Summary

• Star Trek Beyond is a standout in the Kelvin timeline, delivering an exciting blend of blockbuster action and Gene Roddenberry's optimism.
• Director Justin Lin and writers Simon Pegg and Doug Jung successfully brought the Enterprise crew to life with a thrilling storyline balanced with dynamic action sequences.
• Despite underwhelming box office results, Star Trek Beyond set the bar high for standalone adventures in the Star Trek universe.

It's been eight years since Chris Pine Star Trek movie that managed to capture the spirit of Gene Roddenberry while also being an accessible summer blockbuster. Although I was still skeptical about this, I did concede that the signs were promising.

Although he wasn't an obvious fit for the franchise, director Justin Lin's work on the Fast & Furious movies proved that he could handle the thrilling action set pieces that had become a key part of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek movies. Simon Pegg's cult sitcom Spaced, and his subsequent Cornetto Trilogy of movies proved that he was a screenwriter who wore his nerd credentials on his sleeve. If he and co-writer Doug Jung could balance Pegg's nerdy excesses with a solid Star Trek story, then we'd be in for a treat. Thankfully, Lin, Pegg, and Jung's work on Star Trek Beyond succeeded on all fronts.

Star Trek Beyond Is The Best Of The Kelvin Timeline Movies

It's a perfect blend of blockbuster excess and Roddenberry-style optimism.

Star Trek Beyond learns from the mistakes made by Star Trek Into Darkness to deliver a blockbuster action movie that stays true to the spirit of the franchise. Where Into Darkness was inspired by the bleakness of Christopher Nolan's Batman movies, Star Trek Beyond owes a debt to 2012's The Avengers. Like The Avengers, Star Trek Beyond is an ensemble piece that gives every key member of the Enterprise crew a genuine hero moment. In Star Trek , Beyond is the Kelvin Timeline movie that comes closest to recreating Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home a.k.a "The One With The Whales".

Star Trek Beyond was dedicated to the memory of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home director and Spock actor, Leonard Nimoy.

Idris Elba's villain, and the climactic battle to save Yorktown also feels like a substantial blockbuster upgrade on Zachary Quinto and Benedict Cumberbatch's fight scene in Star Trek Into Darkness. That saw Spock and Khan Noonien Singh jump from hovering freighter to hovering freighter against a drab Earth background. Star Trek Beyond gives us a Zero-G battle between Idris Elba and Chris Pine in a collapsing space station. It's more dynamically directed, more in-character because it's Kirk not Spock, and crucially, feels more Star Trek than the Earthbound slug-fest from Star Trek Into Darkness.

I Wish We’d Got More Star Trek Movies Like Beyond

It finally allowed Chris Pine to step out of William Shatner's shadow.

Star Trek Beyond was the movie I wanted when J.J. Abrams rebooted the timeline back in 2009. It told a fresh story, with familiar characters, retooling Star Trek for the cinematic landscape of the mid-to-late 2010s. That's what these movies should have been doing from the beginning, rather than getting hung up on existing Star Trek lore. While Idris Elba's villain and the USS Franklin connect Beyond with the Bakula era, those revelations are Easter eggs for die-hard fans, not turned into a major plot point to alienate the average movie goer.

I'd argue that the reason Star Trek Beyond performed poorly at the box office was because Into Darkness was so incomprehensible that audiences weren't keen to come back.

The problem with Star Trek into Darkness and, to a lesser extent, Star Trek 2009, was that they professed to be accessible to a new audience, but layered on heaps of lore and continuity. I'd argue that the reason Star Trek Beyond performed poorly at the box office was because Into Darkness was so incomprehensible that audiences weren't keen to come back. Leonard Nimoy ing the torch to Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto in Star Trek 2009 was a touching send-off. Leonard Nimoy info-dumping about Khan Noonien Singh proved the script didn't do enough to sell Benedict Cumberbatch as a villain.

Ultimately, Star Trek Beyond showed the way forward for the movies; standalone, blockbuster-scale adventures for the crew of the USS Enterprise. These adventures can play in the giant toy box that is the Star Trek universe, but a good story shouldn't come second to headline-grabbing legacy characters. Sadly, the box office performance of Star Trek Beyond appeared to teach Paramount Studios all the wrong lessons about the movie franchise, as its sequel remains in development hell eight years later. It's disappointing because Star Trek Beyond was the Kelvin Timeline crew's finest hour, and they deserve one last hurrah.