New director soars with ‘Star Trek Beyond’

George and I email all the time, and had a long, lovely discussion about it and we’re on great terms. “It’s been talked about and responded to and I’m still a huge fan of GT, for sure”. According to reports, Pegg was part of a team that rebooted the iconic Star Trek franchise.

If you thought sequels don’t get better and that the Star Trek series would only travel on a downward curve starting from Into The Darkness, you’re wrong. I don’t give a Tribble about canon.

He told NY magazine: “I reached out to him and told him that this might be happening, and I just wanted to know how he felt”.

“Star Trek Beyond” is in theaters now.

OK, I lied. I’m back.

Producers including J. J Abrams and Simon Pegg decided to make the well-known character gay in the new film as a nod to George Takei, who originally played the part. I am a Gen X-er…and there are moments in this movie that are catnip for anybody from that era. STAR TREK BEYOND is fun with a decent dose of humor, mostly from Bones, and it’s evident that the cast revel in playing their respective roles that bring so much joy to fans. A Starship captain’s struggle is real, yo! Krall has a raging anger against the Federation, for seeking to establish peace across planets by way of spaceships such as Enterprise. The ambush causes the Enterprise to crash on an uncharted planet and separates the crew. Obviously, the Enterprise is the only ship that could handle this particular mission – but nobody could predict what comes next! There are plenty of Star Trek universe references as well as American history nods here to keep the Trekkies excited and satisfied. Once there, they encounter a very unique adversary named Krall (Idris Elba) who has a big grudge to settle with Starfleet. I think it’s really unfortunate. Spock works on trying to balance blending in with his human counterparts while respecting his Vulcan sensibilities, and I found the friendship between him and Dr. McCoy, played by Karl Urban, especially amusing. Pegg co-wrote that British TV show and also played “Tim”.

Director Justin Lin appears to be the “Man of the Thirds”, the guy you bring in for film number three in order to breathe new life into a franchise. If anything, this is a flawless example of the tolerant, understanding society of the future which Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry envisaged when he created these iconic characters.

Specifically, the story is sprinkled with some powerful imagery regarding race, sex and gender equality.

We’re grateful any time the narrative slows down and allows the characters to interact and discuss, but it doesn’t happen almost often enough.

Review: While Star Trek Beyond is chock-full of relentless action sequences (the first one, barely ten minutes into the film) and breathtaking space scenes, Lin and the writers of this film have taken things beyond just making stuff blow up in a dramatic fashion.

Of course, there are a lot of factors which may have contributed to the scene being cut.

Four out of five stars.