In the original Star Trek series, there's an episode where the entire planet is run by a 20th century Roman Empire; another where they all act like 1920s Chicago gangsters; there's also a Nazi planet; one where Kirk gets into hand-to-hand combat with a dude in a giant green lizard suit; one where the Greek God Apollos himself captures the Enterprise with a giant floating hand (which is even referenced at one point in this film!); and another where they encounter two aliens seeking each others' extermination, because one is black on the left side and white on the right side, while the other is black on the right side and white on the left. It's not subtle.
I remind myself of all this silliness because Star Trek Beyond has Kirk ride a motorcycle in order to liberate a prison camp, and features the Enterprise crew straight-up surf a literal wave of swarming-ships, and destroys them by blasting "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys--and it's all so ridiculously campy and hilarious, to the point that I can't even tell if its intentional or not--which just might mean that Star Trek Beyond is more in tune with the spirit of the original series than any other film to date.
It's the 50th anniversary of the debut of the original Star Trek this year, and though the franchise has certainly seen worse days (at its 40th, there were no new movies and no TV shows), it's also seen better. I was a lil' tyke at its 30th, when there were 2 concurrent series airing, TNG had just concluded a critically acclaimed run, TOS was still on heavy rerun rotation, and First Contact was doing gangbusters at the Megaplexes. Star Trek was in victory lap mode. The franchise looked unstoppable. Yet by 2009, it took a drastic reboot by a director who straight up described himself as "more of a Star Wars fan" to bring the series back from the dead.
We Trekkies were all grateful, but what a price we paid! Though Star Trek (2009) did fantastic business with amazing cross-over appeal, it had plot-holes the size of the Grand Canyon (Why the heck would Kirk, ejected into the infinite cosmos, land on not only the one planet, but the one corner of the planet that held Old Spock?! Why the hell would Kirk be promoted to Captain simply for picking a fight with Young Spock?! And why in blazes would they introduce Time-Travel and not use it to save Vulcan and Kirk's Dad?! I've graded C- Freshman English papers with better rigor). Nevertheless, the box-office receipts had spoken: the characters were fun and the visuals a blast and so that was the way the new movies were to be, even if you had to turn off your brain to enjoy it.
That Trek fans have historically preferred not to turn off their brains appeared to be beside the point. Nevertheless, the sequel Star Trek Into Darkness at least gestured towards grander "themes" generally, with a rather on-the-nose parable about the dangers of mass-militarization and the atrocities we justify in the name of national defense (ironically, if the film had come out just a few years earlier or later, those themes may have hit home all the harder). The action was exhilarating and the stakes high enough that it took us slightly-longer this time to start cataloguing this fresh new crop of plot holes (why on earth would a star ship need to hide in an ocean?! And how could a super-advanced society never realize they now had a 300-year-old cure for death?!), with shameless rip-offs added to the stew this time (Khan? In Another Star Trek 2? Serious?! And the villain wanted to get caught? Again?!). Though the film also did gangbusters at the box office, it still felt strangely like a failure somehow. We all breathed a quiet sigh of relief when the director finally left the franchise to direct an actual Star Wars film instead.
But that has still left the fate of the franchise in a rather awkward lurch. Even with word of a fresh TV series finally coming this Fall (albeit on streaming-services only--hardly a rousing endorsement from CBS), and even with reports that the new film would be written by folks who actually like Star Trek for a change, I do believe it's been at least a dozen years since a new Trek film has been so tepidly anticipated. I myself straight-up forgot that Beyond was coming out till maybe a month ago, when a friend suggested we go see it together. The surprisingly positive (albeit reeeaaally qualified) reviews I began seeing last week were literally the first time I exercised even cautious optimism that Beyond might not suck.
Well, did it? I was initially apprehensive because, as the first trailer indicated, this would be the third time that the Enterprise would be destroyed, as though that were some novel thing--in fact, the first time the Enterprise was destroyed cinematically was also in a Star Trek 3! It seemed the lazy mistakes of Into Darkness would be repeated. Moreover, the high-camp action elements, particularly given the director, tempted me to derisively nick-name it Star Trek: The Fast and the Furious. Nevertheless, though it is doubtless too early to say, and I'll still need to see it again to be sure, Beyond I do believe breaks from its two immediate predecessors in the best way possible: for unlike Star Trek and Into Darkness, Beyond actually improved the more I thought about it!
Just to back-up a second: How many futuristic dystopias can you name off the top of your head? Hunger Games? Divergent? 1984? Brave New World? Fahrenheit 451? Soylent Green? Brazil? We could go on. Now, how many genuine utopias can you name? I'll wait.
Really, the only one in the running--the only one even existing--is the United Federation of Planets. That's it. I defy you to name me a second. It's similar to the Satan Syndrome--everyone can (and does) imagine what Satan must be like; from Milton's Paradise Lost onward, he is one of the most fascinating and fleshed-out characters in Western literature. Now, what is God like? Western artists, authors, and Hollywood hacks have banged their heads against the wall for veritable centuries trying to imagine a plausible God. It's why Dante's Inferno is so much more widely read than Dante's Paradiso.
Degradation, evil, and misery we find so much easier to imagine than genuine goodness and happiness--doubtless because we have so little experience with the latter. Likewise, Futuristic Dystopias are a dime a dozen, yet still we relentlessly crank them out as though there were something "edgy" or "bold" about them. Bah! Dystopias are the easy way out, the lazy way out. It takes not only real imagination but real audacity to imagine a future for mankind that is genuinely utopic! Not to mention really difficult, too. Mark Fisher once said that it is easier today to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism--Star Trek alone has tried to imagine it!
I bring all this up because Star Trek Beyond not only bothers to remember that the Federation is supposed to be a utopia (as opposed to just an idealized United States), but to show it! When the Enterprise early on docks at Starbase Yorktown, we behold not just a military installation or refueling station (the sort of which we've seen so often on the cheap-sets of Trekdom), but a genuinely gorgeous, open-air, clean, self-sustaining, diverse city living in peace and harmony!
For once, the overly-polished aesthetic of the new Treks serves a purpose: for here at Yorktown, there is no hint of hidden corruption or a seedy underbelly or whatever--simply, this is a model world we would all want to actually live in, a real place where you can walk down the streets without fear of violence, of pollution, of exploitation. Utopia literally means "nowhere," but here in the deepest depths of nowhere, in empty space, they've built it! Everyone is healthy. Everyone is happy. We see a staggering diversity of races and cultures--both human and alien--thronging the streets, just enjoying each others' company, working together for the common good. Yorktown is a microcosm for not only the Federation, but of how we all would actually like to live!
And the bad guy hates that!
Krall spits contemptuously at ideas such as "unity" or "diversity" or "peace" or "working for the common good" or whatever. For him, conflict, war, and struggle are what bred strength and excellence in the human race (I'm frankly surprised he never quotes Nietzsche, or even Ayn Rand). He wishes to "save Humanity from itself" by plunging us back into eternal war with an ancient bio-weapon. A few years ago I might have considered such a villain a little too outlandish to be believable--but I'm now keenly aware that there are a distressing number of voters in America who would prefer to elect a candidate who promises nothing but war and violence, division and segregation, conflict and bullying.
For these people, "Political Correctness"--that is, showing basic respect for minorities different from yourself--is a sign of weakness. They are radically uninterested in cooperation, which they also consider weakness. That point was driven home when the Englishman Simon Pegg, Beyond's main-writer, was distressed by the Brexit vote; he saw it as a sign that the Western world is increasingly pushing away from the ideals of cooperation and unity between nations--that is, against the founding principles of the Federation. Again, we steadfastly refuse to even imagine what a human utopia could look like, let alone work for it; it's just so much easier to imagine--to even want--the opposite.
These voters even all coalesce and congregate around a single narcissistic candidate who preaches the virtues of greed, of selfishness, of living solely for one's self. Krall literalizes this tendency when we see him suck the life-force out of captive prisoners in order to lengthen his own unnaturally long life. He is self-centeredness personified.
The big reveal about Krall is that he was once (HEAVY SPOILERS) human himself--in fact, he was a veteran of the wars Earth waged before forming the Federation. (His long-downed ship is the one the Enterprise crew repairs to escape with.) But whereas the rest of humanity considered the end of wars to be a net-positive, Krall instead felt it a betrayal of his "values"--or of what a previous president called "our way of life." Krall just wants to Make Humanity Great Again.
My wife opined that even Krall's mode of attack is selfish, as she read in it a commentary on Social Media (the preferred platform of narcissists!); for his swarms of attack-drones are called "Bees"--that is, they create "buzz"--and though they have the appearance of working together, in reality, they are all focused upon a single individual, who swarms them all to do his bidding.
Opposed to him is the crew of the Enterprise, who's principles are that of unity, diversity, and cooperation. When the ship is destroyed and they are stranded on the planet below, their first instinct is to immediately begin working together to solve their problems. They pool together all of their various intellects, personalities, experiences, specialties, and expertise to figure out solutions. They are not masses swarming together to suck the life out of the oppressed, but individuals forming a team where all are equally valued. They overcome personal differences and refuse to leave anyone behind. All these things Krall considers weakness--and he was seemingly justified in that assumption by how quickly he destroys the Enterprise. But cooperation is ultimately how Krall is defeated.
Krall is also the contrast of Kirk specifically--both monosyllabic K name Captains who like motorcycles and the Beastie Boys. Beyond opens with Kirk feeling a certain malaise about his 5 year mission ("Things are starting to feel a little episodic" he says, in one of the film's many groan-worthy winks); he feels directionless, lost, without clear purpose. He's trying to find himself. Krall, however, is the exact opposite; he has a purpose. A clear purpose. In fact, too clear of a purpose. It's maddened him. Driven him insane. Made a monster of him. Literally. I bring this up because some reviewers have claimed that the Kirk-has-a-quarter-life-crisis thread was ultimately dropped once the action begins; I'm not so sure it was, because if Kirk had found a set purpose, then he would have become a monster, too.
In fact, his resolution by movie's end--to turn down promotion to resume Star Ship Captaining--is an expression to continue not finding himself, to never find resolution, to always keep searching! And that because he's not inward focused anymore; he's outward now, in the most literal manner possible, flying a rebuilt Enterprise out into the Great Beyond. To quit ever seeking is to cease progressing--also known as the state of being damned. We've already covered how much easier is to imagine hell than paradise. It's hard, but the way to imagine heaven is to imagine Eternal Progression [here my Mormonism peaks out], to never assume we know everything or have learned all there is to learn, to always work to bless and save others as well as ourselves, to cease trying to "Take Our Country Back" but to instead "Take Humanity Forward." Disagreeing with Sartre, Trek does not say hell is other people; stasis is. Those might be the most radical thoughts of all.
Whether or not Star Trek Beyond fully lives up to or does justice to such lofty ideals is another question entirely. But then again, that a campy ol' sci-fi show should engage with themes way above its pay-grade, almost in spite of itself, is perhaps what renders Beyond the most Star Trek-y film of all.
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