Star Trek: Beyond Expectations

I almost passed on Star Trek Beyond. As a life-long fan of the franchise, the trailer for this movie, with its Beastie Boys' soundtrack, seemed to be "beyond" my tolerance for the creative direction of the series. I'm glad I didn't miss it, as this was an entertaining film and worthy summer blockbuster despite its flaws. Though not the best of the movies (That honor still belongs to Wrath of Khan), Star Trek Beyond was at least better than its predecessor, the ill-conceived "Into Darkness," and visually more dazzling than the first movie in the reboot.

With Justin Lin at the helm, the movie delivers action in a way no Star Trek film ever has before. My seven favorite things in this movie were:

7. The enemy swarm ship

6. Zoe Saldana's Uhura

5. Chris Pine's James Kirk

4. Sofia Boutella's Jaylah

3. Yorktown Station

2. Simon Pegg's Scotty

1. Karl Urban's McCoy

The feral Jayalah was a refreshing introduction of a new character in Trek canon, reminiscent of  Sauvik. Played by Sofia Boutella, I only hope she becomes a reoccurring character in the film series.

What Didn't Work [Spoilers Ahead]

The main personal character conflicts were highly contrived and unimaginative. Scotty and McCoy did not have personal dramas and were the two best characters in this movie, but Spock and Kirk's formulaic personal dramas came off as trivial and unnecessary.

Kirk's log was a whine about the routine of space, about pining for a station command instead a star ship. He actually used the word episodic in the log, a nod to the TV show, but the TV show never felt humdrum or boring. Every mission was an adventure. It was completely out of character for James T. Kirk, a man whose lust for adventure and love of ship was greater than for any woman he's ever met. Some say this is the new Kirk, a man whose destiny changed when the timeline was altered, and he just doesn't have the same passion. If that's truly canon, they've replaced an iconic character with a lesser one, and future stories will suffer for it.

Spock breaks up with Uhura because Vulcans need to repopulate and he needs to make purebred Vulcan babies (forgetting it seems that he's half human himself). The truly logical solution would have been to say "I love you honey, but I'm donating sperm to the Vulcan repopulation program and might have biological children running around to help my father's race climb back from extinction." If she loved him, she would not have a problem with this. She would get to keep him and have a few pointy-eared bastards with the guy. Zachary Quinto is also the weak link in this otherwise stellar cast. He does not seem to have the gravitas to pull off a stoic Spock appropriately without sliding into emotion, though he was competent for the role overall and did not ruin the film.

Villains Make The Movie

Krall was physically powerful and had great technology with which to vex the Federation (which he hates), but he was a generic villain and his reasons for hating the Federation made less sense the more it was explained. His lack of personality is the scriptwriters' biggest failure of the movie since Idris Elba has plenty of gravitas and could have delivered a Ricardo Montalban level performance. As the story unwinds, his motivations and limitations make even less sense. At first, he's pissed for being abandoned by Star Fleet in a nebula, but it's revealed by film's end that he's had the means to leave the nebula all along...he was just waiting to get his hands on the final piece of a weapon with which to exact his revenge on a Federation that had abandoned him (except wait, they didn't, he could leave the nebula on his own in a swarm ship.) Or maybe he couldn't, but it was not clear why. There was little explanation about the technology that allowed him to live hundreds of years. Maybe it was a nod to an episode, but I can't remember which.

There was some sadness in this viewing, acknowledging  it was the last time we were watching Anton play Mr. Chekhov. He was great in the role and will be missed. That said, Beyond came closest to the spirit of the series out of the three films. The effects were top notch, the production values and design were great, and the effort was an honest one to make an entertaining film without the gimmicks and gotcha's of the second movie, Into Darkness. Unlike that one, this one's worth the cost of a theater ticket.