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.
No comments:
Post a Comment