Star Trek Beyond (2016)

  I was on the fence about seeing this installment after the clusterfuck that was Into Darkness but my optimism eventually won out.  I'm glad it did, too, because this was a much better movie than its predecessor.

When a lone survivor (Lydia Wilson) crashes into the Federation center with a story about how her entire crew is stranded on the other side of a dangerous nebula, the Enterprise mobilizes into action.  They discover too late that a new enemy waits on the other side of the nebula and the crew is separated on the surface of an uncharted planet.  Krall (Idris Elba) has lured them there to recover an artifact on board and takes the majority of the crew hostage to force Kirk (Chris Pine) to give it up.  But James T. Kirk is not the kind of man to back down from a fight and with a little help from another stranded alien, Jaylah (Sofia Boutella), he and Scotty (Simon Pegg), Chekov (Anton Yelchin), Bones (Karl Urban), and Spock (Zachary Quinto) decide to take Krall head-on.

This really benefitted from having Justin Lin in the director's chair instead of J.J. Abrams.  Lin understands kinetic style, thanks to his work on the Fast and Furious series and the space battles really bear witness to it.  I also liked the forced one-on-one among the crew.  It kept the story moving and still allowed for character development.  I was less thrilled with the close-in camera work on the hand-to-hand fight scenes.  If you're a regular reader, you know that is one of my pet peeves.

The humor is nicely spaced throughout, thanks to Simon Pegg who co-wrote the film, no doubt and there is a really lovely little tribute to Leonard Nimoy.  It was bittersweet to see Anton Yelchin in what is most likely his last completed role.  I would have liked for him to have more screen time in light of that but of course they couldn't have known while filming.  The buzz from ComiCon is that they will not try to recast the role for the 4th film, out of respect, and will simply retire Chekov from the crew.  That's a ways off, however, so I hope they stick by it.