If Star Trek Into Darkness left you cold when it didn’t live up to the legend that is Khan, then get happy; the latest film in the franchise delivers and goes Beyond.
Director Justin Lin, writers Simon Pegg and Doug Jung, along with the rest of the team have created a film so visually lush that you feel you could step right into it. The alien species feel fresh, the costumes make sense, and the relationships between the members of “Squad Enterprise” are as fully explored as the final frontier.
The filmmakers even give new meaning to the all too frequent act of blowing up the mother ship. Simon Pegg told the press he fought Justin Lin on adding another KABOOM to the ship’s story. However, Lin explained he wanted to remove the walls that force the crew together, then separate them via dire circumstances, and see if their familial bonds would pull them back together. After hearing this Pegg says he signed on. He was right to co-sign Lin’s vision; that set up works beautifully here.
If there’s a drawback it’s that Uhura is sidelined—in this episode she only exists to push Spock’s character development forward. She’s still a bad ass, but no part of this story belongs to her.
With that said, you may wonder why I mentioned Khan in the opening paragraph. Allow me to introduce you to the Beyond antagonist Krall. Krall is the leader of a team of genetically modified super soldiers who were abandoned by the Federation and left to die on a hostile planet…except they don’t go gently.
“This is where it begins, Captain. This is where the frontier pushes back!”
– Krall
Sound familiar? Here’s another clue.
“I’ve done far worse than kill you. I’ve hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me, as you left her; marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet…” – Khan
Yes, yes, it is exactly what you think. We were finally given what this divergent universe promised us. We got a new Khan—in all his genetically modified wrathful glory. And while Idris Elbas’ Krall isn’t quite the icon Ricardo Montalban’s Khan is, this film is still a breakneck space opera with enough humor, social awareness, and feels to make you leave the theater grinning. Which means it’s exactly what a Star Trek film should be.
In the end: Yay!
