Review: Star Trek Beyond

This weekend, I went with my wife to see the newest entry in the Star Trek series.  From watching previews, I didn't expect much.  I looked like a pretty standard action romp in which they listened to the Beastie Boys and Bones was cranky.  They did not disappoint.  It was in fact a pretty standard action romp.  They listened to the Beastie Boys.  Bones was cranky.  I only mention Bones because he really stood out in this movie.

Early in the movie (I'm going to keep this as unspoilery as I can) the crew gets split up.  So there is a lot of stuff going on and it keeps jumping back and forth between different characters and groups of characters.  Most of the movie is spent getting the characters to coalesce again into a crew.  Anyhow, that element (along with more use of shaky-cam than I was happy with) made the movie feel somewhat frenetic and hard to follow.  That said, I think that made Bones stand out because he is so grounded during the movie, simplifying concepts so he can complain about them efficiently.

Honestly, I've got to say that the plot of this movie reminds me much more of Wrath of Khan than anything else.  That's all I'll say on that subject, but if you have opinions please sound off in the comments.

The movie has one of the best set-piece fight scenes I've ever seen.  It's extremely vertiginous for those not educated on orbital mechanics (it didn't bother me at all).  It does the classic Star Trek thing where you introduce a really cool idea and then barely use it for anything besides a backdrop (I'm looking at you Dyson Sphere episode of TNG), but it was a pretty awesome backdrop.

Also, as I was watching it (and I should have gotten this from just the trailer) I felt like the entire space adventure genre was upended by Guardians of the Galaxy.  The movie felt like it was trying really hard to iterate on GotG's success.  I think they actually did a good job with this and the movie didn't feel unoriginal, it just felt like it was made in a post GotG world.

I know this was more of a series of thoughts than a proper review, but that's what you get.  I'm not going to give it a number of stars, I'll just say that if you are expecting a fun sci-fi film, you'll probably not be disappointed.  If you're expecting a brilliant movie that will blow you away, maybe watch something else.