Star Trek Beyond (BD/DVD/Digital HD Combo)

As I sit down to write this "review" of Beyond I'm listening to the soundtrack for the first time on Spotify, and I think the sentiments it's evoking are basically the same for the movie. It has all the traits of the new films but adds in far more Trek "flavoring" which seems very familiar to fans and should satisfy them even more. Far from making it more like Guardians of the Galaxy, the movie went the opposite direction, making it for fans..something I wasn't really originally expecting but may also be affecting it's box office. The 6 original films had a certain "feel". The Next Generation films had one film that felt somewhat like the older films, then 3 with their own tone. The JJ Abrams era began with a retro-original series reawakening of the Roddenberry mission statement from the series "Bible": action-adventure, but with a big budget, huge scale that couldn't have even been imagined with ST: The Motion Picture, the most epic of the original film series. Star Trek had come of age. No longer was it the bastard stepchild of the studio which was the product of complex cost-to-profit ratios that made the movies feel like glossier tv episodes. No one can say that the first two JJ movies do not have differences beyond all the callbacks to TOS however. In the roughly 2 hour run-time for Beyond, the entire world of Trek we saw in hundreds of episodes has to be distilled down from 4 hours of film. That's the entire backdrop of this new universe. It's ripe for all sorts of nit-picking just outside of the story. As such, the movies took awhile to get more quiet and intimate...to have our characters pair off, talk with each other more and really work as a team. So despite two great films in this new "trilogy", with the two over-arching themes being Kirk's development and Spock's trials and tribulations, the films were simply two very well made stand-alones. Beyond brings them both together. In his performance, Pine is now uncannily TOS Kirk. The development of Kirk is happening just as I predicted it: We have the brash, immature Kirk in ST09; the more seasoned but still petulant Kirk who acts on impulse in STID, he makes mistakes but learned from them at the end of the movie; to finally the more developed Kirk who would appear to us to be Kirk from the TV show. This is the exact impression I get from Kirk in Beyond. For all intents and purposes, he starts out in Beyond as the diplomat from certain TOS episodes, negotiating a treaty. His scenes with Bones recall similar soul searching from other movies and Tv episodes..he has gotten past the excitement of exploration and now, despite the technology and volume on a huge starship, he is feeling the oppression of being alone in deep space and encountering numerous dangers that take a toll on one's mindset: a theme that runs parallel to the other captain from Beyond: Balthazar Edison, but in a more extreme fashion. He is the quintessential crazy captain...another staple of the original series. This recognition near the end of the movie dramatically serves to strengthen our empathy with another captain who has gone rogue, but really is just a step or two away from the captains we identify with such as Kirk. Spock's story is less relevant to the film overall, but provides us with further character development as well as memorializing an icon of pop culture. That this film took time to have both a scene on Yorktown and also later in the film to honor Spock Prime/Nimoy is to it's great credit. Justin Lin's direction emphasizing Spock's "aloneness" as he came to grips with Spock's death is terrific. Quinto's Spock has a relevatory moment towards the end of the film as he realizes he doesn't want to leave the Enterprise for New Vulcan. It's one of his best acting moments. Other characters are well served and contribute to the plot moving forward but the real fun is watching them work together. This has really become a family and it appears the off-camera "team" gets along way better than the original actors. Of obvious note, McCoy gets more screen time here and is the heart and soul of many a scene. Jaylah is a welcome addition to the characters, and it's nice to see another female character take center stage. She's a renaissance woman! Engineer, ninja, tattoo artist, music fan. The plot here is not complex..it IS a revenge story so again with these things, it's the telling that's more important than the details. Is it any more or less compelling than Khan? Nero? Shinzon? Khan lost an empire and a wife. Nero, an entire world. Shinzon was emo. Krall couldn't adapt to a new way of life. He existed at the time of a great paradigm shift from a regional space culture with Earth centrism, to an interplanetary UN (ironically these points are more relevant than ever with divisive conservative movements all over the world trying to break up factions of human beings. The message of unity in this movie is so refreshing and a metaphor for the UFP itself!). He seemed to go along with it all, but when his ship crashed, and no one came to help him and his crew, he went off the deep end. His mind twisted by alien tech, loneliness and philosophical differences. Despite being able to leave at some point, his twisted mind led him to stay and plot against the UFP. Unlike some reactions to the film, I think this background to an "alien" character actually helps the film. When I saw Idris's face, I knew there would be more depth to the madness. To my surprise, Krall was in many more scenes of the film than expected, contrary to reports he disappeared in parts of the film..he is there throughout and very much an acting presence. Another thing I like about Krall and the Swarm: I'm just so happy it's not Klingons or Romulans and that both their appearance and tech are totally different. It's so different, the Enterporise is not equipped to handle an attack by so many ships at one time. It's truly an original sequence for Star Trek and rarely seen anywhere else on film. The attack on the Enterprise was much longer than I anticipated and a much better set-piece sequence than even the commercials let on. Never have we seen movement through and around the ship with such detail..crewman running through corridors seen from outside, panning, sweeping shots of relative positions of what is occurring. Yes we've seen ship destruction before, but again how was it accomplished? Surely this is better than any similar scenes we've seen before. So we have terrific character work, a good message and a good "villain". Does it pay off? Well there is a "MacGuffin". That's not a dirty word, and of course the popularizer of the term: Alfred Hitchcock, used them more than a few times. It serves well enough to provide character motives for the rescue mission and for everyone meeting up at Yorktown at the climax. It also provides us with one of the more graphic scenes in Star Trek: the torture and killing of several crewman with the new weapon and Krall's vampiric like absorbption of living beings. The main question here is a bit of a plot hole: Why does Krall need this weapon if his ships can already overwhelm the Yorktown defenses? Ultimately, he does wind up needing it because of what happens to his ships.. As someone pointed out on Twitter, Beyond is the first time there is a movie plot where a black man has been defeated by white rappers. Ironically, a review of mine online for the ST: Voyager TV show episode: "The Swarm" which has similar aliens and technological connection between their swarm-like ships, declared simply jamming the frequency between Swarm ships was too easy a resolution to the puzzle...and of course they used a similar solution here, but this time with VHF 20th century classics. This is one of the weaker points of the movie though the result is an epic chain reaction. There probably is very litle science behind ships bursting into flames from sound waves unless it somehow affected the mechanism used to generate them as they shut off abruptly. The final scenes in Starbase Yorktown were more compelling. Krall's fighter chase was thrilling with some of the most spectacular visuals in Trek history, and the scenes of the fight and chase in lower gravity between Kirk and Krall were something closer to what I would have liked for Kirk's death in Generations if the fight had boiled down to fisticuffs as it did. Another one of the best scenes ever in Trek history occurs at the end of the film..a time-lapse build of the NEW Enterprise-A. Off the new beauty sails into the darkness and mystery of space. The ending re-affirms both the Star Trek family, and symbollically, the theme of unity Yorktown represents. Both multi-cultural, both working together to make a better universe. A great, though not perfect film. Miscellany: Justin Lin was a great choice for director. By comparison, the outside "action" director Stuart Baird really infused very little style or nuance into Nemesis despite making the best looking film since STTMP. Lin is no one trick pony. The "look" of the movie was darker and more muted but still had a technological glow to it. We had some of the best scenes of Starfleet and Federation world-building ever. Starbase Yorktown was a revelation. A technological wonder. The cinematography was probably the best of any ST movie. Despite a different FX company, the movie continued and probably exceeded the very real looking, solid CGI work that we saw in Into Darkness. I might give a slight edge to the spaceship work of ILM, but everything else was probably better. The "Easter eggs" were fantastic, and definitely increased my enjoyment of the film because of the 50th anniversary. My favorite was possibly the nod to "Corbomite Maneuver" and the unexpected byproducts of exploration..complete surprise of the scale of a situation. The aforementioned soundtrack. It's simply the best one since the 1980s. Nostalgia fuel. My only decision...I rated it an "A" on a poll elsewhere, but I feel it's on parallel with ST09 in overall quality, so I had to decide if it will replace that as my number 1 film in Star Trek history. At this time I'm going to put it there, though I'll make a more concrete decision after I see it in the theater again. 1. STB 2. ST09 3. STID 4. STII 5. STFC 6. STIV 7. STNEM 8. STIII 9. STVI 10. STINS 11. STTMP 12. STGEN 13. STV

After wrestling my copy of "ST:B" away from my husband (he wanted to wrap it and put it under the Christmas tree), I've now watched it several times. I LOVE this movie, make no mistake. But I posted/blogged about it all year, and wanted to give a better review than one word/sentence, or rehashing the whole plot. I think the theme of this wonderful movie was PERSPECTIVE. It starts at the very beginning, as Capt. Kirk is trying to negotiate a peace treaty with boisterous, angry animalistic humanoids - who are not nearly as fearsome as they first appear. Through the mesmerizing "swarm attack", (where the CGI guys probably studied Starling Murmuration: [...] ) That was the maximum perspective. The minimum swarm perspective was much more personal, and dreadful to watch. It is a superb action/adventure within its Star Trek framework, and Director Justin Lin got excellent performances out of the entire cast. Simon Pegg turned in a great script, and even the set designers made the Canadian scenery look interestingly-alien. There were even soulful scenes touching on Leonard Nimoy's death (where the original Spock dies in the movie too) that radically changes Quinto's Spock's perspective on his life. And Anton Yelchin (Checkov), killed in horrible accident after filming was finished, got another touching send-off, in an escape pod that ejected into a "heavenly" blue sky with clouds, since the Enterprise was close enough to the planet at that point, instead of just space-and-stars. Very nice touches. I liked the villain, Krall, more than others did. To me, he represented the worst kind of enemy: one of "their own" who felt betrayed, a "soldier" who knew everything the crew did, and used it against them to carry out his terrible revenge. His fistfight with Captain Kirk on a ceiling in low gravity was a nice new-perspective touch too. And I would have liked to have known more about his shape-shifting. The new character of Jayla was a mysterious, multi-faceted alien, that Chris Pine's Kirk was obviously attracted too. He even saved her from a kick-boxing fight, where she held her own with one of Krall's henchmen. Although what they do with the character at the end, doesn't leave much room for a Kirk/Jayla romance in the near future. As the Federation recognizes her skills and is ready to engulf and re-brand her as "theirs." And that strange romance between Spock and Uhura became a little clearer with this movie's "perspective." Spock had given her an ancestral necklace that turned out to be a life-saving device for the whole crew. So this pair has a tangled relationship, the Brain and the Beauty, as Spock starts to drift away with his overwhelming concern for New Vulcan. (Too bad they killed off Krall, he seemed to have the hots for Uhura, and never put her in direct danger.) One intriguing mystery is the invisibility-cloak over the USS Franklin. In this new Kelvin timeline, does the Federation (or Jayla's technology) have a "hologram cloaking device" before the Romulons/Klingons' Bird of Prey does? That was featured in the first movies with the Classic Crew? I'd really like to see where THAT goes! Terrific movie, where the Enterprise crew finally finds their exploration footing, and a new perspective on what their "job" in outer space is all about. Especially with new realistic and relatable aliens that confound, infuriate, backstab - or help save the day. Kudos!

I think I liked this one better than the second one! My background: I have watched all of the TOS and TNG movies and all the TV shows. I also play Star Trek Attack Wing on the side for some fun. But I have not got to the books yet, so I guess I am not a full Trekkie. :) Disclaimer: I really enjoyed the revamp the first Star Trek 2009 gave us. It was fresh and fun. The stuff I did not like (what was up with the engine room?) was easily looked over for how much I enjoyed the characters and action. While I liked the second movie, Star Trek Into Darkness, I felt like they threw the first one back at us with a different villain. They just felt so similar. Now Star Trek Beyond was awesome. It took what I loved about the first 2009 movie and added all the stuff I loved about the tv shows. It even had Kirk and Bones drinking together in the mess hall. The crew of the Enterprise is stranded on an unknown planet in a nebula with no hope of rescue. It was just like many episodes of TOS and even Voyager. The people we already love had to learn how to work together in different ways. Personally, the movie is worth the price just to see Yorktown, the space-station that Bones says looks like a snow-globe. It was an amazing feat of imagination and CGI. Loved it.

As a fan of Star Trek, I've found all of the reboot movies to be maddening to various degrees, as each of them contains a mixture of good ideas and uneven execution. Beyond is no different in that respect, but unlike the first two films, it manages to retain some of the spirit of the original series. Perhaps this explains the disappointing box office performance of this installment; it's more of a Star Trek movie than a popcorn-munching blockbuster. I won't rehash the plot, as that is capably done in other reviews. Instead, I'll summarize what I perceived to be the high and low points of the film. The good: All the cast members have really settled into their roles (especially Chris Pine as Kirk), and all the cast members have something substantial to do. Plus, the Spock/McCoy dynamic is explored fully for the first time in the reboot era. Further, Jaylah was quite a neat character and I hope to see more of her if a fourth reboot movie is made. The concept of the swarm was an interesting one. The Federation, like most of the alpha quadrant powers, likes to build large capital ships and it's interesting to see how the Enterprise is no match for, as Jaylah calls them, a bunch of "bees". Some of the visuals are quite impressive, like the exterior shots of starbase Yorktown and the nacelle-less Enterprise limping away from Krall's swarm. I like the fact that the movie was not afraid to reference Star Trek: Enterprise in the form of the not-quite-NX class USS Franklin. Enterprise is often viewed as the lesser TV series, and so it's nice that this film doesn't shy away from referencing it. The bad: The pacing of the movie is a little off at times. For example, when I saw this in the theater, the first 15 minutes seemed to drag forever. All Star Trek movies have plot holes, but the reboot films take this to a new level and Beyond is no exception. Sure, phasers won't work battling the swarm, but you can't detonate a couple dozen photon torpedoes, taking out forty or fifty swarm ships at a time? The Enterprise is the only ship with advanced enough systems to navigate the nebula, but then the obsolete USS Franklin can do so with no problem? I'm fine with VHF emissions disrupting the communications in the swarm, but how will these radio emissions cause the ships to explode? When Kirk and Chekov are ambushed while aboard the crashed saucer, surely there's an easier way to dispatch a handful of attackers than to flip the saucer upside down on top of them, right? The Enterprise crew can take the derelict Franklin and make it operational in a few hours? Someone just happened to bring a motorcycle aboard the Franklin, and after a hundred years, it's still operational? I like Idris Elba, but Krall just wasn't a very convincing villain. Further, while Krall, a handful of his officers, and a bunch of drones could effectively ambush a single starship, I find it hard to believe that they could wage war on the Federation. Much like Into Darkness, nothing that happens in the movie really seems to matter. Sure, the Enterprise is destroyed, but by the end of the movie, Kirk and company are flying away in the shiny new 1701-A. Kirk's existential crisis is solved, and everything is as it was. However, despite the flaws, Beyond manages to be an entertaining adventure. In fact, it's the only reboot movie that I've felt compelled to pre-order on disc.

In a word: BRILLIANT!! An AWESOME movie from beginning to end! Action. Humor. Excitement. Peril. Loss. Grief. Heroism. Selflessness. Unity. Strength. Retrospection. Hopefulness. Resolve. All of the creative minds that came together to bring STAR TREK BEYOND to the silver-screen were brilliant in their own way, and harmoniously produced a film achievement that excels in every way - storyline, script, dialogue, music, directing, acting, et al., and all to the finest degrees of detail and execution. The BEST movie of 2016!! Thus far, each of the Star Trek 2009+ Re-boot (a.k.a. 'The Kelvin Timeline') movies has been strong and incredibly well-done in their own right, and this third 'installment' has continued that show of cinematic feature-film strength and talent. Having been a huge fan of Star Trek since The Original Series, and a huge 'fan' of the vision of Gene Roddenberry as expressed in the Star Trek Universe, I am strongly convinced that anyone who does not see the brilliance of STAR TREK BEYOND, is a person who doesn't truly 'get' the vision of Gene Roddenberry. It truly is intricately woven into the details throughout this stellar movie.

My biggest problem with Star Trek Into Darkness was that it tried to assimilate pieces of Wrath of Khan into its storyline to enhance it, and it ended up muddying and cheapening the truly epic visceral moments from that film that still resonate with those of us who live and breathe Trek. Even as forgiving of a fan as I am, there just wasn't enough plot to work with to justify some of the things that happened. So when I heard they were making another film, I was nervous. Were we going to get something with whales in a really inappropriate way? Thankfully I need not have worried. Star Trek Beyond touches on Admiral Kirk but only touches, using the idea as a sort of reverse angst--Admiral Kirk wanted to get back to being the captain of a ship, this Kirk is a captain experiencing the ennui of deep-space travel and thinking of settling down as vice-admiral of Yorktown, a truly mind-boggling möbius strip of a space station. The angst is interrupted by a distress call (a ship that comes out of an unstable nebula requesting help) to which the Enterprise responds, only to encounter a terrifying new enemy (truly new, as the concept has not been brought out before)--a gigantic swarm of tiny ships that fly in concert (and have to be seen to be believed) that immediately attack and shred the Enterprise. We've seen the ship battered and bashed before in Into Darkness, but in that film the ship limped its way back to stability, enough to be repaired. This time, not so much. The death takes time; the nacelles go first, then later, as the ship turns to flee, with hundreds of the "bees" stuck in the hull like porcupine or cactus needles, the words "Cut it's throat" precede the beheading of the Enterprise, a softening tone enveloping the death of the ship as it is torn apart--unlike the explosion and blaze of glory in Star Trek III, this 1701 dies slowly, with soft music and a full-on planetfall. It even suffers a further indignity midfilm, when Kirk and Chekov trigger the thrusters to escape their enemies, forcing the Enterprise's saucer to lift itself up only to fall back on its reverse side, utterly broken. That's a big difference between this Kirk and the other; he doesn't mourn the loss of his ship, but instead focuses on the lives of the crew that he's determined to find. So we have two nods made, to Star Trek III and to the idea of Admiral Kirk, but neither of them are forced. This isn't a replay of Star Trek III or a half-mash of it; it contains touches but holds its own story, one that hearkens back much further, to Roddenberry's habit of ham-handed morality stories, where the villain is not who you think he is, and sets up the central motivation; that conflict is necessary and the Federation, with its mission of peaceful relations, is the enemy. And when you find out why the villain Krall is so dead set on having the frontier push back, it's a twist that you don't see coming. This movie is sharp, fast, at times overwhelming, full of fight and fear and sadness and horror and humor, and fully redeems this AU (because that is what this is, folks, an Alternate Universe/Timeline, love it or leave it) after the not-quite-there that was Into Darkness. I am fully looking forward to the next film, if just to see if it's possible for Karl Urban to improve on his flawless Leonard McCoy.

I'm a second generation trekkie/trekker, and I really like this movies the more times I see it. I have watched it frame by frame in some bits (trying to make a cosplay costume, and as I am high risk for the covid/corona virus and not working....its not like I have anything better to do. I find though its a bit darker than TOS it more hopefull in the end because of the grittyness if you can say such a things about star trek. This has some of the best balance between the crew regarding how they are friends/chosen family who happen to work together and bolster/tease about each others flaws/strengths like only family can. I do with the had fewer aliens, just because ti a waster of money. Most science fiction and star trek fans awe aware of aliens not needing to looks like us, but I wonder how much budget was wasted on ego boosting the creator on trying to make more.....for no real reason, like having the yorktown station being an impracticable/expensive transparent globe that magically has sunlight instead of a more practical hollowed out moon or planet, dyson sphere, bishop ring , bernal sphere or really anything else. as that unnecessary sfx cost way more to make/plot than really is needed and in no way advances the story except for the "blowing the speaker" scene. Saying that I find the story a good way to advance and mature the characters like in real life happens when you get responsibility in stressful/challenging situations, while still staying true to trek. Alos its fun to see actors my own age playing the parts....which is one of the things I like about the kelvin reboot timeline, along with the possibilities for future movies having new science fiction story lines, apart from the original timesline and any limitations it imposed as the actors aged as well as adding in things from the novels. I do like the style, art and costumes, but I can see the fabric muct have been miserable to wear even if it looks good on screen with teh poor actors having to wear spanx because everything apparently showed LOL!!! I wonder if the male actors even knew what spanx were before this.... and everyone loves the survival suit jacket. Thank you utube posting of some of the available extras....now if we could only get the exclusive iTunes director commentary I would rebuy it again, but not if I have to buy the 4k equipment or iTunes to get as I know peopl who worked for apple and I will NEVER buy any of their products....ever. In any case this is my second copy because I wore out my first and they much have made a clean reissue because the colors have changed. I am trained in computer graphics and I can see more textures and the black pants/shirts and now dark charcoal grey. A minor quibble, but it makes me wish for alts system but they are just too expensive as at the very least you have to buy a new player that a good one that will last more than a year really starts in the thousands. Its irritating still few to no extras because you have to buy the 4k version to get them all unlike my TOSS movies collectors editions which have TONS of tuff including multiple track you can play like trivia as well as commentary tracks and dialogue. They should be selling us mostly software updates....but I digress. But I am seeing things my 1st issue disk never showed w/o a change in any equipment, though the subtitles are a bit blurry and/or jagged which is odd since the rest of the visuals are much crisper. I purchased the same format, of DVD because I am waiting for the true 4K machinery to come down in price as unlike blueray, really is a significant visual quality enhancement even if its still to expensive to be really affordable for most of us. I wonder if this is a unannounced remaster?

This was a great movie..by far the best of the three. The actors have really grown into their roles and nailed their characters. Jim Kirk's growth as a Captain and a leader was spot on. Uhura's statement to Krall, "our Captain will come for us" told the audience just how highly his crew thinks of him now. Loved it when Chris Pine did his Shatner imitation dialog in homage to the original Captain Kirk. I especially enjoyed Karl Urban's expanded role as McCoy. Movie number two underused him terribly and he's so great in this role. I was glad to see the return of the Jim and Bones best friends dynamics once more. Jaylah is a welcome addition as a strong female addition to the cast. I was not looking forward to the destruction of the ship (again) but it was done well and with a purpose behind it and it was not gratuitous. All in all this film is awesome; buy it, enjoy it!

This film is supurb !! The fx were well above average as was the acting. Combine all 3 & you have a film that out does ALL previous STAR TREK films.. live long and prosper

GREAT MOVIE, GREAT PRICE, GREAT DELIVERY TIME

Works great

やっぱりスタートレックは良いです。そのなかでもカーク船長の活躍が目を引きます。 どんな困難にっても、正義感やクルーの事を裏切らず任務を遂行しとげあげる姿勢が最高です。またシリアスのなかでも、ヒョウヒンで人間味を見せるギャツプも良いです。カーク船長みたいに信頼のあつい心の大きな男になりたいものです。 作品は勿論sfだけでも楽しみめまうが、僕は正義やチームワーク、信頼の大切さを学べると感じています。 このdiskはアメリカ盤？ですが、日本盤を購入しても私がは字幕を無しでみてますしdvdは見いないので、早く映画も手にはいったし満足です。

Es una muy buena pelicula pero me parecio la mas debil de la trilogia, no se le falto la escala epica o una historia mas grande. La calidad de video y audio es de 10, incluye doblaje latino y extras, y cabe decir que me llego sin slipcover.