I have always enjoyed anything outer space. This series was particularly entertaining. I loved the Captain - he was great.

Pretty good.

Like the Star Trek of old, these newer ones are just as good. I love them all. I saw something very interesting here and realized James Cameron liked this movie and stole some things from it. In Avatar, not only was Zoe Saldana also in it but in Star Trek Beyond the character, Jaylah was speaking Navi, exactly as Zoe Saldana spoke it in Avatar, and ST Beyond definitely came first. As well, in ST Beyond in the forest scene just before Captain Kirk and company find the wrecked Enterprise there are those little fuzzies floating around just like in Avatar the fuzzies, seeds from the Tree of Souls, are floating around in the forest. Then I discovered this was co-written by the actor Simon Pegg in this movie. I wonder if he and James Cameron had a little conversation about James stealing a few scenes and Saldana too! I love finding those little hidden gems in movies.

For background, I grew up being "forced" to watch Star Trek. My dad's a huge trekkie. I am a child of the '80s, and I will admit, I have no nostalgia for the original Captain Kirk. Point in fact, the original Star Trek is my least favorite Star Trek series, by far. My impression of him as a child was of a smarmy, egotistical man with really weird speech patterns who didn't have the "won't" power to stop falling into the beds of any painted alien who wiggled even vaguely feminine hips at him.

That said... TNG is my personal benchmark for a Star Trek cast with good internal chemistry, and while JJ's reboot doesn't quite capture the golden days of Picard for me, it comes closer than most of the other series. The relationships between the members of the crew, the moments of introspection/insight into characters' thoughts/beliefs in this movie, the predictable and inevitable plot twists, that's what the essence of Star Trek is, to me. Adventure is enjoyable because you get invested in the people having it, and while, sure, there was a LOT of action and violence in this movie compared to a TV series, it didn't feel overdone, because of the relationships along the way. Part of Star Trek's charm as a series, to me, is that it is broad enough, and narrow enough, to adapt to the attitudes of the times and stay successful as a franchise. For all that I personally disliked the "space western" days, they served their purpose and kept people interested in their era.

Is this movie fine cinematic art? Eeeeh. No. I gave it five stars because I enjoyed watching it, and because I feel it was worth the price. There was enough humor/levity to balance the tough decisions and trauma, and there were never any "lull" moments I thought should be trimmed out. I loved the way the music was tied in with the action, the way the score actually felt like it connected with what was going on, instead of simply being background noise to fill the silence. The best thing I can say about a movie is that it is something I would watch again, and for this one, I have.

Rented it for cheap. It was worth it

Five stars just because I'm a huge Star Trek fan and this film really delivers. I don't know about everyone else, but I would have never imagined Lydia Wilson's character, Kalara, dying like she did...but I had really hoped! In fact, thank you Simon Pegg for that scene, it was very satisfying. Of course, nothing could have prepared me for the scene where the Beastie Boys (YES THE BEASTIE BOYS!) literally blew away thousands of bad guys like firecrackers exploding when you light the end of that huge pack of them! It will be a long while before a film scene will come along to top that one! It blows me away just thinking about it!

With that all said, this film has two major flaws. The first is that Krall's elaborate plan is totally unnecessary. Clearly he possessed the capability to destroy the Starbase Yorktown with the the technology he already possessed, there was no need for the ancient bioweapon at all. In fact, given how powerful his forces were, he could have destroyed the starbase with the Enterprise still docked there. His plan made no sense given that the goal could have been achieved sooner and much more easily without the need for the elaborate ruse (kinda of the way Luke blew up the Death Star with one shot).

The second major flaw is that the nearby nebula is uncharted. To say that this thing is nearby the Starbase Yorktown is an understatement, it is literally right beside of it. Like...right...there. The fact that there is a class M planet inside of the nebula would not have gone unnoticed as the nebula would have been explored before a starbase the size of a small planet with millions of inhabitants would have ever come to exist where it was. As Bones stated, it was virtually a "giant snow globe in space," and millions of people lived inside of it. No way that nebula what was close enough to exert a gravitational influence on the "giant snow glove in space" was uncharted.

So, the story had a couple of major flaws. However, in this story's case, the good outweighs the bad ten fold because we get to see a bad guy swatted like a fly, watch the Beastie Boys get all Intergalactic, watch Spock and Bones go through many team building exercises, watch Scottie pilot a torpedo into a real cliffhanger of a situation, and the world finally receives confirmation that strapping a tracking device to your significant other without their knowledge is a good thing. Should we wonder how a hundred year-old starship that was never meant to enter a planet's atmosphere came to rest on the surface of planet so intact that a lone scavenger was able to repair it to the point of it being almost ready to lift off? Should we question whether such a ship would ever really be able to leave the surface of a planet once it was there? Need we question the ridiculousness of that beautiful snow globe? No, no, no, a thousand times no! Just watch it over an over again and marvel at that implausible scene where the Beastie Boys blow the bad guys away while the good guys chair dance! Oh, and don't think about the fact that the ships that are popping like firecrackers at the end were shown to be virtually indestructible earlier in the film because...listen all of y'll it's a sabotage!!!

Good

My favorite Star Trek film.