Star Trek Beyond Expectations

Being a Star Trek fan has always been a double edged bat’leth.  On the one hand it has enjoyed some of the finest science fiction writing to date with both The Wrath of Kahn and First Contact topping the majority of the competition.  On the other however, is The Motion Picture.  Enough said.  But then came the event.  The trauma.  The reboot.  Which is in no way a commentary on the movie’s quality, but the fear engendered by the very notion of a new Kirk, a new Spock and a new Enterprise.  For while undoubtedly mainstream, Star Trek has always been off centre in terms of its popularity; the very term “Trekkie” becoming part of everyday lexicon to denote a rather nerdy individual.  A king among all geeky men.  

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The new Trek was specifically designed to do away with all that.  It was meant to be sleek, cool and oozing sex appeal.  Even Spock became the focus of some serious man crushes.  It also did away with the techno-babble that so flummoxed and confused the regular going public.  Something Star Trek had always been famous for; the inversions of field polarities and harmonic resonances being part of every true Trekkie's vocabulary.  Instead, we got “lightning storms in space”, thanks J.J.  As you may be able to tell, I was not over enamoured with this dumbing down but I enjoyed the first two movies well enough.  They were fun if uninspired and wiled away a few hours in a thinned out universe I still loved.  Originality however, was sorely lacking.

             

 Much as with the new Star Wars a fear of doing too much outside the established norm bred complacency and not a little laziness.  The first was centred entirely on resetting the continuity and making it clear Trek was now cool.  The second clung so tightly to The Wrath of Kahn’s popularity that it left little in the way of effort and committed multiple plot convenience sins.  Super blood, interplanetary beaming technology and why, oh why the Klingons let the slaughter of dozens of soldiers go without even a shrug, to name a few?  But, as I said, they’re fun movies nit picking aside.  With Beyond therefore, I was expecting more of the same.  So colour me speechless when all did not go according to presumption.

                        

Lines around the eyes.

From the very beginning there is a feeling that this is a Star Trek film.  Perhaps due to the Enterprise being three years into their five-year mission, or simply that the cast has grown into their roles.  Iconic and daunting as they surely are.  Some are still more fleshed out than others, Chekhov and Uhura still lagging behind in the developmental races, but from Chris Pine we get a better rounded character.  A character who identifies as James Tiberius Kirk.  The rigours of command have finally started to take a toll, making both he and Spock question their places with Starfleet.  It’s a definite nod to the original films, with Kirk’s possible admiralship being dangled as a diverging path.  The road taken in another life and perhaps, even after all that has happened, again here.  It adds definition to a captain who’s seen two movies go by serving the Federation all on a dare, with nary a thought for whether he really belongs.

                                     

Krall, there'll be no cancelling the apocalypse.

The storyline itself feels like it could have been lifted straight from an episode.  Without revealing the whole shebang: The Enterprise answers a distress call, an enemy presents themselves and cue the action.  My main worry was that by not relying on previous material we might have seen a regression to the two dimensional bad guy, the Nero of first movie fame.  For while Into Darkness may have lacked originality, Benedict Cumberbatch nailed the part of Kahn with aplomb and carried the plot through some of its faultier aspects by performance alone.  Eric Banner did not.  As it would seem however, all that was needed was another Brit and some alien prosthetics to transform Idris Elba into Krall, our baddy in residence.  He growls, he snarls and most of all he has a severe and unrelenting hatred of the Federation.  The reasons for which make for an interesting reveal, although they could have gone into more detail.  It’s a forgivable lapse but a missed opportunity to create a villain with a little more depth. 

                                                

Relatable and awesome.

We also see the introduction of Jaylah, ably played by Sofia Boutella of Kingsman fame.  Remember those blades?  The disabled had never been so deadly.  A refreshingly able but flawed character, both Justin Lin and the screenwriters involved deserve a pat on the back.  Vulnerable but competent, brave but unsure, she makes for a fine addition to the crew and it’ll be fun to see whether she returns in future installments.  Hopefully, alongside an absent Carol Marcus who for some reason they were unable to work into Beyond.  One suspects the controversy the internet created over *that* scene in Into Darkness may have played a part, but one never knows.  In any case she contributed mightily to my enjoyment of the film and aided it in pipping Star Wars: The Force Awakens to the post for my favourite science fiction film of the recent past.  Originality is a boon, not a sin and it’s a lesson Star Trek seems to have learned from its previous outings. 

                                                         

Live long and... well you know the rest.

Not to say that we don’t have plenty of nostalgia and tie ins to the wider Star Trek universe.  The passing of Leonard Nimoy is given appropriate attention, a saddened Spock sorting through his aged self’s possessions to find a photograph of the original crew.  There’s also plenty of nods to Enterprise, the black sheep of the Star Trek continuity that demonstrates a respect not only for the source material but just as importantly, the fans as well.  Regardless of one’s position on Captain Archer he and his ship are part of the canon and one of the few parts of the history not retconned by time travel hijinks.  Finally, I mentioned its absence earlier, but we see the return of techno gobbledegook.  Not a lot and certainly not enough to confuse or alienate anyone, but enough to make the crew appear slightly better educated than a bunch of frat boys joyriding in Starfleet’s most advanced warship.  So, on a whole how best to sum up Star Trek Beyond?  It’s solid, dependable and entertaining.  You’ll leave the cinema after two hours feeling content, not necessarily blown away but knowing what you just watched was definitely good.  I am one of those people who is notoriously difficult to please and like many analyse a film even as I’m watching it for the first time.  Inconsistencies, plot holes and laziness are genuinely irritating and yet my radar barely pinged in this instance. Now there’s only one thing left to say.  Justin Lin, we forgive you for Tokyo Drift, we forgive you.