Now Reading

The Ivory Throne

By

Manu S. Pillai

Star Trek Beyond 2016 (Rating ****)

Cast: Zachary Quinto, Chris Pine, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Idris Elba, Sofia Boutella
Director: Justin Lin

The Federation is experiencing a new era of prosperity and inter-planetary peace and has even constructed a giant new Starbase, the Yorktown. While the lives of the crew of the enterprise have gone through a few changes on the personal front, a major upheaval awaits them when the Enterprise is sent on a potentially dangerous mission to a nearby nebula. They have to fight and defeat a ruthless alien who is bent on destroying the Federation.

While Star Trek Beyond is chock-full of relentless action sequences (the first one, barely ten minutes into the film) and breathtaking space scenes, Lin and the writers of this film have taken things beyond just making stuff blow up in a dramatic fashion. A big part of the original Star Trek's charm lay in the way the characters got along and you'll see that here too.

Spock (Quinto) and Kirk (Pine) have a strong mutual respect along with being great friends. But Trekkie diehards will know that Spock and the ship's cranky doctor, Bones (Urban), had a rapport that was more lighthearted and allowed for humorous moments too. The same goes for the engineer of the USS Enterprise, Scotty, who brings his own brand of wit and humour to the movie. And so, you'll find a decent blend of seriousness and action as well as subtle humour. Lin has also taken a few risks in the film and balanced that off by also remaining for the most part, faithful to the original series. So there's plenty enough to excite, but it's not so radically different as to make long-time fans wonder about what the heck is going on.

To sum things up, get ready for some interesting side adventures, snappy dialogues, brilliant CGI, an entertaining score (the retro hit by Beastie Boys' Sabotage) and also a relationship angle, for good measure. The kind of blend that is signature JJ Abrams (he has a co-producer credit). Then there's the enemy leader Krall (Elba) who is bad to the bone no doubt, but without being over-the-top. A few logical fallacies aside, this one's really enjoyable.