New STAR TREK movie in difficulties over pay

The fourth film in the Star Trek reboot movie franchise (which began with J.J. Abams' 2009 film) has hit a major snag in development. Star Chris Pine - who plays Captain James T. Kirk - and guest star Chris Hemsworth - who played Kirk's dad in the first film and is returning in this one, presumably as part of a time travel story - are both claiming that Paramount has reneged on their previously-agreed pay deal and have refused to commit to the project until their previous pay package is honoured.

Chris Pine and Chis Hemsworth are part of the current Chris Movement in American cinema, a period exemplified by a profusion of Chrises in major blockbuster film franchises. Peak Chris began in 2018 when Evans, Hemsworth and Pratt co-starred in The Avengers: Infinity War and will conclude when its sequel is released in May 2019.

To rewind, the reboot Star Trek franchise began with Star Trek in 2009 and continued with Into Darkness in 2013 and then Beyond in 2016. Even before Beyond was released, producer J.J. Abrams (despite being busy working on the Star Wars movies) had apparently pitched and won early approval from Paramount for a fourth film featuring Kirk meeting his father, and early deals for the regular cast and Hemsworth were put in place.

However, a major snag then developed: Star Trek Beyond, despite positive reviews and being widely credited as the best of the reboot movies (and possibly the best Star Trek movie since the release of First Contact in 1996), did not do well at the box office. It returned $343 million against a budget of $185 million, a drop of $120 million compared to Into Darkness (which had an identical budget). It only just scraped into profit via home media sales and streamings.

Paramount's interest in a new film cooled - possibly not helped by Abrams' decamping from the franchise to work on The Force Awakens (2015) - and they began exploring other takes on the series, including possibly an R-rated film directed by Quentin Tarantino, to the bemusement of fans.

However, with Abrams making himself available again after The Force Awakens and Tarantino deciding to fit in another film before the Star Trek project, Paramount decided to push forwards with the fourth Star Trek film earlier this year, possibly buoyed by the success of Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access. Abrams' 2016 pitch was dusted down and put into development with new director S.J. Clarkson on board.

From the news reports, it sounds like Paramount wanted to renegotiate contracts on the basis of Beyond's underperformance. This would help lower the budget and reduce the cost of the movie compared to its forebears. Apparently the rest of the cast, including well-known (and healthily-remunerated) faces such as Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg and Zachary Quinto, had agreed to the adjustment to help get the film made. However, Chris Pine has recently established himself in the Wonder Woman movie franchise and Hemsworth has starred in six of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films as Thor (including this year's $2 billion-grossing Infinity War) since his previous Star Trek appearance, and neither are willing to drop their price tag.

Negotiations are apparently now suspended, although the film's development is continuing, which is usually a sign that the studio expects negotiations to resume and the problems to be overcome. Solutions would include dropping Hemsworth's character from the film altogether and adjust the script, recasting Hemsworth (which may be viable as his character was in the first film for about five minutes), recasting Pine (much less likely) or simply meeting their pay requests, or making a new pay deal somewhere between the two stools, although this may go down badly with other actors who have already agreed to pay reductions.

Whatever the outcome, it is likely the Star Trek movie franchise will continue. In the meantime, CBS All Access has doubled down on the success of Star Trek: Discovery by commissioning a series focusing on Patrick Stewart's character of Jean-Luc Picard at an advanced age.

Gratuitous Lists: All 13 STAR TREK movies...ranked!

The point of Gratuitous Lists is that the things on it are not listed in order of excellence, but are just on there so people can talk about the shows/games in question rather than argue about the order, which is often arbitrary. But sometimes arguing about the order is just too much fun. After Entertainment Weekly issued a list of Star Trek movies ranked by quality that is simply objectively wrong (how high up is Nemesis?), here's my riposte:

13. Star Trek Into Darkness

Directed by J.J Abrams • Written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman & Damon Lindelof • Released 23 April 2013

Woah! Shots fired! Into Darkness isn't a good Star Trek movie, I think most people agree, but the worst? Worse than The Final Frontier or Nemesis? That seems harsh.

But on reflection, I think not. Each of the previous eleven Star Trek movies, even the deliberately nostalgia-evoking 2009 reboot, at least had at their heart a core idea, or something they wanted to say. Not necessarily anything that was particularly original or good, but at least something that gave them a reason to exist. Into Darkness doesn't do that. Having laid down a fresh new direction in the 2009 movie, J.J. Abrams abruptly reverses course and gives us a poor remake of The Wrath of Khan whilst completely missing everything that made that earlier movie work (like the fact that it was based on us having known the characters for fifteen years, 79 episodes and another movie previously; this cast and crew hadn't earned that story yet), whilst also dialling back on screen time for everyone bar Kirk and Spock. There's a nasty, dark undercurrent to the film, a lack of respect for innocent life that just isn't very Star Trek and a horrendous casting decision in using Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan. Add to that the lacklustre final battle against a poorly-designed enemy ship and a near-total absence of plot logic, and Into Darkness becomes a sprawling, incoherent mess which aims to be gritty and morally murky and ends up just being comically inept.

12. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Directed by William Shatner • Written by David Loughrey, Harve Bennett & William Shatner • Released 9 June 1989

The Final Frontier is, in many respects a badly-directed, indifferently-written movie which is saved by some absolutely killer lines ("I've always known that I'll die alone" could be a Wrath of Khan line; "What does God want with a starship?" could...not) and the emotional bond between the characters. It also acts as some kind of trans-dimensional portal, through which you can gaze into the inner workings of William Shatner's mind. If you emerge with your sanity intact, congratulations, but spend too long gazing into the abyss and The Final Frontier starts looking like something approaching a good film, an offbeat and bizarre character piece with an occasional decent action beat and an ending that was so far beyond the budget's ability to deliver that someone should really have stopped Shatner from attempting it. But of course no mere mortal could stop Shatner once he had been given this kind of power.

I can see why EW put The Final Frontier further up their list. There's something compulsively watchable about the movie, if only because you're not entirely sure what the hell Shatner is going to do next (either directing, acting or writing-wise) and you have to admire the fact that a movie starring actors in their fifties and sixties went up against the Tim Burton Batman film and the Ghostbusters sequel and somehow held its own. But it does only work once. On rewatches, the film's many flaws including its howl-inducing dialogue, weak effects, uncertain tone and poor villain become almost overwhelming.

11. Star Trek: Nemesis

Directed by Stuart Laird • Written by John Logan, Rick Berman & Brent Spiner • Released 13 December 2002

Nemesis almost killed Star Trek. The only film to bomb at the box office (although thanks to DVD it did eventually turn a modest profit), it was responsible for ending Rick Berman's stewardship of the franchise and causing Paramount to completely rethink their plans for how the property would be handled going forwards. For all of that, Nemesis is not entirely without merit: in a young Tom Hardy as a Reman general (and clone of Picard) it has a reasonably good villain, the concluding space battle is one of the better in the series and both Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart deliver killer performances, both rich in tragedy, introspection and pathos. It's also good to see some major changes to the Next Generation paradigm, with characters being promoted, getting married and moving on with their lives.

But it's also a bitty and underwritten film. The scenes focused on character development were almost entirely cut from the final movie, leaving a string of half-thought-out and underwhelming set pieces (the buggy racing scene is a bit pointless). The film also makes the mistake of killing off a major character and then bringing him back five minutes later. You can only do that once in a franchise (and Wrath of Khan and Search for Spock earned it a lot more), and doing it for the second time here (and a third time in Into Darkness) is a big mistake in terms of building suspense and tone.

Nemesis isn't the worst movie ever made or even the worst Star Trek movie. At its core it has a really strong premise, which is more than you can say about The Final Frontier, but it's certainly the most undercooked and indifferently-directed movie in the history of the series.

10. Star Trek: Insurrection

Directed by Jonathan Frakes • Written by Michael Piller • Released 11 December 1998

Insurrection is the Star Trek movie that everyone kind of forget exists. It's just kind of there. A lighthearted film, even marketed as the "Star Trek date movie" (because that is a thing that anyone ever asked for or wanted), it's completely inoffensive. The villain (played by F. Murray Abraham in fine, scenery-destroying form) is okay, the effects are okay, the story is okay and everything about it is kind of okay without ever being outstanding. It's worst sin is being boring, like a late-Season 5 episode of TNG that you completely forget ever existed until you hit it on a complete rewatch and then you've forgotten about again ten minutes after it ends. However, the film does have one outstanding moment: Data going haywire and Picard defeating him using Gilbert and Sullivan. For that gloriously demented scene, we'll forgive Insurrection its overwhelming beigeness.

9. Star Trek: Generations

Directed by David Carson • Written by Ronald D. Moore & Brannon Braga • Released 18 November 1994
Picard and Kirk meet and team up! To ride horses! And punch Michael McDowell! In the last twenty minutes of the film!

In terms of marketing, Generations oversold the idea of Kirk and Picard joining forces to take down an enemy threat. The budget wouldn't allow for the entire crews of both past and present Enterprises to meet and writers Ron Moore and Brannon Braga were distracted by also having to the write the (far superior) Next Generation series finale, All Good Things, which even Patrick Stewart admitted would have made for a better film.

As it stands, Generations isn't too bad. The saucer separation and crash-landing sequence is splendidly realised, McDowell is a reasonably charismatic bad guy and director David Carson brings a dark, subdued tone to the film which doesn't make any sense (apparently it was encouraged by the studio who loved his work on the classic TNG episode Yesterday's Enterprise) but is extremely atmospheric. Patrick Stewart also gets a meaty emotional storyline when confronting his own mortality and that of his family. But the plot is clunky and filleted with holes (why doesn't Soran just fly into the Nexus in a ship instead of blowing up entire star systems and killing billions of people?), Whoopi Goldberg doesn't get enough to do and the feeling is that they destroyed the wonderfully-designed Enterprise-D (its successor is a much less interesting design) just for shock value.

8. Star Trek

Directed by J.J. Abrams • Written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman & Damon Lindelof • Released 7 April 2009
J.J. Abrams's reboot of Star Trek is filled with problems which sound rather damning: the comedy moments are awful, there is zero respect given for science or plot logic and Chris Pine is woefully miscast and unconvincing as the young Captain Kirk. But at the same time, the film is energetic and kind of fun, the rest of the new cast (especially Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban and Zoe Saldana) is excellent and the film makes a decent fist of tying in to the existing mythology and continuity whilst also doing its own thing. You also have to give massive respect to Leonard Nimoy who delivers a well-measured performance filled with gravitas. It's also surprising and welcome that Abrams gives us a whole new villain (played with deranged intensity by Eric Bana) rather than trying to bring back any of the big Star Trek monsters or aliens. There's many wince-inducing moments and a tonal mismatch with what came before, but the 2009 Star Trek reboot hits a lot more than it misses.

7. Star Trek Beyond

Directed by Justin Lin • Written by Simon Pegg & Doug Jung • Released 7 July 2016

The newest Star Trek movie is, fortunately, one of the better ones in the series. Problematic elements in the new canon (beaming between star systems, magic blood) are simply ignored, the plot is refreshingly straightforward and mostly bereft of major lapses in logic, the cast is much-better served by the script and Starbase Yorktown is the first outright stunning piece of new Star Trek design in decades. The film moves fast, Idris Elba is a good villain and overall this feels like a fresh, breezy and massively-budgeted episode of the TV show.

6. Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Directed by Robert Wise • Written by Harold Livingston, Alan Dean Foster & Gene Roddenberry (uncredited) • Released 7 December 1979

In Gene Roddenberry's head, all of Star Trek would have looked like The Motion Picture and the first season of The Next Generation: slow, talky and only occasionally letting off a phaser for the fun of it. If the Roddenberry who made the original Star Trek series was a fast-working administrator who understood the beats and needs of action-adventure television, a decade of constant praise and being hailed as a visionary ("The Great Bird of the Galaxy") at Star Trek conventions had not so much gone to his head as triggered an explosion of vanity that could have sunk the franchise. The Motion Picture, in particular, is held up as an example of film-maker overindulgence at its flabbiest.

It's hard to argue with that. But it's also hard to argue against the idea that The Motion Picture is a good film. Whether it's a good Star Trek film is another matter, but The Motion Picture makes some quite bold decisions that, in an absolute million years, no director or writer on Earth would get away with today. It's a slow-paced movie with tons of expensive visual effects. There's lots of scenes where characters sit around and make philosophical scoring points. Spock doesn't get involved in the plot until almost halfway through the film. The Enterprise only fires its weapons once, to destroy an asteroid. There's more lip-service paid to science and the dangers of the everyday technology the characters use (the death-by-malfunctioning transporter scene is still grimly disturbing). There isn't even a bad guy. The Motion Picture is much more Solaris or 2001: A Space Odyssey than Star Wars, which for an effects SF movie released in 1979 was a very bold and counter intuitive decision.

But there's a sense of gravitas, of vision and of scale to this film that Star Trek never achieved before or since. V'Ger is a stunning creation, the best-realised Big Dumb Object in the history of SF cinema, and Kirk and crew's first reaction being to study and negotiate with it is welcome. The film is also a love letter to the starship Enterprise, which arguably has never been depicted with more aplomb than in this movie, and of course its design in this film is now the gold standard for all other attempts to depict the ship. And it easily has the best soundtrack of any Star Trek film (which given how good some of the others are, is saying something). It's not for everyone, and if Roddenberry had been allowed to continue with the franchise he probably would have wrecked it, but The Motion Picture is the oddest, weirdest and - arguably - most interesting Star Trek movie of them all. But, obviously, not the best.

5. Star Trek: First Contact

Directed by Jonathan Frakes • Written by Ronald D. Moore & Brannon Braga • Released 22 November 1996

When The Next Generation created the Borg, it always felt like they were trying to unleash an enemy they didn't quite have the money to realise fully. This, combined with the fear of over-using them and losing their implacable menace, saw them deployed on TNG in only six out of 178 episodes, and arguably only in three of those episodes were they the "proper" Borg.

Using the second TNG movie to fully realise the Borg as a horrific, invasive force of assimilation and destruction was a wise move and First Contact is full of well-directed moments showing this unstoppable enemy in full swing (all handled with aplomb by TNG actor Jonathan Frakes). It also features some rather howl-inducingly terrible moments which are best forgotten (most of the Earth subplot involving James Cromwell's spectacularly grating mad scientist), not to mention how the ridiculous ease with which the Borg cube is defeated in the opening minutes of the film reduces the threat level of the Borg quite a lot. But overlooking that, Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart deliver killer performances, as does Alice Krige, whose Borg Queen may be the most sinister and disturbing Star Trek movie villain of them all. One ends up wishing for an adult-rated version of this movie where they really go to town with the body horror and action sequences.

We never quite get that and ultimately First Contact pulls a few too many punches. But it's a watchable, enjoyable action film featuring one of Stewart's best performances in the role of Picard, and certainly is the only TNG movie which can withstand comparisons with the best films in the franchise.

4. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

Directed by Leonard Nimoy • Written by Harve Bennett • Released 1 June 1984

The Search for Spock is the Star Trek movie franchise's most underrated entry, and one that seems to be gaining more in popularity as time goes by. It's the film that introduces more iconic ships and ideas into the Star Trek universe than almost any other: the Klingon Bird-of-Prey, Spacedock, the Excelsior and transwarp technology go on to star in many future Trek movies and episodes. It also uses a fairly narrow plot directive - resurrect Spock - in an enjoyable and rather smart way throughout. Like The Wrath of Khan the script is built on a series of thematic elements which resonate throughout the movie. Kirk's growing age, his frustration with his desk-bound career and his mixed feelings on family: in The Wrath of Khan he gained a son but lost his best friend. The Search for Spock's absolute masterstroke is giving Kirk back his best friend, but taking away his son and his ship and his career: his very reasons for living. For a film that gets a lot of flak (some, like Christopher Lloyd's well-played but ill-defined Klingon villain and the dodgy planet sets, justifiably) The Search for Spock delivers two of the franchise's most brilliantly-staged and tensest moments: stealing the Enterprise from Spacedock and later blowing it up over the Genesis Planet. I mean, how many movies can make reversing the car out of the garage into one of the most iconic set-pieces in the franchise's history?

The Search for Spock's best moment is when Kirk nails that being human is to be irrational and illogical: "The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many" doesn't make sense, especially when the many includes Kirk's son, his ship, his career and those of his crew. But then in the final scene Spock lives again, and more adventures are promised, and then it makes sense.

3. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Directed by Leonard Nimoy • Written by Harve Bennett, Nicholas Meyer, Steve Meerson & Peter Krikes • Released 26 November 1986

A plot summary for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home sounds like a bad acid trip. Millions of years ago, an alien probe surveying the galaxy visited Earth and made contact with the most intelligent species on the planet at that time: whales. Figuring that the whales would eventually evolve into a more impressive lifeform, the probe leaves with a promise to swing back by. It does, only to discover that the whales have been killed off by the ape-descendants who have evolved in the meantime. The probe is a bit annoyed by this and prepares to destroy the planet and everyone on it. Kirk and co., heading home to face the music after the events of The Search for Spock, realise they have no choice but to travel back in time to rescue two humpback whales and bring them back to tell the probe to bugger off.

But it works. The Voyage Home is a barmy film which starts off as a relentless, doom-laded SF thriller before turning into an 1980s-tastic comedy in the second act, complete with "nuclear wessels" and right-on ecological messages. It's also genuinely funny, with some great culture-clash moments. It's unusual because there is also no sense of tension: because Kirk and co. can return to their own time at the exact moment they left, they could spend several years in the 20th Century if they really wanted to. This results in some breezy pacing and great character interplay. The finale, where they return home and try to see if their plan worked, is predictable but effective.

The result is the most light-hearted Star Trek movie and the most atypical. It's fun and slightly cheesy but is rooted in these characters and the easy chemistry they've developed over twenty years.

2. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Directed by Nicholas Meyer • Written by Nicholas Meyer & Denny Martin Flinn • Released 6 December 1991

After The Final Frontier's ghastly critical reception, both the original series actors and Paramount wanted to to send them out on a stronger note. Leonard Nimoy was brought in to produce and he decided to re-recruit Nicholas Meyer to direct and co-write, developing the idea of glasnost and the notion of the Federation and the Klingon Empire making peace whilst generals and spies on both sides desperately want to prolong the cold war.

The result is a film that takes the metaphor and pushes it forwards a little too obviously, but is really watchable and clever for that. The movie also tackles racism (Kirk invoking the death of his son by Klingons in The Search for Spock as a reason for hating them) and the notions of age and moving on, with Sulu and his Excelsior, a ship bigger, more powerful and faster than the Enterprise, making the Enterprise crew realise that their adventures are over. Thrown in some fun battle sequences and a great villainous turn from Christopher Plummer as a Shakespeare-quoting Klingon general and you have a perfect send-off to the original crew.

1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Directed by Nicholas Meyer • Written by Harve Bennett, Jack B. Sowards & Nicholas Meyer (uncredited) • Released 4 June 1982

This is the film that saved Star Trek, by bringing on board a writer and director who had no knowledge about the franchise at all and letting them deliver a faster-paced and better-written movie than the ponderous Motion Picture. Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer hit paydirt by bringing back the powerfully charismatic Ricardo Montalban as Khan, a villain from the TV series, and turning their limited budget into a boon. More than half the film is shot on the same set standing in for the bridge of both the Enterprise and the Reliant, and a large chunk of it is a taut, expertly-directed game of cat and mouse in a nebula. The film also has one of the cleverest doomsday weapons of all time with the Genesis Device, a terraforming aid which can be perverted into a force for destruction, and it also competes with The Motion Picture for the title of "best soundtrack in the franchise", promoting James Horner to the big leagues of Hollywood composing.

But where the film works best is its exploration of age, which sees Kirk plunged into a depression as he struggles with the demands of responsibility and his desire to command a starship once again, and it is only as the film unfolds and Kirk gains a family, defeats an enemy and loses a friend that he realises how well off he really is. The film usually sees William Shatner praised - this is by a light-year his finest moment as Kirk - as well as Leonard Nimoy, but DeForest Kelley also does sterling and under-appreciated work as McCoy acting as Kirk's conscience.

Great music, fine performances, brilliantly-developed themes and a superlative soundtrack all make The Wrath of Khan the best Star Trek movie...and we haven't even mentioned the fact that its groundbreaking CG sequence resulted in the creation of Pixar Studios. Not just the best Star Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan is one of the finest SF movies of all time.

Star Trek Beyond

The USS Enterprise is three years into its five-year mission exploring deep space. However, Captain James T. Kirk is feeling boredom settling in. The mission consists of a lot more diplomatic work and less boldly exploring the frontier than he was expecting. Whilst docked at the massive Starbase Yorktown, the Enterprise receives a distress call from the heart of a nearby, mysterious nebula. Kirk sets out, eager to see something new...only to get a lot more than he bargained for.

When J.J. Abrams rebooted Star Trek in 2009, he assembled an absolutely killer cast. Replicating the chemistry of the original crew was a tall order, but he somehow achieved it with the likable - if massively flawed - first reboot film. It was also pretty much the only thing holding together the appalling sequel, Into Darkness, in 2013. The diabolical quality of that movie lowered expectations for this third entry in the new series, especially when it was announced that Simon Pegg would be writing the script and Justin Lin would be directing.

To some degree that was counter-intuitive, given Pegg's geek credentials and his strong writing experience (especially on the Spaced TV series and his collaborations with Edgar Wright). But Pegg's recent writing work has been patchy and Justin Lin is best known for the Fast and Furious franchise, not known for its thoughtful exploration of the unknown. Fans may have been a little too quick to judge there: not only is Lin a massive Star Trek fan from his chilldhood but his F&F movies transitioned quite cleverly from just dumb action movies into actions movies with a strong sense of character interplay, family and heart.

These sensibilities come into full force on Star Trek Beyond. Lin delivers explosions, impressive stunts and some great action set-pieces - and unlike the two previous movies, most of these are well-shot and comprehensible - but he also delivers on bringing the characters together and driving them apart and finding out what makes them tick as individuals and as a group. He is well-served by Simon Pegg's script (helped out by Doug Jung), the writer relishing his chance to finally write an all-out science fiction blockbuster and delivering. Pegg, like Abrams, is known to be a Star Wars fan much more than a Star Trek one, but whilst Abrams ill-advisedly set about trying to turn Trek into Wars, Pegg has actually sat down and worked out what makes Star Trek different and brought those elements into the script. For example, fans were bemused by the near-total lack of any decent Spock/McCoy banter in the Abrams movies but here get an entire, fairly substantial subplot focused on the two characters which works extremely well. Zoe Saldana's Uhura also gets a great (if a little brief) storyline as she gets under the skin of main villain Kraal (Idris Elba under heavy makeup) and tries to find out what makes him tick. Anton Yelchin's Chekov gets a fair few action scenes, so of the main cast it's only John Cho's Sulu that gets short shrift. And even he still gets to command the Enterprise, lead a prison break and is given the most personal stakes in the final showdown (nicely underplayed, as well).

Star Trek Beyond in fact tries to do something that is very clever: it goes for the all-out CG blockbuster stuff but then suddenly reins it in and goes for unexpected restraint. A lengthy (and slightly nonsensical) CGI space battle turns into a low-tech, far more relatable struggle on the surface of a planet. A major CG fest of phasers and spaceships in the finale gives way to that greatest of Star Trek staples: Kirk and the villain facing off with just their fists, but done in a near-zero gravity environment against a dizzying backdrop (if you suffer from strong vertigo, I would advise against seeing this film in 3D). The movie also sacrifices the shining Apple-influenced hallways and bridge of the Enterprise for a more primitive NX-class starship (cue the Star Trek: Enterprise fans cheering, although it's not that one) and brings back a genuine sense of wonder to the graphic design. Starbase Yorktown is a jaw-dropping creation, a multi-sided city floating in what is effectively a snowglobe, evoking not just previous Star Trek designs but also the Citadel of the Mass Effect trilogy.

The film also remembers it's the 50th anniversary year and uses the recent death of Leonard Nimoy to pay homage to that: young Spock learning of the passing of his older, other-dimensional self and then discovering a box of his possessions allows the movie to tip its hat at what came before in a surprisingly effective move which informs Spock's excellent character development throughout the rest of the movie. Zachary Quinto has less to do than in either of Beyond's two predecessors but his character arc is considerably more satisfying, emotional and, as some may say, logical.

New characters are surprisingly thin on the ground. The villain Kraal is well-played by Elba, but for most of the film lacks decent motivation. The finale finally explains who he is and what he wants, and it's a great moment, but comes rather late in the day. Still, Elba's villain satisfies far more than either Benedict Cumberbatch-trying-to-be-Ricardo-Montalban or Eric Bana's way too expositionary and over-explained Nero. Also impressive is Sofia Boutella as Jaylah, a native of the new planet who quickly becomes a key ally of Scotty (and later the rest of the gang). Boutella gives Jaylah just the right mix of badass warrior and slightly overwhelmed local girl, and her fascination with science and engineering plays well into the finale. I hope we see her back in the next film (if there is one; Beyond's opening numbers are looking a bit iffy at the moment). Shohreh Aghdashloo also gets a memorable cameo as a Federation commodore, a pick-up shot to help with exposition and sell Kirk's motivations a bit better. Given it was a late addition to the film, I do wonder if Lin and Pegg had seen her in The Expanse (or, more likely, the trailers) and decided to borrow her authoritative space leader charisma for their movie. In that case, good job.

It's not all a glorious bed of roses, though. There's a fairly obvious plot hole in why Kraal decides to stay on his rubbish planet long after he managed to take control of a swarm of warp-capable spacecraft which could have taken him anywhere he wanted in the galaxy. The Beastie Boys return to the soundtrack for a very well-explained (indeed, somewhat oversold) reason but it still feels out of place, and Star Trek Beyond tries to get a lot of mileage out of a joke that was a toss-off in a 1965 episode of Doctor Who (modern rock music is described as "classical music" by people in the future...BECAUSE THEY ARE IN THE FUTURE!). Kirk also gets to ride a motorbike because, hell, why not?.

But ultimately, Star Trek Beyond (****½) brings a surprising amount of heart to proceedings, doesn't entirely neglect the brain, engages in some great characterisation and team interplay, pays homage to its departed castmembers in a genuinely moving way (a toast to "departed friends" gains tremendous pathos during Anton Yelchin's reaction shot) and features Kirk punching an alien in the face, McCoy and Spock bickering like an old married couple, Scotty pulling off an engineering miracle, Sulu pulling off an insane piloting maneuver, Uhura figuring out how to communicate with an alien species (also: best depiction of the universal translator ever), and Chekov explaining how Russia invented everything, including Scotch. It is, inarguably, the best Star Trek movie in twenty years, since First Contact, and may even (much more arguably) be the best in twenty-five, since The Undiscovered Country. The film is on general release now.