Star Trek Beyond

There’s a core difference between the two great sci fi movie franchises. Star Wars is mostly about myth and the epic retelling of stories that have been around for thousands of years. Star Trek, on the other hand, is mostly about ideas, questions about human nature and how that nature stays the same even when we are onboard a starship in the final frontier. With its beginnings during the optimistic, technology crazy days of the space race, Star Trek envisioned a utopian future in which disease, war, and prejudice are all but eliminated and all the races of the universe come together to explore the unknown and share knowledge. Though the franchise has seen several iterations over the last half century, the heart of Star Trek has always been a cerebral one – a brainy “what if” set in space.

When director J.J. Abrams rebooted the film series in 2009, it was a sleeker, sexier, more action oriented vision. It was less about ideas and more about souped up space adventure, but seeing how each familiar character and setting was reimagined was so entertaining, the shift in focus almost didn’t matter even to die-hard Trekkies.  The sequel also directed by Abrams, 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness, was less successful and the less said about it, the better. 

 Now we have Star Trek Beyond, directed by Justin Lin, the man responsible for installments 3 through 6 of the car and wife beater fashion show known as The Fast and The Furious. I’m not saying a director can’t be responsible for brainless entertainment sometimes and smart entertainment other times. I’m just saying all the self-tanner, car exhaust, and testosterone fumes from directing that many Fast and Furious movies can’t have been good for Lin’s judgement. Anyway, the concern was that Lin’s Star Trek might be just another dumb action picture that happens to feature people in Starfleet uniforms.

The film does at least give lip service to the realm of ideas. It begins with a mopey, listless, emo Captain Kirk halfway through his ship’s five year mission to explore the universe and he’s wondering what’s it all for? Why explore? To what end? Especially when the different races he tries to help reject his efforts at making peace. Meanwhile, our favorite Vulcan, Spock, contemplates his own future, thinking maybe he should resign from Starfleet, settle down with a nice pointy eared gal and help repopulate his race after his home planet was obliterated in the first film. 

 

So there are these large themes about purpose, legacy, mortality, duty versus love, and the value of knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Then the crew gets called on what they think is going to be a routine rescue mission and all of that goes out the window. What follows is a chain of sometimes exciting, sometimes confusing and cheap-looking action set pieces loosely strung together by underdeveloped characters and eye roll-worthy motivations. There’s a vampiric, shape changing supervillain intent on destroying the Federation. Why? Meh, just ‘cause. He commands a deadly superfleet of possibly drones, possibly other aliens, it’s never really clear. Where did he get them or learn how to command them? Meh, unimportant. There are holes in the basic story that you could fly the USS Excelsior through. 

Lin’s overall sensibility and general wrongness for the Star Trek franchise is summed up in the scene in which Kirk and crew destroy the entire enemy fleet simply by playing the Beastie Boys’ song “Sabotage” really loud over the radio. It’s dumb and doesn’t make much sense, but is intended to appeal to pure emotional reaction rather than our brain. It’s not very logical, if you know what I mean.

Star Trek Beyond is definitely one of the lesser films in this 50 year old franchise. You can still go see it, but I’m not sure that’s the best idea.