Star Trek Beyond review

The Return of the King and Revenge of the Sith are the only "Part Three" films that particularly shine (and Revenge arguably only shines in comparison to its predecessors) - unless you count Goldfinger, of course.

Star Trek Beyond is the 13th Star Trek film and the third in the rebooted film franchise. It is more Goldfinger than Return of the King, in that it's not wrapping up a trilogy or anything, it's Just Another Star Trek Film. There are a few things in it that seem really dumb or contrived that later turn out to actually be bits of foreshadowing, but that doesn't change the fact that they seem dumb or contrived when they're introduced (and one in particular that causes a massive plot hole when the "foreshadowing" penny drops). The Badass Alien Chick Who Barely Understands Humans is hands-down the best part of the film. Give her her own film please. You know you're going to do that stupid "cinematic universe" thing to compete with Marvel's Underpants Brigade and Mickey's Jedi Fanfic, so seriously make a movie about Albino Alien Katniss.

Yes, you may marry me.

(Her name's "Jaylah," as in J-Law, because guess whose characters they based her on?)

So here's the part of the plot that the trailers spoiled: the Enterprise is destroyed and Kirk and company are stranded on a planet with an evil alien warlord played by Idris Elba. They have to use their wits to survive and save the day blah blah blah.

Now, I bitched and moaned back in my Skyfall review about how it would be nice to actually f*cking wound James Bond for once and make him rely on his wits to survive and save the day blah blah blah, so I was kind of interested in seeing how this would work.

It works all right, I guess. There were a couple of instances where the exposition felt really rushed, as if they just wanted to get to the Big Dumb Action without really explaining why the Big Dumb Action was necessary. The fight scenes were also poorly edited, which seems to be an ongoing problem in Hollywood for almost everyone who isn't the Russo Brothers. There's some great by-play between Spock and McCoy (Karl Urban remains hands-down the best cast member, convincing me effortlessly that he's a young DeForest Kelley). There are a lot of neat little references to classic Trek - my favorite is a photo of the original cast (i.e., Shatner et al.) among Old Spock's belongings, which is obviously* a cast photo from The Undiscovered Country - and the score very subtly quotes the Undiscovered Country theme right as it's shown. They worked Leonard Nimoy's death into the plot, which is touching, but that's counterbalanced by some really awkward stuff involving Chekov (for those who don't know, Anton Yelchin, who plays Chekov in the rebooted film series, died in a freak car accident a month before the film premiered). There's some appallingly bad CGI involving a motorcycle, and the film has about three separate climaxes. Oh, and you can totally see the join between Idris Elba's lips and his (otherwise very impressive) mask. Overall I'd give the film a B+, which puts it light-years ahead of Star Trek: The Wrath of Sherlock.

*TvTropes seems to think it's a cast photo for The Final Frontier, but the Enterprise bridge set doesn't match that film. YES I AM A NERD.

SPOILERS BELOW

Okay, so the Big Spoilery Problem is that Albino Alien Katniss lives on a crashed-but-still-functional starship that Our Heroes can use. That seems like cheating - after all, this is supposed to be a film where Kirk and company rely on their wits to survive and save the day blah blah blah - but there actually turns out to be a damn good reason for the crashed-but-still-functional starship to be on the planet - namely, it's how the evil alien warlord got to the planet in the first place. The problem is, the evil alien warlord should kinda know about it, since, um, that's how he got to this planet in the first place.

Also, Idris Elba wants to destroy Babylon 5 The Citadel Starbase Yorktown, using a weapon he intends to recover from the Enterprise wreckage, which doesn't make sense because a) his fleet cut through the Enterprise like a knife through tissue paper, and Enterprise is the best Starfleet has, so why didn't he just attack Yorktown with his fleet? and b) why did he destroy the Enterprise when he could have just disabled it in space, boarded it, and taken the weapon? 

Still, Idris Elba doesn't turn out to be Khan after the writers and director swore up and down he wasn't, so that's a plus.

Also we learn that Spock is totally cyber-stalking Uhura, which is funny.

As thoroughly ridiculous as the second climax is (the one where the crashed-but-still-functional starship defeats Idris Elba's fleet), smart viewers (hi) can see it coming almost a minute ahead, because they actually bother to infodump this one properly, and get about a full minute to laugh out loud before it finally happens, and it's gloriously hammy when it does.

But as I said, the best thing about the film is the Albino Alien Badass Babe, and after the first climax she has absolutely nothing to do. Sad!