Splatter: on FILM

Justin Lin is decent at picking up where a film franchise leaves off and keeping the action hot. His direction of the muscle-car mania Fast & Furious film events proved him worthy to handle the inner space destruction and emergency landing of yet another downed Enterprise in this fast-paced sequel. His explosive take on Trek feels more like a tricked out ancient episode than a full feature. While the action soared, the characters rambled and paused. Sadly, what lacked was finesse in emotional moments.

I applaud Simon Pegg for taking on a summer blockbuster. I have to admit that the writing here felt like space-filler serving a moving action plot which lacked continuity and soared to an anti-climax. It wasn’t enough inner conflict to make the captain and first mate question whether they liked their jobs enough to stay in them. It also felt like a jumble of too many recently viewed plot points: the hive mind movement was very Ender’s Game, the “Sabotage” replay felt like a forced nod to JJ, and the new character Jayla, (actually oddly named for Lennifer Lawrence), shows little if any connection to her namesake or imagination as she is a cut and paste of Ray from Star Wars (2015) as she shares all of the same skills, attitudes, and basic backstory?

I don’t know. Give us a weapon meant to destroy the universe and a bitter demented madman wielding it. Yes. Great. But then at least follow up and show us what happens to it and give us more than ten minutes of Kirk on a bike fist fighting to fix it.

It’s fun. It moves. It’s got throwback allure and on-screen pizazz, but it just left me feeling a bit like Spock looked the whole movie: emotionless but confused and dealing with the complex mess in front of me. 

I’ll give it a 6.5/10