It takes time to build mythology. The original Star Trek was a TV show that ran for years and was followed by next and other generations of space-ships, commanders and crews, some of them memorable, other easier to forget. The latest generation on the big screen debuted in 2009 and are now at their third adventure and movie together. The one big achievement of ‘Star Trek Beyond‘ may be the fact that the team is now coming together, the characters have slowly won the hearts and minds of the fans, and if they did not erase the memories of the members of the old crew (mission impossible!) they have become at least compatible with them and have now a life of their own.
source www.imdb.com/title/tt2660888/
Screen direction for this 3rd series is trusted in the hands of Taiwanese director Justin Lin of ‘Fast and Furious’ glory. As one may expect there is a lot of action, speedy editing, special effects which to a large extent are different than the ones in other Star Trek films. As many critics and viewers noticed since the previous installments, Star Trek and Star Wars starts to converge to something that is less specific to the worlds that each of the movie comes from and is closer to the Hollywood big action movies of the 21st century. Do I like this trend? Not really, but I cannot but admire the art direction and set decoration. The cities of the future will be fantastic if they will look like in this film, these are no orthogonal worlds, there are no right angles, but a number of dimensions that largely exceeds the commonly accepted figure of three. It’s a cheap bet that some Academy Awards are around the corner for the technical categories.
(I had some problems with the 3D projection though, especially in the lower-lit scenes. I cannot comment if this was because of the film or of the conditions in the theater we saw the movie).
(video source Paramount Pictures)
What about the story? Characters development? Some new and original villains we can cheer and feel sorry at the same tine after the final fists fight? None of these happen in too large amounts in this movie, it’s only the cliche that seems to gin ground, although the film enjoys some acceptable acting from Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Zoe Saldana. The connection between the new frontiers explored by J.J. Abrams and the good old world that was imagined by Gene Roddenberry is pretty casual. There is some retro-technology as the heroes use an older model of the Federation space-ships to flee a planet the Enterprise crushed on, and there are some memories of the new Spock for his father who does not appear but in photographs (the late Leonard Nimoy).
The difference between my generation of fans and the fans of today (some are our grandchildren) is the almost infinite number of options the younger folks are exposed to. Yes, there is some evolution, coalescence, more consistency in the characters of the latest film in the series. The question is whether this does not come too late.