![]() (Jaylah is the last of her kind Kirk and Spock are wondering if it’s time they end their fruitful Enterprise partnership bonds of friendship between several different characters are tested and reasserted and so on.) So, of course, the hawkish Krall wants to strike back at the Federation because he believes unity and peace are crutches that make people weak. Rather awkwardly, Star Trek Beyond wants to be a film about the importance of family, and the theme keeps getting shoehorned into every free moment. Plus, the filmmakers have saddled Krall with a strained motivation for his dastardly plan that-wouldn’t you know it?-runs perfectly counter to Kirk and his crew’s belief system. (You want to wipe out humanity, dude? Star Trek has been there, done that-a bunch.) And as imposing and soulful a presence as Elba is, his Krall isn’t particularly scintillating, nor is his evil plan all that chilling. With the exception of Khan and the Borg-the monolithic alien collective that debuted on the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series before appearing in 1996’s Star Trek: First Contact -the Star Trek films have featured mostly serviceable villains. But it is also diminished a bit by the franchise’s nagging weaknesses. ![]() This is the 13th Star Trek film, and it ranks somewhere in the middle because of the series’ considerable strengths-its well-drawn characters, its likeable performers, its smart and stripped-down approach to sci-fi spectacle. Barely escaping to a nearby planet, Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Chekov (the late Anton Yelchin), and Bones (Karl Urban) team up with a warrior named Jaylah (Sofia Boutella) to scupper Krall’s plans to destroy the Federation. The extended fight-really, it’s a stunningly choreographed massacre-brings Kirk in contact with Krall (Idris Elba), a fearsome alien who wants a seemingly worthless relic onboard the Enterprise for nefarious reasons. In many regards, Star Trek Beyond is a pretty familiar Trek tale, but this early battle sequence is one of the franchise’s most inspired, our heroes’ vessel being torn to shreds by a swarm of enemy ships too tiny for its weapons to hit. Immediately, Kirk and his team are attacked-not by a single ship but by a hornet’s nest of small vessels that assault the Enterprise on all sides. Star Trek Beyond finds the Enterprise venturing out to an uncharted nebula to help an alien named Kalara (Lydia Wilson) rescue her besieged, shipwrecked crew. Will Kirk (Chris Pine) give up his command of the Enterprise for a cushy promotion? Can Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Uhura (Zoe Saldana) repair their foundering romantic relationship? But Lin and screenwriters Simon Pegg (who returns as Scotty) and Doug Jung don’t put much heft behind these questions, letting them be mildly suspenseful mysteries we’re pretty sure will be solved before the credits roll. Oh, sure, Star Trek Beyond gestures toward internal dramas. ![]() However, one definite advantage it has over its two predecessors is that, at this stage of the reboot, there’s no longer a need to establish these slightly altered characters or fuss over their emotional arcs. It also made them wildly uneven and more than a bit smug, but I appreciated the ambition. Rebooting the franchise with 2009’s Star Trek, Abrams blithely deviated from the original story’s timeline and lore so he could make adjustments, and while neither of his movies can hold a candle to Star Trek II or Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the willingness to tinker made them unpredictable and intriguing. I’m a lifelong fan of these films, but I’m clearly not a bona fide Trekker since I actually didn’t mind Into Darkness’s supposed sacrilege. ![]() (Plus, Trekkers were rightly annoyed that Abrams swore up and down for months that Into Darkness’s bad guy, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, wouldn’t be revealed to be Khan, when in fact he was.) Abrams reworked major themes and reintroduced bad guys from 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the franchise’s crown jewel, making them less clever and resonant in the process. Hardcore Star Trek fans despised 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness. ![]()
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