#well. i also hate generations. and nemesis. and insurrection the least but it’s still not good.

[nymphaerie]

WHAT DO YOU MEAN PEOPLE LIKE FIRST CONTACT .

[daleisgreat]

Star Trek XIII: Beyond

Longtime readers of this blog had to have figured this one was coming. For newer readers, in 2014 I reviewed one of the 12 Star Trek films each month and I somehow managed to stay on pace and review all 12 films by the end of 2014. 2016 saw the release of the third Star Trek film in the new ‘alternate’ universe, Beyond (trailer). I recall going into this movie at the theaters with a few different scenarios rummaging around in my mind. One scenario had me trepid that this film saw the director of the most successful Fast & Furious films, Justin Lin at the director’s chair replacing JJ Abrams (who stayed on as a producer). Those films have always been a guilty pleasure of mine, but I was not sold that Lin would successfully transition from the blockbuster heist/racing/action beasts he was known for into the world of science fiction. Another part of me was a little hung up on the recent deaths of cast members Leonard Nimoy (original era Spock) and Anton Yelchin (Chekov) going into this film. Suffice it to say I did not go into this without reservations.

Beyond kicks off with Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) failing miserably making a peace offering to a new race they encountered a few years into the Enterprise’s five year exploration mission. After Kirk makes yet another dramatic, last-second escape the crew of the Enterprise make a pit stop on the space station, Yorktown for some much needed shore leave. It is there Spock (Zachary Quinto) discovers the news about the passing of the elder Spock (Leonard Nimoy). Kirk is also in the midst of a personal crisis and is considering stepping down as Captain so both of the Enterprise’s top officers are at a crossroads in their careers. Kirk and Spock’s personal dilemmas get set aside when the Enterprise answers a distress call on an uncharted planet. This ultimately leads up to the Enterprise crash landing on the mysterious planet and the crew getting split up. This made for a unique twist on the film as we saw the primary cast team up with the supporting cast members in teams that ordinarily would not have happened and provided some interesting dynamics. Beyond has Kirk & Chekov on one end of the planet, and Spock & Bones (Karl Urban) on another side while Uhura (Zoe Saldana) & Sulu (John Cho) are imprisoned with the rest of the crew at the base of this film’s villain, Krall (Idris Alba). Scotty (Simon Pegg) finds himself isolated until he meets another person stranded on the planet by the name of Jaylah (Sofia Boutella).

Jaylah is a fun addition to the cast, and by the end of the film it appears she is going to be a mainstay among Starfleet. Her unintended dry humor provides most of the levity for Beyond and it cracked me up more often than not. For better or worse, she is the one responsible for a scene set to Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage.” Without spoiling the scene too much, they manage to kind of have a somewhat meaningful justification for their music, but the song overstays its welcome a smidge too long, especially when the Enterprise crew starts to nod along and mildly jam out to it….I am not kidding. Naturally, there are a couple big action set pieces in the film’s final act. One is where the Enterprise crew reunites to make a retreat from Krall’s planet and a short while later while Kirk and friends are hot on the tail of Krall to stop his invasion of Yorktown. The CG and special effects do not disappoint in these showcase scenes, but it was the Krall himself who did not get me fully invested in these scenes as I would rank him among the weaker villains of the Trek films. Beyond tries to add some substance to Krall by diving into his origin toward the end of the film, but by that point it seemed too late for me to get invested in him and I was ready for Krall to meet his demise.

There are 17 behind-the-scenes extra features to indulge totaling a little less than two hours. If that is a bit much for you, than I would advise skipping around half of the features that go into the nuts and bolts of the CG, costumes, special effects and stage design. They are all well made, but those ones in particular I cannot help but feel are aimed directly at enthusiasts of those fields only. Divided & Conquered stuck out to me as the cast and crew talk about the challenges of having the Enterprise crew split up for a good portion of the film. Beyond the Darkness is another recommended extra as it is all about welcoming Lin to the director’s chair and introducing the new characters debuting in Beyond. For Leonard & Anton features countless testimonials from the cast and crew for what both actors meant to them and the franchise. Finally, I would recommend Live Long and Prosper because it is about celebrating Star Trek’s 50th anniversary and defining its legacy. I hate to give it this distinction, but I would have to rank Star Trek: Beyond as the least enjoyable of the current era of Star Trek films. As stated above it was Krall not being an antagonist worth buying into that knocked the film down a couple pegs for me. There are still a lot of great moments and killer special effects throughout, and I am on board with Jaylah being part of the Enterprise team and I feel like she can be a great movie exclusive addition to the team much like Savik was in Star Trek II-IV. I thought Paramount did an admirable job at how they handled writing Nimoy’s Spock out of the film and the tributes for Nimoy and Anton during the credits were simple, but effective, and all I needed. I will conclude here as I did with all my previous Star Trek blogs with my individual ratings for each film so you can see how they all measure up. Star Trek Film Ratings Star Trek: The Motion Picture - 5/10 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - 10/10 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock - 7.5/10 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - 9/10 Star Trek V: The Final Frontier - 6/10 Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country - 7.5/10 Star Trek VII: Generations - 8/10 Star Trek VIII: First Contact - 9/10 Star Trek IX: Insurrection - 8/10 Star Trek X: Nemesis - 9.5/10 Star Trek (XI, 2009) - 10/10 Star Trek XII: Into Darkness - 9/10 Star Trek XIII: Beyond – 8/10 Additional Star Trek Blogs Star Trek Evolutions and Captains Summit BluRay Bonus Discs Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Creed Dirty Work Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Guardians of the Galaxy Hercules: Reborn Hitman Ink Interstellar Jobs Man of Steel Marine 3 & 4 Mortal Kombat The Replacements Rocky I-VII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Take Me Home Tonight TMNT The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars The War Wild The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Days of Future Past

[thesoliloquyofastranger-blog]

Star Trek: Insurrection

Star Trek: Insurrection, the third movie to feature the crew of The Next Generation, is one of the least popular Star Trek movies. It’s hated by a large number of Star Trek fans, and a lot of the people who were in the movie itself dislike it as well. This strikes me as odd for a few reasons. 

Firstly, of the Next Generation movies, Insurrection is the movie which is the closest in tone to the show. While this is often one of the main points of contention against the movie--that it could have been a two-part episode of the show and it wouldn’t have mattered--I think this is one the things that really worked about the movie.

A lot of the Trek movies had plots that could have been two-part episodes, or at least elements that could have fit right in with the kind of plot you’d expect in one of the shows. For example, in The Undiscovered Country when Kirk and McCoy are being held captive at Rura Penthe, the story set on the Enterprise with Spock and the rest of the crew working out the issues regarding the radiation and the apparent firing of the torpedo could have been out of a television episode, or at best, a television movie.

And yet, The Undiscovered Country is one of the movies that are generally regarded as being the cream of the crop of Trek movies. While there was a lot more happening in that movie than the firing on the Klingon flagship, it still had moments that would have been right at home on a television show. It’s almost like these movies are--and bare with me here, I know this is going to be a shock--are based on a television show.

Secondly, there is a moral position taken in this movie--namely that the needs of the many do not necessarily outweigh the needs of the few. This is especially the case when the “needs of the many” are being defined as they are here in Insurrection as being the medical needs of several million people, many of whom won’t start feeling the effects of the planet’s rings for years; and when the “needs of the few”, as defined by Insurrection, are the right to self determination and to keep their culture.

This style of moral position is quite common in the Star Trek universe. We see Kirk taking a similar position in The Search for Spock, where the option he chose was to risk provoking a shooting war with the Klingon Empire in order to restore the life of his friend.

We also see Picard making similar kinds of moral choices in The Next Generation, where he’ll choose to ignore the Prime Directive when he finds it inconvenient in order to save a culture. One example of this is the episode Homeward, in which Picard elects to save the populace of one village rather than to sentence them to death with their planet.

“Ah,” you say, “but the difference here is that the Federation is at war during Insurrection and there were strong medical benefits to those rings.” To this I respond, look at the effects of those rings--their healing powers were quite potent when you were being exposed to them (after all, la Forge could see without the help of twenty-fourth century technology on the surface of the planet), but faded fairly soon afterwards (he was blind again in Nemesis).

Even if the Son’a plan to extract the rings using the metaphasic collector and find a way of artificially exposing people to the radiation had worked, there was no way to ensure that this effect would continue over the long term. After all, the reason why the Ba’ku had been able to essentially live forever was because they’d lived on the planet for hundreds of years.

This brings up one of the weaknesses that I believe exist in the anti-Insurrection vitriol. While there were definite medical benefits to the rings around the Ba’ku planet, even the people who wanted to extract the rings knew that there was no way to have the benefits take effect quickly enough without extracting them.

Had they artificially exposed people to the radiation via hypospray, they would have to find some way of continuing the exposure over the long term; either because people would keep needing the treatments to remain well, or simply because the demand for the substance would become so high because of the ongoing war with the Dominion. 

It was pretty clear that neither the Federation nor the Son’a had any way of doing this, because had they been able to artificially replicate the rings’ radiation, they would have done so already. 

Of course, on the flipside, there is a weakness apparent in the movie--the villains’ motivation doesn’t seem to hold up to scrutiny. While they sought an extended lifespan by injecting themselves with the radiation and to benefit their own respective peoples, it was quite clear that this wouldn’t work over the long term. 

By the same token, it seemed like a lot of the main powers within the Son’a ranks weren’t exactly mentally stable. And in the case of Admiral Dougherty, there really have been very few admirals presented in the Star Trek universe that haven’t been evil for some reason or another.

The fourth reason why I think this movie isn’t as bad as everyone thinks is that of the first ten Star Trek movies, Insurrection really is one of the best shot. This is very evident during the title sequence, which is the most engaging of any title sequence of any of the Star Trek movies.

This is really a peripheral point in my mind, but it does factor in for me. While the CGI in this movie hasn’t held up very well at all, the cinematography has.

Speaking of Insurrection’s CGI, if you ever wanted an example of why movies should probably use both practical and digital effects, this movie is a pretty good example of it. While the CGI in First Contact has generally aged pretty well, it didn’t really do so here.

This is really the biggest thing that dates the movie. The only other thing this movie could have really done that would have dated it more would have been to include a soundtrack of the biggest hits of 1998. Thankfully, this wasn’t really a huge possibility thanks to Star Trek’s genre and setting.

Overall, I did really like Star Trek: Insurrection. There were a few places where I think the movie fell short, but for the most part, this is a movie I really liked.