Star Trek Beyond is the best film we’ve seen from the series in almost 20 years. It’s picked up countless positive reviews and fan acclaim, but it doesn’t have any traction. No one’s talking about it. No one’s digging into the philosophical meat, and several weeks out, box office numbers for the sci-fi flick are pretty rough. What the hell happened?


It’s simple — Star Trek Beyond took the franchise back to its political, utopian roots and nobody want that kind of movie anymore.

On first pass, that seems like an odd thing to say. I’m basically claiming the Beyond is too Star Trek for people to put down money to go see it — but that’s exactly it. Broadly speaking, Abrams’ Star Trek movies have enjoyed solid ticket sales and public acclaim. But for diehard Trekkers like yours truly, they just didn’t scratch that itch. They got the character’s (mostly) right. They gave the series a retro-future, chrome spitshine. But then Abrams and his team took the series in a dark direction.

Star Trek (2009) is about mass extinction — first of the Romulans, then the Vulcans. Into Darkness is about adapting to terrorism with militarism. In many ways each film dealt with salient political issues (hell, balancing security and liberty in our highly connected era is still an important topic), but they did so in clumsy, cynical ways.

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Beyond takes the series back to those utopian roots. Without spoiling too much (because I hope after this you’ll consider grabbing some tickets), Beyond is all about cooperation. The big bad this time around is a walking symbol of fascism. A born warrior, Krall, is stuck in a time that finds no use for him. Starfleet’s alliances have all but eliminated classic warfare. Without a purpose, without anything to wage war against, Krall sets his eyes on Starfleet itself. Krall stands in existential opposition to everything that Starfleet is supposed to symbolize. He believes that a universe without war is weak, and cannot define themselves without suffering.

That’s a narrative that’s become all too common in recent years. With the rise of global fascism, people around the world have been drumming up support for war, for violence, and for aggressive, callous policies of all kinds. And before you say that it’s a stretch to apply a political lens to FUCKING STAR TREK, let me remind you, once again, that this is the show that aired the first interracial kiss, pushed for the inclusion of a Russian as part of their main cast, and would roundly and consistently rebuke divisive politics during its original 1960s run, to say nothing of the more effusive politics of later series.

MovieBob Reviews: Star Trek Beyond