If you’re going to be spending the week trying to avoid reviews and spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens before it starts screening Thursday evening, perhaps you would like to distract yourself with the first trailer for that other Star frachise, Star Trek.
Star Trek Beyond will be the first in the rebooted franchise’s run that isn’t under the direction of JJ Abrams. He was off doing the aforementioned Force Awakens, and it looks like Paramount is hoping to piggyback onto the hype for that movie with the timing of this release. Taking over the directorial reigns is Fast & Furious franchise helmer Justin Lin, so that explains the frenetic tone of the minute-and-a-half long teaser. It is also nice to see that the film is being upfront about having more of a sense of humor, something that was in short supply in the previous two Star Trek reboot films.
Paramount hasn’t released an official plot description yet, but on first blush I will say that there are a few moments in the trailer that reminded me of the classic TV Trek episodes “Arena” and “The Gamesters Of Triskelion.” Whether or not it pans out that those episodes are influence or not remains to be seen.
It should be noted that the rebooted franchise hasn’t completely stopped imitating things from the original run of Star Trek films, as in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock they also destroyed the Enterprise.
And if you have a very deep knowledge of Star Trek, you are probably chuckling at the use of the Beastie Boys’ song “Sabotage” for the trailer, outside of it being just a call back to Abrams’ first Trek film. And if you don’t get the joke, find yourself a Trekker friend who can explain it for you.
Star Trek Beyond stars Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Joe Taslim, Sofia Boutella, and Idris Elba and beams into theaters on July 22, 2016.
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