(You can read piece over at https://cinapse.co/2016/11/03/star-trek-beyond-blu-ray-review/)
It’s a rotten shame that Star Trek Beyond found itself ignored this summer, as it’s the kind of crackling pop-pulp that Hollywood so often trips over its own feet trying to create. Smart, funny, heartfelt, wildly entertaining, and with an emotional story ground entirely in terrific actors playing iconic characters, Beyond, now available on DVD and Blu-ray, is everything audiences could want from a summer movie.
The film picks up with the Enterprise three years into their five-year mission, and the frontier is beginning to take its toll. Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) feels adrift and has lost his sense of purpose, while Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto) is also at a crossroads in his personal and professional life. With the loss of Spock Prime (a genuinely affecting homage to the passing of the beloved Leonard Nimoy), the current Spock is unsure with how to move forward with his own life. Both men have eyes on the Enterprise’s exit door when the ship is conscripted to rescue a crashed crew from a previously unknown planet.
But no sooner does the Enterprise appear in the atmosphere then the ship is swarmed by the forces of Krall (Idris Elba), and the crew scattered across the planet’s surface. Kirk and Chekov (the late and deeply lamented Anton Yelchin) are paired off while Spock and Bones (Karl Urban) take their bickering double-act on the road. Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Sulu (John Cho) are held prisoner with the rest of the crew, and Scotty (Simon Pegg) stumbles across Jaylah (Sofia Boutella), a survivalist on the planet who may hold the key to Krall’s true agenda.
This is normally the part of the review where the critic will talk about their love for the Star Trek franchise and how their intensely personal connection has grown and changed over the years. But I’ll be honest: growing up, Star Trek meant less than nothing to me. I came of age at a time when the franchise was at its lowest ebb, represented primarily by Voyager (a show that ran for seven years and hundreds of episodes and is today regarded as little more than an embarrassing footnote) and Enterprise (a show that barely even qualifies as a footnote. Scott Bakula might not even remember it exists) and the crappy Next Generation movies.
It wasn’t until JJ Abrams’ reboot that I actually started digging into the original series proper. Even with that series’ limited resources and special effects, it still sings. Star Trek was a show about smart, adult people working together to find moral routes through impossible decisions, and Gene Rodenberry and his team’s genius was in grounding these high-minded ideas with high-flying pulp adventure. Star Trek was a deeply silly, deeply emotional show that made no apologies for being either. It was a serious inquiry into humanity’s place in the universe that also understood that having a guy fistfight a lizard-man is fucking rad.
Abrams’ first Star Trek movie is pure pop, dead from the neck up but so confidently entertaining that you forgive its many (manymanymany) story deficiencies and roll with the good times.
Star Trek into Darkness is a bloated, lazy, cynical piece of shit and everyone involved in it should be deeply ashamed. The only reason that abomination isn’t the movie I hate most in the world is that someone let Rob Zombie remake Halloween.
Star Trek Beyond, then, is a franchise resurrection of almost miraculous success. Pegg and co-writer Doug Jung (who also plays Sulu’s husband — don’t know if you heard about this but Sulu’s gay now) jettison everything that stank up Darkness, including the whole ‘Star Fleet can cure death now’ thing, and dig down to focus on the things that have made this series endure for so long: the characters and the ideas.
Justin Lin stepped in as director for this one, and his time shepherding the Fast & Furious franchise really honed his skills at balancing an ensemble. Everyone gets great moments, from newcomers to old hands alike.
Urban, in particular, has been remarkably underserved in the previous two films and he really gets a chance to shine in this outing. Bones is cantankerous and short-tempered, but Urban projects a warmth and humor throughout.
Quinto and Pine have relaxed into their roles as well, and now that the screenplay for once isn’t punching you in the face with the importance of the Kirk/Spock friendship (in Darkness they are friends who only ever talk about the state of their friendship. That’s not how friendship works) the actors are allowed to carry it through their innate abilities and chemistry. Between this and Hell or High Water, Pine’s having a helluva 2016, putting on a clinic for both movie star charisma and character actor chops.
Saldana, Cho and Yelchin are more utility players in this one, but everyone gets multiple moments in the spotlight, particularly Cho who gets the most ferociously badass hero moment he’s had in this series yet.
Lin has an obvious knack for the mayhem and action beats; Beyond is loaded with action shots and sequences that play like gangbusters, even at home. But he’s equally adept at the quiet moments, the character beats, and that’s something I maybe wouldn’t have guessed before seeing the film. When Bones tends to an injured Spock and the two have a discussion of fear and mortality, Lin lets the actors do their work and allows the scene play out slowly, in quiet. While not a subdued movie in any way whatsoever (including a soundtrack pull that is next-level brilliant) Lin, Pegg and Jung build in moments of quiet, of reflection, and they let that humanity breathe.
Having seen the film a couple times now, the one nagging problem that I can’t shake is Elba’s Krall. To dig too deep into the character would enter spoiler territory, but that’s sort of the problem. Krall proves to be a fascinating creation with a history and an agenda that ask giant, complex questions about the nature of Star Fleet and Star Trek itself. But by the time the film has laid all its cards on the table, the story has to jump into its big finale and wrap up quick. It leaves the central thematic arc of the film feeling underserved, and the fantastic Elba left with only the pieces of a character worthy of his abilities.
Technically, the film is a knockout. Lin and his Furious cinematographer Stephen Windon give Beyond a bold, broad look with an eye-popping color palette. Lin shoots his special effects with the confidence to know he doesn’t need to underline how special they are. Warp drive looks more beautiful than any film in recent memory (undulating ripples wash out from the Enterprise as it coasts through space), and the film’s big signature addition to Trek mythos, the new starbase Yorktown, is the sort of “Holy shit!” reveal that leaves you wishing the film was 40 hours long and could wander through every detour of this brave new world.
I’m really hoping that people who let the film pass them by in the cinema will make the time for it at home. Star Trek Beyond is exactly the kind of film that Hollywood spectacle should be. It more than delivers on kinetic action and mayhem, but connects the sensational with the emotional, with the thoughtful. It’s a terrific ride, one that I hope many will take.
