Star Trek Beyond capitalizes on classic formula

After a half-century of TV shows, spinoffs, and—now—13 movies, it’s doubtful the Star Trek franchise will ever reach its final frontier. But the latest installment, Star Trek Beyond, makes a compelling case for the crew of the USS Enterprise to continue extending its “five-year mission to explore strange new worlds.”

After four Star Trek: The Next Generation films (1994–2002) received tepid responses from fans, the series prudently rebooted in 2009 with younger versions of the original characters, including Capt. James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock. With sharp acting and deft humor, the new cast has clearly come into its own.

Beyond doesn’t plow new ground (or space), yet it entertains remarkably well. The story launches from the standard Star Trek platform: Kirk (Chris Pine) and his crew investigate the report of a ship lost in an uncharted nebula. There, Krall (Idris Elba), a megalomaniac with a bio-weapon and a beef against the Federation, captures most of the Enterprise’s crew. Krall begins to kill off the crewmembers, absorbing their life energy to prolong his own existence. Kirk, Spock (Zachary Quinto), Dr. Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban—so spot-on, he displaces DeForest Kelley as the real McCoy), Chekov (the late Anton Yelchin), and Scotty (Simon Pegg) must free their comrades and also protect Yorktown, a Federation base with “millions of souls” on which Krall has set his sights.

Director Justin Lin keeps skillful rein on the film’s emotional content, neither overplaying comedy nor belaboring Kirk’s and Spock’s soul-searching. The soundtrack delivers a rousing, goosebump-raising punch through an aptly selected and perfectly timed Beastie Boys song. Almost patriotic.

The MPAA’s PG-13 rating of the film (for sci-fi action and violence) surprisingly omits mention of two cheeky uses of an expletive and, not surprisingly, a dozen (less coarse by today’s standards) misuses of the Lord’s name. Eagle-eyed viewers will also notice Sulu (John Cho) walking arm-in-arm with a male lover, a brief but agenda-heavy bit of character revisionism.

Perhaps one of the most underappreciated aspects of the film (and of the franchise) is the brotherly love the main characters have for each other. Not a Christian community, of course, but more than just a phaser-packing Brady Bunch, the Enterprise crew lives and works together as a family dedicated to the mission before them. Their success—and the franchise’s—lies in the characters’ exemplary loyalty and self-sacrifice.