50 years ago this September, a little sci-fi show called Star Trek premiered on NBC. Though cancelled after three seasons, what is now known as Star Trek: The Original Series ended up launching an entire media franchise of multiple TV shows and movies that has put an indelible stamp on pop culture*.
Star Trek has been many things in those years. But it has been somewhat consistent in its adherence to two basic themes: the virtues of exploration and advancing human knowledge (the original series began each episode by stating the mission of the starship U.S.S. Enterprise, on which most of the show's action took place: "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before"), and the perfectibility of human nature, with the United Federation of Planets serving as a sort of outer space United Nations, an umbrella organization presiding over a future utopia spearheaded by a mankind whose nature has become largely peaceful.
Star Trek Beyond, the third in a "rebooted," alternative universe Star Trek series (which solved in one fell swoop the problems of the creative stagnation and increasing unpopularity of the original Star Trek timeline** and the inconvenient aging of that original timeline's cast) places itself firmly into this pre-established Star Trek mold. And it does so, intriguingly, by challenging both of the principles that have long guided the franchise.
Beyond opens with a Captain's Log by James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), the commander of the U.S.S. Enterprise, as it continues to explore new worlds and civilizations. Revisiting - or, some might say, reusing - a trope from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (by far the best Star Trek film, and one of the best sci-fi films ever), Beyond finds Kirk suffering a sort of exploratory ennui (on his birthday, no less!): He wonders if his mission to explore the unknown can ever truly be complete, or whether he will even have charted a measurable portion of the great unknown upon the five-year mission's completion.
Fortunately, the ship and crew are due for a rest at Yorktown, a space station that serves in the film as utopian microcosm of the diverse, technologically advanced, and peaceful future Star Trek has always imagined for mankind. But, in the grand tradition of Star Trek, a distress signal makes its way to the Enterprise from a distant planet, and off the crew goes to answer it. And - again, in the grand tradition of Star Trek - surprises greet them upon their arrival. The Enterprise is destroyed, and the crew - this time, more in the tradition of The Empire Strikes Back or X2: X-Men United - is separated, and at the mercy of a foe whose power is vast and whose motives are a mystery.
It's a great setup, and Beyond makes the most of it. We see some fun pairings as the scattered crew attempts to reunite and defeat its tormentor: Kirk winds up with Pavel Chekov (Anton Yelchin, who tragically died at 27 just weeks before the movie's release); the rational-to-a-fault Spock (Zachary Quinto) winds up with the folksy, down-to-earth medical officer Bones (the underrated and underappreciated Karl Urban - you may also know him as Eomer in The Lord of the Rings - who has by far the most appropriate recreation of an original series character).
Throughout the movie, new-to-series director Justin Lin (of Fast and Furious fame, and replacing J.J. Abrams, who remains on board as executive producer***), stages the action with an impressively fluid, dynamic camera. Though at times it becomes a bit difficult to follow what's on screen, he mostly takes advantage of his mobile cinematography, exploring scenes from unexpected angles, and creating both figuratively and literally off-the-wall stunts. Only twice, in my view, does he indulge in film-making tics that clearly belong more in a Fast and Furious film than a Star Trek one, though he makes one of them - the deliberately anachronistic but delightfully fun presence of a motorcycle - worth its while****. Beyond also contains simultaneously one of the best uses of the Beastie Boys in movies, and one of the more clever versions of the "destroy the hive mind" trope (see the climaxes of The Avengers and The Phantom Menace). Lin largely disproved my fears that he would simply replicate the dumb action movie aesthetic in space.
I don't wish to say too much about the villain specifically, so I'll focus on him philosophically (though even in this I shall remain brief). Krall (Idris Elba, in heavy makeup), as portrayed in the screenplay co-written by Simon Pegg (who also plays Scotty), represents an antithesis to everything Star Trek believes about the universe and about human nature. He thinks humanity has become soft, that war is inevitable, and that the human race's softness spells eventual doom. You might say he wants to Make Starfleet Great Again.
I won't say whether I agree with him on this point politically, nor will I spell out his ultimate fate. But it is interesting to note that the best Star Trek media - *cough* Wrath of Khan *cough* - involves direct challenges or threats to the mores which Star Trek exists to promote. This is, in part, because all good storytelling involves drama - it would be pretty boring to watch a Star Trek movie in which only perfect, nonviolent, utopian things happen - but also, I think, because even utopias need to be maintained and defended, so long as humans are running them, and so long as evil exists.
Whether that's a flaw in this movie, or in Star Trek as a whole, I'll leave it to others to decide. For now, I shall simply decide that I enjoyed Star Trek Beyond, which was better than I expected it to be. It may not be as fun or epic as 2009's Star Trek, but it is certainly superior to Star Trek Into Darkness, the unearned, pseudo-semi-remake of The Wrath of Khan that will always be the exception to my otherwise passionate defenses of J.J. Abrams.
At any rate, Star Trek Beyond shows that there's still some fuel left in the warp nacelles of this 50-year-old franchise yet, despite the fact that much of this movie - the single baddy bent on vengeance, the destruction of the Enterprise, etc. - seems familiar, and despite the unfortunate recent deaths of some of its stars (Leonard Nimoy, who passed away in 2015, and the aforementioned Yelchin*****). Let's hope Star Trek lives long and continues to prosper.
*And created some of the best parodies. See, e.g., the Futurama episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before," and the great movie Galaxy Quest.
**Though it had the noted demerit of preventing the original Star Trek timeline from progressing any more into the future, which a forthcoming new series may do.
***I have to think Abrams either came up with the scene in which the crew "push starts" an old starship, which happened to an old car in an episode of LOST.
****The other, a mid-air grab of one character by another, seems only slightly more realistic than it did in whatever Fast and Furious movie in which it also happened (I know it happened in one; I just don't know the franchise well enough to know which one).
*****Both of these actors get tributes in a credits sequence I foolishly skipped. If you see the movie, stick around for it.
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