Review of Star Trek Beyond (2016) by Mordec — 02 Aug 2016

In one enormous leap back for mankind, Star Trek Beyond moves the Star Trek series from space exploration to white dudes save space from aliens of color using explosions. There's less plot than there is hole, the writing is wooden and uninteresting, and the movie simply didn't feel Star Trek.

My greatest gripe is that if you replaced the words Star Trek with any other generic space action series you would lose nothing. There's nothing here that's brought in by being part of the Star Trek series, no sense of adventure or of the peace loving Federation we know. There's not a single alien entity in the movie that doesn't immediately attack the crew in a whirl of special effects and poorly shot action sequences, and because it retreats from the rest of the Star Trek series its nothing but boring action from start to finish.

I expected a lot from this movie, maybe a bit too much given its predecessor, but I was let down unbelievably by what I saw on screen here.