Film Review: Star Trek Beyond

Star Trek Beyond : Into Lightness ?

Latest Star Trek offering will please fans of the original series, but may lack the complexity and darkness that won over newer converts

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Star Trek Beyond is  a pleasing summer blockbuster ; well paced and well acted with the high level of special effects you would expect from a Star Trek movie. It also explores character development in a feel-good way that fans of the original series will appreciate ; in particular the relationship between Bones and Spock. Spock especially is given some major character developments and this almost feels more his movie than Kirk's.

The basic story is simple enough ; the crew of the Enterprise are trapped beyond the help of Starfleet on a remote planet. They are at the mercy of  a villain, Krall, who seeks to retrieve a weapon of mass destruction which Kirk earlier stumbled upon. Enterprise is grounded, and the crew seem only to have one main ally on the ground, the resourceful Jayla ; a young alien who has likewise been stranded on the planet long ago and learned to survive on her wits. She is almost the space version of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. On their journey to save their crewmen, Kirk and co will of course bond and learn more about themselves and each other.

There is an old joke about the original series ; if an unknown actor beams down to the ground in a red shirt, they're gonna get it . Other than that though, you always knew the core of original characters were going to be safe. This film returns to that tradition, and in the oftentimes hectic action more than a few 'red-shirts' bite the dust, especially in the initial attack on Enterprise. This is not in itself necessarily a problem, and has a practical necessity. Star Trek doesn't have a huge cast like Game of Thrones ; it actually needs to keep its core of main characters alive whilst trying to maintain a suitable aura of danger. This does however create a slight air of un-believability about it all that nags at the fourth wall. An example might be Lt. Uhora defeating with ease an enemy soldier in hand to hand combat. How exactly does she elbow a helmeted soldier unconscious without hurting her elbow ? Create an imaginary fantastical universe by all means, but within that universe stick to the bounds of believability.

In Into Darkness,  one pivotal scene involves a savage attack on Starfleet headquarters. A main character, Kirk's mentor, is mortally wounded and dies unpleasantly. The scene has all the feel of how you might imagine a modern terrorist attack feels, much like Khan's earlier bombing of the fleet 'archives' in London. The action scenes have a gritty realism despite their futuristic setting.  Meanwhile, in Star Trek Beyond, Kirk's initial reaction to a dead crewman seems to be mainly  disgust at their walnutty appearance ( they have been drained by the enemies vampiric like technology )  - but hey, it was just  a 'red shirt' after all.

None of this is to suggest that the action scenes in Star Trek Beyond are not impressive. Director Justin Lin, of Fast and Furious fame, delivers the spectacle you might expect. The camera movement can sometimes be annoyingly choppy, but the first battle of the Enterprise is particularly impressive in terms of its scale and speed. Krall's bee-like craft make short work of the Galactic class starship, and Krall himself is  a fairly imposing villain, with his character giving more than a nod to Darth Vader. But it is often the slow, tense micro-scale that an audience can connect with and feel more acutely. Remember Into Darkness, when Lt. Uhora on Kronos was lifted off the ground by a Klingon, who then threateningly and slowly withdrew a jagged knife from his boot ? The technological and futuristic setting was the background, not the focus of the moment. Such a slow, tense and simple scene can convey more genuine terror than a Starship being frenziedly torn apart by a fleet of CGI enemy ships. 

The Science element of this latest installment has also fallen a little to the more Fiction element. The nature of the weapon of mass destruction is only vaguely hinted at. Challenging problems are overcome with the flip of a few switches and some wires hurriedly plugged into various outlets. This is what I mean by very much the sixties original series feel as opposed to the physics heavy theory of the Next Generation that even inspired new technological design.

More seriously perhaps, the  morality questions of this installment are also much simpler ; the distinction between good guys and bad guys is almost annoyingly stark. There are no real moral dilemmas to be dealt with here ; in fact a potentially interesting one is discarded when we discover one particular character is a baddy anyway. We are in no doubt here that the Federation are all good guys, and the bad guys have no redeeming qualities. Only the loyalty of a lieutenant hints at any real depth to the main villain.

On the plus side this installment is, as promised, more fun. There are more laugh out loud moments, and the conflict between the crew is largely absent. Even Kirk's own internal struggle is pretty minor and dull ; does he give up spaceflight and become a vice-admiral? Problem is, those conflicts on the 'good guy ' side actually made the franchise more interesting. 

Ultimately your opinion of Star Trek Beyond may depend a lot on what you want in Star Trek ; a more space opera type of escapism with a lighter touch and gentler humour, or a more nuanced and realistic vision of what the future might look like with some nagging political and moral questions that stay with you long after the film. 

At the risk of sounding patronising, which is probably my de-facto voice anways, I'm going to summarise this as Star Trek for Kids, in stark contrast to the more disturbing and cerebral Into Darkness. It's an enjoyable and visually impressive film, and the actors did the best with the plot they were given. 

7.5 / 10