August is here…summer is almost coming to an end. Well…sorta. It stays pretty goddamn summery here in LA through, like, the end of October…so in reality we have a good three months left of this warm shit. Truth, right there. But…I mean, for teachers, summer is almost gone.
Today was a helter skelter day, for sure. We went first thing and saw Star Trek: Beyond. Before I even ate breakfast. We’d been trying, seriously, to find a way to fit it into our schedule to go see together for two solid weeks. Well, today was the day.
I mentioned it on here before, but I’ll mention it again: the Ho and I actually got to see this movie a few months ago, in its unfinished stages. So I was REALLY interested the see what sort of changes had been made, and how all those effects shots were going to come out that we’d had to use our imaginations for. I’ve never had the opportunity before to see a big-budget movie during the in-progress phase and then see how it turned out in the end.
I have to say…I was really, really impressed. Genuinely. I liked Beyond a lot. A lot. It was exceptionally well-paced, the visuals were impressive and fun, and the character moments were absolutely wonderful. Spot-on. They clearly really, really focused on relationships and it paid off big time. This is easily the second best of the three in the JJverse (sorry, not calling it “Kelvin” timeline)…giving the first movie a slight edge, maybe just for that cold open which is probably the best cold open of any Star Trek movie ever.
The memorium for Nimoy was very touching, as was the way they handled a nod to Anton Yelchin at the end with just this one perfectly-placed, subtle shot where they were all raising their glasses in a toast to those crew members who hadn’t made it through this adventure, and we linger for just a moment on Chekov.
Jaylah was absolutely wonderful. I remember she stood out from the get-go, and she was even better in this polished final version. That shot of her watching the planet recede from her little window, finally escaping her prison…that was a standout moment.
Kirk’s journey was gratifying…he was considering leaving his crew behind and doing something else, and when he lost them, he realized how much he needed them. I do wish that the motivation for *why* he was restless was a little clearer, and what else he wanted to do instead was clearer…but it worked for me. He ended up where he belonged, on his ship, with his crew surrounding him.
Spock and McCoy were a lot of fun together, as were Kirk and Chekov, and Scotty and Jaylah. The only TRUE downside of the whole affair was the bad guy, which is whom Uhura (and to a lesser extent Sulu) were paired with. Krall was hard to understand, both simply in what he was actually *saying* AND in what the hell he wanted. Didn’t get his motivations, didn’t get what he was trying to accomplish big-picture…and Liz brought it up first and I completely agree: he wasn’t scary. Perhaps it was because we’d seen the movie before…but I don’t think so. He just wasn’t scary. I never believed he was a real threat and that he had a legitimate chance of defeating our heroes.
But honestly…that’s been an issue for all three of these movies, and they’ve worked just fine with that area of mediocrity…well, TWO of them have, anyway (looking at you Into Darkness). The pillar of this iteration of Trek has always been the cast, and they really had a chance to shine in this movie, and the hijinx and adventures were fun, and the new addition of Jaylah was awesome. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
After that, I worked. This little baby project for the Flix took all day, which I was not anticipating…which means I did NOT get writing done today. Don’t like that. Don’t like it one bit. But, back to it tomorrow. Also, contemplating going and doing a writers’ retreat next week for a few days, which is VERY attractive, because I could maybe even *finish* with my rewrites in that time…we’ll see, though. It’s not a for sure thing yet.
That’s the news that’s fit to report, yo. Bed time!