Star Trek Beyond Movie Review

Article by Gabe Zia

Lazy Film Critic Movie Reviews

Star Trek Beyond

Star Trek Beyond is the third Star Trek movie in the Kelvin timeline (that's nerd speak for any Star Trek movie since the 2009 one). This time around we finally go into uncharted territory, as the Enterprise explores the worlds beyond Federation planets. This film was made around the same time as The Force Awakens, so J.J. Abrams doesn't direct this one, instead Justin Lin, the director of a few Fast & Furious movie, helmed this movie.

Now if you go into a Star Trek movie, there's one thing you go into it looking for, and that's the cast. And as usual, the chemistry between the cast is fantastic. Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto have amazing back and forth as Kirk and Spock, and unlike Into Darkness a lot of the supporting cast members get a lot of spotlight in this movie. There's also a great addition to the cast, Sofia Boutella as Jaylah, who was hands down the best part of this movie. She was compelling as a character, badass when she needed to be, but never had any of the tropes that usually plague Hollywood whenever it attempts to do a strong female main-ish character.

As this is directed by one of the Fast & Furious directors, you know the action is going to be great. There's a lot of fantastic action sequences in this movie, and they never stop being entertaining. There's one sequence in particular that was very divisive, and although it had more of a Fast and Furious style of action, the new style felt welcome to the series and never over stepped its bounds.

However, there is one problem with Beyond, and it's a pretty big problem. The movie is very underwhelming. Idris Elba is criminally underused as the villain, and the villain himself has little characterization until the end. And even then it's not enough to make him a compelling or interesting villain. And without a good villain, there's never a moment in this movie where I ever really cared about the outcome. Which was weird, the stakes in this film were higher than they were in Into Darkness, and yet Into Darkness was far more compelling as a movie.

Final Rating
Is Beyond good? Yes, absolutely. However, the overall result is just that, good. Which isn't exactly a bad thing, but this series has produced two overwhelmingly amazing films so-far, so the mediocre nature of this movie is surprising to say the least. But nevertheless, if you're looking for a good and entertaining distraction, Beyond certainly provides that.