Rating of
4/4
My favourite film of this new Trek trilogy
Stuart '2-D' Pot - wrote on 06/15/17
3 years into it's 5 year mission, The USS Enterprise makes a stop at Starfleet's newest, most advanced starbase, Starbase Yorktown, when it recieves a distress call. Following the location of the call to Altamid, a class M planet on the edge of the Nebula, uncharted space, The Enterprise is destroyed by a swarm of drones led by a ruthless alien with a vendetta named Krall. With their ship destroyed and scattered all over Altamid, the crew of The Enterprise must get back together and team up with alien warrior Jaylah if they are to escape. Now, the first thing I want to say is that this is the most flat out fun film of this new trilogy, which also makes it my favourite, with the 2009 film coming in close second because of nostalgia and a great ensemble cast. The action scenes are fun and very creative, especially given that Justin Lin, the same guy that made the Fast and Furious franchise good, directing, good action pieces are expected of this film. The characters are great as always, with Jaylah being a great new addition to the franchise and the villain having the most deep origin story, even if that story is left hanging by a thread for the majority of the film, and leading to a lot of questions, and the villain's plans are rather rough on the edges at first, but become clearer as the film progresses. The storyline is great and carries the weight of the visuals (best warp space shot of this trilogy yet) and the action set pieces, with Justin Lin diving deep into his Star Trek childhood to make this film the most Trek film of the new trilogy, and with that Beyond feels like an extended episode, it doesn't bother me, it actually makes me happy because Bones is actually given stuff to do, unlike Into Darkness, where all Bones did was open a torpedo and help bring Kirk back to life, but the majority of that film he isn't there. This actually gives Bones more screen time, which means he has more stuff to do, including treating Spock's wounds and having a very touching moment in the film (again with Spock). And Scotty is given more to do as well, including helping Jaylah to repair and old federation ship named after Justin Lin's dad and all the technical stuff. Because Into Darkness also lacked Scotty. But, it starts off a little slow, with it taking a good 30mins to get started, which is the slowest start this trilogy has had yet, and there are some plotholes, particularly at the end with Uhura conveniently knowing Krall's secret identity just by seeing an old video of Balthazar Edison, leave that stuff to Sherlock Holmes. But overall, despite some pacing issues and a few plot problems throughout, this is still a good film and my favourite of the new Kelvin trilogy. Worth the watch if you liked Star Trek and Star Trek: Into Darkness.
