We Don’t Care To Go ‘Beyond’ The Trailer For This One
‘STAR TREK BEYOND’ TRAILER REVIEW BY METRO CREW
The latest installment of Star Trek finds the USS Enterprise on a new mission. But when the ship is attacked and nearly destroyed, the crewmembers, led by Captain Kirk (Chris Pine), are stranded in the wilderness and must defeat a hostile alien race to get home. We have mixed feels about this one. While there are aspects of the film that seem intriguing — like director Justin Lin’s track record and a diverse cast — we’re not sure that this it will add up to more than the sum of its parts. Star Trek Beyond opens in wide release July 22.
PAIGE: I once took a class in college called “Star Trek and Philosophy” (I don’t know how that happened either) but the Star Trek episodes I had to watch were all allegories for Plato’s Republic or questions of ethics and such. Mostly just people standing around talking. And it was engaging! That intellectual, nuanced side of the franchise seems to have pretty much died in these reboot movies. Not that there’s anything wrong with operatic space battles, but we have Star Wars for that. A bit sad to see Trek wandering away from its original thing. We could’ve probably squeezed in some ethics talk in between all the explosions.
CHRISTINA: I would expect this to be the kind of series where you could pick at any point and still enjoy it. But I haven’t seen a Star Trek movie, and I found this trailer extremely confusing. What is even happening? I got zero idea of what the plot is supposed to be from the trailer.
JAIMIE: I was never big on Star Trek, and so I don’t plan on watching this in theaters … or ever. But I am a huge fan of the director, Justin Lin. You know, best known for directing Fast and Furious films three, four, five and six — arguably one of the best film franchises of all time, and I’m not even being sarcastic.
NICOLE: Chris Pine’s only saving grace are his piercing eyes. And I can’t put my finger on it, but he kind of looks like some sort of animal. Badger? Something with a flat mouth. Catfish?
PAIGE: Chris Pine is the Chris no one really cares about. That’s all I have to say about him. The non-Marvel Chris. Zoe Saldana is in every single space franchise known to man. Have we cast her in Alien yet? Because that’s basically the only one she’s missing since she’s in Avatar, Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Trek. Granted, this is the only franchise where she’s allowed to be her normal skin tone.
JAIMIE: I will say that I do appreciate the diversity on screen and behind the scenes — how great is it to have an Asian director at the helm of yet another big film? So as much as I want to like the film (it was co-written by Simon Pegg!), I can’t bring myself to feel remotely interested. Maybe it does have something to do with the most boring Chris of all time…
PAIGE: There’s been some controversy about them making Sulu canonically gay in this movie, which George Takei was very “ehh” about. I can see his point. It feels kind of like a blase thing to do, like they want to be congratulated on their diversity and thoughtfulness. It reminds me a little too much of J.K. Rowling’s Dumbledore reveal — retconning diversity into the series, rather than just putting it in the first place.
