What happens when you give prolific Fast & Furious franchise director Justin Lin the keys to the USS Enterprise? He wrecks it, apparently, and pretty darn quick.
Star Trek Beyond doesn’t debut until next July, but the first trailer has arrived to give us a glimpse at the franchise’s future. It’s action-packed, at the very least, although it’s not clear yet quite what all that action might add up to. We get a good look at Sofia Boutella’s as-yet-unnamed alien pugilist, several shots of swarming alien spaceships, and some welcome banter from Bones (Karl Urban) to break up all the punching and jumping and more jumping.
It’s just a 90 second trailer, but that’s enough to pick up on a distinctly different from the previous two Star Trek installments. That’s no doubt in large part because director J.J. Abrams has beamed on over to the Star Wars universe (The Force Awakens opens this week, which you of course already knew, because at this point it’s impossible not to know), though he still maintains an executive producer chair. It’s also not necessarily such a bad thing. If nothing else Star Trek Beyond looks like it remembers how to have fun, in a way that Into Darkness maybe forgot.
The one thing this trailer could have used? Any signs of Idris Elba, Beyond’s big bad, though that sounds like his voiceover saying threatening things. Who he’s playing remains anybody’s guess (maybe he's hiding in plain sight here, under a metric ton of makeup?) but Elba’s so good, I’d happily spend two hours watching him play a tribble.
Pause at: :25 to say bye-bye Enterprise. :50 for some Fast and the Kirkious. :54 for our first good look at Boutella's character, kicking an appropriate amount of keister.
Essential quote: "This is where it begins, Captain. This is where the frontier pushes back."
