Review of Star Trek Beyond (2016) by Nikolayg — 23 Jul 2016

By comparison the 2009 reboot is a classic. So much more thought went into Abrams' effort. Also, whoever wrote that 'Beyond' is like TOS hasn't seen TOS. The positive reviews MUST be bought and paid for.

The good: Sofia Boutella, the guest actress, was one of the few good things about this movie consistently and, even better, it appears they are setting her up to become a member of the crew, which would be great as she has more attitude and life in her than most of the other actors. Another good thing: the opening few minutes, which were funny and well done; and the final scene, Kirk's birthday party, where the characters finally showed their personality and had some dialogue beyond yelling for help or saying 'hang on!' or 'over there! behind you!' Ok, I don't know if they said those things in the movie exactly but almost the entire film used only short choppy action scene dialogue about where to go and what to do next in order to escape trouble or get the bad guy. But in the last scene the actors showed a lot more color and personality, finally, for a few minutes before the credits.

The bad: the plot. In the next few sentences I reveal minor plot basics, probably no more than professional reviews. A bad guy once again wants to destroy the Federation for vague reasons he cannot quite articulate - something about having been a soldier and now feeling useless because there is peace in the galaxy (it's news to me that there's peace in the Star Trek universe but whatever), and also feeling abandoned when he was left behind by people in Star Fleet a hundred years earlier (he's discovered the secret to some sort of life extension, you see, which was vaguely explained in five seconds). He has also changed his form completely, which is also unexplained but I suspect he did it by putting on an alien costume left over from the show Star Trek Enterprise, and he is going to take out as much of Starfleet as he can with a super weapon he can now use thanks to the fact that he has found some alien artifact he needs to make it work. You can't really give a spoiler because there's nothing to spoil. What I just told you is about the level of detail the movie gives. He sets this stone artifact in place like Indiana Jones, but instead of opening a door to treasure it powers up a weapon. No explanation as to why this weapon exists or its origins is even attempted. It's just some bs they threw together so they could trigger nonstop action which continues uninterrupted for almost the entire movie. Without room to breathe the movie just goes from one set piece to another, using closeups almost exclusively, so that often you don't know exactly where people are; and when they show one person running then cut to another, you don't know where those two are in relation to each other and if one is chasing the other and if so, which one; and when people are running through exploding ships I sometimes had no idea what was going on the visuals were such a busy mess. Whoever is in charge of maintaining the clarity of what is happening physically on screen utterly failed with this movie. Perhaps most importantly, the way they finally defeated the bad guys made no sense at all. I would tell you so you can understand how ridiculous it was, but I don't want to spoil it. Though it's crap so I'm not sure that you'd care anyway.

Zachary Quinto gained a little weight in the face so he no longer has the angular Spock look. He looks puffy like the face of Darth Vader when Luke finally removed the mask (OK that's an exaggeration but he was puffy). Chris Pine starts off a little heavy in the face but quickly loses it. He apparently lost several pounds during filming. I'm sorry but I paid $12 to see Bruce Springsteen perform for 3 and half hours in 1978, an incredible classic performance. So if I'm going to pay over twice that much merely to see a 2 hour movie (3D iMax), then the script better be great, the visuals better be great, the acting better be great, and the actors better be fit and trim and look their best. If the actors can't get in shape for all the millions they are paid, then they have an entitlement problem. Zachary wasn't ready to shoot. Chris wasn't but he fixed it fast during filming. Zoe Saldana, who I love and think is beautiful, looks so severe throughout almost the entire movie (until the Kirk birthday scene when finally she looks like herself again) that she was unpleasant to watch. Mostly she just stared at things severely. They gave her little to do. Maybe she was still channeling Nina Simone and hadn't broken out of that character fully. The best of the regular cast this time around was Bones, who was great. Though there vulgar dialogue that was a bit jarring to hear in Star Trek, jokes about horse sh!t. Like a Farley brothers movie briefly invading a couple of times. It was weird. Overall, a paint-by-numbers action movie, vague and poorly shot or maybe just poorly edited action. Not much spirit of Star Trek to be found.