Beyond kicks off in grand Star Trek movie fashion, by assuming we're all big ol' nerds who've seen the other films and have them pretty much memorised and require absolutely no spooling up. So Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), in year three of his five-year mission leading the USS Enterprise, is bored out of his wits. The frontier of space exploration in the United Federation of Planets turns out to be mindlessly schlepping diplomats and negotiating treaties with flyspeck civilisations out in the deep reaches of the galaxy: the opening sequence dramatises this workaday existence in a goofy comic sequence that would run damn close to being obnoxious and trivially silly if it wasn't so utterly sweet at heart (being utterly sweet saves Beyond from a lot of sins that have felled a good many Star Trek pictures over the years). And may I salute screenwriters Simon Pegg & Doug Jung for opening their new movie with this gambit: by directly marching up to the fifty-year-old Star Trek formula of exploring new worlds and having the swashbuckling main character complain that it's boring. The remainder of the film, of course, finds Kirk being rejuvenated, and if it's too much to hope that Star Trek itself can ever feel like something truly fresh and new in this year of our Lord 2016, Beyond does its very damnedest to at least be fun enough that it manages to be exciting itself.
Fun. Yes, that's the word. Beyond is fun - it is, in fact, maybe the most fun that any of the 13 Star Trek movies have ever been. The emerging critical consensus is very much that this feels like an oversize episode of a television show, which isn't entirely fair on the details - it is very consequential and involves life-altering decisions and events - but gets at least one thing exactly right: the appeal of the movie is exactly the appeal of hanging out with the main characters and watching them do their thing. I'm not sure the film gets to this point entirely honestly: these specific incarnations of the characters, played by these specific actors, haven't been around for long enough to earn that kind of "you know us and love us! Enjoy romping through a summertime adventure with us!" goodwill, particularly since the previous films have generally done as Star Trek movies do, and focus on Kirk and Spock (Zachary Quinto) to the general exclusion of the rest of the characters.
This, then, is what makes Penn & Jung's script so important: they have put real effort into giving most of the cast some chance to stand out. Is it cheating that they're drawing so much on the personalities from a canonised TV classic to flesh out these characters? Yes, probably, and not everybody in the cast thrives on it: after two films of being generally terrific and maybe my favorite ensemble member both times around, I found Karl Urban to have weirdly lost his grip on Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy, who now feels like an embarrassed attempt to poorly ape DeForest Kelley's prickly Southern asshole with a lot of mugging and playing to the cheap seats. Though when the plot starts carving out smaller chunks from the main narrative, and puts Urban and Quinto alone together, Urban does manage to find something of his own version of the character once more, at least temporarily.
Anyway, that's what really marks out Beyond as a tiny little genius bit of writing: not the plot, which is such boilerplate that I'd fall into a boredom coma if I had to reacap it (latex-headed despot wants to destroy the Federation using an unimaginable superweapon, and the only reason it's not as lifeless as the conflict in the 2009 Star Trek is that Idris Elba plays the bad guy, and even under thick makeup and with nothing to do until the last ten minutes, Elba is the absolute tops). It's the way the plot breaks the cast into neatly-defined parcels that allow most of the characters to shine: Spock & McCoy, Kirk and nervous young Pavel Chekhov (Anton Yelchin, to whose memory the film is dedicated), Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (Pegg himself) and mysterious white-faced alien Jaylah (Sofia Boutella, a great old-school Trek addition, with her erratic behavior always managing to feel convincingly alien without getting in the way of enjoying her presence), and Nyota Uhura (Zoë Saldana) and Hikaru Sulu (John Cho). Not since Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home has any Star Trek movie of any generation put in such an earnest effort to give each member of the cast a meaningful contribution to the plot, and it doesn't actually work: the Uhura/Sulu leg of the story is absolutely given short shrift, with Sulu barely even registering for the first three-quarters of the movie (the ballyhooed "he's gay now" scene barely even causes a flicker, and would practically count as subtext if one doesn't go looking for it), and Uhura coming across as a generic "strong female character = can punch things" figure, though at least it's better than "Spock's nagging girlfriend", like she was in the last two movies.
But anyway, the movie is positively rotten with its love and affection for these characters, giving them plenty of characteristic moments even if half of them don't actually have characteristics, and throwing a great many good-natured quips and corny jokes at the audience. It's unbelievably pleasant, and it's handled with a great deal of energy by director Justin Lin, taking a break from Fast & Furious movies to bring just enough contemporary flash and dazzle (not to mention over-editing, the one acute flaw in the movie; when you have sci-fi action choreography as natty as the second-act climax of Beyond, you should really let it take places in long enough, continuous enough chunks that we can appreciate it) to let the film work as a 2016 tentpole filled to the brim with the series' now-familiar top-notch CGI, but not to go overboard, as Abrams did, in making it feel like he secretly wants it to be something else. This is altogether Star Trek: most of the action takes place surrounded by coastal forest and rocks that look moderately artificial, the aliens are all obvious masks on normal human bodies, and any technical problem can be solved by throwing five-syllable words at it. And the people making it adore it for that: it is an astonishingly sincere movie, with not one detectable spot of cynicism even in the most theoretically-dire moments, like when the Beastie Boys are used to blow up alien spaceships. This in a movie released in 2016 and set in 2263, no less.
Not everything plays well: the film is addicted to shots where the camera rotates from side to side like we're on a boat in a storm, and the finale includes yet another aerial battle through a sterile urban environment where windows blow out of CGI buildings. And by God, it's trivial: if it captures the original series' love for its characters, born from a deeply optimistic belief in humankind's ability to figure it out and do right even in the face of overwhelming odds, its appeals to the original's sometimes ludicrous, always heartfelt humanist philosophy are so vaguely "be nice to each other" as to feel like they were taken without alteration from a kindergarten teacher. But the Star Trek movies were never really great cinema, and most of them were nowhere near this confidently entertaining and convinced that a good attitude and non-stop swashbuckling was enough to put over a fluffy summertime diversion. It's not a popcorn movie for the ages, but it's certainly facing in that direction.
7/10
Reviews in this series
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Wise, 1979)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Meyer, 1982)
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (Nimoy, 1984)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Nimoy, 1986)
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (Shatner, 1989)
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (Meyer, 1991)
Star Trek: Generations (Carson, 1994)
Star Trek: First Contact (Frakes, 1996)
Star Trek: Insurrection (Frakes, 1998)
Star Trek: Nemesis (Baird, 2002)
Star Trek (Abrams, 2009)
Star Trek Into Darkness (Abrams, 2013)
Star Trek Beyond (Lin, 2016)
"And may I salute screenwriters Simon Pegg & Doug Jung for opening their new movie with this gambit: by directly marching up to the fifty-year-old Star Trek formula of exploring new worlds and having the swashbuckling main character complain that it's boring."
ReplyDeleteIf that's a real question--no? Please? The Kirk "arc" has got to be the worst tactical move the screenplay makes (or maybe it's the villain, but for the purposes of the argument, let's say it's Bored Kirk). And since the worst strategic move Lin makes is deciding that this thing needed to top out at slightly over two hours, if you literally just threw it out, you're that much closer to something I'd have enjoyed.
Nah, I can see someone theoretically having fun with this--I like the CGI swarms, I guess, for what they are, and the Beastie Boys part--and I'm legitimately glad you liked the whole thing, but, man, did it feel hollow and wrong on a lot of big points, generic and hollow on most of the rest, and without the sense of freshness (even if it was a stupid freshness) that energized the '09 film.
That said, it's at least five times better than Into Darkness. (And Into Darkness is a much stupider title than Beyond. Come on. Beyond is not a good title. But it's not, you know, literally embarrassing to purchase a ticket for it.)
I'm all over the place on this one! Don't know what to think! I did love how casual it felt, especially that second act, where we just hang with the characters. It actually reminded me a lot of Insurrection and - I know I'm one of the very few - but that is one of my favorite Star Trek movies. So it has those great character moments but it would be nice to have a story that isn't once more an absolute revenge against the federation scenario. Two movies in row we've some kind of life rejuvinating serum that's meant nothing. Is it wrong to think that a great sci fi story with the Trek crew could be made from that which doesn't require so much battle and revenge plotting? I think this is my favorite of these new movies though but it's an odd one.... Jaylah's makeup was great and this one has some good posters!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I can't help but think that Into Darkness is a way worse title than this.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised by how not-terrible this one was, really. I kind of hated the first rebooted movie, and I sensibly skipped Into Darkness. I only saw this one because I needed somewhere to go for a date, and, well...it wasn't bad. Mostly. Doesn't seem like the kind of thing that ought to inspire passion, exactly, but I agree with Tim; it's basically a pretty good popcorn movie.
In this summer, we have to take as many pretty good slick, self-contained entertaining popcorn movies that we can.
ReplyDeleteI honestly kind of loved this movie. Was surprised, given how much I utterly loathed Into Darkness, but there it is. It was fun, it was funny. It had an honest to god theme that came from its source material.
ReplyDeleteNot smart enough in its writing to get an 8/10 from me, but a very strong 7.
There was too much action for my liking, not enough character development. I think I liked Jayla, but she barely got past the "I'm an alien and talk funny" bit. She sat down in the captain's chair all splayed out, which was funny, but what does it mean? Does she honestly not know how to sit in chairs? Was she simply getting comfortable, or was she trying to display an air of confidence? Beats me. I don't know enough about her to say.
ReplyDeleteI loved this one. It had all the visual imagination that I wish had been in Force Awakens. There was a heck of a lot of scenery porn, and some absolutely fun dialogue in there.
ReplyDeleteThe overall plotting was definitely weak though. At least the previous two movies had given the Kirk and Spock arcs. Here, we just kind of check in on their beats every so often.
Still, easily the best of the new Treks, and better than a lot of the old ones as well.
4 Megalomaniac declares war on Earths people and the enterprise must stop him films in a row (5 if you count Galaxy Quest as a Trek film). Try something else!
ReplyDeleteIs it thinking about it too much to try to apply auteur theory to Justin Lin's filmography? The one thing I can say about every Fast and Furioua picture is that they Go For It in moments that should be unacceptably stupid, and I totally agree that Star Trek Beyond has a sweetness and sincerity that prevents it from going off of the rails. That Beastie Boys scene works better than it has any right to, because a) it works (however slightly) as a character moment for Kirk, since that song was featured in a Young Kirk moment from the "first" film, and b) spaceships riding a gnarly wave of other spaceships exploding is totally fricking sweet. At risk of overstating things, I think the unifying theme of Justin Lin's filmography is that every moment is a Tyrannosaurs in F-14s moment.
ReplyDelete@J.S.: six out of the last seven also end in a fistfight. Seriously. Guys who have matter/anti-matter explosives, the most blow-uppiest shit that ever shat on a theoretical level short of a Goddamned evaporating black hole (they probably have those, too, depending on who's filling in the [TECH] lines), and they end their space war movies with fistfights.
ReplyDeleteAt least Luke and Vader and Rey and Ren had laser swords and the Force.
"six out of the last seven also end in a fistfight"
ReplyDelete...holy shit. That's upsetting.
Watching this movie, I found myself comparing it to Batman Begins. In my opinion, both movies were careful rehabilitations of franchises that had been in dire straits. What I really liked about Batman Begins was that it was about something more than Batman. It was an examination of what it meant for a person to construct and maintain multiple identities. It was hardly the last word on the subject, but I still felt enriched from watching it. I think Star Trek Beyond might fall a little short because it's not quite as meaningful. It certainly has a theme - that trust and cooperation are successful strategies. But I'm not sure that it has any particular insights to offer regarding that theme.
ReplyDeleteSlightly off topic, but I wonder, do the folks in Star Trek have everything they need because they cooperate, or do they cooperate because they have everything they need? They often come across as being so sheltered.
I mean, technically, two out of the six before that did, too, but Star Trek III does it against the backdrop of an exploding planet and an exploding Enterprise and a clever ruse, and it generally felt earned. And Star Trek VI doesn't really count, since when they plug the assassin in his hidey-hole, that's just mopping up.
ReplyDeleteBut TMP: transcendent, more-parsable 2001-kinda ending.
TWOK: Rad starship battle, from hell's heart, I feel young; you know how TWOK ends.
TVH: Whalesong. (Now, that's a different kind of blockbuster ending!)
TFF: Death rays thrown into the face of an angry God. And say what you will about the rest of the movie--hell, you can even call the ending dumb--but in my book, there's something special about that that doesn't get enough credit.
Then as soon as the TNG films pick up, it's not-especially-good fistfights with not-especially-good villains forever, with the exception of Trek '09 (the climax of which does still begin with a fistfight).
I LOATHED this movie. As in, would say it is hands down one of the least enjoyable cinematic experiences I've had since X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I was really hoping this movie would be good, and it really wasn't. I liked the first two Trek reboots for what they were, despite having serious bones to pick, but this movie just felt much more lifeless. Lin's camerawork is just bafflingly bad. The actors all seem tired of being in these movies, especially Quinto. Only Urban, in my opinion, has even a glimmer of genuine charisma. Pegg, who WROTE the damn thing, seems worse to me than in the last two movies. I even have to say that Elba is awful (for Elba). He cannot act in the makeup, and the direction he was given had to have been "just get in people's faces, sneer, and pivot your face around the other characters while you talk". He does better when he's shown as himself and when he's in partial-transformation, but wow did he ever suck in comparison to every other time I've seen him.
ReplyDeleteThis movie did NOT feel more like Star Trek to me. It felt like a Fast and Furious movie, which I cannot stand, and all the "we're such a team, because we finish each other's sentences" rang so false to me, just like "we're a family because we drive cars fast together" does.
This movie is somehow even dumber than the first two. I'm so done with this series.
Thank god someone else pointed out Karl Urban's horrible DeForest Kelley impression. I finally got around to seeing this tonight and seconds into his first scene with Kirk found myself wondering how I could ever have felt anything for this performance/casting but overwhelming rage. Then it kinda went away and he was fine for the Bones/Spock subplot. But now I know how close we live to complete derailment.
ReplyDeleteI appreciated the tributes to Nimoy/Spock, as like all nerds I feel unreasonable emotions about Nimoy's passing, though it would've been nice with all the time they spent on it to actually give the characters a clearer reason to care. I could've used some boilerplate "I just heard that I died" identity crisis dialogue. I certainly felt nothing watching Spock look at a picture of the original crew.