Star Trek Beyond

This threequel goes where no man has gone before…or at least nowhere Starfleet has.

Star Trek Beyond, the newest sequel in the rebooted Star Trek-universe, takes place three years into the USS Enterprise’s deep space exploration mission. While on shore leave at a nearby space station, the Enterprise crew, staffed as usual by Captain James Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Sulu (John Cho), Scotty (Simon Pegg), Chekov (the late Anton Yelchin), and last but not least, Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban), are whisked away to help investigate a downed space craft that has crash landed on a remote planet after a series of brutal attacks by an unknown assailant. When the Enterprise arrives to see what’s what, all Hell breaks loose and the crew soon find themselves separated and stranded on this new world with a vicious alien threat in the form of Krall (Idris Elba) hot on their tail. Now it’s up to Kirk and his fellow crewmates to reunite and take down this menace before he is able to exact his revenge on the Federation by destroy it, and everything it stands for.

When it comes to the third outing of any particular franchise, you get one of two things: a quick cash grab that makes no goddamn sense as to why it was made in the first place (oh, hai Hangover 3), or something worthwhile that upholds the quality of what came before and doesn’t stink to high heaven (The Dark Knight Rises anyone?). Point being, the quality of Star Trek Beyond falls into the latter category, and dare I say it, even comes close to taking the cake as the best film in the rebooted franchise thus far, and that’s saying a lot.

Now I’m not insinuating that there’s anything glaringly wrong with this film that stops it from hitting such high heights, but there’s definitely a down tick in quality as the script moves forward and starts to ever so slightly lose the first half’s spark and excitement. Things slow down significantly once everyone crash lands on the main planet (and oddly ramp back up again when they’re off it) mainly because the sense of awe and story progression that pushed a lot of the early scenes forward gets lost in the shuffle the closer we get to the end of the film. While still solid all around and much better than it has any right to be, the second half and third act in particular brings the action center stage and kind of abandons everything else that made the first half so great.

Once the crew find themselves back together, the scenes that come after seem a tad formulaic and very Star Trek: Into Darkness-y, meaning there’s nothing really bad about what happens, it’s just that the film doesn’t carry that it factor any longer now that the central focus of the crew and their relationships with one another have been pushed to the side. Whereas the first half of the film felt fresh and new and had an emotional weight that started to build nicely, the second half seemed to be playing it safe with more attention paid to its summer blockbuster roots than anything else, and that’s saying nothing about the relatively underwhelming resolution in regards to the main villain.

Acting-wise, everyone involved manages to slip back into their characters with ease, allowing me to enjoy their character work and interactions between one another more so than ever before. The fact that the script purposely splits up the crew and then chooses to focus so heavily on the interactions between each group along with their own personal problems and dynamics, is brilliant and really says a lot about the priorities this film is putting first. While I honestly do feel like a lot of the second half of the film was a bit lacking and slow in parts, it was never because of the characters or the actors portraying them. In fact, I wish there was even more time dedicated to the fun pairings I saw in the film. Putting Spock and McCoy together was priceless genius as was pairing Scotty and alien scavenger newcomer Jaylah (Sofia Boutella) together, and while the villain isn’t the most original or unique as one would hope for, Idris Elba does a great job of adding that extra something to his character that I feel like no other actor could pull off.

As one would expect, the special effects look great from beginning to end both in space or otherwise and kudos to new director Justin Lin for attempting to use a lot of practical effects throughout. It hits the right spot when you know the actor is interacting with something tangible as opposed to yet another green screen. I also have to applaud Lin for crafting some great action set pieces; I guess he learned a lot from smashing cars into one another in the last few Fast and Furious films, so think that, just in space and you have a pretty good idea of how cool these scenes have turned out.

With a great first half that’s on par, if not better than the original reboot, and a second half that reminds more of its slightly off target sequel, Star Trek Beyond shows that this franchise still has a ways to go before running out of steam. With a new director behind the lens and a greater importance placed on the dynamics between crewmembers, this threequel is a fun-filled ride mixed with just enough emotion to offset its summer blockbuster status.