Star Trek Beyond

Solid instalment in the long-running sci-fi franchise Dir: Justin Lin 2hrs (12A)

The plot of this latest Star Trek movie resembles nothing so much as an episode of the original 1960s TV show, said Tom Huddleston in Time Out. The crew of the Starship Enterprise crash-lands on an alien planet. “They get into a spot of bother and Captain Kirk punches an alien. The end.” The film-makers’ only aim seems to be to entertain their audience – and it’s an ambition, it must be said, in which they spectacularly succeed.

Star Trek’s appeal has always lain in the contrasting characters of its crew members, and that’s something this instalment gets spot on, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. Chris Pine and Simon Pegg are both on fine form as the bold Kirk and nerdy engineer Scotty, but it’s Zachary Quinto’s imperturbable Spock that’s the “real star” of this movie. The weakest link is Idris Elba as the villain Krall, said Kate Muir in The Times. He seems to want to destroy the universe, but it’s hard to tell since his face is obscured by a “prosthetic blue lizard mask”.

It’s a great relief to find that Star Trek Beyond “doesn’t take itself too seriously”, said Wendy Ide in The Observer. But the script, which was co-written by Pegg, is baffling at times. In the action scenes, it relies on “the ‘shout something incomprehensible, do something inexplicable’ technique”. I was left “feeling battered by asteroids and not entirely sure what was going on”.