Movie - Star Trek Beyond

Note:  May be minor spoilers throughout, but will try to keep them to a minimum.

     With a new director, and Simon Pegg taking over partial writing duties, Star Trek Beyond brings back the crew from the previous two movies to make a third installment of the Star Trek reboot franchise.  I really enjoyed the first two movies, and I was a bit apprehensive about the new director taking over for J. J. Abrams, but by the end of the film, I felt like all the things that made the previous two films good were still intact, while feeling even a little bit bigger than the previous two installments.
     The movies picks up some three years after the previous installment, as the crew of the Enterprise, more specifically Captain James T. Kirk, are in a rut.  Kirk is questioning why they are even doing all of this if the universe is infinite and they will never see everything or understand everything.  It looks as if Kirk is going to give up the Enterprise for a desk job in the city when a strange ship arrives and a female alien explains that her ship was lost inside a nebula and asks for help.  Kirk and the Enterprise are sent on the mission, where they are viciously attacked by an alien force unlike anything they have ever seen before.  The crew gets separated and stranded on the planet, as they try to reunite, find a way off the planet, and stop Krall, the leader of the aliens that attacked them.
     I'll start with the director, Justin Lin.  Primarily known for his directorial duties with the Fast & Furious franchise, I was a little worried that attention to the plot and details were going to be thrown aside for bigger, badder action scenes.  But that didn't end up being the case.  In fact, I found myself enjoying the action scenes more than I did in the previous two installments, as he really brings a nice flare to the action sequences, without making them feel over the top as some of the scenes in the Fast & Furious movies feel.  The plot made sense, and the pacing was pretty good, but it was a little slow at first as the movie tried to find its footing, but when it finally got rolling, every scene felt important as they built to the climax of the movie.
     The performances were once again really good by the cast (RIP Anton Yelchin, a fine performance), and I feel that at this point, the actors have really gotten a feel for the characters, and so the actions on screen make sense to the characters, and they are brought to life as we have come to expect.  While that does lead to some predictability, it's not as if we watch these types of movies to be blown away, but to be entertained, and Star Trek Beyond goes above and beyond (see what I did there?) to make sure the audience stays entertained.  It has equal doses of humor and seriousness, with a nice mix of character development and action sequences.  It really is the pure definition of what a blockbuster should be.
     I don't know if I would say this was better than Into Darkness, but it was certainly close.  Idris Elba did a fine job as the bad guy, but it's hard to top Benedict Cumberbatch from the previous movie, so I think that is the primary difference here.  Overall, I was thoroughly entertained, and as I sat there watching the movie, I was thinking to myself about how this has become one of the more solid franchises on the market today.  It has a distinct feel to it, and Beyond only helped solidify that feel, and I can only look forward to the next installment (which I hear is going to bring Chris Hemsworth back as Captain Kirk's father, which is only a plus).

My rating for the film is 8/10