I was asked on my Tumblr thing what I thought about it, because I didn’t like the trailer at all (I said something like “I just saw this trailer for a generic sci-fi action movie, but everyone was wearing a Starfleet uniform.”)
Before I get into Beyond, some context: I’m the guy who worked on TNG, but was a massive TOS fan growing up (and still is). When I watch Star Trek movies, I don’t watch them as someone who actually went to Starfleet Academy (class of 2389 REPRESENT!) but as someone who loves Star Trek and cosplayed as Spock before he knew what cosplay was. So, that said, to recap: I loved the first rebooted Trek movie. It had its flaws, but none of them were big enough to upset me, so I give it 4 out of 5 jars of Red Matter. I really enjoyed Into Darkness when I was in the theater, but the more I thought about it after, the more it fell apart until I now have to give it 2 out of 5 tribbles-on-a-stick.
Star Trek movies are always going to have a hard time with fans of the series, because when we think about Star Trek, we think about 79 episodes of the original series, or our favorite 30 episodes of TNG, or the last season of DS9. We take something that’s been spread out over days of on-screen time, spread out across years of releases, and then compare all that character development and nuance and series of individual moments with something that has to be a fully-told and completely self-contained story in 90 or 120 minutes, and it has to be accessible (as defined by risk-averse studio goons) to as wide an audience as possible. So I think it’s unfair and unreasonable to directly compare the film installments of a long-running TV series to that series. I won’t do that with Star Trek Beyond. I’ll just compare it to the two previous installments in this series.
Without holding Beyond next to the hundreds of episodes of Star Trek we can watch on TV, and just looking at it as part of this current film trilogy: I was really disappointed by it. Unlike Into Darkness, which was a lot of fun for me in the theater but fell apart upon reflection, Beyond just fell apart while I was watching it. You can read more if you’d like to know some of my reasons. There are spoilers.
Let me start out by saying that I enjoyed a lot of it, before I completely turned on the movie and checked out. The first act is great, and so were parts of the second act. I loved the relationship between Spock and McCoy, I thought the swarm of whatever those ships were was really, really cool, and the Dyson Sphere starbase thing looked amazing. All the performances were solid, and the effects look great.
But with just a few very small cosmetic changes, the story could have been any generic sci-fi action movie produced in the last 20 years.
I really didn’t like that there was this amazing female character (who could keep a fucking STARSHIP HIDDEN for years while she survived on a hostile planet) who turned into The Girl For Kirk To Save the instant the boys showed up.
Someone who read this post in its original form on Medium also observed that Uhura was reduced to Spock’s girlfriend in this movie, and all the amazing stuff she’s capable of doing just sort of … vanished.
I hated hated hated hated the whole Sabotage thing. Instead of laughing and enjoying “is that classical music?” I just rolled my eyes, because by that point, I had turned on the movie.
The whole film was massively overdirected. The camera moves were indulgent and distracting, totally unnecessary, more than one time to establish the ship being on its side, and disoriented me the rest of the time.
There were, like, three? climaxes in the thing and by the final one I just didn’t care and wanted it to be over.
When we got to the message about strength through unity, it felt tacked on and preachy and unearned.
Do we really have to keep destroying the Enterprise?
I could go on, but I’d probably get into nitpicky stuff. Maybe I’m outside the demo now, and it’s not the movie’s fault that it didn’t deliver what I wanted. I know that a huge number of my friends who saw it loved it, and felt like it was the most “Star Trek-y” of the new films. I couldn’t disagree me. I think that if it was a generic sci-fi action movie, it would have been fine (I still hate the way a strong, competent, ass-kicking female character becomes the damsel in distress when the boys show up, though). But it’s supposed to be a Star Trek movie, and just like we have expectations for a Star Wars movie or even a Fast and Furious movie, I think movies should fulfill the promise of their premise.
Beyond was a Fast and Furious movie in space, and that’s not what I wanted to see. I give it 1 out of 5 motorcycles that are on the bridge of a starship for no logical reason, and still work after not being used for an incredibly long time for even less logical reasons.
Star trek movies I wish were made,
1. Remake the doomsday machine. One of the best episodes of the original series. I’d love to see a big budget version with antimatter missiles, planets being cut up and devoured, etc.
Giant space monsters. They were the most alien creatures seen.
Rendezvous with Rama. It’ll never be made well, audiences supposedly want resolution and Hollywood would ruin it, but id love a purely exploratory flick where the crew has to make guesses about an ancient civilization, never really knowing if they’re right.
I’d like to see an original series ST version of Suicide Squad, except you… good.
Mirror-verse Spock gathers those space hippies (Charles Napier will have to be digitally recreated), Cracko and Oxmyx, Bizarro Abe Lincoln and Zora, Nomad, Harry Mudd, and Ted the Horta. They’ll trek around the stars and get into (mis)adventures and such.
Paramount, call me.
*know
(Need some editing toolage up in this muh).
The only person who can take Star Trek beyond is Spudnuts.
I am resolved to Paramount never asking me to fix Trek within my lifetime.
But Q willing, I can transfer my consciousness into a jar of pulsating neon green liquid such that — some five hundred years hence — when they finally, finally, finally-finally-FINALLY get truly desperate they can come ask “me”: “Okay. Fine. How can we fix this?”
And I’ll be ready.
I’m a Trekker, and I’ve watched TOS in syndication since I’ve been a kid. The first reboot movie was great. However, with Into Darkness, the whole Khan reveal took me out of the movie until the Spock/Khan fight scene. The movie has grown somewhat on me since, at least some of the non-Khan parts that give fans Easter eggs.
With Beyond, I agree with everything you are saying. It felt so strange that I never got into the characters and kept looking at my watch, wanting the movie to be over. I can’t help but wonder what a Robert Orci script and direction would have looked like.
Paramount is to blame for insisting on using Khan, as well as the script/director change for Beyond. The studio is hurting the franchise. I’m really concerned what Star Trek 4 is going to look like. I’ll be boycotting the opening weekend in protest of Paramount’s poor decision making.
Boycott Star Trek against the studio that brought it to life? Oh yeah, that’s a smart move – kill off Star Trek so it is forgotten by all? Name on franchise where that has worked.
Last time we did that, we didn’t get a movie for 7 years (looked like we wouldn’t ever get one for a time there) and will be 12 years since we had a series.
Part of being a Trekie is accepting the bad and acknowledging the good. Peace man
What really wound me up, and has consistently wound me up, are the itty bitty technical mistakes or weird canon twists. As a die-hard Trek fan, the filmmakers MUST have realised people like me would watch these new films, and be sitting there saying “whaaaaa?” I really liked the first two films, and I didn’t hate Beyond, but – and here’s my point – if the Franklin predates everything we’ve ever seen, if it predates the NX-01 … why is it stylistically like the Kelvin and hot-rod-Enterprise, with the same hot-rod nacelles and transparent viewscreen/window? We’ve seen models of starships on Admiral Marcus’ desk in Into Darkness, and – what do you know – there’s the NX-01, just as we saw her in all four seasons of Enterprise. So why is the Franklin so different?!
And don’t get me started on why the Kelvin is so different when nominally we see it for the first time right on the cusp of the timeline schism. It would have been a fantastic homage to set that whole opening sequence in a slightly-pre-TOS-era environment, plastic switches and all.
I feel your pain, Wil, just about slightly different things 😉
Also, yes. That TMP homage poster is completely amazing.
I thought I was going crazy, people kept telling me it was their favorite Star Trek movie, I just wasn’t feeling the trekness. Where are the higher principles and thought-provoking enemies?
Bad Guy, wants MacGuffin. Battles Hero. End.
This movie was such a let down and you’ve written–nearly verbatim–things I’ve been saying since seeing it: it’s just a space action/adventure flick (it’s clearly missing the science aspect of sci-fi); it’s Fast and Furious in space; random motorcycle on the starship; what does she need them for?
Aside from the fact it’s been done before as pure satire–re-watch Mars Attacks–playing Beastie Boys in order to disrupt communications and save the day was utterly, er, illogical.
Other points: Kirk’s never ridden before, but he’s taking jumps like a motocross pro; when steel hulls grind against rock, bad things happen; why is it referred to as a nebula, when it’s an asteroid field?; the “nebula” is at the edge of the galaxy and no one has ever navigated it before because it’s too difficult/dangerous and distant, yet our intrepid crew arrive in “two sips of a Saurian brandy” and plow through it like the F18s mopping up alien craft in Independence day (after the shields were down, of course).
The fact it rated so well with critics and consumers leaves me disheartened that this is the end of Roddenberry’s franchise and the birth of some monster who’s sole existence is EPS/ROI.
S.
PS: Quick shout out for putting Hardwick in his place! Love that guy, but he needs to learn the proper pronunciation of “GIF” (next time he gives you grief, ask him if he owns a pet giraffe or does gene splicing or like ginger in his tea). There’s precedent and the guy who invented it says it’s “jiff,” ergo…
It’s interesting that I just got home from watching this movie. I really enjoyed it. But then, I’m a pretty easy audience. I don’t dig deep for comparisons to other movies/TV series. I just enjoy the characters and stories for what they are. BTW, Kirk was in fact a biker – this was established early on in the first film. the only problem I had was the recent loss of Leonard Nimoy and his character, as well as losing Anton at such an early age. It had nothing to do with the movie, but I was sad throughout the whole thing.
The first movie, Kirk rides into the shipyard on what looks suspiciously like a futuristic version of a Yamaha bike.
Yorktown wasn’t a Dyson Sphere.
A Dyson Sphere is a sphere that’s built around a star, which Yorktown is far smaller than a Dyson Sphere. What Yorktown is, is a space habitat.
Any reincarnation of already established characters is really dangerous and will ruffle feathers; there will always be haters of this reboot. If they do everything exactly the same as TOS, they’ll be accused to plagiarism, and if they do anything original, they’ll be martyred for spitting at the hard work of the original cast and crew. I won’t deny that it’s an action movie, but isn’t the excitement and special effects pretty much required nowadays in order for Star Trek to survive on the big screen? I always thought many of the same things about “Nemesis” that you used in you argument here. TNG struck gold with “First Contact” (Jonathan Frakes is a brilliant director). The studio capitalized on that success to make “Insurrection” (While it was not terribly well received, it was the movie that felt most like a TNG episode). “Nemesis” was an attempt to sell out a bit to make a huge, action-y, Star Trek movie, with a huge budget. While it was a fine movie, it felt out of place to me. The cool thing about this reboot is that there’s not too much pretense for it to be too much like a TV show; yes they’re reusing the characters but everybody is new in the cast and crew, so I won’t be too critical of them doing their own thing unless they do something absurd like rewrite Sarek to make him a Romulan double-agent.
Here is what my thoughts were after seeing “Beyond”:
The first in this series, while very well made, was trying very hard to own the original characters while attempting to look like it wasn’t trying too hard. “Into Darkness” built on what was already established, but still used too many throwbacks to the past as almost a crutch, training wheels.. “Beyond” is not only completely original, but you can finally see the chemistry between the actors/characters. It’s that chemistry that allowed TOS to stand on its own regardless of good or bad writing, directing, etc.
I’d definitely like to see the fourth movie rely more on a riveting story as opposed to action; the beginning of this movie showed that Kirk sucks as a diplomat, so he’s obviously still developing as a Captain. The sudden loss of Anton Yelchin will present a writing and production challenge, and I’m sure that everybody on that set is struck with grief and will feel weird going back to work without him. I really liked the character of Jaylah and think she should become part of the crew; that’ll also help this series continue to move in it’s own direction. What I want to see is the crew warping all round the quadrant to resolve a crisis in order to avoid war and preserve peace. Maybe the Romulans are using espionage to undermine the relationship between the Federation and the Vulcans? The Andorians? I want to see that story involve anybody except for the Klingons because they were always the villains of TOS. Speaking of TOS movies, one of my favorites was “The Undiscovered Country” because of the story. Kirk hated the Klingons, blamed them for everything that was wrong in his life, but still had to put his emotions in check to save the Federation as well as the Klingon Empire. I think this cast along with Bad Robot is completely capable of giving us a balance of action and emotion on that scale while still keeping things original.
I saw it again tonight. I’d first seen it opening night in 3D. People clapped after that night – and amazingly, they did tonight too (and still a full theatre, but a smaller one).
Thoughts: It’s better in 2D (I could actually see it this time). Barco is kind of a gimmick. Jaylah and Uhura both save themselves – with help (but everyone else has help too – it’s a movie about teamwork).
The motorcycle wasn’t on the bridge (seems like a quibble, but it was in the mess – and Jaylah could have brought it there).
And it’s very much a Star Trek movie, even with the action.
It’s not perfect, but I think it’s a movie people will watch again and realize it’s better than they’d thought. And there’s certainly character development.
That said, the Krall stuff still feels rushed and underdeveloped. They could have given Elba more to do and say.
(Also not a fan of the costumes, done by Insurrection’s costume designer).
But personally, I’m thrilled to see Trek on a movie screen every 2 or 3 years – and with a big budget. Since 1979, I’ve always looked forward to the movies, even when Trek was on TV.
I thought Beyond was excellent, all the negative comments are beyond belief!
Into Darkness did not feel like a Star Trek movie the ending was way to violent for a Trek movie. This was a simply story brilliantly done, well acted great set pieces loved it. A return to form from the first one. WELL DONE ALL INVOLVED!
I have a couple items to point out that I have not seen commented yet.
What is the Yorktown? This wild technological marvel is so out of place in this timeline that it doesn’t make sense. I get the historic connection with the Yorktown city under siege but there are so many issues here. First, this place is far too advanced for this timeline. This place would be unbelievable even in the next generation timeline. Also, what is it doing way out here relatively unguarded. I didn’t see a single ship besides the enterprise at this suppose it space station. Why do starships travel through the space station under the people? A station of this size carrying millions of people should be able to defend itself, of course not placing it next to an unknown astroid belt might’ve been a good start.
There was a lot of good chemistry between the actors and the jaylah character was quite good until they turned her into a damsel in distress. Same with Uhura. The real disappointment here is how Idris Elba was completely wasted in this movie.
Finally, Simon Pegg is a nerds nerd so you are bound to have some of this but the beaten to death beastie boys music completely jumped the shark as being the weapon in this film. Absolutely eyerolling. The message of unity was a half hearted attempt at intellectualism that was tacked onto a CGI fest where they blow up the enterprise yet again. The reboot series has already irritated some people with the ships ability to fly through the atmosphere and be underwater. Now apparently everything keeps working on the ship no matter what happens to it. This series needs to get out into space away from the Federation and actually explore. It seemed like they were going to do that this time but somehow being out on a five-year mission meant that they were still close enough to start plead to build this of the space station. Also, does every ship in Star Trek have to be the first one that did something? This couldn’t just be some ship but it had to be the first ship to warp 4. Ugh.
Yes, the too-advanced space habitat with ships traveling under populated sections was unbelievable. Some design elements and effects were wonderful and served the action – that wonky gravity near the center of the sphere was good. But the antique motorcycle sequence should have been ruthlessly pruned.
Also, the transformation of the lost crew was unnecessary. Plus, the MacGuffin element wasn’t needed, they had those crazy hive ships. Bah.
I re-named it “Star Trek: The Terrible, Horrible, No-Good Camping Trip”, because it didn’t feel like there was a need to hate or stop the villain except when the artificial “timer” turned on for the movie to wrap it up. At no point did I care that the villain was doing what he was doing because he only threatened to do this or that and ordered people around.
Then we all went surfing and everything was fine again.
I’d just like a villain in the reboot continuity to be motivated by something other than misplaced revenge. “Wait, why are you upset? And why are you pointing that suspect upset over there?”
Even good ol’ fashioned alien imperialism would work.
(And I just can’t with the Beastie Boys deux ex machina.)
Sorry, “deus.” (Where’s an edit button when you need one?)
Left the theater today thinking exactly that. Three for three have been crazed revenge against the federation, stories. There are a wealth of stories to mine in the Trekverse even if they don’t want to create an original story and that’s all they can come up with over and over again? That’s what makes it feel like a generic sci-fi story. Definitely F&F in space with the leaping/crashing/smashing quick takes and good grief someone turn on a light. Where’s a lens flare when you need one?
That being said, splitting the crew worked very well, giving every character more rather than less. I actually liked NuKirk’s Captain crisis, the intro was hilarious — I would totally have watched and loved a movie that was just mission after mission of them screwing up diplomatic assignments, and Jaylah was frickin’ awesome and having her on deck for the next movie would go a long way toward getting me into the theater to see it.
Disagree – Wrath of Khan only had a couple of hours, yet did not suffer the same NON-Star Trek-y-ness. Love ya, Will, but the franchise suffers precisely because Majel is gone and the studio has sold Trek’s soul for a few fleeting box office indulgences. All of the things that ever made Trek special are unimportant next to the pile of money they think it stands to make. THAT’s why they keep destroying the Enterprise. The heretics are performing the ceremonies now, and Star Trek will fade with increasing (and entirely deserved) disinterest. I’m just sorry that you must now watch the institution that escorted you into adulthood now be relegated to a convalescence home.
And no, I don’t think CBS sees it any differently, though the jury will remain out until the new show airs…
(for “heretics performing the ceremonies,” see: Terminator, The; Jaws; et al…)
Yeah, the motorcycle on the bridge has bben haunting me. Not only “Why a motorcycle on the bridge”, but, if on the bridge it must be because the captain is a motorcycle fanatic… right? So why on a new planet not use this motorcycle? No, he left it on thd bridge for Kirk to find hundreds of years later..
When I saw “from the director of Fast and Furious” I imagined that this movie whold be a disaster. I simple ignored it.
Now I know I am right and intend to still never watch it.
And then there’s this perspective: http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2016/08/star_trek_beyon.shtml
Good one.
I couldn’t stand J J Abrams’s Star Trek because it had the wrong ethos for Star Trek: it was just a shoot-em-up action movie with cliched characters, a plot which made no sense and was loaded with deus ex machina plot twists and showy explosions, and no real ideas. Plus bad characterization. I didn’t even watch Into Darkness because it doubled down on that.
Star Trek Beyond actually does have some ideas. The starship captain who’s been alone on an alien planet and has turned into a monster is actually a bit of an original series cliche, but this is the first time, IIRC, that he literally turns into a monster, and I think it actually explores this idea pretty well. The message of the movie seems to be that his entire attitude is wrong, that we have to move on. Kirk & company actually spend the movie trying NOT to punch people, which is a marvellous improvement over the violent and reckless Kirk of J J Abrams Star Trek. The opening scene is particularly characteristic, and sets a deliberately different tone from JJ Abrams.
Abrams was writing the handwaving magic and cardboard characterization of Star Wars but calling it Star Trek. This was far more genuinely Star Trek.
The characterization is pretty solid, unlike in the JJ Abrams movies. I was OK with Kirk rescuing the heroine… because he’s the one who talked her into going on the mission which she thought was a terrible idea, and he owed her. Thank goodness it wasn’t played for romance.
The direction is a mess, and I agree it was over-directed, but unlike the JJ Abrams movies it was written well, and it was directed better than those “lens flare specials”. (I only watched it in 2D and I assume the 3D was bad because it nearly always is.)
There has been a lot of badly written Star Trek over the years but as you say, those are the ones we ignore. We compare new Star Trek movies to Star Trek IV or Star Trek II or Star Trek VI, not to Star Trek V or Star Trek: Nemesis. We think of DS9’s What You Leave Behind, not Voyager’s Threshold. We think of Devil in the Dark, not Obsession (why did Kirk become Captain Ahab, for one week only?!?!)
Judged against the history of Star Trek, Star Trek Beyond is a solid middle-of-the-road average-qualtiy series installment deserving of a 3/5, and you’ll probably agree when you look back at it in a decade. (JJ Abrams Star Trek was at best 1/5, given that its total non-Trek-ness actually dissauded me from even watching his next installment, which is an impressive accomplishment given that I’ve watched the rest of Star Trek. Best I can say is that it was better than Threshold.)
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I would like to say that the series seems to have done exactly what Lost did after the producers secured a larger budget. Kate became a pointlessly incompetent character, despite her ‘strong-independent-girl’ backstory being shoved in your face at every opportunity.
It is disappointing when an incredibly well-thought-out universe/world gets degraded by generic tropes and storylines.
I will still probably see the movie.
The thing that bugged me most was, Why does the bad guy always gotta be black? This movie turned me off way earlier so I already didn’t like it, but this was particularly tone deaf. I mean, out of all the alien races, even with his alligator face, why a black guy? On a similar note, when Geordie LaForge replaces the visor, why do his super eyes gotta be blue? Maybe the cast is already fixed, so there are only so many places to put actors, so the counter might be just as valid, why not. It really was way too long; I was more than ready to get out of dodge after ending the second.
Tone deaf? You’re obviously colour-blind, because Eric Bana and Benedict Cumberbatch were white, last time I looked…
“Star Trek: Nemesis” was better than this. And that’s kind of saying something.
I came out of the cinema with one strong positive thought about the movie – finally I could believe that this Kirk belonged in the captain’s chair. The cast has always been a high point for reboot-Trek and Beyond gives them space to shine. It’s not the best of Trek, but it’s much better than Into Darkness, and I enjoyed it more than the first of this series with it’s insistence that this Kirk be captain of the Enterprise because he has the right name or something…
I’m not going to argue about the direction or that the action scenes were fitting for the franchise, but it had some interesting ideas – the swarm ships, the vampiric captain twisted by time, the more creative use of artificial gravity to create a spectacular environment in place of the budget-imposed corridors and halls of TOS starbases. And it had an excellent cast with a script that let their characters be themselves rather than constantly serving the needs of the plot.
The things I value, it did well; the things it did badly, I’m less concerned by (which is also why I like Through the Looking Glass)
I might disagree on some points, but…
You nailed it with “it’s not the movie’s fault that it didn’t deliver what I wanted”.
It’s so applicable to MOST of the die-hard-fan-hate films/comics/TV shows (any superhero movie, Star Wars prequel, current Star Wars 3rd trilogy, Game of Thrones books & TV episodes, and on and on…).
Our impressions are mostly based on our preconceptions.
Unlike most of the reviewers, you’ve stated your argument well, Mr. W.
P.S. I loved Beastie scene, but that’s me 🙂
Uhura was reduced to Spock’s Girlfriend in into darkness as well, with Carol Marcus playing the role of competent female character who exists to be rescued once she joins up with the main characters. So in terms of consistency, we can at least say that the new movies have been consistently screwing over the female leads for the last 2.
Uhura Uhura…You realize Mccoy is just the friend? Even with Spock here he only listenens to his personal issues and Kirk’s where is HIS contribution to the plot that has nothing to do with Kirk and Spock? It’s laughable that fans can praise the bromances between the boys for being co-dependent in the same breath they insist painting the women as just love interests the moment their fav dude shows he has feelings for them. All the more funny is the fact that Spock wants to save Uhura but she ends up saving him and the actual damsel in distress who needs to be saved and who says he can’t live without Spock is Kirk!
If you think a woman is ‘reduced’ by having a relationship but you don’t think the same of Spock in spite of the movie making him more her boyfriend than her his girlfriend, you probably are the one with a problem called sexism. Uhura has an important role in the movie and she hardly had any scene with the guy she loves, and she hardly expressed her feelings or even mentioned him! but women are never enough dehumanized for you fans of the bromances..maybe they should should her into a robot. I guess the next movie should maybe turn her into a white boy for people to finally notice how awesome she had been since the start, and for fans like some of you to finally allow her to be human and not get criticized for stuff the male characters are praised for.