Poor old Enterprise. Always getting it in the neck. Literally, in the case of one scene in this first, action-packed promo for Star Trek Beyond.
We’re not given a huge idea of the plot just yet, save for the fact that Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), McCoy (Karl Urban), Scotty (Simon Pegg) and the gang are once more in big trouble out in space. They’ve been pushing the frontier, and the frontier, as Idris Elba’s villain says, is “pushing back.” From the looks of it, there’s a lot of aliens being taken… somewhere and our team is left without a ship and having to survive. Let’s hope their trusty vessel gets to do something, though, less fans complain that there’s still not much star trekking in their Star Trek.
There is, however room for Justin Lin (taking over for J.J. Abrams who was a tad busy in another galaxy) to channel his past as the main Fast & Furious director with a motorcycle moment and plenty of the heroes being thrown around and challenged. And with Simon Pegg co-writing alongside Doug Jung, the humour from the first two is still intact, with Urban getting one typically wry Bones moment here.
Using Sabotage is a nice nod back to the 2009 film, and it’s certainly busy, big and crammed with aliens. But the main issue will be if it can really channel the original series and not pull another Into Darkness on us all. With Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Joe Taslim, Sofia Boutella and Deep Roy all aboard, Star Trek Beyond will be out here on July 22.