Star Trek Beyond Movie Review

Star Trek Beyond (2016)

Written by: Simon Pegg & Doug Jung (written by), Gene Roddenberry (television series "Star Trek"), Roberto Orci (writer uncredited) , Patrick McKay (writer uncredited) , John D. Payne (writer uncredited)
Directed by: Justin Lin
Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Idris Elba
Rated: PG-13

Plot:
Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew again boldly go where no one has gone before.

Verdict:
It contains many ideas that could be their own movies, and thus it feels scattered. I don't know what this movie is about. It goes in too many different directions without centering on a unifying theme. The action runs together with hardly a break which is detrimental to the action and character development, and there isn't much of the latter. This movie has a lot to like but it's trying too hard to be an action movie in space rather than a sci-fi movie.
It depends.

Review:
From the start and as it continued, I kept trying to pick which sequence I would make the first scene. This movie just doesn't have a true opening. It's mostly action sequence after action sequence and that's the pacing of the film.


All the pieces are there, but nothing comes together. This movie needs a central theme. The first scene should have been a sweeping shot throughout the ship. Let's see Kirk and the crew doing their jobs and what they do best. It doesn't have to reintroduce us to the characters, but it would also make it accessible to newcomers.  It can also provide clues to the adventure they're about to undertake and more deftly develop the Kirk and Spock sub-plots as the camera moves from room to room and deck to deck.

There is an attempt to develop Kirk (Chris Pine) a bit more and then later Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Uhuru (Zoe Saldana) but it feels lazy at best. These attempts at character development earlier in the movie are revisited later but it just feels perfunctory. These plots points cold be interesting if time was devoted to them instead of motorcycle stunts and space battles.

Star Trek Beyond - It has all the pieces, they just aren't balanced.

I kept wondering what this movie is about. What is the theme? It tries to juggle too many characters. While splitting them apart was a good touch, only the Spock and Bones pair up was really enjoyable.

It has more than a few comic one liners, and while I like a balance of humor and action, Scotty (Simon Pegg) in particular is relegated to just comic relief. Bones (Karl Urban) steals the show, bringing his character to life better than the others. Spock in particular felt like a tired performance.

The villain is a run of the mill cardboard cutout. His story could have had depth and there are similar movies that explore how someone grows into a character like that, but this movie has no time for that. There's action sequences and big explosions that need to be showcased.

There is another new character that becomes an ally that has a great design, but just becomes a cliche. She had to be inexplicably tied to the villain instead of just an ally.


When the crew later escapes a planet, I thought the story might get into how history isn't always what it seems, trying to tie that into Kirk's current state of pessimism and confusion. It doesn't attempt that at all. It's just a cool and tense sequence.

This could have been about Kirk determining his legacy, but it ends up an ode to how awesome he is. There are no small touching moments in this movie, and it needs it from a pacing stand point.
Kirk ostensibly determines his purpose while fighting the villain in the final fight. His job is to save people, but it's a silly line to tell the bad guy during a fight, and it should be a small scene, realized while talking to one of the crew. Kirk's development is relegated to the beginning and end in an attempt to fake progression. Everything else is action and explosions.

There are of course a couple of space battles. The idea and what happens is good, but it didn't look as epic and impressive as it should have been.

The movie and budget is just too big. Paring this down  would have helped to focus on the underlying story, because there isn't much story here other than a cliche bad guy set on revenge. Slowing the pacing down also makes the action set pieces stand out instead of running together. It has the pieces, they're just assembled poorly.

This isn't a bad movie, it's an action flick that I hoped was going to be better than it is.

Star Trek (2009) is still head and shoulders my favorite since the world was rebooted. I would rank Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) higher than Beyond.

SPOILERS

Kirk wants to become and admiral and give up flying in the first scene. Spock wants to rebuild Vulcan. These scenes are forced into the first third of the movie, just so they two of them can admit to each other they considered retiring from the Enterprise, but now want to stay. These ideas aren't bad, but the movie doesn't give it a credible basis. This is an action movie first and foremost.

I had to wonder if Simon Pegg wrote his cliff jumping scene, wanting to try a Mission Impossiblestyle stunt.

Sulu's husband made the news but it was an actually subtle touch, casusing us to care about the space station Yorktown. We only see him in a few scenes, but it reinforces that the crew has people they care about at the space station.
Sulu's husband was similar to the red jacketed girl in Schindler's List (1993), appearing throughout to give us someone to follow and care about.

You barely see Idris Elba in the film, usually under heavy makeup. While he has a great character,  there is no attempt  to develop him into anything more than a man seeking revenge in the form of destruction. We only see Elba without makeup for a few seconds. The rest of the time, you can't really confirm it's him.

Jaylah is a new ally that I expect we'll see in future sequels. Her design, the black and white skin tones, looks great. Unfortunately her story is flimsy. Her father was killed by one of the bad guys and she fights that bad guy later herself. At least her loud rock music had a point.

The music later comes back to be an aid. The bad guys swarm the Enterprise and later the space station like some kind of insect plague. Music is used to disrupt their signal. It's a great use of the Beatie Boys Sabotage as alien ships begin to explode, though it also felt under-cooked. It's a neat sequence that should have been jaw dropping.

With all the alien space craft we saw initially with the Enterprise and then at Yorktown, it didn't seem like it was that many inhabitants at Yorktown to fill that many vessels.

When the Enterprise is first destroyed by the swarm, it showcased a great tactical maneuver, and that stranded them. This really kicked off the movie. This could have been the beginning and we wouldn't have lost much.

Taking off in the USS Franklin was a tense scene. It rewrote Idris Elba's character. Elba was a Federation ship captain that was lost in space. History books wrote him as a history, but it turns out he's not. I though this was going to comment on Kirk's situation, but the connection isn't as strong as it should be. Kirk doesn't seem to gain anything from it.