Genre: Sci-Fi/Action
Rating: 1.5/5
SPOILER WARNING
How many times will the Enterprise be Destroyed?
No, actually…they destroyed the Enterprise in the last movie, and it is again in Beyond. That’s not even a spoiler, it’s the premise of the movie…Also, I put a spoiler warning, yet I watched a trailer for this movie the day it was released that revealed the final plot twist of this movie. With that out of the way, Beyond killed this Star Trek reboot series, because it was far from good.
Where to start with this? This film is plain ridiculous. Starting off with a gag, essentially ridiculing the episodic style of the original Star Trek series’ this film has very few good elements. Continuing to the Yorktown Space station...since when does the Federation have such technology in this time period? And why at the limit of explored space? Surely that’s not the safest place to put a brand new massive space station inhabited by civilians. It’s ridiculous. The mind-bending design of the station may be cool to look at, but is impractical. In other Star Trek shows we see Dyson spheres and things alike, which are seen to be far away from the Federation’s capabilities, yet Yorktown Station is perhaps more advanced than any of those.
The Enterprise being destroyed is relatively common in Star Trek movies, but seriously? Two movies in a row? At least in Into Darkness they waited until the end. Here, it’s like they hate the Enterprise so much that it’s only in the movie for about 4 minutes. It’s laughable. I guess the only thing this film is “beyond” is the concept of space travel. There are several moments in the film that contradict each other in terms of technology that easily works sometimes, and not others. Scotty’s survival and meeting of the scavengers is random and never revisited.
Something is so annoying about beehive enemies. I’m not interested in seeing a swarm of mindless expendable enemies fight. It happens in Marvel, Star Wars, DC, and now Star Trek. It’s lazy and not intriguing. The villain in this film is not at all compelling. Although he gets close to winning, he never feels like a threat. That’s even after destroying the Enterprise. It didn’t seem to take a lot of skill. Maybe because It’s easy that should make it frightening, but this seemed to reflect more on the Enterprise than on the enemy. Seeing Kirk fight on a motorcycle is a callback to Star Trek (2009) but not compelling enough to be a major stnrypoint. Justin Lin, the Director, borrowed too much from his experience on Fast and Furious movies.
The final battle sees an “ancient” rock song used as the Enterprise’s main weapon. As “cute” as that is, it’s a bit of a joke. It doesn’t seem to take a lot of intellect or ingenuity, it wreaks of a decision that the writers thought would be “cool”. Unlike its two predecessors, this film steers completely clear of any Star Trek methods. Because of that, it was a huge failure and the fourth film has seemingly been cancelled completely.
The only good thing in this film is Chris Pine’s Kirk. He’s reached a full circle in his story arc, which I really appreciate. He seems much more mature and responsible, and despite them being ridiculous he has some clever strategies for saving his crew. Also, I like the jackets like the ones seen in the photo above.
Overall, this film is not very good. It deviates from Star Trek completely and ruined this film series’ chances of continuation. It’s a shame because the series had a strong cast, I just wish they were given original characters to explore. Would I watch this again? No. Just about the only good part of this film is the Rihanna song. Should you watch it? Don’t waste your time.
Tony King