Director Justin Lin (The Fast and Furious franchise) and writer Simon Pegg take the reigns of the continuing adventures of the Starship Enterprise from J.J. Abrams in this the 3rd big screen adventure of the all-new all-different crew of the NCC-1701. Find out if we think it fixes the damage done in Star Trek Into Darkness in the review after the jump.

Star Trek Into Darkness was a tremendous disappointment for fans of Star Trek and especially as the 2nd film in the relaunched Star Trek film franchise. While 2009’s J.J. Abrams directed Star Trek had some heavy lifting to do in terms of establishing a new film universe with an all-new cast while still keeping the original fanbase onboard by establishing it as an alternate timeline; 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness lapsed into a weird quasi-remake of The Wrath of Khan and bad fan service that left a bad taste of things to come for Trek fans. Abrams left the Trek franchise for the sunny shores of the Star Wars franchise for 2015’s Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens; leaving Trek in need of a new steward. Enter Justin Lin, director and steward of the Fast and Furious franchise who’d made it a moneymaking epic over the course of directing the last 4 Furious films. Lin and actor/writer Pegg delivered Star Trek Beyond, a more grounded adventure that feels like a film in the vein of an original Enterprise film and delivers a lot of great character work with the excellent cast they have assembled.

Star Trek Beyond centers primarily on two divergent paths presented to Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto). After a failed peace mission where Kirk offers an alien race an olive branch of an old weapon called the Abronath, Kirk wonders whether he would be better off serving in Starfleet’s admiralty and leaving exploration to Spock as captain. Meanwhile, Spock has been alerted that Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy), his counterpart from the Prime Universe, has died on New Vulcan; making Spock wonder if his destiny would be better served helping shepherd the survivors of the small Vulcan race left. As they ponder their future on the new space station Yorktown, an alien pod in distress piloted by an alien named Kalara asks for Starfleet’s help in rescuing her crewmates beyond a nebula that can only be navigated safely by the Enterprise. Kirk, Spock and the crew accept the mission not knowing there is an alien hive force behind the crew’s distress led by an alien named Krall (Idris Elba), made almost unrecognizable in performance and makeup.

Star Trek Beyond succeeds as a pulp adventure. It doesn’t have universe destroying stakes, but those you might find in an episode of The Original Series or The Next Generation. Bones (Karl Urban) and Spock’s relationship is given a lot of spotlight and the two have great chemistry. Scotty also has a lot of great character development in dealing with an alien named Jaylah (played by Kingsman: The Secret Service‘s Sofia Boutella) who stands poised to help them escape when captured on Krall’s planet. Jaylah is the film’s breakout character and Bad Robot would be smart to feature her as a crewman in future Trek films. The late Anton Yelchin also has a meaty role alongside Pine’s Kirk in exploring the wreckage on the world they find themselves marooned on and his absence will be missed in future Trek films.

The film’s pulp feeling has a negative however; the film feels very reminiscent of many other science fiction films. Most notably 1985’s Enemy Mine, down to Krall’s makeup being very similar to Louis Gossett’s in the film. The film’s climax also feels very very similar to 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy down to pop music being an important part of the film, and the film’s MacGuffin being very similar. I would imagine it wasn’t Lin and Pegg’s intention to ape Guardians so closely, but it removes much of the gravitas of the finale when your ultimate bio weapon and final set scene are almost identical to those of a huge hit from another studio.

In the end, Star Trek Beyond is a fun popcorn movie outing for a weekend afternoon. The tributes to Nimoy and then original cast in the film are well done and there are string performances throughout that seem poised to right the new Enterprise’s path towards more original adventures and character introductions down the line and less apeing of the original series and films.