"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Star Trek Beyond (2016, PG-13)



I saw this a few weeks ago but haven’t had a chance to review it until now – so many write-ups, so little time, and all that.  Don’t take that as a sign of disinterest in the movie, though.  On the contrary, I think it might be my favorite so far of this incarnation of the series (a few spoilers.)

In the middle of his five-year exploration and diplomacy mission, Kirk is starting to get listless.  The days seem to melt into one another, and he fears he’s losing the thrill he had for the work.  Kirk is shaken out of his complacency in the worst way when a routine search-and-rescue operation turns into a brutal attack on his ship and the taking of most of his crew.  With Kirk and a handful of others stranded on a remote planet, and the rest held by the mysterious and destructive Krall, it’s up to the crew of the Enterprise to stop Krall before he unleashes havoc on an unsuspecting space base.

A lot of people, in talking about this movie, have brought up the shakeups in the normal character interactions as one of the film’s major assets, and I agree.  For a franchise that, thus far, has spent most of its time on Kirk-Spock, Kirk-Bones, and Spock-Uhura, Beyond serves up something different.  Because everyone is scattered upon making planetfall, main characters connect with whoever is geographically closest.  This way, we get Kirk working with Chekov, Spock placidly getting on Bones’s nerves, Scotty meeting fellow engineering wizard and excellent new character Jaylah, and Uhura and Sulu trying to survive their imprisonment by Krall.  (Note:  I’m not saying it’s racist or anything, but I do think it’s odd that the only two main characters to be captured are the only two main characters of color.  While Uhura and Sulu aren’t to “blame” for getting captured – the ones who aren’t caught escape through chance, not skill, so it’s really just their bad luck that they don’t get dropped elsewhere on the planet, and both are brave and clever throughout their imprisonment – it also means they don’t have as much to do as the rest of the characters, which disappoints me.  It was a choice that definitely stuck out to me.)

Overall, I think the movie comes off very well.  There’s some cool action that relies pretty equally on skill, nerve, and cleverness, there’s a solid balance between plot stuff and character interactions, and although some of course get to contribute more than others, everyone gets at least one great moment to shine.  And as I said, Jaylah (played by Sofia Boutella from Kingsman) is a slam dunk of a new character:  smart, cool, and highly competent, with a neat backstory and well-written dialogue that immediately paints a good picture of her.  I really hope we see her again in any future films – aside from being generally great, adding her to the main cast would make the ratios of human:alien and male:female slightly less unbalanced.

If I had one complaint to make, it’s that Krall is somewhat hampered by the story’s needed to have a big reveal with him.  Because the film spends so much time holding back on who he is and what he’s about, his motivations feel muddy and ill-defined.  Idris Elba gives it his all in the role, but the writing doesn’t give him as much to work with as it should.

Warnings

Violence, swearing, and some drinking.

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