“Star Trek Beyond” is a rare success for the 2016 summer movie season

It hasn’t been a particularly great summer movie season, I think we can all agree with that sentiment. Outside of a small handful of releases, it has been one disappointment after the next. This week, however, things pick up with the emergence of Star Trek Beyond, a sequel that not only manages to improve on what came before it, but really fits in with the entire franchise so far to date. It was very impressive what this film does, without ever really calling attention to itself. I suspect it’s going to be a pretty big hit, and rightly so, as it’s a high quality effort. The sequel picks up a while after the events of Star Trek into Darkness (itself taking place a bit after Star Trek). The crew of the Enterprise, led by Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), is in the middle of a five year mission when they wind up being attacked by a mysterious new enemy named Krall (Idris Elba). Their ship is destroyed, much of the crew is captured, and the main members of our team of heroes are separated. Kirk is paired with Chekov (Anton Yelchin) among the Enterprise’s ruins, Doctor ‘Bones’ McCoy (Karl Urban) is trying to save an injured Commander Spock (Zachary Quinto), Scotty (Simon Pegg) meets a stranger who can potentially help them all in Jaylah (Sofia Boutella), while Lieutenant Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Sulu (John Cho) are among the captives of Krall. Eventually they all come together in order to save the day. In some ways it’s like a long television episode, but I mean that in a good way. Justin Lin directs, while Pegg co-wrote the screenplay with Doug Jung (though uncredited work was apparently done by Roberto Orci, Patrick McKay, and John D. Payne). The rest of the cast includes Shohreh Aghdashloo, Lydia Wilson, Deep Roy, and more. Michael Giacchino again provides the score. This is a very satisfying sequel, while also being perhaps the most appropriate screen adaptation of the Star Trek original series. It’s a lot of fun, exciting in all the right ways, but not solely concerned with action. Lin handles all of that from the director’s chair, but Pegg and his co-writer(s) came up with a script that tackles ideas in the process. It owes a lot to the television series, but it’s done in a loving and slightly less than obvious way. Most of all, what [...]