There’s never a moment where you feel as though the Star Trek crew is going through the motions in their latest big screen adventures Star Trek Beyond, though there is a sense of familiarity to it all. Three films into the reboot of the exploits of the original crew, director/producer J.J. Abrams has successfully mined the long history of the Gene Roddenberry’s original creation, tipping his hat towards seminal stories and situations from the franchise’s fifty-year history while somehow bringing a sense of newness to it all. It’s not an easy trick and one that could easily be dismissed but there’s no denying that these three films are entertaining larks.
The tone of the movie is set from the first scene as we see Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) attempting to present an ancient artifact to an alien race as a peace offering. Things go south quickly and he nor the audience are aware that the stone relic he ends up hiding on the U.S.S. Enterprise is the film’s MacGuffin and that a great deal of fuss will be made over it. Known as the “Abronath,” this device is coveted by a rather nasty villain named Krall. He’s been searching high and low, across one galaxy and the next in search of it, as it is instrumental in his plan to destroy the Federation’s deep space outpost, the Yorktown. Needless to say, he goes to great lengths to get his scaly hands on this item, luring the Enterprise and its crew down to an unknown planet on a fake rescue mission that leaves the ship destroyed and the crew separated.
As far as the story is concerned, this is standard issue stuff where Star Trek is concerned but that’s not to say it doesn’t have its merits. Director Justin Lin of the Fast and Furious franchise brings a sense of speed to the proceedings if not an understanding of pace. While the battle sequences – and there’s at least one too many of those – are spectacular, they all run on far too long, going from wondrous to tedious before the requisite destruction comes to an end. That being said, the story does manage to contain a surprise or two that pulls the audience back in after they’ve been numbed by the overwrought action.
Also of note is the overall look of the film that manages to separate itself from the plethora of digital effects driven productions that clog the nation’s multiplexes. The production design, led by Thomas Sanders, is a wonder as the massive team used to bring the movie’s various worlds to life outdo themselves. The Yorktown, modeled after Dubai, resembles a snow-globe as designed by M.C. Escher, a dimension bending metropolis that thumbs its nose at gravity, composed of buildings that jut every which way and a docking bay for space ships in its substructure that comes in handy. A forest populated with bright, floating motes and the planet the crew members finds themselves on, straddle the line between the familiar and alien, creating the sensation that we are off planet.
While some may classify this film as slight in comparison to this reboot’s first two entries, the fact that humor is one of its driving forces serves it well. Stranding Spock (Zachery Quinto) and Bones (Karl Urban) together and forcing them to rely on one another generates one delightfully funny moment after another, while Kirk, Scotty (Simon Pegg), Sulu (John Cho) and Uhura (Zoe Saldana) all get their chance to shine, whether cracking wise and saving the day.
In the end, the smartest move Abrams made when getting this franchise back up on its feet was in the casting, as these performers not only bring a vibrancy to their well-established characters but the chemistry and camaraderie they project makes for an immensely likable crew. In the end, we don’t care so much if they conquer the threat du jour as to how their personal actions impact one another. We like them damn it, we like them and that’s all that’s really needed to get us to go on one more with them.
