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.
Thankfully, Beyond leaves J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman behind, replacing them with Justin Lin as director and Doug Jung and Simon Pegg as writers (the latter pulling double-duty as Scottie), and it makes all the difference in the world. These are talented people, of course, and know what they’re doing when it comes to putting together a movie – Lin had just come off directing the third through sixth Fast & Furious movies, and Pegg has written multiple films including the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy with Edgar Wright – but they’re also real Star Trek fans with a palpable enthusiasm for the material. Unlike the Abrams/Kurtzman/Orci team, they’re not trying to make Star Trek something it fundamentally isn’t, and that matters. Lin is best known as an action movie director, but the real reason he was right for Star Trek is that he’s so good with ensembles and character interactions, which was crucial in turning Fast & Furious from a niche curio into a big global success. He actually does fewer (albeit better) action beats here than in either of the Abrams films, and shows more comfort just being with the characters, pairing them off, and letting things breathe.
The middle stretch of the movie on the planet Altamid is a classic Star Trek problem-solving adventure, and while there is enough scope and big-screen action to make this feel like a real movie and not an elevated TV episode (the problem of the Next Generation films), I would never call what Lin is doing here ‘frenetic’ or ‘chaotic,’ like the Abrams movies. Beyond is much more in the classic Star Trek tradition of watching a group of competent experts work a series of hard problems, with the best and most thrilling action beats coming organically out of creative and daring solutions. In fact, that’s why the film’s most iconic moment – the big third-act space battle outside the Yorktown starbase scored diegetically to The Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” – works so well. As crazy as it is, it is entirely grounded in both good Star Trek problem solving (How do we disrupt communications in this enemy swarm?) and in the specific versions of these characters (Chris Pine’s Kirk likes the ‘oldies’, as we saw in the scene with him as a kid stealing a car and playing “Sabotage” in the 2009 film). The scene is very explicitly not the crew flying by the seat of their pants, but calmly reasoning through a hard problem and coming up with a bold solution, which happens to dovetail perfectly with Kirk’s love for The Beastie Boys and Justin Lin’s unique talents for outlandish action. And it is, in every way, one of the best set-pieces the franchise has ever mounted.
Thanks for reading The Weekly Stuff Wordcast! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
The inciting incident with the Enterprise being destroyed and leaving the crew stranded on the planet is also outstanding. The Enterprise has, of course, been blown up, crashed, or otherwise decimated far too many times in the Star Trek films at this point, but Lin and company actually make this one count, building a whole action sequence out of it where every member of the crew gets a chance to shine, we feel the loss of the ship, and a problem is created the crew will spend the rest of the film trying to solve. It’s second only to the original Enterprise destruction in The Search for Spock.
Throughout this whole opening stretch and then into the second act on the planet, the writing here is so much sharper in centering interesting character dynamics than the last two films achieved. Kirk’s opening Captain’s Log signals an immediate shift in how much more grounded this film is, as he reflects on the years spent exploring deep space, and the weariness he feels. It isn’t a monologue I would expect from William Shatner’s Kirk, but then, Chris Pine is playing a very different version of the character at this point, and he does so really effectively. It works for me because they ground his anxieties in his dad’s death, the event that kicked off this whole alternate timeline. I love the line he has about getting older than his father ever did – I feel that. That kind of existential dilemma feels like the kind of very real, human character conflict we would get in the Original Series movies.
And outside of Kirk, Beyond is much better at spreading material across the cast. The two Abrams films almost completely ignored the Spock/McCoy dynamic, for instance – which is of course a huge and essential part of The Original Series – and Beyond does a great job rectifying that, with Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban being paired up for the entire second act, and proving an absolute joy together. The film also builds in Leonard Nimoy’s real-life passing through Spock learning that his older counterpart has died, which gives Quinto a chance to play the very real grief we know he had over that loss (he and Nimoy had become very close since the 2009 film), leading to some beautiful and touching moments here. Uhura gets much more interesting material to play than in either Abrams film, including a completely wordless moment during the Enterprise’s destruction where she separates the saucer section and traps herself with antagonist Krall to save Kirk, which is the best beat Saldaña had to play in the series thus far. I also love the choice to have Sulu be both gay and a family man; it is a welcome dose of additional diversity in a series that should always be striving for more, and I especially like that his non-heteronormative family becomes the film’s main link to the broader humanity the crew is fighting to protect in the last act. We even get a brand-new character here in the form of Sofia Boutella’s Jaylah, and it is a real joy to see her integrated into the cast, playing mainly off Pegg’s Scottie, but eventually getting to meet everyone and having big hero moments of her own. The long-in-development-hell Star Trek 4 is probably never happening at this point, and that’s a real shame, both because of the general strength of this great cast, and because Jaylah is a character I would love to see more of in the future.
The villain side of things is weaker, with Krall proving something of a dud, and it probably wasn’t a great idea to bury an actor as charismatic and expressive as Idris Elba under several inches of make-up. But even then, I do appreciate that Krall looks like an actual Star Trek alien – which is to say, a fundamentally humanoid figure with a weird face. All the aliens in the two Abrams films look like they’re from the Mos Eisley cantina on Tatooine – the kinds of shapes you’d use puppets and animatronics to illustrate – and while I love Star Wars aliens too, the design philosophies are diametrically different. Star Trek Beyond gets it right, and that goes for a lot of the production design, make-up, and costuming here. Everything on the planet’s surface looks like a modern version of the kinds of design language you’d see in The Original Series, authentic to the franchise without looking cheap, and almost all of it is practical. The CG comes mostly in outer space – on the ground, the locations are real, the aliens are all humans in make-up and prosthetics, and the sets, like the abandoned USS Franklin, are wonderfully lived-in. The Starfleet uniforms get a redesign here, and while the Paramount+ show Strange New Worlds would do an even better job updating the yellow/blue/red costumes, what we have here are a lot better than the weird sport jerseys from the Abrams films. I am also a big fan of the ‘ground uniforms’ Kirk and Chekov wear in this one (the blue jackets with yellow shoulders). They had to get creative with the Kelvin Timeline movies because of Chris Pine’s distaste for wearing the yellow leotards, and this was definitely the best solution across the three movies.
Outside of the “Sabotage” set-piece, the third act is the weakest point of Star Trek Beyond, not bad by any means but a bit more generic an action climax than one might want from a film so otherwise smart and creative. Still, the ending is nice, with everyone gathered together appreciating the well-honed crew they’ve become. The time-lapse construction of a shiny new Enterprise is, admittedly, a very funny image to end on, but since The Voyage Home essentially did the same thing, it’s all in good fun, and most importantly, it’s optimistic and forward-looking. Even if we won’t see Chris Pine and company in these roles again, they’re still out there exploring the galaxy, which is the note these films should always leave off on.
So yes, Star Trek Beyond is good stuff, the only film from either this era or the Next Generation period I enjoy without any significant reservations. I would happily rank it above either of its predecessors and all four TNG movies, and it’s a step above The Final Frontier, too – and being the sixth-best entry in a thirteen-film franchise spanning almost 40 years is nothing to sneeze at. I wish we’d had more like this one along the way.
Read all STAR TREK SUNDAYS Pieces:
Read the book 200 Reviews by Jonathan R. Lack in Paperback or on Kindle
Like anime? Listen to the podcast I host with Sean Chapman, JAPANIMATION STATION, where we review all sorts of anime every week. Watch on YouTube or Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
