This is my second review, so I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments section! I'm thinking about doing more of these in the future.

Star Trek Beyond is the third outing in the newly rebooted Kelvin timeline of the Star Trek universe. I was personally never a fan of Star Trek, my dad got me into Stargate before I had even heard of Star Wars or Trek, so JJ Abrams take on the universe was the first version of Star Trek that I had any investment in. Sure, I had seen Wrath of Khan and some of tNG, but I never cared for the characters until I was 15 going on 16 in May of 2009. When Star Trek Into Darkness came out, I actually thoroughly enjoyed it! I had no comparison point except for the 2009 version, and wasn’t that disappointed since sequels are never quite as good anyway!

Here we are in 2016 and James T. Kirk and crew have spiffy new duds, a (3rd?) new ship, and a new mission. Below I’m going to take an in-depth look at how this movie fared v(s) some of the other blockbusters this summer.

Again, SPOILERS ahead.

The Good

Captain Kirk - Chris Pine has done a fantastic job with the role so far. I’m invested in every moment with his character. Even with the standard “considering giving up my role as ___” plotline, it didn’t detract from my care for his character. His moments with Spock seemed very genuine

Spock - In this series, Spock has had the privilege of learning from the version of him from the previous timeline. Ambassador Spock and Spock had a great relationship in the first film, but I feel that this movie would’ve benefitted more from being a sequel to the 2009 version, not STID. Into Darkness downplayed Ambassador Spock’s mentorship to his Kelvin-timeline counterpart, and I felt like the film couldn’t get me reeled back in if not for the fact that Leonard Nimoy passed away. I think that my personal favorite parts of this film were when it seemed that Zachary Quinto was speaking about Nimoy. They were beautiful moments, and I thought it was a great sendoff to the late actor.

Jayla - Props to Sofia Boutella. After a solid outing in Kingsman with not much to do, she impressed me in this film. Her interactions with “Montgomery Scotty” were awesome and I loved their friendship.

Krall - *Twissstttttt* [Mr. Sunday Movies reference] For the last time, spoilers, but learning that Krall was actually Captain Edison of the fallen USS Franklin was great! I think that, while it wasn’t necessarily surprising, having Krall turn out to be a morphed human was brilliant. Krall is easily the best villain in the Kelvin timeline, and I am very satisfied at how his motivations were pure and that he isn’t necessarily a sympathetic villain. While he had some sympathetic elements, as many villains do, I was captivated by Elba’s performance as the big bad. Not gonna lie, I was very worried about his character going into seeing the movie.

Visuals - Justin Lin did a fantastic job visually with the direction of this film. Between the establishing shots, coloring (shout out to set design), and character moments, everything looked beautiful.

[I’m going to give every movie a “freebie”]

The captions - The captions looked cool, that's all.

The Meh

Bones - While I love Karl Urban, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t getting tired of his interpretation of Bones. We get it, you don’t wanna be here, you’re grumpy, and you don’t like Spock. Fine. While it was fun in the first two movies, it just felt a little overwhelming to me a third time. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this, but I don’t personally like it, so he’s gonna go into “the meh” category.

Uhura - She isn’t given much to do in the movie. I wanted more presence from her.

“I quit” - While I enjoyed the interactions between Spock and Kirk, both of their quitting plotlines didn’t go anywhere. I would’ve enjoyed the movie more if there was more screentime given to the idea that they wanted to do other things, but since the only time this plotline did anything was at the beginning and end, I didn’t really care. This isn’t a bad thing, but I could’ve used more, or dump it altogether.

The Bad

The editing in the first 30m - There was a lot of story happening here and it was jarring to keep going from item to item. Specifically, my problem is with when [whats-her-face]’s ship was crashing, for the next 10 minutes I thought she was a hologram. I didn’t need to see them rescuing her, but going from crashing to briefing on the mission to her being on the ship really threw me off. What made it a little worse was all of the time spent establishing the Yorktown base (which was great) that could’ve been used on clarifying. I’m an adult, I don’t need a thorough explanation of everything, but it would’ve helped to chop 30 seconds off of the Enterprise shots and tack it onto saving [whats-her-face].

I want more aliens - I believe that every alien that has been a part of these films has been humanoid. One of the reasons that I love Star Wars is because of all the cool non-humanoid characters. That’s all.

The Ugly

Nothing. Scott-Free - There was nothing terribly bad about the movie but there was something terribly amazing.

Sabatoge - As soon as Jayla set up the radio to take on the alien army, I KNEW that they were gonna play Sabatoge. Wave-riding on the exploding ships literally made me laugh out loud, but when the Yorktown base starting playing the song on the “WOAHHHH” I couldn’t even focus anymore. It was so dumb that it was just absolutely awesome to watch.

Overall,

I’m going to start a grading system based off of the review styles, so out of the 4 ratings I give (good, meh, bad, ugly), Star Trek Beyond gets a GOOD.

What do you think? Comment below with your thoughts on the movie itself, or on my review. I know I missed some big things, but with such a long system, I’m trying to find ways to cut it down. Maybe I’ll start recording videos?