Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

STAR TREK BEYOND boldly goes where we’ve been before, but that is not a bad thing in this third installment of JJ Abrams’s reboot of the franchise; first time director Justin Lin gives what is essentially a big screen episode of the TV series. The crew of the Enterprise ventures into an unknown and uncharted area of deep space runs into big trouble and then has to improvise their way out of it or the Federation and the rest of the civilized galaxy faces imminent doom. This sounds like very familiar territory to anyone just casually acquainted with the Star Trek universe, much less hard core Trekkers, but BEYOND is all about the execution, and in that, it might even surpass it immediate processors. What is most enjoyable about this reboot is how well the new cast embodies the best traits of the original crew, fleshing out their quirks and mannerisms, and most of all, getting the chemistry between them right, along with a sense of humor that gives us knowing winks at some the old series clichés-right off the bat, Chris Pine’s Kirk gets his shirt ripped in an alien encounter that goes bad, and back on board the ship, we are shown a closet in his quarters filled with identical replacements. At the beginning of the story, Kirk is shown contemplating leaving the Enterprise, having grown weary of the long voyages into space, and taking a desk job, while Spock is shown to be having doubts about his own future as well. We know that when the plot hits the fan, they will come to their senses and realize they are right where they need to be. At one point in the movie, the principles are marooned on a hostile planet after the bad guys have taken out the Enterprise (again) and separated from one another in small groups; this lets us see them at their best who they really are as Kirk refuses to accept defeat and finds a way to prevail, while Scotty, ever the engineer, gets the tech running again so an escape will be possible, as Uhura and Sulu are forced to stall the villain and a wounded Spock and McCoy bicker and banter, reminding us that these two opposites are really brothers just the same. The visuals are truly stunning; the destruction and crashing of the Enterprise is one of the best special effects sequences in any Star Trek movie so far, the kind of awesome spectacle that we go to the movies to see or to pay extra and buy the Blu Ray. Also noteworthy is the massive space station we see in the opening and closing scenes; it makes me think that being a contractor for the Federation is one sweet gig. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, and John Cho are as comfortable in their parts as a hand in a glove, but how sad is it that this is Anton Yelchin’s last appearance as Chekov after his untimely death. Yelchin’s energy lights up every scene he’s in, as he did in every role he ever played. There is also an acknowledgement of the passing of Leonard Nimoy and his great contributions to the series. Idris Elba’s Krall is like so many of Star Trek’s villains who motivation is not so much malevolence as having lost his way; Sofia Boutila registers strongly as Jayla, a resourceful refugee who comes to the aid of the Enterprise’s crew. And Greg Grunberg and Simon Pegg are in that rare group of actors who can say they’ve been in both a Star Trek and a Star Wars film. STAR TREK BEYOND’s screenplay, by Pegg and Doug Jung, is loyal in every way to the vision of Gene Roddenberry, a man whose diversified and unified world has never been more real. I think he would be most proud of this movie and what his original begat. The best moment in BEYOND for me is when we learn what constitutes “classical” music in the future. A fourth installment in the Star Trek franchise has already been green lighted, one that see the return of Chris Hemsworth’s George Kirk, but personally, I would like to see a return of The Gorn, those lizard headed aliens from the first series were always a favorite of mine.