Star Trek Beyond

The latest Star Trek bears a striking resemblance to Star Wars on first impression: lots of worlds, strange creatures and smells, cityscapes and space ships. It's just that what is pure invention and creative joy in Star Wars is rather copied from somewhere in the new adventure of the Enteprise crew and set up to look fantastic to the eye, but not so glorious under the skin. The main plot is not even worth commenting on. Basically, there isn't any – unless you count the bad guy who wants to destroy the world, or in this case the universe. After a great opening action scene and a fantastic gala presentation of the combat base (visual effects artists rulez, camera wtf?) comes an exhausting half hour of hanging out on a semi-deserted planet in blackened filters with one cool painted girl kicking ass all around and still managing to listen to music. The ending returns to warp mode and puts up a solid battle, where it narrowly loses to its predecessors, it’s weaker. Less constricted, less dramatic and less dark, but endearingly mischievous with wonderfully layered characters and a healthy essence of humour. (22/08/2016)

Hit them with MP3s! This year’s first full-blooded blockbuster that kept its promises and remained true to the story. For this anniversary episode, Simon Pegg came up with a story that pays homage to plots from the old series and spiced it up with a few nice (although rather predictable) twists and excellent ideas. The absence of Abrams is obvious. The fatefulness disappeared, but Justin Lin is much better at action scenes (even if an entrance on a motorbike is pretty weird) and provides a slightly different visual feeling. In terms of acting, this is a classic, but the unusual pairing up (Spock and McCoy) is very refreshing, cool lines are abundant. Idris makes a great villain, but you only get to like him toward the end. Sofia Boutella wasn’t as important as I had thought she would be, but Pegg just plain enjoys himself. I thought it good that they didn’t save the Earth, that they meddled in the past, and I liked the doubting sub-story line. I enjoyed it. (16/08/2016)

I'm not setting off into the unknown next time. I have no problem with the characters, the lines are pretty funny too, but the biggest letdown is the action. It lacked any kind of suspense and was quite confusing at times. Only the soundtrack got full stars from me; otherwise this was boring. 2 stars (10/09/2016)

The dynamics of the crew are the main focus here, as the relationships between the characters (and the chemistry between the actors themselves) are the key to the whole story. While the first installment was about finding one's true self and the second deepened the relationships, this time the Enterprise embarks on an episodic space adventure, which unfortunately loses some steam after the intense action in the first encounter with Krall. Luckily, the dialogue does not fall far behind, and the change of gears in the story is quite beneficial, as Scotty and McCoy have more space than in the previous films, while Uhura surprisingly takes a backseat. Without a perfectly graded finish, I'm not sure, I'm not sure. The individual storylines sometimes struggle to come together, the antagonist doesn't have a chance to gain points until his (albeit expected) identity is revealed, and it is only when the dusty motorbike kicks into action that the true cosmic ride begins with all the promised thrills. A stronger 70%, which paradoxically works perfectly as a farewell to the current crew. (25/08/2016)

As a space opera, it's more in the department of Mark Stone than "intended" Star Trek (only introductory ten minutes are in line with the latter one), the pace is furious as in the blockbuster movie and it's packed with action, but the action scenes are way too confusing, and so paradoxically the movie works best as a one-liner comedy, which is not taken seriously, not at all. And it helps a lot. (17/08/2016)