As far as the new series of Star Trek movies go, Star Trek Beyond is the most enjoyable, probably in part because it was co-written by Simon Pegg, who you can feel is a real fan of the series. Not to say that previous scribes Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci weren't, or director J.J. Abrams, but there's something about this one that just feels more Star Trek than what we've gotten before.
Set 3 years into the 5 year deep-space mission of the USS Enterprise, we pick up on a Kirk (Chris Pine) bored with the journey and looking to make a career move, a Spock (Zachary Quinto) who learns of the death of his alternate universe self (the late Leonard Nimoy) and decides maybe he should do more to help his endangered race, and a crew that still more or less functions as a whole.
After a stopover at a Federation port, the crew comes across a refugee from an alien attack in a nearby nebulae, and jump on the opportunity to investigate the misdeeds. It's not long until the Enterprise is under attack and crashes on a nearby planet, where the crew is separated and must journey to reunite with each other.
As directed by Justin Lin, best known for reviving the Fast and the Furious movies into a lucrative franchise, the film is chockfull of delightful, fun action sequences that vibrate with a unique pulse and entertain. He's helped by Pegg's script, co-written with Doug Jung, which makes Pine's Kirk bearable for the first time in the franchise, and unites the crew in a way we haven't really seen in this series.
Back again are Zoe Saldana as Uhura, Karl Urban as Bones, Pegg as Scotty, John Cho as Sulu, and the late Anton Yelchin as Chekov, all comfortable and making the roles their own, the pressures of living up to the original cast all but a distant memory. Joining the cast are Sofia Boutella as Jayla, an alien the crew stumbles across on the foreign planet, and Idris Elba as Krall, a rather boring bad guy whose motivations and twists are a little too confusing and muddied.
While the film is entertaining, there are large portions that jump incredible logic, and you kind of just accept it because it's sci-fi and that's what happens. But too many times the film does this and at some point it feels a little convenient for convenience sake.
But my quibbles are minor; this film is a great step-up from the dour tone of Into Darkness, which was more obsessed with being a mirror to The Wrath of Khan than being it's own unique piece. While the first in this series ingeniously set-up a new universe where new stories could be told, the second squandered this potential by paying too much homage to a classic. Beyond, hate or love it, at least tries to tell a new story, familiar as it may be to other Trek films.
And Lin, surprisingly, is a director I don't mind. This is the first of his films I've seen, and while I don't consider him a great auteur, he has an effortless, entertaining way of delivering his films that make them palatable. Sadly, this is something that many directors today can't do, and while we shouldn't praise serviceable entertainment for doing the bare minimum, it's somewhat needed to prop up films like this that, at the very least, go one step beyond.
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