paced and appropriately builds each plot point throughout its length, with every set piece and plot point introduced ultimately factoring in to the overall story.

            Ultimately, however, the film is not so much a plot driven one but a character driven one.  The characters all have natural chemistry with one another, resulting in some great humor throughout the film that feels natural.  For the first time it feels like the characters are growing as people and becoming more like the characters from the original show.  Unlike the previous films, it actually feels like an ensemble piece that give each of the characters an appropriate amount of screen time and, for the most part, develops them in a pretty significant way.  Spock and McCoy, for example, are stuck together for a significant portion of the film and as a result come to realize how much respect that they have for one another.  The biggest arcs, however, come from Kirk and Spock.  I won’t give too much away, but both characters have significant, potentially life altering events thrust upon them at the start of the film and by the time the film has ended, it feels as though these arcs have come to their natural conclusion.  The standout, however, is Idris Elba as the film’s villain, Krall.  Despite a god-awful makeup job, Krall manages to be an otherwise menacing antagonist with a pretty diabolical plan with a pretty good, tragic backstory to boot.  After a certain point, you’ll probably see some of the twists regarding the character coming but it’s a depressing one all the same that makes you feel for the character in ways that were impossible in the previous two films. 

            The problem with this film is everything else.  Say what you will about the previous films, but they were visually impressive and this film lacks the same level of imagination and technical skill.  The ship and its interior, for example, have been redesigned from the Apple Store look of the previous films to something that looks more like a modern update of the design of the original series.  It’s not a bad move, per say, but it ended up looking far less visually impressive and ended up looking cheaper as a result.  The outpost of Yorktown, likewise looks off.  From a narrative point of view, they manage to pull off what they wanted with this city but from the technical side it looks subpar.  It was obviously going for a sprawling space metropolis look with buildings pointing every which way but a good portion of this city ended up looking like a bunch of building models nailed to 2X4s hanging upside down.  Likewise, the makeup jobs in this film are pretty bland as well.  They’re by no means the worst things I’ve seen in a Star Trek film but while watching this films I was always aware that I was seeing an actor run around with pounds of makeup and prosthetics on their face.  Elba probably gets the worst of it as he unable to do much in terms of facial expressions and seems to be constantly wheezing through his mouth because the makeup won’t allow him to breath.  The action is also pretty bland as well.  The swarm ships are pretty cool and the final solution to how they defeat them is pretty creative, if a bit of a shark jumper, but the rest of the action was just subpar.  Most of the action is made up of the pointing the camera at the actors while they fight and lacks any inventiveness, stunt work, or set piece design that would have made them more interesting. 

            Overall, watching the film is a decent way to spend a couple of hours.  The character play is solid, the humor is good, the action is flawed but never boring and actually succeeds in evolving the characters.  It won’t change your life and is by no means the best Star Trek film out there, but in a summer that has been filled mostly with disappointments and outright disasters this one is a welcome change of pace.  I say give it a watch.

            So until next time, please follow the site, like the Facebook page, follow me ontwitter and come back next time.  Until then, have fun in the final frontier.