Star Trek Beyond... and back... and again... and up.... and around....and nauseous....

First off - when the studio says "here's a trailer for the new ST series" - we need a little more than just table-top CG! of a ship. It means you basically have NOTHING done but want to say you have something. I like the triangle back to the Discovery like the old concept design for ST2 but.... give us a little more to think about.  Kids can do graphics like that without hard work so CGI is not a trailer anymore.

Anyways - so saw the new Star Trek Beyond movie. Quite fun. Good feel to the writing and it really felt like an episode of TOS but updated with good effects and balance to the cast. Simon Pegg seems to have the right flare for it.... glad old JJ is away from the helm now....

Good jokes and lines. Good homages to TOS: Yorktown, Ent-A, 'starship class', Xindi (Enterprise reference), etc. Real fans wrote this.

Sure hope they don't do the cliché of the Enterprise being the only ship... oh wait, yep, there it is.

Found the visuals very weird with short focal length (why was there a 10 second close up of the starship neck... doing nothing) but overly twisty... but enjoyable. It felt like the screen was cropped or something - didn't feel expansive enough.  Sad to see the old girl go down in flames... but intact enough to flip and squish the femme fatale.  Really Kirk, you didn't think she was faking from the beginning - didn't seem to say 'hey, I never saw swarm ships like that before' - she just was silent.

Good parallels of ST2, 3, and 4.. (villain from past for revenge, bye-bye ship, outfox aliens on a planet, see Ent-A arrive.) but I am tired of them crashing ships into cities...and very very very tired of swarms of CGI-anything being the villain weapon.  So if the Feds can make such a huge bio-sphere station... why are they so short of ships? More metal in those entry tubes than in the whole Starfleet.

I loved the Jaylah character but she seems a little clean to have been alone on the planet for years. Franklin seems a little too flyable too fast. Swarm is allergic to Beastie Boys VHF? Really?

So Indris Elba is great when in makeup, but ineffective when re-humanised? Found the whole fight in the glass tower disappointing. He only had 3 men left - but he had an army? He recruited others, had a swarm of ships, spied on the Fed station, yet could only launch a plan when he found one little piece? Classic super-villain writing. No one thought - hey, maybe we shoot the glass tube and end the poison threat - can't be too hard to make a new one.

Overall, really enjoyed it.... the logical mind takes over on the ride home.  Glad to see a strong entry to keep the franchise going.