Star Trek Beyond

lifestyle SUNDAY, JULY 17, 2016 Film Review ‘Star Trek Beyond’: A high octane but low impact sequel t doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see why direc- it’s good up to a point-because “Star Trek Beyond,” for all the out with a cast that audiences have-rightly-come to love. tor Justin Lin was handed the reins of the “Star addictive intensity of its visual flourishes, is the most prosa- On the planet, the crew members land in different places I Trek” series from the outgoing JJ Abrams. Lin, ic and, in many ways, the least adventurous of the Abrams- because they’ve escaped the crashing Enterprise in sepa- the director of four “Fast and Furious” films, is a era “Star Trek” outings. It’s a sturdily built movie that gets rate pods. It’s fun to watch Spock (Zachary Quinto) and virtuoso at making vehicles fly through space, and his “Star the job done, and it’s got a likable retro vibe: The fact that Bones (Karl Urban) bond through their antipathy. Or Scotty Trek Beyond” has a few of the most spectacular set pieces Kirk and his crew spend a good part of the film stranded, (Simon Pegg) try to weave his nerd weaselness around the ever seen in the series. What’s more, if you had to find a without recourse, gives “Star Trek Beyond” a wide-eyed, forceful Jaylah, the alien dominatrix in white who refers to theme in the “Fast and Furious” films-apart from their real slightly clunky analog stasis that takes us right back to the him as “Montgomery Scotty.” Or Anton Yelchin’s Chekov theme, which is that speed and destruction rock-it would spirit of the TV series. Like the show, it lets us share quality simply be, in every scene, his ardently antic Chekov self, be this: A motley crew of multiculti ego-driven auto pilots time with cast members who now seem like old friends. Yet which allows us to revel in what an inspired job the late works best when they make themselves into a team. Yet it’s to say that the movie fails to break new ground would be young actor did of making Chekov’s face match his heavily not until the halfway point of “Star Trek Beyond” when Lin putting it mildly. It truly feels like an extended episode, accented words, his eyes popping in comic communion stages a sequence that truly seems to get his juices flowing. without a single “Oh, wow!” trick up its sleeve, which may with his vowels. Yelchin, a superb actor (he is honored in be why, until the eye-popping climax, it’s more earnest the closing credits with a simple “For Anton”), slyly disap- Overdose of activity than exciting. peared inside this role, and in that very act of disappear- We’re in the jagged wilderness of a foreign planet, where ance he was never more himself. the Enterprise has crash-landed after being cut in two by a Keeping it stale Conveniently, the planet houses the carcass of an old swarm of metallic space “bees.” The swirling bees are con- To be fair, a “Star Trek” movie-this is the 13th-can’t be Federation ship, the USS Franklin, which our mighty crew trolled by Krall (Idris Elba), a dictator with the face of a lizard expected to reinvent the wheel each time. Abrams already can resuscitate. From there, the battle heads to Yorktown, and the voice of a warlord and an attitude to match. He did that once, and he did it brilliantly, casting the series a Federation outpost that’s like a gyroscopic steel-and- gets energy by literally sucking the life out of people, and with such an acute eye for the inner qualities of every “Trek” glass city that resembles an amalgam of the aristocratic he’s out to capture an artifact that was on board the crew member that you almost feel as if each character satellite in “Elysium,” the city of the future in “WALL-E,” and Enterprise, an ancient clicking doohickey he wants for terri- should come with a little book entitled “The Zen of Scotty,” an Apple store. It’s a lurching, multi-planed vertiginous the hint of warmth masked by his impish ultra-deadpan. You ble (but unspecified) reasons. The crew of the Enterprise, “The Zen of Bones,” etc. Yet the dimension of the original place, and Lin stages the protracted final battle there like can rest assured that this team will become a team again, dispersed on the planet, is trying to regroup, and now, at series that turned fans into lifelong cultists is that it pushed a gladiatorial contest suspended in the air. It’s a sequence because that’s the message of the movie: that in space (or last, they have it together enough to launch a plan of and poked boundaries; it kept spinning your head. That’s you won’t soon forget. maybe anywhere), a crew of quirky oddballs beats a scaly attack. Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) provides the diversionary what Abrams tried to do in his two films, and the underrat- What is forgettable, perhaps, is everything else about the megalomaniac every time. But that’s kind of a lesson that we activity, riding a chopper around Krall’s woodland head- ed “Star Trek Into Darkness,” though it played a bit of a shell movie, which doesn’t so much advance the “Trek” cosmolo- already knew. “Star Trek Beyond” is a somewhat diverting quarters, his biker image literally multiplied a dozen times. game with “Trek” mythology, casting Benedict gy as keep it running in place. “Star Trek Beyond” opens with place holder, but one hopes that the next “Star Trek” movie Meanwhile, a leonine alien named Jaylah (Sofia Boutella), Cumberbatch as a young Khan who didn’t completely Kirk, and Spock, each having a private existential meltdown: will have what it takes to boldly go where no “Star Trek” whose black-etched-on-white face makes her look like parse as the Khan of legend, was still a movie that took you Kirk from the every-day-is-like-the-last-day routine of pilot- movie has gone before. — Reuters Darth Maul by MAC Cosmetics, engages in hand-to-hand on a sinister cosmic joyride. ing through space, and Spock from the knowledge that he combat with Krall, whomping him with kung fu kicks. That’s because it’s basically the “Star Trek” version of an might want to ditch the Enterprise to become a Vulcan The sequence has that Lin spin, that overdose of activity interplanetary action film, with a plot that doesn’t take you patriarch, now that Commander Spock has died-a nod to that gets you pumped. And that’s a good thing-or, at least, to many new frontiers. But there’s plenty of chance to hang the late Leonard Nimoy, whom Quinto inspiringly echoes in MUSIC Review Veterans’ groups disturbed by ‘Orange is the New Black’ eading veterans’ groups are disturbed by the way vet- him juggle live grenades until one blows up. That’s egregious, and less killers and sexists.” She said she’s not saying veterans deserve erans hired as prison guards are portrayed in the new just one way veterans are misrepresented, said Dan Clare, the “hero status,” but “don’t portray us as a group of monsters.” L season of the Netflix series, “Orange is the New Black.” national spokesman for DAV and an Iraq War veteran. “‘Orange is the New Black’ had the opportunity to portray veterans The veterans’ groups say they take issue with the way The danger, Clare said, is that “Orange is the New Black” is a in a way that shed light on an identity that’s widely misunder- the new guards disparage the inmates throughout season four of popular show airing at a time when many service members are stood,” she wrote. “But instead, the show fed into the very worst the drama that takes place in a women’s prison and the way they returning home and looking for jobs. If the public has a negative stereotypes that we’ve been working so hard to overcome.” At talk about their combat experiences. The Veterans of Foreign Wars perception of veterans, that will affect how they’re able to transi- IAVA, policy officer Jonathan Schleifer said the show’s producers called the show “offensive.” Iraq And Afghanistan Veterans Of tion back into civilian life, he said. VFW national commander John are unfortunately telling stories that will further stigmatize a com- America said it will further stigmatize veterans, and Disabled A. Biedrzycki Jr. said the show’s writers and producers chose to munity that has been through so much. Biedrzycki said the American Veterans said the show is out of the touch with the reali- offend all veterans because they needed new villains. He spoke “deranged veteran story line” must change and he asked for an ty of the veteran experience. out Thursday, after a 27-year-old Air Force veteran, Tahlia Burton, apology. Burton, of New York City, said on Friday that she’s torn Netflix didn’t respond to multiple messages left Thursday and wrote an opinion piece about the show for a military news and about whether to watch future seasons, but likely will, in the Friday seeking comment. In one scene in the finale, a guard tells culture website, Task & Purpose. hopes that the audience will be given a chance to empathize with another guard about innocent people he killed in Afghanistan.

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