It seems the idea that Gene Rodenberry conceived of a more grounded approach to sci-fi with “Star Trek” was tossed out the window when Paramount decided to reboot the franchise for the big screen. J.J. Abrams‘ 2009 movie managed to strike a good balance between honoring the original property, and updating it for the modern blockbuster age. But that delicate touch was lost with “Star Trek Into Darkness,” which if you switched out the characters for anybody else, would just be another generic sci-fi movie with a bad twist. And at least to my eyes, things don’t look much better for “Star Trek Beyond” which seems to even further juice the tentpole clichés while losing the very spirit of “Star Trek” at the same time. And according to the new Captain Kirk, Chris Pine, it’s simply not possible to make anything too smart with the property these days.
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“You can’t make a cerebral ‘Star Trek’ in 2016. It just wouldn’t work in today’s marketplace. You can hide things in there – ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ has crazy, really demanding questions and themes, but you have to hide it under the guise of wham-bam explosions and planets blowing up. It’s very, very tricky,” the actor told SFX (via JoBlo). “The question that our movie poses is ‘Does the Federation mean anything?’ And in a world where everybody’s trying to kill one another all of the time, that’s an important thing. Is working together important? Should we all go our separate ways? Does being united against something mean anything?”
I don’t know about you, but if even Captain Kirk thinks “Star Trek” can’t address important ideas without dressing it up with explosions, then I don’t have much faith “Star Trek Beyond” will be much of an improvement over ‘Darkness’ (and sorry Chris Pine, that movie was more dumb than deep).
“Star Trek Beyond” opens on July 22nd, with Rihanna’s music video for the movie, “Sledgehammer,” debuting on IMAX screens this week. Check out some new TV spots and a Rihanna featurette below.