I had a lot of fun seeing this movie, and it really was the first of the three "reboot" movies that made me feel like I was actually watching "Star Trek" the whole time and not action movies that were paying lip service to the franchise. There had been brief flashes of familiar characters before, but this time I felt like the roles were truly being played to their fullest. I mean that as no disrespect to the actors - you have to work with the script you are given. Unlike ST09, which was pushing together people who don't know each other, and Into Darkness, which attempted to generate conflict among the crew, Beyond has the camaraderie so essential to the original series. The banter between Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban wouldn't sound weird coming from Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley. Chris Pine is finally playing
Captain Kirk, a dedicated officer who still has a bit of a rebel streak. And he has managed to do so without becoming a parody of William Shatner.
The other thing I really liked about this move was that the
Enterprise was allowed to star in it. The ship has always been a character as much as the humans aboard her, and I felt that ST09 and ID mainly used the ship as a vessel (pun intended) to move behind scenes. Granted, as you see in the trailors, she gets her ass kicked, but there are several scenes at the beginning that treat the ship with the same reverence seen in the TOS movies from the 80s. And without giving too much away, I will say that a few tweaks make me like the
Enterprise of this film series even better by the end of the movie.
To those who complain it wasn't cerebral enough, I counter that the only movie that ever really tried to be was The Motion Picture, and it flopped both with critics and with Star Trek fans because you can't take a script for an hour long episode and turn it into a two and a half hour movie without filler (I love the
Enterprise refit from that film, but a 15 minute establishing shot of her in spacedock is a little much). The rest of the movies have been action-adventures in space, just mainly without the effects budget we've seen from the recent films. Star Trek IV also was on the cerebral side, but it had the one time contemporary setting and the whales message, which drew in a larger, more contemporary audience at the time (Trivia: This is the only Star Trek movie where nobody is killed on-screen. Unknown if the massive disruptions from the whale probe caused deaths on Earth).
This film has the spirit of Trek. I hope it does really well both domestically and overseas. Paramount has already confirmed another film, and maybe if they do a better job marketing it than they did Beyond, even more of us can reap the benefits.
On another note - what do you all think of the concept design for the ship from the new series, Star Trek: Discovery?