Star Trek: Beyond [M]

BANG! ZOOM! BLEEP! “TURN THE THRUSTERS ON!”: aren’t space battles fun? Well yeah, at least I feel like they were once upon a time. But as the classic space battles of good forces against evil have ‘flourished’ with the CGI age, I cannot help but wonder if they’ve gone in for some tricksy devil or genie wish where they get what they want, but lose something of themselves in the process. This could maybe account for my boredom and wanting to curl up in the reclining theatre chair and close my eyes during Star Trek: Beyond. 

A predictable story from start to finish, the movie chronicles the mid-space-life crisis of Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) and his crew of the Enterprise. Lost physically, emotionally, and metaphorically within the emptiness of space, Kirk volunteers his crew for a rescue mission on a strange planet. But before getting there, they are expertly attacked, the crew is taken, the ship destroyed, and an ancient weapon in the archives is stolen. Predictably, Kirk, Chekov (Anton Yelchin), Scotty (Simon Pegg), Bones (Karl Urban), and Spock (Zachary Quinto) are the only uncaptured survivors of the attack and with the help of a stranded local (Sofia Boutella), they hatch a plan to rescue the Enterprise crew and stop the villainous Krall (Idris Elba) from using the weapon to destroy the Federation. 

Whilst the newer Star Trek movies are fun and sci-fi chic, they are nothing awesome to rave about and Beyond has to be the weakest instalment. The story, as I’ve already mentioned is pretty damned predictable: tricks, ‘self-discovery’, and revenge against the Federation. 

More than that, the film suffers from a lack of character chemistry and development and over saturates itself in special effects and space battles to compensate. The individual character stories were half-arsed at best. Kirk and Spock are going through their own “who am I?” crises, which don’t even get resolved properly: just a few lines and then “yeah I’ve changed my mind and everything is good now”. Bones and Spock are sort of thrown together as an attempt at an unlikely friends comedy type of thing, which doesn’t really amount to much anyway, Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov are there because they have all the technological answers, which is apparently the only way to move the narrative along (even stories are now reliant on technology), and Uhura really didn’t need to be in this movie at all. Seriously, Zoe Saldana could have sat this one out with a drink and a good book. 
As if sensing the lacklustre and monotonous repetitiveness of the movie, the actors all give mediocre performances. Teasing banter is forgotten and everyone just seems to be reading through the lines whilst their eye is on the clock, counting down the minutes until they can wrap for the day and be somewhere else. 
To be fair, I have to give honourable mentions to Sofia Boutella and Idris Elba who actually put some effort into their performances. 

And it appears that, to compensate with all this, the wizards behind the cameras and computers decided to insert a load of special effects and CGI space battles to stop audiences walking out or lapsing into boredom-induced comas. Admittedly the CGI is very impressive, but it’s so completely overdone that I got a headache within the first 20 minutes. The spectacle of this new starport, whilst being quite breathtaking, is also so heavy on the curves and spinning camera angles to give the impression of floating in space that it sent me into the foetal position with the my eyes closed. It’s a bit like staring at Escher’s ‘Relativity’ for too long. 

So, Star Trek: Beyond: while the special effects are quite a spectacle, the cost of looking good is apparently the soul or heart of the film’s narrative and cast. 

Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Idris Elba, Sofia Boutella, Joe Taslim, Lydia Wilson, Deep Roy, Melissa Roxburgh, Anita Brown, and Doug Jung.