TMC
11-05-2020, 06:08 AM
https://screenrant.com/best-worst-things-jj-abrams-star-trek-2009-movie/
10
Right: Casting
J.J. Abrams cast all the major Star Trek roles perfectly. The only way he could’ve found better actors than Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Karl Urban to play Kirk, Spock, and Bones respectively is if he’d gone back in time and picked up a young William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley.
From Zoe Saldana as Uhura to John Cho as Sulu to Anton Yelchin as Chekov, Abrams and co. cast a bunch of fantastic up-and-coming stars to round out Trek’s iconic ensemble.
9
Wrong: Focusing On Action Over Philosophy
Gene Roddenberry conceived the distant-future setting of Star Trek as a way of telling thought-provoking stories that posed ethical and philosophical questions about the present day.
The 2009 reboot had no such interest in philosophy. Instead, Abrams bombarded the audience with loud, explosive intergalactic action sequences.
8
Right: Updating The Trek Aesthetic
The primary function of a reboot is to update an intellectual property for the modern day. J.J. Abrams did that wonderfully with Star Trek, taking the big-budget filmmaking skills he honed on Mission: Impossible III and using them to bring Gene Roddenberry’s ‘60s creations into the 21st century.
The redesign of the Enterprise wasn’t to everybody’s tastes, but on the whole, Star Trek’s slick production design beautifully reimagined the original series’ dated look.
7
Wrong: Poorly Choreographed And Edited Fight Scenes
While the space battles in Star Trek are dazzling, the hand-to-hand fight scenes are a huge disappointment. For starters, they’re badly choreographed, so the excitement is missing.
And on top of the bad choreography, they’re poorly edited, too. With choppy cuts and no clarity of movement, viewers are barely able to follow the beats of each fight.
6
Right: The Kirk/Spock Dynamic
In addition to perfectly casting Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto in the roles, 2009’s Star Trek nails the dynamic shared by Kirk and Spock. Pine and Quinto’s chemistry is off the charts and Abrams keeps the story focused on their blossoming friendship.
The great thing about Star Trek is that it doesn’t begin when Kirk and Spock are already best friends; it shows how they met, initially butted heads, and eventually came to love each other.
5
Wrong: Lens Flares
While Martin Scorsese’s filmmaking style is marked by Catholic guilt and the consequences of violence and Guillermo del Toro uses classical genre stories to convey social commentary, one of the defining hallmarks of J.J. Abrams’ directorial style is the lens flare.
Thanks to the spacecraft of the Star Trek universe lighting up the vacuum of space, Abrams filled almost every frame in his 2009 reboot with ugly artificial lens flares.
4
Right: Crossing The Timelines
Abrams gives his reboot a free pass in the 2009 movie by introducing the notion that it takes place in an alternate timeline, so all the classic episodes and previous movies remain untouched.
The director crosses the timelines in the best way possible: a cameoing Leonard Nimoy appears as the original Spock, explaining how the timelines work.
3
Wrong: Time Travel
Having time travel and interdimensional travel in the same movie was too much. The writers should’ve chosen to either have a time-traveling villain or introduce a timeline-crossing Spock, but not both.
A time travel plot was already done spectacularly in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and it was much funnier and less confusing in that movie, too.
2
Right: Satisfying Prequel Elements
Prequels are a risky business, because the audience already knows the ending and there’s a lot to live up to, so they rarely work out. But 2009’s Star Trek is one of the most satisfying prequels ever made.
Instead of focusing on arbitrary elements like where Han Solo’s dice came from (explored in Solo: A Star Wars Story) or how Legolas killed Bolg (explored in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies), Star Trek focuses on what’s important about the characters: how Kirk became the kind of leader he is, the stigma Spock faced for having a human mother, etc.
1
Wrong: Muddled Final Act
The first half of Star Trek hits all the right notes, brilliantly telling the story of how the Enterprise crew came together and when they first set off on their mission to boldly go where no one has gone before.
However, the second half devolves into yet another cliché-ridden sci-fi blockbuster. The plot gets lost in the fray in favor of dizzying action and bountiful CGI.
Star Trek Into Darkness: 5 Things It Got Right (& 5 It Got Wrong) (https://screenrant.com/best-worst-things-star-trek-into-darkness-sequel-movie/)
10
Right: Riveting Opening Set Piece
Like all the best sequels, after laying the groundwork in the original movie, Star Trek Into Darkness dives headfirst into the action. The film starts with a riveting, edge-of-your-seat set piece that plays like an Indiana Jones opening in space.
In the red forests of Nibiru, Kirk and Bones flee from the base of an active volcano with a sacred scroll as legions of Nibirans chase them.
9
Wrong: Dark Tone
Abrams and his team set out to tonally differentiate Star Trek Into Darkness from its predecessor. The problem with that is that the way they chose to do so is the same way almost every other sequel does so — by going darker — and it didn’t work for Trek.
Like Man of Steel’s uncharacteristically gloomy take on the Superman myth and Fant4stic’s weirdly body horror-inspired take on Marvel’s first family, a dark tone doesn’t suit the Star Trek universe.
8
Right: Michael Giacchino’s Score
Michael Giacchino wrote a great score for 2009’s Star Trek, giving the franchise a hummable new theme, but he wrote an even greater score for its 2013 sequel.
The action sequences in Star Trek Into Darkness wouldn’t be anywhere near as compelling without Giacchino’s music playing over them.
7
Wrong: The Khan Twist
Midway through Star Trek Into Darkness, the bad guy John Harrison is revealed to be Khan Noonien Singh, the iconic villain from the first Star Trek movie sequel. The problem with this twist is that it makes no sense to passive viewers who don’t know who Khan is.
And Trekkies who do know who Khan is could see the twist coming from a mile away, despite J.J. Abrams handcuffing the script to the guy who brought it Benedict Cumberbatch, because it was painfully obvious.
6
Right: Casting Benedict Cumberbatch
The one saving grace of the John Harrison character is that he’s played by Benedict Cumberbatch. He might be written as a one-note baddie who could’ve been ripped straight from any other factory-line Hollywood sequel, but Cumberbatch brings enough nuance to keep the character interesting.
Before Cumberbatch was cast to play Doctor Strange in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Harrison was his highest-profile blockbuster role, and he didn’t disappoint.
5
Wrong: Getting Caught Was Part Of The Plan
Ever since the Joker got arrested on purpose in The Dark Knight, getting caught has been a part of just about every blockbuster villain’s masterplan.
Silva in Skyfall, Loki in The Avengers, and even Bane in The Dark Knight Rises all got captured as part of their plan. And then, after all those examples had numbed the minds of moviegoers, John Harrison got caught on purpose in Star Trek Into Darkness.
4
Right: Dazzling Visual Effects
s
One of the most common criticisms faced by J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek movies is that they rely too much on visual effects. But they’re big-budget blockbusters about warring factions in the heavily populated outer space of the distant future. What did critics expect to see?
The effects in Abrams’ Trek movies, particularly Into Darkness, are eye-popping. Every action scene is a dazzling spectacle — lens flares notwithstanding.
3
Wrong: Alice Eve’s Gratuitous Underwear Shot
There’s a gratuitous shot in Star Trek Into Darkness in which Alice Eve’s character Carol Marcus strips down to her underwear for absolutely no reason other than the film wanting to objectify her.
Writer-producer Damon Lindelof apologized for the scene, while J.J. Abrams tried to defend it on Conan by screening a deleted scene of Benedict Cumberbatch in the shower, which didn’t work because: a) it was deleted, so it doesn’t count, and b) “Sure, my movie objectifies women, but it almost objectified men, too,” isn’t a valid excuse.
2
Right: The Earth-Set Finale
In Star Trek Into Darkness’ big finale, Khan crashes the Vengeance into San Francisco in the hopes of destroying Starfleet’s headquarters as Spock races through the sprawling futuristic metropolis to stop him.
For all the spacefaring antics of this franchise, scaling back the action in the third act and focusing on the characters had the surprising effect of making the story feel even bigger.
1
Wrong: Whitewashing Khan
Khan was pretty specifically conceived as a non-white character. He was introduced as a Sikh was said to have ruled over a lot of eastern Eurasia. So, naturally, the casting of white actor Benedict Cumberbatch in the role drew some criticisms of whitewashing.
The producers were reportedly concerned about casting an actor of Middle Eastern descent as a terrorist, but representation of people of color is virtually non-existent in Hollywood blockbusters. The last thing big-budget cinema needed was another white guy.
Star Trek Beyond: 5 Things It Got Right (& 5 It Got Wrong) (https://screenrant.com/best-worst-things-star-trek-beyond-justin-lin-threequel-movie/)
10
Right: Returning To The Light Tone
J.J. Abrams gave Star Trek Into Darkness an unusually dark tone in the vein of Man of Steel and it didn’t work for a lot of Trekkies. Fortunately, the studio took note and returned to the franchise’s lighthearted tone in Star Trek Beyond.
Justin Lin brought a vibrant color palette to every big set piece in the threequel, while superfans Simon Pegg and Doug Jung’s affectionate script brought some much-needed humor back to the Trek universe.
9
Wrong: Forgettable Plot
The plot of Star Trek Beyond is almost entirely forgettable. Try and remember what happens. It’s impossible, because the movie didn’t leave an impression quite like fellow trilogy closers Logan, The Bourne Ultimatum, or Revenge of the Sith did.
In crafting the story outline, the writers seem to have plucked a bunch of random plot devices from the sci-fi playbook and loosely arranged them into a narrative throughline.
8
Right: Idris Elba As Krall
Although it doesn’t receive the criticism as much as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Star Trek movies have a villain problem. For every Khan or Borg Queen or Valeris, there are a dozen Shinzons or Syboks or Gods.
But thanks to some genuinely surprising plot twists and a captivating performance by Idris Elba, Star Trek Beyond’s Krall is one of the franchise’s greatest villains.
7
Wrong: Lack Of Social Commentary
A huge point in Star Trek’s favor in its ongoing debate against fellow space-set saga Star Wars is that Trek was designed as a vehicle for social commentary. Gene Roddenberry used his vast fictional universe to explore contemporary issues.
However, despite dealing with such lofty subjects as wartime protocols and bioweaponry, Star Trek Beyond is completely lacking in social commentary, instead settling for mere space-bound spectacle.
6
Right: Exciting Action
When Paramount tapped the Fast & Furious franchise’s most prolific filmmaker Justin Lin to replace J.J. Abrams as the director of the third Star Trek reboot movie, the studio knew it could count on him for one thing: big, bold action sequences.
And that’s exactly what they got. Lin brought an action-oriented sensibility to Star Trek Beyond that made its set pieces uniquely dazzling in relation to their past counterparts.
5
Wrong: Lazy Storytelling
While Simon Pegg and Doug Jung’s Beyond script has a lot of love for the Star Trek universe, it doesn’t have the arguably more important element of a well-crafted plot. All the obstacles that the plot puts in the way of the characters are easily overcome.
When Scotty tells Kirk that getting an old starship moving will be impossible, it proves to be possible almost instantly and the problem goes away before it even becomes a problem.
4
Right: Introducing Jaylah
Simon Pegg and Doug Jung’s script for Star Trek Beyond introduced a new character to the franchise: a lone-wolf alien scavenger named Jaylah. It’s tough to bring new characters into a world as unique and iconic as Star Trek’s, but Jaylah proved to be a terrific addition to the ensemble.
Sofia Boutella, who has quickly made a name for herself as one of Hollywood’s foremost badasses with roles in Kingsman and Atomic Blonde, gave a fantastic performance as Jaylah.
3
Wrong: Beastie Boys On The Soundtrack
When the teaser trailer for Star Trek Beyond was released, Trekkies were outraged by the misplaced use of the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” on the soundtrack. Simon Pegg assured fans that the use of the song was just the marketing team’s way of telling audiences they’d have fun if they bought a ticket and not an accurate representation of the movie.
But of course, when the movie was released, it turned out that “Sabotage” was a major plot point. The heroes even use it to defeat the bad guys in the final battle. It doesn’t just play on the soundtrack; the actual song is their weapon.
2
Right: Recapturing The Feel Of An Episode
For the first time in the “Kelvin Timeline” reboot series, Star Trek Beyond actually felt like an old episode of the TV series, following the classic structure and playing in Trek’s episodic sandbox.
It’s usually a negative thing when a feature film adapted from a TV show just feels like an extended episode, but when the TV show being adapted has the epic scale and limitless storytelling potential of Star Trek, it’s hardly a bad thing to recapture that feeling.
1
Wrong: Playing It Safe
At the beginning of Star Trek Beyond, a fleet of small ships attack the Enterprise and rip it to shreds, killing most of the crew members on-board and sending the few survivors of the ship crashing onto an uncharted planet, where most of them are promptly captured by the villain.
Despite the huge stakes established in this first act, the movie plays it depressingly safe. There are no hugely affecting character deaths or shocking plot turns along the way; it’s just another agreeable, by-the-numbers blockbuster.
10
Right: Casting
J.J. Abrams cast all the major Star Trek roles perfectly. The only way he could’ve found better actors than Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Karl Urban to play Kirk, Spock, and Bones respectively is if he’d gone back in time and picked up a young William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley.
From Zoe Saldana as Uhura to John Cho as Sulu to Anton Yelchin as Chekov, Abrams and co. cast a bunch of fantastic up-and-coming stars to round out Trek’s iconic ensemble.
9
Wrong: Focusing On Action Over Philosophy
Gene Roddenberry conceived the distant-future setting of Star Trek as a way of telling thought-provoking stories that posed ethical and philosophical questions about the present day.
The 2009 reboot had no such interest in philosophy. Instead, Abrams bombarded the audience with loud, explosive intergalactic action sequences.
8
Right: Updating The Trek Aesthetic
The primary function of a reboot is to update an intellectual property for the modern day. J.J. Abrams did that wonderfully with Star Trek, taking the big-budget filmmaking skills he honed on Mission: Impossible III and using them to bring Gene Roddenberry’s ‘60s creations into the 21st century.
The redesign of the Enterprise wasn’t to everybody’s tastes, but on the whole, Star Trek’s slick production design beautifully reimagined the original series’ dated look.
7
Wrong: Poorly Choreographed And Edited Fight Scenes
While the space battles in Star Trek are dazzling, the hand-to-hand fight scenes are a huge disappointment. For starters, they’re badly choreographed, so the excitement is missing.
And on top of the bad choreography, they’re poorly edited, too. With choppy cuts and no clarity of movement, viewers are barely able to follow the beats of each fight.
6
Right: The Kirk/Spock Dynamic
In addition to perfectly casting Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto in the roles, 2009’s Star Trek nails the dynamic shared by Kirk and Spock. Pine and Quinto’s chemistry is off the charts and Abrams keeps the story focused on their blossoming friendship.
The great thing about Star Trek is that it doesn’t begin when Kirk and Spock are already best friends; it shows how they met, initially butted heads, and eventually came to love each other.
5
Wrong: Lens Flares
While Martin Scorsese’s filmmaking style is marked by Catholic guilt and the consequences of violence and Guillermo del Toro uses classical genre stories to convey social commentary, one of the defining hallmarks of J.J. Abrams’ directorial style is the lens flare.
Thanks to the spacecraft of the Star Trek universe lighting up the vacuum of space, Abrams filled almost every frame in his 2009 reboot with ugly artificial lens flares.
4
Right: Crossing The Timelines
Abrams gives his reboot a free pass in the 2009 movie by introducing the notion that it takes place in an alternate timeline, so all the classic episodes and previous movies remain untouched.
The director crosses the timelines in the best way possible: a cameoing Leonard Nimoy appears as the original Spock, explaining how the timelines work.
3
Wrong: Time Travel
Having time travel and interdimensional travel in the same movie was too much. The writers should’ve chosen to either have a time-traveling villain or introduce a timeline-crossing Spock, but not both.
A time travel plot was already done spectacularly in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and it was much funnier and less confusing in that movie, too.
2
Right: Satisfying Prequel Elements
Prequels are a risky business, because the audience already knows the ending and there’s a lot to live up to, so they rarely work out. But 2009’s Star Trek is one of the most satisfying prequels ever made.
Instead of focusing on arbitrary elements like where Han Solo’s dice came from (explored in Solo: A Star Wars Story) or how Legolas killed Bolg (explored in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies), Star Trek focuses on what’s important about the characters: how Kirk became the kind of leader he is, the stigma Spock faced for having a human mother, etc.
1
Wrong: Muddled Final Act
The first half of Star Trek hits all the right notes, brilliantly telling the story of how the Enterprise crew came together and when they first set off on their mission to boldly go where no one has gone before.
However, the second half devolves into yet another cliché-ridden sci-fi blockbuster. The plot gets lost in the fray in favor of dizzying action and bountiful CGI.
Star Trek Into Darkness: 5 Things It Got Right (& 5 It Got Wrong) (https://screenrant.com/best-worst-things-star-trek-into-darkness-sequel-movie/)
10
Right: Riveting Opening Set Piece
Like all the best sequels, after laying the groundwork in the original movie, Star Trek Into Darkness dives headfirst into the action. The film starts with a riveting, edge-of-your-seat set piece that plays like an Indiana Jones opening in space.
In the red forests of Nibiru, Kirk and Bones flee from the base of an active volcano with a sacred scroll as legions of Nibirans chase them.
9
Wrong: Dark Tone
Abrams and his team set out to tonally differentiate Star Trek Into Darkness from its predecessor. The problem with that is that the way they chose to do so is the same way almost every other sequel does so — by going darker — and it didn’t work for Trek.
Like Man of Steel’s uncharacteristically gloomy take on the Superman myth and Fant4stic’s weirdly body horror-inspired take on Marvel’s first family, a dark tone doesn’t suit the Star Trek universe.
8
Right: Michael Giacchino’s Score
Michael Giacchino wrote a great score for 2009’s Star Trek, giving the franchise a hummable new theme, but he wrote an even greater score for its 2013 sequel.
The action sequences in Star Trek Into Darkness wouldn’t be anywhere near as compelling without Giacchino’s music playing over them.
7
Wrong: The Khan Twist
Midway through Star Trek Into Darkness, the bad guy John Harrison is revealed to be Khan Noonien Singh, the iconic villain from the first Star Trek movie sequel. The problem with this twist is that it makes no sense to passive viewers who don’t know who Khan is.
And Trekkies who do know who Khan is could see the twist coming from a mile away, despite J.J. Abrams handcuffing the script to the guy who brought it Benedict Cumberbatch, because it was painfully obvious.
6
Right: Casting Benedict Cumberbatch
The one saving grace of the John Harrison character is that he’s played by Benedict Cumberbatch. He might be written as a one-note baddie who could’ve been ripped straight from any other factory-line Hollywood sequel, but Cumberbatch brings enough nuance to keep the character interesting.
Before Cumberbatch was cast to play Doctor Strange in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Harrison was his highest-profile blockbuster role, and he didn’t disappoint.
5
Wrong: Getting Caught Was Part Of The Plan
Ever since the Joker got arrested on purpose in The Dark Knight, getting caught has been a part of just about every blockbuster villain’s masterplan.
Silva in Skyfall, Loki in The Avengers, and even Bane in The Dark Knight Rises all got captured as part of their plan. And then, after all those examples had numbed the minds of moviegoers, John Harrison got caught on purpose in Star Trek Into Darkness.
4
Right: Dazzling Visual Effects
s
One of the most common criticisms faced by J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek movies is that they rely too much on visual effects. But they’re big-budget blockbusters about warring factions in the heavily populated outer space of the distant future. What did critics expect to see?
The effects in Abrams’ Trek movies, particularly Into Darkness, are eye-popping. Every action scene is a dazzling spectacle — lens flares notwithstanding.
3
Wrong: Alice Eve’s Gratuitous Underwear Shot
There’s a gratuitous shot in Star Trek Into Darkness in which Alice Eve’s character Carol Marcus strips down to her underwear for absolutely no reason other than the film wanting to objectify her.
Writer-producer Damon Lindelof apologized for the scene, while J.J. Abrams tried to defend it on Conan by screening a deleted scene of Benedict Cumberbatch in the shower, which didn’t work because: a) it was deleted, so it doesn’t count, and b) “Sure, my movie objectifies women, but it almost objectified men, too,” isn’t a valid excuse.
2
Right: The Earth-Set Finale
In Star Trek Into Darkness’ big finale, Khan crashes the Vengeance into San Francisco in the hopes of destroying Starfleet’s headquarters as Spock races through the sprawling futuristic metropolis to stop him.
For all the spacefaring antics of this franchise, scaling back the action in the third act and focusing on the characters had the surprising effect of making the story feel even bigger.
1
Wrong: Whitewashing Khan
Khan was pretty specifically conceived as a non-white character. He was introduced as a Sikh was said to have ruled over a lot of eastern Eurasia. So, naturally, the casting of white actor Benedict Cumberbatch in the role drew some criticisms of whitewashing.
The producers were reportedly concerned about casting an actor of Middle Eastern descent as a terrorist, but representation of people of color is virtually non-existent in Hollywood blockbusters. The last thing big-budget cinema needed was another white guy.
Star Trek Beyond: 5 Things It Got Right (& 5 It Got Wrong) (https://screenrant.com/best-worst-things-star-trek-beyond-justin-lin-threequel-movie/)
10
Right: Returning To The Light Tone
J.J. Abrams gave Star Trek Into Darkness an unusually dark tone in the vein of Man of Steel and it didn’t work for a lot of Trekkies. Fortunately, the studio took note and returned to the franchise’s lighthearted tone in Star Trek Beyond.
Justin Lin brought a vibrant color palette to every big set piece in the threequel, while superfans Simon Pegg and Doug Jung’s affectionate script brought some much-needed humor back to the Trek universe.
9
Wrong: Forgettable Plot
The plot of Star Trek Beyond is almost entirely forgettable. Try and remember what happens. It’s impossible, because the movie didn’t leave an impression quite like fellow trilogy closers Logan, The Bourne Ultimatum, or Revenge of the Sith did.
In crafting the story outline, the writers seem to have plucked a bunch of random plot devices from the sci-fi playbook and loosely arranged them into a narrative throughline.
8
Right: Idris Elba As Krall
Although it doesn’t receive the criticism as much as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Star Trek movies have a villain problem. For every Khan or Borg Queen or Valeris, there are a dozen Shinzons or Syboks or Gods.
But thanks to some genuinely surprising plot twists and a captivating performance by Idris Elba, Star Trek Beyond’s Krall is one of the franchise’s greatest villains.
7
Wrong: Lack Of Social Commentary
A huge point in Star Trek’s favor in its ongoing debate against fellow space-set saga Star Wars is that Trek was designed as a vehicle for social commentary. Gene Roddenberry used his vast fictional universe to explore contemporary issues.
However, despite dealing with such lofty subjects as wartime protocols and bioweaponry, Star Trek Beyond is completely lacking in social commentary, instead settling for mere space-bound spectacle.
6
Right: Exciting Action
When Paramount tapped the Fast & Furious franchise’s most prolific filmmaker Justin Lin to replace J.J. Abrams as the director of the third Star Trek reboot movie, the studio knew it could count on him for one thing: big, bold action sequences.
And that’s exactly what they got. Lin brought an action-oriented sensibility to Star Trek Beyond that made its set pieces uniquely dazzling in relation to their past counterparts.
5
Wrong: Lazy Storytelling
While Simon Pegg and Doug Jung’s Beyond script has a lot of love for the Star Trek universe, it doesn’t have the arguably more important element of a well-crafted plot. All the obstacles that the plot puts in the way of the characters are easily overcome.
When Scotty tells Kirk that getting an old starship moving will be impossible, it proves to be possible almost instantly and the problem goes away before it even becomes a problem.
4
Right: Introducing Jaylah
Simon Pegg and Doug Jung’s script for Star Trek Beyond introduced a new character to the franchise: a lone-wolf alien scavenger named Jaylah. It’s tough to bring new characters into a world as unique and iconic as Star Trek’s, but Jaylah proved to be a terrific addition to the ensemble.
Sofia Boutella, who has quickly made a name for herself as one of Hollywood’s foremost badasses with roles in Kingsman and Atomic Blonde, gave a fantastic performance as Jaylah.
3
Wrong: Beastie Boys On The Soundtrack
When the teaser trailer for Star Trek Beyond was released, Trekkies were outraged by the misplaced use of the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” on the soundtrack. Simon Pegg assured fans that the use of the song was just the marketing team’s way of telling audiences they’d have fun if they bought a ticket and not an accurate representation of the movie.
But of course, when the movie was released, it turned out that “Sabotage” was a major plot point. The heroes even use it to defeat the bad guys in the final battle. It doesn’t just play on the soundtrack; the actual song is their weapon.
2
Right: Recapturing The Feel Of An Episode
For the first time in the “Kelvin Timeline” reboot series, Star Trek Beyond actually felt like an old episode of the TV series, following the classic structure and playing in Trek’s episodic sandbox.
It’s usually a negative thing when a feature film adapted from a TV show just feels like an extended episode, but when the TV show being adapted has the epic scale and limitless storytelling potential of Star Trek, it’s hardly a bad thing to recapture that feeling.
1
Wrong: Playing It Safe
At the beginning of Star Trek Beyond, a fleet of small ships attack the Enterprise and rip it to shreds, killing most of the crew members on-board and sending the few survivors of the ship crashing onto an uncharted planet, where most of them are promptly captured by the villain.
Despite the huge stakes established in this first act, the movie plays it depressingly safe. There are no hugely affecting character deaths or shocking plot turns along the way; it’s just another agreeable, by-the-numbers blockbuster.