Review of Star Trek Beyond (2016) by Tiberio S — 23 Sep 2017

Though Act I felt promising with a Nick Meyers formula - hook action to shake our seats (not half the strength of Into Darkness), Kirk narrating starlog over montage of crew actions (I love Kirk spilling his mug and I want one!), Bones playing Kirks' conscience, Spock and Kirk together, etc. - Act II, after an amazingly tense bout of peril, slowly started to die.

Chris Pine looks sensational. For the first time he really feels like the Captain of this ship. His face has beautifully matured, his posture and demeanor are firm - I truly accept Pine as our modern Trek Captain. He never needed to be Kirk, but he is our leader. Now a question is raised which appears to setup a multi-film arc: what are we here for? The mission has always been stated from the onset, "...to boldly go..." but what is Jim doing here. He got this position on a fluke, got into a handful of situations that required young heroics. And now here he is, a Captain floating in space, aimlessly. We'll have to wait for another round to understand what part of his father he's connecting with by doing this, because another threat enters their airspace before he can decide that.

Thankfully, Kirk's sidekick this round wasn't Bones or Spock, but the late Anton Yelchin in his best rendition of Pavel Chekhov. What a fitting ending for this gone-too-soon talent, as any other supporting role wouldn't have allowed him to shine enough. Whereas the first movie he was just there replacing Walter Koenig, then barely present for Into Darkness, here he plays an integral role.

Uhura and Sulu did not have so strong a story, despite them being the ones to tour Krall's world, muddled with cliche villain talk that was tough to hear, bulk fetish behavior, and general meanness. Poor ensign, we knew she'd get it sooner or later.

I quite like the camera tracking with Spock as he comes forward from the elevator, phaser at ready, his best overdone movie gun-prep at an almost parodic level.

The crash of the Enterprise almost looks to be pulled right out of Generations, which for both stories really raises the stakes, threatens the audience with a sense of abandonment, upping the ante. Fast forwarding, we're given an all too easy reassurance by the end of the film to settle our worries about the future of Enterprise, and I think that cheapens the effect on a second viewing. It's a much bigger deal in Search for Spock, where we won't see another Enterprise until the very end of Voyage Home (shot stolen from previous film!). Generations loses one early, gets another, loses that, and all is not resolved until First Contact. Here they lose one and they rebuild it in time lapse faster than you can chew and swallow your popcorn.

But for first time viewers, the film did a great job at raising stakes, creating impossible situations, badly outnumbered, the kind of thing we're used to in summer blockbuster comic films - it's all Marvel stuff. It kind of works, because you're forcing yourself to ask, really, how are they going to get out of this one? They're so dead. And knowing they all live to tell another tale, we realize somehow they have to get out of it, and that may or may not be satisfying. I didn't find the way out was interesting, mind-bending, or anything but a cliche episode of the original series. Maybe they shouldn't get out, maybe a greater peril comes over everything. Where's the mind-bending science fiction? Chris Pine himself admitted these movies were dumbed down, and that it was the audience's fault; he might be right.

The new Jaylah is mildly entertaining, but just another blockbuster ass-kicking female to prove a point and supposedly add shock factor. Maybe she'll fight Wonder Woman, clearly neither of them will ever be challenged by a male 2016 going forward. But I don't care what your sex or alien origin is, I'm sick of fight scenes. Nobody is Bruce Lee, nobody is impressing us with a type of Oldboy-like fight style that can be done in one shot to prove how amazing the stuntmen are. It's all the same, very conventional.

The strength of Jaylah is that she doesn't fall to being a sex object, something this film thankfully avoided altogether. For the first time in his tenure, Pine is not playing the romantic, there's no love interest, and if there's anything between Scotty and Jaylah, it doesn't stop to bog us down. I liked their interplay, it teased us and left more to the imagination, where it belongs, that they have some feelings for each other working so hard at surviving together. We could feel that kind of love, not sexually, developing between Spock and Bones, whose differences over a period of films make their union better. In the climactic third act battle, when they take one of Krall's cruisers, a coda from where they'd already been, and do some ass-kicking, the action was unsatisfying, but what it meant to the characters gave umph to the overall film. After three movies, they finally achieved camaraderie.

There's a certain level of dullness to the movie. On the one hand, I really appreciated that it felt more into it's world than the previous two, which were more cheap imitations with great production value. On the other, I want to be careful saying this, it took itself too seriously. Yes, it really kind of needed to, but it was a bit too grainy and desaturated, and rushed into action. The camera is not once interested in exploring this fascinating world of Krall's, or the juxtaposition of people to Yorktown - where's that sense of discovery Trek is supposed to be about? Hopefully the new show, with it's new title, delivers. Why don't we get the colors, the lifestyles of the aliens, let the captain spend some time and get drawn into their world? Somebody was conscious of that aspect being needed, but their result was the cheap Sulu Uhura tour with Krall, where he speaks like a one-dimensional cartoon villain who tells them his plan and hasn't one reason not to kill them when he's killed everyone else. Explore strange new worlds? Seek out new life and new civilizations? When is that going to happen? We're three movies in, chances are wearing.

The trailer song, Beastie Boys 'Sabotage,' is more than a marketing ploy - in this film, it harkens back to the music young Kirk would play stealing his stepdad's car, now reiterated to throw the bad guys off course. I admit, it works, and it gave me a solid laugh - though if it's Beastie Boys in a scifi, why not Intergalactic?

Unlike it's predecessor, arguably one of the best IMAX 3D experiences ever produced, this is a waste of extra money. Not only do we see no glorious IMAX footage, but the 3D has no concept, appears to be a straight transfer, no depth, nothing. And as I previously said, the stock (digital I guess?) was far too grainy, not in any artistic way, for a blown up print; I'd think pixelated but maybe it was a poor filter or something. Blah! Ugly.

What's with the ugly appearance of characters falling? From the very first ad, I saw Scotty falling off a rocky mountain and hanging by a finger (I had a dream like that 3 years ago, except it was Chekhov, weird), but did anyone bother to notice how bad it looked? It happened again with two other characters, don't remember which. Then there's the zero-g battle between Kirk and Krall - contained they looked spectacular, but once they're blown out into the open, yikes! The effects are at their weakest of the trilogy. Kirk on the motorcycle was off, too jerky.

I always loved it in a Trek story when they'd crew another ship, like Voyage Home aboard the Klingon Warbird. It shows that no matter what they fly or where they are, it's never about the technology as much as it is the relationships of those characters - that's always been the core of Trek... it's the crew, not the ship. Here they get the USS Franklin, supposedly Starfleet's original ship. There's a motorcycle on board that maybe belonged to George Kirk, at least it reminded Jim of his dad's.

This is a great film for Trekkies who didn't mind their franchise getting beefed up, but who didn't want the sour mistakes Into Darkness made. I liked a lot. As a Trekkie I'm biased, but I can't tell if that serves for or against me, if I'm being more forgiving or less. I wonder how an outsider would feel. It started off interesting, but that slowly melted away. Clearly setting up the multi-film arc takes something away. These questions about Kirk's purpose should be dealt with in this movie, but they're left hanging. All to reveal George Kirk will be in the next installment. The challenge of getting a new Enterprise in a later chapter is gone. My belief is that Trek, more than any other franchise, has the potential to bounce out of mediocrity and produce some of the best science fiction ever done. It's due. The ultimate Trek, in film or television, hasn't been done. But I believe I know how to do it.