While the Star Wars saga is grabbing headlines left and right, J.J. Abrams other sci-fi epic is gearing up for its latest chapter as Star Trek Beyond dropped its first trailer for the 2016 movie.
The premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens brought in a parade of stormtroopers, droids, celebrities and fans in Los Angeles, hoping to bring in enough to help Disney overcome the decline of ESPN’s profit margin. But it was the teaser for Star Trek Beyond that surprised many fans, especially after five million people watched the short’s debut in less than a day. Abrams, who directed the first two Star Trek reboot films, bumped up to producer. This opened the door for Justin Lin, of The Fast and The Furious fame, to take the helm and captain (pun intended) the latest film co-written by Simon Pegg (Scotty).
In it, the crew finally embarks on their “five year mission” to explore “strange new worlds” and “seek out new life and new civilizations.” And new life is what Trekkies will see.
After the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” opens the trailer, with James T. Kirk mentioning he likes the song, alluding to the introduction of a younger Kirk in the reboot, we see “the Swarm,” as Zoe Saldana (Uhura) put it during an interview with Yahoo, destroy the Enterprise.
That is just the first of many new alien additions to the Trek universe. Very little are seen of the Klingons, Romulans, or even the cute little Tribbles. Instead, we have Idris Elba disguised as a new species, a not-quite Cardassian but sinister-looking alien with ridges, glowing eyes and razor-sharp teeth.
As they push through on a mysterious planet after the Enterprise’s apparent demise, Kirk (played again by Christopher Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) and the rest of the crew must face the deadly threats of Elba’s yet-to-be-named race.
Good news for them, though: Sofia Boutella (from Kingsman fame) portrays Jaylah, an alien ally who stands up to the big bad’s henchmen and aides Kirk and Company on their quest.
“I put Sofia through hell in her intro fight,” Lin told Yahoo. “And we had to go take after take after take. It was four days of really pushing it. She was so pumped up and she just went for it. It looks great. I’m excited for that.”
While the plot is still sketchy, we still get plenty of action to carry fans away from the newness the two reboot films provided into the traditional mission of the Enterprise crew — especially as the franchise is celebrating 50 years in 2016 — a five-year “trek” into the unknown of space.
“The first film was about establishing the characters. The second film was about taking it into a darker place, which was the in-vogue thing circa the Batman/Dark Knight era,” Pine said. “For us Beyond is re-establishing … the world of Star Trek, re-establishing why Star Trek is uniquely its own beast.”
Star Trek Beyond opens in theaters July 22.
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Hanania covered Chicago political beats including Chicago City Hall while at the Daily Southtown Newspapers (1976-1985) and later for the Chicago Sun-Times (1985-1992). He published The Villager Community Newspapers covering 12 Southwest suburban regions (1993-1997). Hanania also hosted live political news radio talkshows on WLS AM (1980 - 1991), and also on WBBM FM, WLUP FM, WSBC AM in Chicago, and WNZK AM in Detroit.
The recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, Hanania was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media;In 2009, he received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. Hananiaalso received two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild, and in 1990 was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
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