Directed by: Justin Lin
Star Trek 3: Beyond the Fast and the Furious 8 is the latest Trek Film in the rebooted JJ-verse of faster-er, more explosion-y, screamy, punchier Star Trek films. In this film, bad man wants revenge. Enterprise and co. are sent to stop the bad man. The enterprise is destroyed, leaving Kirk and the rest of the crew to stop bad man before he does bad thing, because revenge.
(Note: Don't get mad at me about spoilers, the trailers already gave away everything. There will be one spoiler I'll stick at the very end )
But seriously this time. Star Trek: Beyond follows the crew as they are left marooned on a planet. Their ship is destroyed, leaving the crew with their wits and scrounging abilities to escape captivity and stop an evil alien terrorist before he attacks a Starfleet base.
Star Trek: Beyond was an enjoyable film on a very superficial level. I like to judge these new Trek films as just generic space action movies, because you'd never be able to sell a "real" Trek movie that wasn't an over the top, supercharged action film. So on those merits, it works. Although this entry sometimes feels like its trying to do two things: Be an action movie and be an actual Star Trek movie. There's all of the action, punching, screaming, revenge-y bad man, and explosions that we've come to expect in this new series. And then there's some actual moments and images that feel like Star Trek. Like the look of the alien planet that the crew finds themselves marooned on. It looks like a supped up version of some corny alien planet right out of the 60's TV show. Shots of all of the colored uniforms on the planet when the crew was imprisoned looked cool. There was lots of more neat and funny character moments. More of Bones and Scotty, whom I like way more than Kirk and Spock in this new series. They do try to tack on a scene where Sulu is revealed to be gay in this universe. It feels silly and pandering, something George Takei has even given the film criticism for.
The rest is... Well, the same as the last two films. It was kind of laughable of how the villain was just another random guy with anger problems who wanted revenge against Starfleet for some reason. Nero, the villain from the first film, was a random guy who was angry and wanted revenge. Totally not Khan who ended up being Khan was a random guy who wanted revenge, except it was dumb that he did because Kirk and co. never met him before in this rebooted universe like they originally did in the TV series. In addition to Revenge man, they have also added a Marvel style MacGuffin to prod along the plot in the first few scenes. This movie also tries to do a plot twist that is both stupid, lacks any weight or consequence, and was literally given away in the trailer. It even has a laughably bad enhance, ENHANCE, E N H A N C E scene.
The action, while well shot and visually good looking, is tiring after even just the first third of the film. However, just having good looking action shouldn't get you props these days. Its normal for a $175 million blockbuster to have good looking effects and action. But, it gets tiring. Every punching fight has to last 10 minutes. Every character appears to be some kind of martial arts expert. Fights lack any real weight to them and feel overly choreographed.
Bottom line- 3/5- It had more good character moments and more fun than the last entry, but its so, so stupid.
SPOILER BELOW
I never thought there would be anything more stupid than Jeff Goldblum using his old timey Windows laptop to destroy an alien fleet. This movie destroys an alien fleet/swarm with the Beastie Boys. They literally play the Beastie Boys really loud and all of the alien ships explode. They plug a boom box into the ship, turn on the Beastie Boys, and alien ships start exploding in sync with the music.
"You're welcome"- Tim Burton
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