Like Beyond… But Better
It didn’t gel with every fan but, for this particular writer, Star Trek Beyond got a lot of things right after Into Darkness made some missteps. Thanks to director Justin Lin and screenwriters Pegg and Jung, it felt like the rebooted series was looking to The Original Series a little bit more than it had before, as well as combining that with modern moviemaking sensibilities, which made for a more authentically Trek experience.
Instead of being stuck on the Enterprise or being mostly set on Earth like previous films, Beyond properly got to grips with the team’s five-year mission to explore the final frontier by seeing them marooned on an exotic, backwater planet. What’s more, getting rid of the Enterprise was a great move, as it meant that the story focused on the characters themselves as they had to prove their bravery and ingenuity in the direst of situations. Plus, as already stated, there was also some social commentary through its villain.
All in all, then, this was exactly the right bag of ingredients to make a great Trek film – Beyond was probably the best one in decades. However, there’s always room to improve and Star Trek 4 could definitely rise above its predecessor if it continues on this path and goes on to capture the ethos and philosophy of the TV series. There was potential to do that in what we knew of the previously established plot, and while whether that ends up going ahead or not remains to be seen, fingers crossed that the filmmakers are able to pull something special together.