Star Trek Beyond

Last week I finally watched the new Star Trek film - one that I have been anticipating for awhile now because it was co-written by Simon Pegg, and featured a new story idea (still love you Into Darkness!).  I had such high hopes for this - or rather so much faith in Simon Pegg for some reason.  Star Trek Beyond was a good film, but not as good as I was hoping.  Anticipation and Expectation is a bummer sometimes.

My feelings on the film are mostly positive though.  It's an enjoyable movie, sometimes a little too predictable, but there are some great epic moments, the way the story moves between what is happening with the separated crew was excellently done, and the way the different storylines meshed was fantastic.  I loved that the film started with a bit of humor with Kirk trying to broker peace with an alien race.  It felt very much like the start of a fun adventure, and I think the movie mostly delivered on that.  It does have it's darker moments though, and some great emotional moments for the cast.

Thinking about the film though, I was disappointed by the sense that the story felt too derivative of the Original Series TV show.  Which is a little odd for me to say, because it's like saying the film was too faithful to the original and I almost never have a problem with that.  But a lot of the moments or the plot points felt too episodic or traded on the dynamic of the characters in ways that were already explored thoroughly in the show or even in the Abrams films.  It all felt so familiar, that it was hard to appreciate the film as it's own thing.  I was thinking as I was leaving the theater, that the films might be better if they had a completely new set of characters (so excited for Star Trek Discovery!) or maybe in a similar way to First Contact - if it explored something that the Original Series didn't really explore.  With First Contact, the story was so much more cohesive and riveting because you see a different Picard, changed by the Borg, and the effect on his character was huge.

I'm not sure if being a fan of the show hurt or enhanced/validated my feelings for this film.  When I first watched the two Abrams films, I had never seen any of Star Trek before (refer to my first post on getting into Star Trek!) so I didn't have anything to compare or detract from the films.  I could appreciate them as their own thing, and I haven't re-watched those films since.  I should, just to see if I would feel differently, or less enthusiastically about them now.

Anyways, despite some of my lackluster emotions toward this film, I think it is very good, and worth watching if your a fan, or maybe more worth a watch if you are not as much of a fan.  I can see why this film is more appealing to the Trekkie though because it adheres more strongly to the ideals and the message of Trek, and it highlights some of what fans love about the show.  It was beautifully chilling to see the new Enterprise built, the old theme music used, and the "space, the final frontier"  speech being said.  My nostalgia (from watching it just a couple years ago...haha) for the TV show was satisfied by the inclusion of these things.  I look forward to the next film and I even hope that Simon Pegg might co-write it again, because I feel like he can really do something great with Star Trek.