We’ve gotten our second taste of what the latest installment of the reimagined Star Trek universe looks like, and we’ve got to say that the movie looks like it’s going to boldly go where no Star Trek has gone before (pardon the pun).
Star Trek Beyond features the crew of the USS Enterprise and a powerful new villain, Krall, played by Idris Elba. Members of the crew are forced to survive on its own after he takes over the ship and maroons them on a faraway planet. The Enterprise is destroyed in the process, so there appears to be no way, at least in the near term, that the crew’s getting home.
If this seems slightly familiar, it is. In the “canonical” version of the Trek movie series, the NCC-1701 was destroyed in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. The Enterprise was boarded after a fierce battle with the Klingons, and rather than lose the ship, Kirk and Spock set off the auto destruct sequence. The crew abandoned ship for the Genesis Planet. But all that happens at the end of the movie, while here it appears to happen early on.
Where this movie seems to differ from what we’ve now seen across two trailers is in its tone. The original series and movies were filled with your phasers-full-spread battles and hope-for-the-future shtick, and were pretty sanguine. The characters were personable and the dialogue often highbrow.
With the Star Trek reboot, first under JJ Abrams and now The Fast and the Furious director Justin Lin, things are much darker. In just two installments, we’ve seen the Vulcans destroyed, the near annihilation of 23rd Century London, and Starfleet Command nearly brought down to its knees. Our cast of characters also seem to have changed: Chris Pine’s Kirk is a man often uncomfortable in command, while Zachary Quinto’s Spock is a Vulcan less in control of his emotions.
Star Trek Beyond seems to take the “this isn’t your Daddy’s Star Trek” idea to a whole new level. Watching the trailer, you get the feeling that it will be one action-packed ride from the opening scene to the closing credits. Unfortunately, it still does not answer any questions as to who Elba’s character really is and where he comes from; it doesn’t even answer questions as to what this movie’s plot is in the first place.
But it does look like we’re going to get a whole lot of character development, especially from Kirk. The previous two movies haven’t done the best job in truly explaining why and how this Kirk is so much different from Shatner’s Kirk, alternate universe notwithstanding.
Star Trek Beyond hits theaters on July 22.
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