Star Trek Beyond

Our Review

The best of the Kelvin trilogy, and the one that understood what made the cast click. Justin Lin took over directing and, with Simon Pegg co writing, ditched the Earth shaking stakes for a survival story: the Enterprise is shredded by a swarm of drone ships in the best opening twenty minutes of the modern films, and the crew crashes onto a hostile planet in scattered pieces. Kirk and Chekov wander with a wrecked motorcycle, Spock and McCoy carry the film’s best odd couple scenes, and Scotty meets Jaylah, Sofia Boutella’s scavenger warrior, the freshest character the reboot era produced.

Idris Elba’s Krall is a generic alien face hiding a genuinely pointed idea: a human soldier so hollowed by war that he became an alien, an anti Federation argument the script makes explicit in a strong late reveal. The swarm attacks are visually chaotic in a way that reads as genuine threat, and the solution, broadcasting Sabotage by the Beastie Boys to shake the drones apart, is gloriously silly and perfectly in character for a crew that always wins by improvisation. Yorktown, a starbase shaped like a snowglobe city, is a stunning piece of design that gives the finale real vertigo.

The tributes to the fiftieth anniversary, Leonard Nimoy’s passing acknowledged gently, and the closing toast aboard the rebuilt Enterprise, give the film warmth its predecessors lacked. Pacing wobbles in the middle, and Krall’s plan is nonsense if examined. But as a pure adventure with a working ensemble, it delivers. Seven out of ten, the Kelvin timeline’s high point and, so far, its accidental farewell.