Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Star Trek: Beyond (2016)

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Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 07-23-2016, 11:52 PM:

CINEMA: Cinemark Altoona and XD, Altoona, IA
AUDITORIUM: 5
PRESENTATION: Cinemark Illuminated by Barco Magical Beefcake
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: Two really old men who WOULD NOT SHUT UP
RATING: Two and one half stars (out of four)

THE PLOT: The Enterprise is swarmed by moths. Wackiness ensues.

The third installment in the rebooted series doesn't rely on borrowing from the original for this story nearly as much as the first two (though there's one blatantly lifted sequence from "Generations" of all things and the solution to disrupt the end attack reminded me of "Mars Attacks!")

While I didn't like it quite as much as the last two, I was still pretty much grinning through the whole thing.

They also, however unintentionally, introduced a new character who could not have been written more perfectly to drop into Chekov's seat in the fourth installment.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-26-2016, 08:53 PM:

Cinema: Harkins Bricktown 16, Oklahoma City
Screen: Cine Capri
Format: 2D, Dolby Atmos
Presentation Problems: Projected image seemed a little dark. Might have been the look of the movie though.
Rating: 2 stars out of 4

I keep trying to give this new version of Star Trek a chance. It has a good cast and good production values, but it keeps coming up short in certain respects such as baffling plot points. Perhaps I'm just supposed to unplug my brain and just look at all the stuff happening on screen without trying to understand any of it.

Spoiler Alert - Click to Toggle
If the main bad guy turns out to be a former Star Fleet officer stranded on some distant planet just how is he able to figure out how to suck the life force out of other people, much less develop swarming, brain connected space craft that totally schools Federation star ships? Why would such advanced space craft be prone to a Mars Attacks" style vulnerability? The flaw would seemingly be there on purpose. In Mars Attacks the vulnerability had a very good comedic pay off. In this movie the big action moment looks kind of like a big space wave getting lit on fire. The moment isn't as thrilling as it was supposed to be. It sure isn't as wild a visual as a Martian's skull exploding. Since they re-used Sabotage by the Beastie Boys I felt more like I was watching the movie's movie trailer again.

The Star Trek saga has a habit of marooning its cast members on some distant planet for a big chunk of the movie. I like it more if the story has them visiting a lot of different places. It's not a prison movie or Castaway. Star Trek: Beyond is a little more like Star Trek: Stranded.

The movie's Atmos mix was okay, but nothing really impressive. There was a few decent side wall and back wall sound pans tracking across the speaker arrays. If the sound designers used the ceiling arrays at all I hardly heard any of it. And I was sitting fairly far back and high. The ceiling surrounds were loud and clear during the Atmos "Unfold" trailer. I think Harkins to needs to adjust the sub bass in this room. There's not as much thump in there as I think there should be.

Interesting note: while killing time in the lobby I saw Steven Tyler of Aerosmith fame with a younger brunette lady. At first I thought I was seeing things, thinking "what the hell is Steven Tyler doing in Oklahoma City of all places?" They were coming from one of the auditoriums on the theater's western half headed to the main snack counter. As they were passing a self service station Tyler pointed at a pile of spilled popcorn on the counter. "Slobs," he scoffed. My thoughts exactly. Slobs. When I heard his voice I knew it was him for sure.

Posted by Pravin Ratnam (Member # 1417) on 07-27-2016, 04:09 PM:

Saw the 3D version at Regal Avalon. The lights remained too bright for the main presentaiton. That made the picture contrast suffer. I went and complained, the manager looked at the lights and said that was normal. Now it was not an obvious too bright level. But shouldn't I be able to stare at the lights in the ceiling and not have to blink my eyes in reaction? Or see people in other seats way too clearly even during the dark scenes?

I don't know if because it is assigned seating(all auditoriums are htis format in this theater) that they feel they need to have the lights on this much, but it was annoying.

Anyway back to the movie.
The 3D effects were hardly visible and when they were it was for the bad reason (like relative scales of people versus objects, in one scene Spock's hand looked like that of the Hulk's while the rest of the frame looked nomral). No need for a 3D conversion if it was going to be done this lazily.

So what is the trend of this series giving partners to even freaking Spock, (not to mention Sulu's male partner even if Takei himself felt it would have been better to come up with a new character who was gay), but then at the same time emasculate Capt. Kirk. Kirk hasn't gotten any action the last two Trek movies. not even Jalen and Kirk?

Overall, I enjoyed the movie. even if it was not great. I am a huge fan of the original series. but except for Wrath of Khan and Park 6, felt like the movies with the original cast were lame. So this movie definitely is an improvement over some of those movies.

In a weak slate of movies this summer, this movie will do as one of my big movies to see.

Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 07-27-2016, 07:58 PM:

This was what I'd call "watchable" but far from great. A lot of things don't make sense. In addition to Bobby's spoiler:

Spoiler Alert - Click to Toggle
How did the bad guy not know the albino alien girl was camouflaging his old crashed ship and living in it. Wouldn't he know where it was? After however many lifetimes he'd been on that planet, did he just forget about it?

I don't regret seeing it but I don't need to see it again either. The first half was kind of slow also. It felt longer than 2 hrs. They definitely could have spent more time explaining the villain's motivation and how he accomplished certain things instead of the somewhat plodding set up.

The interaction between Spock and Bones was the highlight. Perhaps they should have waited until J.J. Abrams was done with Star Wars to film this. The 2 he directed were much better.

2.5 out of 5

quote: Bobby Henderson
Interesting note: while killing time in the lobby I saw Steven Tyler of Aerosmith fame with a younger brunette lady. At first I thought I was seeing things, thinking "what the hell is Steven Tyler doing in Oklahoma City of all places?"

Maybe he is in town promoting his new country album? He seems like a nice enough guy. A little while back he was in Orlando and posed for pictures in a supermarket.

He also rode the "Rock n' Rollercoaster starring Aerosmith" at Disney Studios (on his birthday) and entered the ride through the line and interacted with the fans on the way.

He didn't wait on line like a regular person but most celebrities get taken in back entrances so they don't get bothered.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 07-31-2016, 01:01 AM:

I really liked this one. Formulaic, sure. But that doesn't mean bad. I'd say 99% of all movies ever made are formulaic. If you like more than 10 movies, then you likely enjoy something that's formulaic. Who cares? But the movie was fun and I enjoyed it a lot. I will buy it on Blu-ray. I like it a lot better than the 2nd movie starring that guy who has a face shaped like I'm viewing it through a couple of prisms.

As for some of your questions about the movie:

Spoiler Alert - Click to Toggle
The main bad guy crash landed on the planet. He did not figure all that stuff out on his own because it's said that there was lots of alien stuff there (like the ships that they use) and also part of the weapon he was so lustful for. The previous aliens shot half of it into space. As to why he looks alien, to me it was inferred that was a side-effect of using the life machine with other aliens' DNA mixing in with his. The life machine was already there with all of the other war tech, by the way. Once he started sucking up actual humans again, he started to get some human looks back.

The aliens weren't affected by Mars Attacks-style vulnerability. In Mars Attacks their brains exploded from how shitty the music is. By the way there were absolutely ZERO comedic payoffs in Mars Attacks. That movie is seriously more boring than a four hour long MP3 of complete silence that you encoded at 320kbps for maximum quality and listening for flaws in the encoding. I've tried twice to make it through that movie. Can't do it. Anyway in Star Trek it was just VHF frequencies that caused the ships to lose communication with each other. The rest of the universe had switched to ATSC by this time and no longer used VHF so the aliens who designed the ships didn't think that would be a problem. They probably didn't even need a song playing.

The bad guy didn't know the albino alien girl was hiding his old starship because frankly he had no reason to care. As far as he was concerned, the ship was a wreck. He found sweet new shit to keep his attention. He knew that ship could not possibly be a threat. He didn't forget about it but he clearly had no reason to care. He seemed pretty surprised when he saw it again.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 07-31-2016, 01:20 PM:

Cinemark 17 Springfield, #13. 2D on a blotchy hotspotting silver screen.

Movie is pretty good. Adequately met my general scifi action movie expectations, with bonus ST content. Chris Pine has gotten really good at channeling early Shatner, a compliment not criticism.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 08-04-2016, 09:31 PM:

sure there was some plotholes and bizarre characterizations but man oh man, in IMAX-laser this was a kick and half. The 3D was okay, not great (even with the boosted luminance) - some of the action filming was a tad too fast to convey any dimensionality. But with the way the movie was presented, the light from the projectors which toggled from dark scenes, to ultra brightly lit scenes, by the end I thought my eyes were going shrivel up inside my head - visually (and on a six story screen) it was a bit much.