Star Trek Beyond doesn’t need to exist and I don’t know if anyone was really asking for this, but it’s here so let’s go.
The film picks up 3 years into the 5 year space mission of The Enterprise and everyone is getting into a mundane routine, to the point that Kirk and Spock are both considering leaving space travel for desk jobs. Because if there is one thing we can all relate to is that prolonged space travel is so dull that desk jobs seem appealing.
However, after going into an uncharted section of the space it all goes a bit very wrong and the crew are separated all over the planet and have to save the future city from ‘Idris Elba, Alien Bio-Terrorist’.
Ok, for all the jibes I’m gonna throw down there are a bunch of good things about Beyond (Beyond!). The cast, except Idris Elba who hasn’t done anything really good since The Wire in my opinion, are brilliant as they were for the past two films and Karl Urban is still quipping like it’s his job. While I have issues with the story (we’ll get onto that) the actual script, by Simon Pegg and other human Doug Jung is fun, bouncy and full of character.
I like that it doesn’t spend any time at all before getting into the action set pieces all the action stuff overall is very enjoyable, some things are a bit convenient at the end but I can hardly blame the film for trying to tie up loose ends. There is one hero moment that the crew get near the end of the film involving a certain rap group from the 1990’s which is frankly awesome and made me shout with teeth clenched I was so jazzed.
Now let’s get back to the story. I will mention the troubled production on this film, multiple director questions and writer changes leading to Simon Pegg not having as long as he may have wanted to create the story to suit both his and the director’s style.
However much of that is true and impacted the creative, the story is too predictable, lazily told with deus ex machinas dropped all over the place. When a string of 5-7 events occur in a row that are so lucky/coincidental you lose the relationship of trust you built with the film that the events happening could be real because no one is that lucky so many times in the space of a week.
Now I’m ready to forgive movies for having coincidental plotlines when there are other things in the film to distract me long enough like a great script, well developed and believable characters, true performances and representation of the ideas of the film and characters.
Star Trek Beyond will make money because of the first two words in its title. If this was a brand new film it would make no money and the franchise would die with it.
COMING SOON…
JASON BOURNE
