Wow. I’m not even sure where to begin. ‘Star Trek Beyond’ is a terrible film. That this is what’s produced to celebrate the franchise’s 50th anniversary surely means that there is no genuine love for Star Trek anywhere inside Paramount. It’s simply a brand to be exploited. What’s more shocking to me is that the film is still sitting at over 80% on Rotten Tomatoes. The creative team might take some solace in that figure, but I’m sure the bean counters are less impressed with the number that counts.

If ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ isn’t a home run, it’ll probably be time for me to give up on Trek all together. The direction the franchise has been taken feels so wrong and so far from the old shows I still love. There’s no thoughtfulness, no subtlety, no intellectualism. Everything that was interesting has been stripped away in favour of explosions, fight scenes, stunts, and guns. ‘Beyond’ doesn’t pretend to be about anything or deliver any kind of message. The villain has no motivation other than ‘being evil’, and his ancient super weapon may as well be a magic jewel. The Enterprise still looks awful, the Yorktown Starbase seems to be designed solely around Director Justin Lin’s wacky camera moves, and even Spock’s hair looks bad. The cast seems completely uninterested and already looks old and tired.

For me, ‘Beyond’ is right at the bottom of the Star Trek film pile with ‘Nemesis’ and ‘Final Frontier’. Though at least those movies had interesting premises. At least there were nuggets of cool ideas. ‘Beyond’ has nothing. I’m absolutely finished hearing from Trek film’s writers and directors that they ‘love Star Trek’ and ‘grew up with the show’. Either Simon Pegg and Justin Lin were lying through their teeth, or the studio deliberately removed anything that might have been novel. Either way, the result is the same. A formulaic sci-fi action movie with no surprises, no messages, and loads of cliches. This film is just…boring. Even writing this has been boring. I’m done.