You'd expect a movie titled "Star Trek Beyond" to take you into a world of deep wonder and awe- a world so extraordinary that you forget about your daily squabbles. In a sense, that's suppose to be the goal with most movies, (to take the audience out of their realm of reality and into another), but somehow the third installment of the popular sci-fi film franchise managed to remind me that I forgot to purchase those items in my Amazon cart, that I had to wake up early for my gym date the next day, and that Chipotle unfortunately closes at 10pm (which led to a internal debate of whether I wanted to leave the theater early or not).
Yet at the end of the night I managed to stay in my $6 movie theater seat until the end credits flashed on the screen feeling pretty content with my decision but overall still disappointed in the movie.
Maybe this is because my expectations for this movie were too high. Maybe I shouldn't have expected an enthralling villain like Benedict Cumberbatch's Khan in "Star Trek Into Darkness". Maybe I shouldn't have expected more jokes like in the original film, "Star Trek". Maybe I should have expected only a simple movie, with simple jokes, and a simple plot.
Maybe I should have just expected to watch a futuristic, tech savy version of "Fast and Furious" because that's what I got.
With all due respect, the movie is definitely much better than anything in the "Fast and Furious" franchise, but it does not raise up to the quality of its previous two movies. The point still remains, the plot in "Star Trek Beyond" fails to make me care about anyone, not even Spock.
"Star Trek Beyond" starts off with Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) talking about how he has become bored with the routines on the fleet. To put it even more simply: Kirk is bored and is having an early mid-life crisis. He's comparing himself to his father (again) and is trying to decipher who he really is. He's ready to step down as captain and do something else with his life. Meanwhile Spock (Zachary Quinto) is also ready to jump ship and go back to his Vulcan planet to take the place of his recently deceased father (RIP Leonard Nimoy). Before Spock could tell Kirk of his plans of course our main problem occurs.
The bitter villain Krall (Idris Elba) invades the ship, completely destroying it and taking the crew as prisoners all in hopes to get one small doo-dad that only has the power to kill everything without a trace. This is all because he refuses to unite with the Federation who believes in co-existing with past enemies. You know the good 'ol "kill the world" plot.
I could go in deeper about what the movie is about but there's no point because you've probably already seen it before in the first and second movie. The only thing is those movies made me care that the world was about to be destroyed. The plot had more meat in it, you understood the villains side of the story and you understand the heroes. Most importantly, you just understood what was going on instead of being distracted by a sub-par story-line with asteroids and robot bees.
Take away all the cool explosions, astro-speed chases and comedic points and you'll see that "Star Trek Beyond" is void of a plot interesting enough to keep you for two hours. The saving grace of these films is, as always the relationship between their colorful characters but even that isn't as heart-hitting as before.
The choice to separate the crew into pairs --Kirk and Chekov, Uhura and Sulu, Spock and McCoy, and Scott and Jayla---was the most entertaining part of this movie. Yet the initial vibrant character and charm that sold enough tickets to create the 150 million dollar budget for this movie was weak.
The only character I truly cared about and understood in this movie was Jayla. Her story was actually interesting. She's a scavenger living in one of the Federation's wrecked ships after having lost her family to Krall and his men. She exhibited some much needed attitude, and her time with Scottie led to some much needed comedy as the movie continued to stroll it's way to it's end.
Overall the movie was good, but the creators just stayed in their safe zone, making "Star Trek Beyond" another forgettable adventure.
Written By: Endia N. Mathews
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