Star Trek Beyond is a step up from the tepid Star Trek Into Darkness, but it’s not a patch still on the earlier 1979 film, based on the sci-fi TV series, that made icons of Scotty, Spock, Kirk and delivered unforgettable phrases like “Beam me up Scotty” and “It’s life Jim, but not as we know it.”
The Justin Lin-directed movie is the third installment in the Star Trek franchise reboot. Trekkies will be appeased with the action-intensive plot that tempers the cheeky humour and cheesy jokes and leans towards themes of unity, harmony and hope. Simon Pegg co-scripts along with Doug Jung, which means he has been able to enhance his own significance as the USS Enterprise’s chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott.
The starship is in the third year of a five-year mission in deep space when an alien being requests help from the Federation to rescue her stranded crew from the nebula, Captain James T Kirk (Chris Pine) and the Enterprise are commandeered to undertake the rescue. But as soon as they enter the nebula, they are attacked and overrun by a swarm of space machines and crippled by alien warlord Krall and his army of drones. Krall is after an ancient artefact that has been in Kirk’s safekeeping.
While a few of Kirk’s key crew members escape the siege, Krall takes most captive. Kirk, Scotty, Doctor “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban), Chekov (Anton Yelchin), Spock (Zachary Quinto) and an unlikely ally called Jaylah (Sofia Boutella) team up to rescue the crew and retrieve the artefact before Krall unleashes its power. In a final act of retro reverence, the final space battle is cut to a head-banging rock number.
One of the most memorable aspects of Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) was Benedict Cumberbatch as the bad guy Khan. Another British actor steps into the bad-man suit in this instalment, but Idris Elba’s Krall and his motivations and menace remain on the fringes. You wonder if Elba really needed to be in that stiff, grey and uncomfortable-looking suit and endure hours of make-up for such a flimsy part.
The script boosts Scotty, Spock, Kirk, Bones, Sulu (John Cho), Chekov and Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and presents high-end special effects and imaginative space worlds (the art-direction on the spacecraft USS Yorktown is especially noteworthy). The balance between wit, irreverence, philosophy, blockbuster tropes and action is deft, but if only the plot had been more convincing.
