We’ve now reached the third installment in what’s known as the ‘Kelvin Universe’ of the Star Trek film franchise. In Star Trek Beyond director/writer JJ Abrams ops to take a backseat this time switching gears and letting one of the stars, Simon Pegg, co-write and director of Fast And The Furious Justin Lin to steer. That combination somehow manages to bring both the action you’d expect, but also a level of drama you wouldn’t for this franchise.
Early into the film the tone is set, with Captain James T Kirk (Chris Pine) delivering us a monologue about the depth and loneliness of space and space travel. Kirk is questioning his place in the universe, and what he has to offer Star Fleet. To add to this his First Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto) is suffering his own existential dilemma after receiving some upsetting news. They are then tasked on a rescue attempt that turns into an ambush when the Enterprise is attacked and obliterated out of the sky by Krall (Idris Elba) and his swarm of small attack ships. Stranded on an unknown planet, cut off from each other and the rest of the galaxy, they must come together to save each other and escape.
With each new film the stakes are raised, and it always seems that the Enterprise and a good part of her crew end up destroyed. Usually though that happens towards the end of the film, but here Lin ups the ante by blowing up the ship in the first act. Now the ship is not just a vehicle, but a metaphor for their home where the crew that is now like family reside. To have it so violently attacked leaves them both physically and emotionally reeling. In the previous film Star Trek Into Darkness, we touched on the theme of the crew being Kirk’s family. This is of course followed up again in Beyond, so once again Captain Kirk must lay it all on the line to save his crew and help them escape. Thematically we also look at the relationships in the film and how integral they are in both the narrative of this film and the overall franchise. Structurally the film has explosive first and third acts, whilst the protracted middle where we delve into our character relationships is drama laden. It works well for the film, because it gives us an opportunity to focus on the characters without being over-stimulated by visual and aural effects.
One of the best things about this film is how screenwriters Pegg and Doug Jung split the ensemble up into almost odd-couple pairings as we follow their individual vignettes for the overall story to all fall into place. Kirk and Chekov (Anton Yelchin), Spock and Bones (Karl Urban), Scotty (Simon Pegg) with new alien friend Jaylah (Sofia Boutella), whilst Uhura (Zoe Saldana) ends up nose-to-nose with our villain Krall. Some of these work better than others, Bones gets to play therapist as well as medical doctor with Spock’s love life and gets to crack out some of his best lines to date. Whilst Scotty meets someone who is almost his equal in the engineering stakes in Jaylah, but her fighting skills as well as her ability to fix things will be critical in helping them all.
We don’t seem to learn anything new from Kirk and Chekov’s team up, and Uhura seems wasted pitted against Krall when all she does is provide us a POV into Krall’s plan and barely foils any of his work. And sadly Idris Elba is a little under-utilised in a stupid amount of prosthetics doing his best Darth Vader heavy breathing impersonation. His motivations are left a mystery until the third act but if you’re clever enough you can put a couple of clues together and figure out who he is. There was also a brief controversy stirred up surrounding Sulu (John Cho) with him being in a gay relationship and having a daughter. But the reveal is so underplayed and subtle in the film itself that it seems like all that ‘controversy’ was just a bunch of hot air.
Justin Lin and his cinematographer Stephen F Windon use far too many spinning cameras to try and give texture, depth and movement but it just ends up being a little nausea-inducing. In saying that though, the visual effects are once again top notch and almost immersive and believable, so when you’re not feeling like you’re in a front load washing machine, you get to enjoy some stunning visuals. The score also helps add to the atmosphere, though the blatant use of Beastie Boys ‘Sabotage’ again felt a little on the nose when they easily could’ve picked something else in its place.
For Trekkies, it’s less of an abomination story-wise than Into Darkness (FWIW I really enjoyed Into Darkness). Fans of the Kelvin Universe installments will feel this is a decent addition to the franchise; Lin brings a real rollercoaster type spectacle atmosphere. The film ends up being a surprising balance between character drama and story by bookending it with two very large action packed sequences.
Review Score: THREE AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Running Time: 122 minutes
Star Trek Beyond is out in Australian cinemas from 21 July 2016 through Paramount Pictures Australia
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