Unless something drastic changes in the near future – which looks unlikely given all that’s happened in the last few years – Justin Line’s Star Trek Beyond is poised to carve out a reputation as the movie that potentially buries the franchise’s big screen prospects.
That’s not what it deserves, at least if we take things at face value. Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an 86 percent score, the third installment in the Kelvin timeline also boasts a stellar 80 percent audience approval rating, while it would go on to land an Academy Award nomination for Best Makeup.
And yet, audiences didn’t turn up. Beyond wasn’t close to being an unqualified box office bomb, but the profit margins were rendered fairly thin after the threequel racked up a solid-if-unspectacular $343 million against production costs of $185 million, which did admittedly conspire to make it both the worst-reviewed and lowest-earning of the trilogy.
Since then, Star Trek 4 has risen from the ashes several times over only to fall back into the never-ending abyss of development hell, while a couple of untethered reboots have also fallen by the wayside during that period. The iconic franchise is in rude health on the small screen, but on a cinematic level, the jury is out on what comes next.
Either way, streaming subscribers have opted to indulge Star Trek Beyond, which pits Captain Kirk and the gang up against the ominous thread of Idris Elba’s prosthetic-caked adversary. FlixPatrol has named it as a top-viewed feature among Sky Showtime crowds, but let’s hope they’re all fully aware that it marks the end of the line so far, and possibly even forever.
