Star Trek Beyond - Spoilers

[Udaman]

So I saw it this weekend...

And it was fine....

But just fine....Overall there were lots of things I was disappointed with. In many ways it was like X-Men Apocalypse. It kept me entertained for the most part, but it could have been so much better. The real problem I had with it (like X-Men) is that there were several plot line/questions I kept having that made no sense. Here is my main list from least to most important:

10. How does Scotty survive crashing onto the surface of the planet at that speed (and why wouldn't he have used a parachute like some of the others seemed to do)?

9. Why would a Federation space ship have a motorcycle on it? I mean, seriously...why?

8. How could he ride the motorcycle that fast on a rocky area, and why would there be a path anyway?

7. How could the duplicator device (which was a total rip-off from both Total Recall and The Avengers) allow each motorcycle to drive independently? Wouldn't they all be mimicking the actions of the actual Kirk ridden device (which would mean they would be driving through rocks and in odd circles)?

6. Why would you need to jump start a ship? And when they hit the side of the mountain, that would have slowed them down big time.

5 How did the Enterprise's shields not work against the small drones (bees) attacking it? Kirk clearly ordered the shields up, and had time for that to happen. But then the small drones just fly right threw it because they are small? What?

4 Where were all the drone ships stored? It looked like they were in these trees at the bad guy's camp. And the trees held what looked to be about 50 or so ships on them. But at the end fight scene, there were easily 100 thousand of these small drone ships. Even if each tree held 500 ships, that would be (at least) 200 trees. I saw maybe 3 or 4 of them at the base camp. And there could have been a million of them (I mean that was a gigantic wave of ships at the end). That's 1,000 trees of ships.

3 What exactly was the biological weapon, and why would it kill everyone? And wouldn't the goal to be to get back the device so you could call the weapon back (which Uhura clearly saw?)

2 What exactly was the reason for the former captain to go bad? Because he felt abandoned? And how did he discover the way to live forever? And how did that work exactly? And why did it turn him green and scaly? And why didn't he fly out the drone army from the nebula earlier (he clearly could do so)? And how did he figure out they were there, and how to control them?

So # 2 is a huge issue. It basically ruined the movie for me. Almost no explanation, or common sense for who the bad guy is, or how he got that way, or why he acted as he did in the past, or why he was acting like he was in the future. Pretty much same in X-Men (and just FYI, the BIGGEST issue I had in X-Men was Silverstreak. He would have immediately checked out the helicopters when they landed and saw they had those devices and ran like hell, or deactivated them...but that's a different thread). So the fact that this point is only #2 is trouble. Number 1?

1 I'm sorry, but when your ship is ripped apart, and the two power arms cut off, and the saucer torn apart (while then exposed to space)...everyone dies. Even in this movie, it's clear some people died. But basically it would have been thousands and thousands of people. And the fact that none of the main people were part of those...well, that's just ridiculous. Plus, it wouldn't have mattered...because EVERYONE WOULD HAVE DIED.

Grrrr.

Still, I enjoyed it. Mainly because of Bones. He's absolutely perfect in his role.

[BandAlum83]

So I saw it this weekend...

And it was fine...

But just fine...Overall there were lots of things I was disappointed with. In many ways it was like X-Men Apocalypse. It kept me entertained for the most part, but it could have been so much better. The real problem I had with it (like X-Men) is that there were several plot line/questions I kept having that made no sense. Here is my main list from least to most important:

10. How does Scotty survive crashing onto the surface of the planet at that speed (and why wouldn't he have used a parachute like some of the others seemed to do)?

9. Why would a Federation space ship have a motorcycle on it? I mean, seriously...why?

8. How could he ride the motorcycle that fast on a rocky area, and why would there be a path anyway?

7. How could the duplicator device (which was a total rip-off from both Total Recall and The Avengers) allow each motorcycle to drive independently? Wouldn't they all be mimicking the actions of the actual Kirk ridden device (which would mean they would be driving through rocks and in odd circles)?

6. Why would you need to jump start a ship? And when they hit the side of the mountain, that would have slowed them down big time.

5 How did the Enterprise's shields not work against the small drones (bees) attacking it? Kirk clearly ordered the shields up, and had time for that to happen. But then the small drones just fly right threw it because they are small? What?

4 Where were all the drone ships stored? It looked like they were in these trees at the bad guy's camp. And the trees held what looked to be about 50 or so ships on them. But at the end fight scene, there were easily 100 thousand of these small drone ships. Even if each tree held 500 ships, that would be (at least) 200 trees. I saw maybe 3 or 4 of them at the base camp. And there could have been a million of them (I mean that was a gigantic wave of ships at the end). That's 1,000 trees of ships.

3 What exactly was the biological weapon, and why would it kill everyone? And wouldn't the goal to be to get back the device so you could call the weapon back (which Uhura clearly saw?)

2 What exactly was the reason for the former captain to go bad? Because he felt abandoned? And how did he discover the way to live forever? And how did that work exactly? And why did it turn him green and scaly? And why didn't he fly out the drone army from the nebula earlier (he clearly could do so)? And how did he figure out they were there, and how to control them?

So # 2 is a huge issue. It basically ruined the movie for me. Almost no explanation, or common sense for who the bad guy is, or how he got that way, or why he acted as he did in the past, or why he was acting like he was in the future. Pretty much same in X-Men (and just FYI, the BIGGEST issue I had in X-Men was Silverstreak. He would have immediately checked out the helicopters when they landed and saw they had those devices and ran like hell, or deactivated them...but that's a different thread). So the fact that this point is only #2 is trouble. Number 1?

1 I'm sorry, but when your ship is ripped apart, and the two power arms cut off, and the saucer torn apart (while then exposed to space)...everyone dies. Even in this movie, it's clear some people died. But basically it would have been thousands and thousands of people. And the fact that none of the main people were part of those...well, that's just ridiculous. Plus, it wouldn't have mattered...because EVERYONE WOULD HAVE DIED.

Grrrr.

Still, I enjoyed it. Mainly because of Bones. He's absolutely perfect in his role.

And I want to know who ambassador Spok is and who were all those people in the picture?

Seriously, was that all just a nod to Leonard Nimoy? Because this is now the original crew. And Spok's father is Sarek, the ambassador.

And what was this other starship that could do warp 4 and was 100 years old? I don't believe that's consistent with the original star trek timelines

[JasonEvans]

I saw it middle of last week and was so "meh" on it I didn't even bother to write it up here. Like you, I thought it was fine, but nothing special. Like you, the lack of a villain I could care about or understand really, really hurt the overall story.

I agree with darn near every one of your points. Let me address them one at a time though.

10. How does Scotty survive crashing onto the surface of the planet at that speed (and why wouldn't he have used a parachute like some of the others seemed to do)?

1. I'm sorry, but when your ship is ripped apart, and the two power arms cut off, and the saucer torn apart (while then exposed to space)...everyone dies. Even in this movie, it's clear some people died. But basically it would have been thousands and thousands of people. And the fact that none of the main people were part of those...well, that's just ridiculous. Plus, it wouldn't have mattered...because EVERYONE WOULD HAVE DIED.

I think #10 and #1 are very similar -- that anyone survived the crash was sorta insane. I'm going to go with the explanation that the saucer section and the escape pods are all designed for the express purpose of survival in a massive failure/crisis. Think of them (especially the escape pods) like they are the black box from air planes. You know how in a plane crash everyone says, "why don't they make the plane out of the same material as the black box because the black box always survives?" Well, the escape pods are designed to withstand tremendous impacts and I think the saucer sections are too. Their entire purpose is to protect the inhabitant. Don't apply conventional physics to them as they use advanced alloys and the such. Remember the "transparent aluminum" from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home? Well, future spaceships are made from crazy strong alloys like that. It is worth noting that interstellar travel would probably requires ships to be built out of phenomenally strong metallic alloys because you never know when you are going to run into a stray piece of rock or whatever while traveling at warp speed. The Enterprise is strong enough to not be bothered if it bumps into a piece of space debris at 670,000,000 miles per hour so then it is going to have little trouble staying in tact when doing a somewhat controlled crash on the surface of a planet.

That said, I was really bothered by the level of destruction that our characters survived.

9. Why would a Federation space ship have a motorcycle on it? I mean, seriously...why?

8. How could he ride the motorcycle that fast on a rocky area, and why would there be a path anyway?

7. How could the duplicator device (which was a total rip-off from both Total Recall and The Avengers) allow each motorcycle to drive independently? Wouldn't they all be mimicking the actions of the actual Kirk ridden device (which would mean they would be driving through rocks and in odd circles)?

The motorcycle was silly, as was Kirk riding around and not falling off due to rocky terrain. It was one of several moments that "took me out of the film" and caused me to wonder about the silliness of what I was watching. Moments like that are fatal blows to a film. I need to be immersed in the picture to really enjoy it and moments that pull you out of the movie are a really bad sign.

As for the duplicator device, I choose to see it as something more advanced than a simple holographic projection. It is a projection that has programming allowing it to study the terrain and make different moves to suit its surroundings. That said, this was yet another moment where I said, "What the _____??!?!" to myself and was taken out of the movie by some of the silliness in it.

6. Why would you need to jump start a ship? And when they hit the side of the mountain, that would have slowed them down big time.

I thought that moment was beyond idiotic. Didn't they have some warp core jumper cables or something?

5. How did the Enterprise's shields not work against the small drones (bees) attacking it? Kirk clearly ordered the shields up, and had time for that to happen. But then the small drones just fly right threw it because they are small? What?

Ding ding ding! If a mass kamikaze attack is that effective against a starship, then someone else would have figured it out and it would be standard practice for the Klingons, Romulans, and everyone else in the galaxy. Heck, I'm sure drone technology would be good enough to not even need to sacrifice the pilots. You could just send up drone ships and take out any attacker. It looked cool, but was totally unrealistic. I mean, if the shields will stop something physical, like a photon torpedo, then why weren't they similarly effective against all those ships?

4. Where were all the drone ships stored? It looked like they were in these trees at the bad guy's camp. And the trees held what looked to be about 50 or so ships on them. But at the end fight scene, there were easily 100 thousand of these small drone ships. Even if each tree held 500 ships, that would be (at least) 200 trees. I saw maybe 3 or 4 of them at the base camp. And there could have been a million of them (I mean that was a gigantic wave of ships at the end). That's 1,000 trees of ships.

Yup, fully concur. In one scene it looked like the bad guy had a few dozen ships and men, in the next he has tens of thousands (or more). Whaaat?!?!

And I'll add something else that bugged me -- the moment we saw they had a coordinated "swarm" kind of attack (Ender's Game much?!?!?), I knew they would be defeated by taking out the command center. Such an obvious sci-fi storyline! but, the movie even pulled off the execution of this terribly, by having them all just blow up the moment their transmissions were jammed. Huh? Why were the enemy ships exploding? Were they supposedly running into each other? We never really saw that, we just saw them explode when the old Starfleet ship got close. What was going on there?

3. What exactly was the biological weapon, and why would it kill everyone? And wouldn't the goal to be to get back the device so you could call the weapon back (which Uhura clearly saw?)

Terrible, worthless plot point. I think we were supposed to believe that the bad guy (no memory of his name, that's a bad sign) had been searching for many years for that bio weapon. Ummm, why? Couldn't he have accomplished the same thing with any number of other poisonous gasses? I'm sure the moment where he tested it on that one crew member was supposed to be terrifying, but I just watched that scene and thought, "Is that it?"

2. What exactly was the reason for the former captain to go bad? Because he felt abandoned? And how did he discover the way to live forever? And how did that work exactly? And why did it turn him green and scaly? And why didn't he fly out the drone army from the nebula earlier (he clearly could do so)? And how did he figure out they were there, and how to control them?

So # 2 is a huge issue. It basically ruined the movie for me. Almost no explanation, or common sense for who the bad guy is, or how he got that way, or why he acted as he did in the past, or why he was acting like he was in the future. Pretty much same in X-Men

Great sci-fi action movies almost always have a great villain. Star Wars started to go off the rails the moment Darth Vader stopped being a great villain. The best Star Trek movie ever, Wrath of Khan, had a great villain. The Dark Knight has a great villain. Avengers has a great villain. I could go on and on. To some extent, the villain often makes the story. Good guys are pretty simple, but a nuanced, interesting, and imposing villain is truly a special thing. Whenever you bury your villain under tons of alien makeup and give him a difficult accent, it adds a lot of extra hurdles for the villain to cross to be decent, let alone great. Well, this villain didn't even come close. I think he was supposed to be a PTSD former warrior or something like that, but we never got to know him enough to have any sense of what his motivations were. As a result, he's just a crazy bad guy -- which are the worst!

Still, I enjoyed it. Mainly because of Bones. He's absolutely perfect in his role.

Note to DC movies -- the humor (mostly from Bones but also from Scottie and a few others) absolutely saves this movie. It is not nearly as funny as Marvel movies like Guardians or Avengers, but it does not take itself too seriously and it avoids going to really dark places thanks to the humanity of the characters. The new Enterprise crew is really wonderful and their interactions are the light that makes this a film worth seeing (maybe not full price, perhaps in the dollar theater). They are the reason the film gets largely decent reviews.

By the way, after we saw it my son mentioned that the 84% Rotten Tomatoes rating for this film was a classic failing of Rotten Tomatoes. The 84% is built around almost everyone liking it but very few folks finding it great. Because RT only asks for a binary decision (was it more good or more bad?), a film that consistently gets 2 or 2.5 stars can get a high RT score because no one is giving it 1 or 1.5 stars. But, on the other hand, no one is giving it 3.5 or 4 stars either. This is that kind of film -- its good, but it sure ain't great.

-Jason "I thought it was a definite step up from X-Men: Apocalypse, that's for sure" Evans

[cato]

Wow. You guys are more fun than a bowl of soggy noodles.

My wife and I left the kids with a babysitter and saw Star Trek on Saturday. We loved it. The writing was great, the mix of humor, adventure and interpersonal dynamics spot on, and the story kept us engaged from start to finish.

Your complaints about how "realistic" the space opera was should be filed with the Federation Continuity Division. I hear it's run by tribbles.

[BandAlum83]

Wow. You guys are more fun than a bowl of soggy noodles.

My wife and I left the kids with a babysitter and saw Star Trek on Saturday. We loved it. The writing was great, the mix of humor, adventure and interpersonal dynamics spot on, and the story kept us engaged from start to finish.

Your complaints about how "realistic" the space opera was should be filed with the Federation Continuity Division. I hear it's run by tribbles.

For the record, I loved it

[davekay1971]

For the record, I loved it

Thank you for that, because my wife and I are both looking forward to seeing it this weekend, and Udaman and JE had me seriously considering other options. Hopefully we'll have your reaction, not theirs...

[fuse]

If you go to the movies for entertainment and are able to easily slip into willing suspension of disbelief, Star Trek Beyond is a fun movie.

I can't argue with the criticisms noted above.

How you enjoy Star Trek Beyond will largely depend on the lens through which you view it. It won't stand up to light analysis.

What I enjoyed the most was after the fact learning that the alien actress was in the Kingsmen movie. I thought I recognized the voice but could not place the actor under the makeup.

They are not comparable, I enjoyed Star Trek Beyond more than I enjoyed the new Ghostbusters. (Not only did that surprise me, had nothing to do with the controversy over the reboot and casting. Loved the new Ghostbusters cast, especially Kate McKinnon!)

[YmoBeThere]

Several "Trekkies" I was having lunch with and who saw the movie were unanimous in their rankings of this series. One, who used to live in LA as I have, told me to remember it like like the area code, 213.