Star Trek Beyond

Sabotage as a weapon of war. That alone earns this movie a permanent spot in my rotation. You can keep your photon torpedoes; I'll take the Beastie Boys at maximum volume any day of the week.

Idris Elba shows up and does what Idris Elba does, which is make a villain feel like an actual threat. The man could play the bad guy in a cereal commercial and I'd believe it. Drop him into Star Trek with some prosthetics and a grudge, and yeah, he delivers.

You can keep your photon torpedoes; I'll take the Beastie Boys at maximum volume any day of the week.

The story setup is solid. Crew goes to investigate something, crew gets trapped, crew has to outsmart their way out. That's the kind of Trek I like. It's not the captain punching his way to victory; it's the whole crew using their heads to crack the problem. Kirk and Scotty in particular felt locked in this time around. Their stuff worked for me start to finish.

The crew chemistry overall is still the engine of these movies. Everybody knows their lane, everybody plays their part, and when they're on screen together it just hums.

But I'd be lying if I said the writing didn't feel a little phoned in. The bones of the story are good. The execution gets you where you need to go. There's just a layer of polish missing, the kind of detail work that turns a good Trek movie into a great one. And honestly, I think that's the reason we never got another one. You can feel the ceiling on it.

Did it stick with me? Yeah, more than I expected. I keep coming back to the Sabotage scene, keep thinking about the crew dynamic, keep wishing the script had a little more in the tank.

Worth my time. Would I throw it on again? Absolutely. Would I hand it to just anyone? No. But for the right crowd, it plays.