Star Trek Beyond - Movie Review!

Who's In It?

Zoe Saldana, Idris Elba, Karl Urban, Zachary Quinto, and Chris Pine

What's It About?

As Kirk and Spock both decide to leave the Enterprise, the ship is downed and the crew is separated, postponing their decisions.

Any Good?

Despite being a fan of The Original Series, I've never seen Into Darkness. It just seemed a bit too action-y and didn't interest me, but what made me want to see this one is the old style posters.

Having just watched shows like The Original Series and Babylon 5 this film looks INCREDIBLE. The CGI is done really well and all the ships and landscapes look great, but the real impressive work is the spot on makeup and prosthetics. They've certainly come a long way since guys with large heads in episode 1.

I LOVED Karl Urban as Bones McCoy, he felt almost like he did in The Original Series and had great chemistry with Chris Pine as Kirk. I was sadly less impressed with Simon Pegg and the late Anton Yelchin though. Scotty's script was about 70% "lassy" which would be fine, but when it's every second word it gets a bit grating. Anton Yelchin's acting was done well, but his accent was ever so slightly off that it was more South African than anything, including Russian.

One thing I noticed was that after about 20 minutes the story of the film literally becomes a patchwork of the story of Mass Effect 2. In fact, the only difference between the majority of this and two of ME2's biggest moments is that Kirk gets into an escape pod and not spaced like Shepard, and that the collectors (they even look alike) aren't creating a giant human reaper. It even has a Quarian admiral's voice actor as human admiral!!

The baddie's helmets are very similar, as are their weapons

Overall I enjoyed this, even if it was a bit more Star Wars than Star Trek. The whole openly gay Sulu thing is extremely overhyped - it's not shoved in your face or anything, and I quite liked how they handled it.

If you're a fan of Original Series like me, I would recommend this. It has just enough cheese to keep the seriousness at bay and still feels like an episode in some parts. If you're not a fan, I'd say you'd love it too because it's stand alone and establishes the characters really really well - and might get you to watch the any of the shows, WHICH ARE ON (IRISH) NETFLIX NOW!!

Rating: