Beyond Ridiculous

First off, kudos to Star Trek Beyond for having the best subtitle of any movie. I was struggling with Beyond the Pale, To Infinity and Beyond, and The Great Beyond as a title before I hit on the obvious. And it says it all, really - you remember how I said John Wick was one of those movies you should watch on a bad movie night with friends? Yeah, this tries to be the same.

So the story: Kirk's birthday is coming up and he's struggling with growing older. As he wrestles with the notion that his father was already dead at his age, the Enterprise pulls into the latest Starfleet space station, Yorktown. Following a distress signal and some now-trademark betrayal, the Enterprise falls against the might of alien terrorist Krall's fleet, leaving Kirk and the rest of the crew stranded on an alien planet following the now-also-trademark destruction of the Enterprise. From there, Kirk must reunite his crew, defeat Krall and stop the destruction of Yorktown.

And that's where things start to get ridiculous. Not to spoil too much, but there's action setpieces involving weird solidifying smoke, motorcycle stunts and a rock 'n' roll musical callback that had me laughing at just how terrible it was. Terrible in a good way, mind: the movie seems to be rolling its eyes along with you, and every contrived situation that calls for some amazing action scene or CGI battle is fully foregrounded; Beyond certainly wears its B-movie style on its sleeve.

To his credit, Justin Lin has created the most fun Star Trek movie to date, it's great to just sit back and watch the events unfold and get lost in the ridiculousness of it all! However, that enjoyment comes at a cost. There are leaps of logic you need to make when thinking about the plot, things which are never explained, and why can nobody shoot straight in this film? It takes whoever aims the weapons on the Enterprise to take out anything with a laser/pulsar/I never learned what the starfleet ships fired at enemies, so kudos to them for actually hitting things with their weapons. Also Sophia Boutella as alien mechanic Jaylah, who gets some really awesome moments and is generally pretty badass.

Speaking of, let's talk about the actors. First, Idris Elba was sold way short, as the villainous Krall he should've had a bigger role and more interaction with the main cast. I say main cast: both Uhura and Sulu (gay Sulu! That was really nicely done and it's nice to see lgbt representation in such a big franchise, but couldn't they have given his husband a name and a line or two at least?) are imprisoned in Krall's compound, where they plot to escape and learn of his evil plot to destroy starfleet. In any other movie, the number of threads from the split cast would feel busy and confusing, but the new Trek movies are busy enough visually that a busy story feels only too right, and the crew keep it fast-paced until they can get everyone back together again and get to the main meat of the plot. Spock and Bones are thrust together out of necessity, with the good doctor taking it about as well as you'd expect, and Kirk is partnered with Chekhov, played by the late Anton Yelchin. It's kind of bittersweet, seeing him in this and feeling he was undersold. I would like to have seen more of him, heard more lines from him; he was integral to the plot, in a way, but only in the sense that some of his lines were necessary to understand the plot. There was maybe one scene where his not being there would have stopped the movie dead, and that feels like a shame when we aren't going to see any more of him. Nevertheless, there was a presence and liveliness conveyed in his performance, and he really added to the sense of fun in Star Trek Beyond and the franchise as a whole.

I don't want to say too much more, partly because I fear I'd be veering into spoiler territory and partly because now I'm thinking about Anton Yelchin and wanting to watch the Trek prequels. But it's good fun, as far as movies go, and it's on par with John Wick and Pacific Rim as far as drunk-movie-time movies go. Go see it; you'll have fun with it.

Adieu!