Review: Star Trek Beyond

It’s Eric, an admitted non-Trekker, with some reflections on Star Trek Beyond.  

Is there a better rebooter in the industry than J.J. Abrams?  His last directing effort, a little film called Star Wars: The Force Awakens, expertly combined the franchises’ original charm and simplicity with a new sparkle that made it the best in the series since 1983.  And when Abrams kicked off Star Trek in 2009 for a new generation, he seemed similarly to balance many of the qualities dear to Trekkers’ hearts while introducing a new audience (of which I was one) to the series.   

Abrams also directed the next installment, Into Darkness, but here on Beyond serves as producer only while the director reigns go to Justin Lin.  Lin is an expert action director and has delivered some killer set pieces in volumes three through six of the Fast and the Furious franchise...

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Posterized: Star Trek Franchise

The Star Trek mission statement is a little silly in retrospect, isn't it:

To boldly go where no man has gone before.

The franchise, now celebrating its 50th anniversary, has produced six television series and thirteen feature films so what man hasn't gone there? It's probably bolder to have never taken a ride on the starship Enterprise. But let's do a Posterized. We'll include the series (which each get one poster) in this roundup. So how many of the 19 Star Trek adventures have you seen? 

All the posters are after the jump...

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John Cho's Sulu Comes Out

In a fun bit of refreshing happy news, it has been revealed that John Cho's Sulu will be gay in the upcoming Star Trek Beyond. What a heartwarming nod to the series's original Sulu George Takei, who has been one of the loudest and proudest out performers advocating for LGBT rights for some time.

This is also a welcome alternative to the after-the-fact revisionism granted to franchise icons like Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series, though Takei himself disagrees. But Sulu hasn't previously had any romantic backstory in the canon, so any grousing of opportunistic pandering isn't quite fair either. Reintroducing the character as gay without a "might be" or "actually was" asterix is something else entirely while the series is running, especially without definitively being drawn as straight in his history.

The reported nonchalant introduction of Sulu's same-gender partner is a hopeful sign that gay visability in mass entertainment to moving toward characters that that don't shy from queerness but don't require it to solely define them. Cho commented on the reveal:

I liked the approach, which was not to make a big thing out it, which is where I hope we are going as a species, to not politicise one’s personal orientations...

While the unfortunate obvious truth is that we are not at that point with LGBT acceptance, having a beloved character who now happens to be gay is a necessary step towards wider visibility that has been missing in franchise entertainment.

This is a step in the right direction for franchise entertainment as a whole, but one that seems long delayed for the historically progressive series. Toss in that original Rihanna track and Beyond is starting to look like a gay old time at the movies - but Sulu, honey, you're supposed to come out during Pride month, not after!

Do you find Sulu's outing exciting or revisionist?