Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and the crew of the
Enterprise
are three years into their five year mission.
Kirk is questioning his role of being the Captain of the enterprise and
may accept a Vice Admiral position while Spock (Zachary Quinto) gets news about
Ambassador Spock. Their decisions are
put on hold at Yorktown Starbase when they go on a rescue mission to a planet
beyond a rocky nebula into unexplored space.
The Enterprise is attacked
and the crew finds themselves separated and stranded on the planet. The
alien Krall (Idris Elba) wants an
artifact that Kirk had tried to use as a gesture of piece between two alien
races. Kirk must find his crew and get
off the planet.
STAR TREK BEYOND is a
very enjoyable Star Trek movie which is the closet in spirit to the original
movies and series with this movie being as good as the first one in the reboot
series (which takes base in an alternate timeline). The character work
(the banter between McCoy
(Karl Urban) and Spock is priceless) and humor is spot on along with references
to various things in the star Trek Universe.
It isn’t the Star Trek movie that I would have imagined (or written),
but it is a familiar and safe way to celebrate the 50th anniversary
of Star Trek. I hope they boldy go where
no one has gone before with the fourth movie or have a movie touch on the big
conflict between Kirk and the Klingons like in some of the original Star Trek
movies. However, I do think they could
get away from the stakes of the Federation in danger and focus more on the personal
stakes of the crew being in danger.
Simon Pegg did some great writing with co-writer Doug Jung while Justin
Lin did some very capable directing of this latest Star Trek movie. I just think
they could still scale it back
to make an enjoyable adventure. I know
the STAR TREK movie are making more money
than ever, but I do think Paramount is too worried about controlling the
direction of the franchise due to the massive budgets the new STAR
TREK movies get. I just hope the next STAR
TREK movie can push the franchise while serving both new and old fans, but
maybe Paramount need to allow the writers to take risks
instead of worrying about how much money the next one will make.
This review is ©7-25-2016
David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission. Send all comments
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