Review of 'Star Trek Beyond':
In 2009, Paramount Pictures rebooted the Star Trek movie series. Director J J Abrams and scriptwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Transformers series) made Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). For the third movie, Paramount made two disastrous changes. First, Abrams went away to direct Star Wars: Force Awakens. So they replaced him with Justin Lin (Fast & Furious series!). Second, scriptwriters Orci and Kurtzman were replaced with actor Simon Pegg (!!!) and rookie Doug Jung.
Hollywood action movies have a formula: beginning action scene + middle plot sequence + ending action scene. Star Trek Beyond follows this formula, but screws up 2 out of the 3 parts:
a) Beginning – Justin Lin's dal-roti is cars racing on the road, not spaceships fighting in space. So for the opening spacebattle sequence, he copies Michael Bay – yes, the jerky camerawork that gives you a headache. The over-complicated battle scene is badly shot and edited.
b) Middle – There is not much of a plot here. At best, it is a plot for one TV episode. Simon Pegg plays Scotty here, and Benji in the Mission Impossible series. His one-point agenda in writing this script was to give himself a Tom Cruise scene (hanging from a cliff). The entire middle is poorly written and directed.
c) Ending – Here Justin Lin dumps Michael Bay and tries his own thing. The result is a climax that is at least watchable. (Any Beastie Boys fans around? Kirk and co destroy an entire alien invasion fleet just by playing their song 'Sabotage'!)
The cast (Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, etc) do the best they can with this average script. And why hire a good actor like Idris Elba (the villain) just to wear a plastic mask on his face? Heck, I could have done that job (for a lot less money). This year is the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. Hollywood has reduced the classic sci-fi saga to a mediocre product from its assembly line. Creator Gene Roddenberry must be rolling in his grave. Star Trek Beyond joins this year's big-budget duds: Star Wars: Force Awakens, Superman Vs Batman, Avengers: Civil War and X-Men: Apocalypse. Mainstream Hollywood is as dead as mainstream Bollywood. (STB has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 85%. This puts one more question mark on the honesty of American movie critics. The cynics seem to be the only honest guys around)
PS: I felt so guilty about dragging my parents to this B-grade show that in the interval I booked tickets for a Kannada movie for the next day – to atone for my sin :-p
In 2009, Paramount Pictures rebooted the Star Trek movie series. Director J J Abrams and scriptwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Transformers series) made Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). For the third movie, Paramount made two disastrous changes. First, Abrams went away to direct Star Wars: Force Awakens. So they replaced him with Justin Lin (Fast & Furious series!). Second, scriptwriters Orci and Kurtzman were replaced with actor Simon Pegg (!!!) and rookie Doug Jung.
Hollywood action movies have a formula: beginning action scene + middle plot sequence + ending action scene. Star Trek Beyond follows this formula, but screws up 2 out of the 3 parts:
a) Beginning – Justin Lin's dal-roti is cars racing on the road, not spaceships fighting in space. So for the opening spacebattle sequence, he copies Michael Bay – yes, the jerky camerawork that gives you a headache. The over-complicated battle scene is badly shot and edited.
b) Middle – There is not much of a plot here. At best, it is a plot for one TV episode. Simon Pegg plays Scotty here, and Benji in the Mission Impossible series. His one-point agenda in writing this script was to give himself a Tom Cruise scene (hanging from a cliff). The entire middle is poorly written and directed.
c) Ending – Here Justin Lin dumps Michael Bay and tries his own thing. The result is a climax that is at least watchable. (Any Beastie Boys fans around? Kirk and co destroy an entire alien invasion fleet just by playing their song 'Sabotage'!)
The cast (Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, etc) do the best they can with this average script. And why hire a good actor like Idris Elba (the villain) just to wear a plastic mask on his face? Heck, I could have done that job (for a lot less money). This year is the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. Hollywood has reduced the classic sci-fi saga to a mediocre product from its assembly line. Creator Gene Roddenberry must be rolling in his grave. Star Trek Beyond joins this year's big-budget duds: Star Wars: Force Awakens, Superman Vs Batman, Avengers: Civil War and X-Men: Apocalypse. Mainstream Hollywood is as dead as mainstream Bollywood. (STB has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 85%. This puts one more question mark on the honesty of American movie critics. The cynics seem to be the only honest guys around)
PS: I felt so guilty about dragging my parents to this B-grade show that in the interval I booked tickets for a Kannada movie for the next day – to atone for my sin :-p
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