Star Trek Sundays: "Beyond" gets back to basics, and it rocks

Redemption, at last...

It’s Sunday, and we’ve spent all summer going through all 13 theatrical STAR TREK films, a series that includes a number of pieces that have never appeared online before taken from my book 200 Reviews, available now in Paperback or on Kindle (which you should really consider buying, because it’s an awesome collection!). The series concludes today with the third and final film in the modern reboot trilogy, STAR TREK BEYOND. Enjoy…

Star Trek Beyond

2016, Dir. Justin Lin

Originally published in 200 Reviews, based on notes from 2022

At last, redemption.

Star Trek Beyond is the first and only film since The Undiscovered Country that I can enthusiastically say is a ‘good’ Star Trek movie, without any significant qualifiers; and since Undiscovered Country came out in 1991, and I was born in 1992, that means this is the only one in my lifetime that truly hits the mark. It isn’t perfect, but Beyond is largely successful at blending the more bombastic expectations of a modern blockbuster with a very recognizable, authentic understanding of what Star Trek is about and why these characters are so beloved in the first place. In so doing, it cracks a code Star Trek has struggled to nail down since Generations, and when watching through all the films in order, arriving at Beyond feels like finding an oasis in a very big desert.