Star Trek Beyond

RATING: B

Star Trek's still going fifty years after its initial inception; but this is only the third movie since they completely rewrote the timeline through some mumbo jumbo in that first Star Trek "reboot" movie. This is the second movie in the franchise thus to not be tainted by time travel; but only the first one to have an entirely new director (Justin Lin), as J.J. Abrams stepped down to produce instead. 

This particular Star Trek movie takes place three years into the Enterprise crew's five-year voyage in space; and they come into battle with a brand new enemy (one *not* recycled from any older Star Trek material): a swarm of tiny little ships, basically. Led by this alien named Krall (Idris Elba), who is obsessed with obtaining some alien artifact that Kirk has in his possession for his own nefarious purposes. The crew is ultimately stranded on a remote planet, having to depend on other means of fighting for most of the movie instead of using starships to defeat their enemies.

Star Trek Beyond is definitely not as good as the previous installment, Star Trek Into Darkness; part of that reason in general being the fact that Krall has *none* of the presence that Benedict Cumberbatch's Khan did (or even Nero in the first movie), and is easily the most average villain in the rebooted Star Trek thus far. Also, if you had trouble understanding Bane in The Dark Knight Rises (I really didn't), you will hate Krall's speaking voice: a garbled bit of growling. Krall is much better when he's punching people or things.

And though this movie has a tendency to be more frenetic on the action scale than its predecessors, there's a point nearly halfway through where the pace really seems to slow down and I found myself zoning out a little bit. Luckily, the movie made up for that during the second half with some pretty good action/fight sequences, as well as its quite serviceable finale.

There's still quite a bit of witty humor too; mostly coming during conversations between Spock and McCoy. The acting performances are still strong, the new character Jaylah is good, and for the most part it's a fairly entertaining film. Probably the best part of the film is when they incorporate the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" into a fight scene.

Star Trek Beyond's not a classic by any means, but it's enjoyable for most of the way through. There's some parts that are better than others, and one could argue that coming off the heels of Into Darkness, it was going to have a difficult time finding strong ground. But for the most part it doesn't disappoint, even if it's not the best in the series.