Star Trek – Not Quite Beyond Star Wars

Hey, everyone, I got to see Star Trek Beyond last night at a sneak preview showing, thanks to a friend of mine belonging to a large company that rented out the Cinerama in Seattle. Thanks, Rich.

If you want a movie with incredible special effects, including attacks by swarms of drone-like weapons, people running around inside the ship at unusual angles, and gizmos with complex moving parts, this is for you. If you want a great plot with familiar characters, um . . .

The characters are familiar. In fact, in the first half of the movie, they are just like the characters in the original Star Wars movie. For my brilliant analysis, which has to include spoilers, click on the Read More button.

*SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* *SPOILERS*

I realized the Star Trek characters were patterned after the characters from the original Star Wars movie when Spock and McCoy landed in a small pod in a wilderness, mainly doing funny shtick lines. They were obviously behaving like the two droids. Scotty was quite a main character in the first half, accompanying in a nebbish way the can-do female alien Jaylah. They were obviously like the callow youth Luke Skywalker and the confident Princess Leia. Captain Kirk is obviously like the swashbuckling Han Solo, and Chekov as his sidekick may or may not have been like Chewbacca, but he was certainly in a support role.

There was no Obi-Wan Kenobi, but Sulu and Uhura combined tried to give wise retorts to the head evil guy, with Sulu then falling in pain (but not dying). These roles are not hard and fast. For a moment, Uhura was like Princess Leia when the evil guy gave a demonstration of his ultimate weapon.

Keep in mind, I am not saying the plot of Star Trek Beyond is the exact same as Star Wars: A New Hope. They simply forced the Star Trek characters into the mold of the Star Wars characters and ran with their own story. In the second half of the movie, the characters behaved much more like Star Trek, with Scotty receding from being a main character and Spock coming up with scientific and technical scenarios. But there is an extensive scene of flying through a tunnel that was reminiscent of flying through a trough on the Death Star that was so obvious, I thought it was ridiculous.

But I had fun. It was worth the price of admission. For my analysis of the sources of the movie Inception, click here.