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Star Trek: Beyond | 2016 | PG-13 | - 2.6.2

Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) leads First Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto), the ship's doctor (Karl Urban) and the Enterprise crew into a barren world. Stranded on the planet that's ruled by sinister reptilian aliens, they join a freedom fighter (Sofia Boutella) to save her species and return to Earth. Also with Simon Pegg, Idris Elba, Zoe Saldana, John Cho and Anton Yelchin. Directed by Justin Lin. A few lines of several alien languages have no translation, and many lines of the languages have English subtitles or a Universal Translator translating. [2:02]

SEX/NUDITY 2 - A woman kisses a man and across the hall, a woman wearing a tank top and short shorts pushes a man out of her cabin; he is shirtless and she throws his shirt at him. A woman kisses a man briefly on a cheek (in trailers they kiss on the lips for a few seconds, but not in the film). A gay married couple hug briefly.
 A man says to a Vulcan, "You thought you should be out making little Vulcans" and the Vulcan answers yes. A man says that he thinks another man gave his girlfriend a tracking device in a necklace and the second man denies this. Three men stare briefly at three women and the men then laugh at one another.
 Several female starship personnel wear minis. An alien woman reveals a little cleavage in a square-necked body suit. A shirtless man washes his face and looks into his closet.

VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - Talking brown gargoyles are alien leaders on a foreign planet; they shout and roar at a human, fall down at him from a tall precipice and we see that they are only the size of small dogs as they jump on the man's neck and back, tearing a shoulder of his shirt and growling like dogs until a transporter beam takes the man and two gargoyles to a starship and men chase the small beings through corridors. A race of warrior aliens are tall, with spiny black scales covering the body, beady eyes and sharp teeth; their hands are claw like and they shoot laser pistols with green beams. A subservient race on a planet is humanoid with skin as white as chalk, black stripes down the face, and whitish mane-like hair. Several scenes feature aliens of many races with colorful skin (blue, green, yellowish and gray) and some with horny scalps like sea shells and crab legs. In one scene, aliens are the size and shape of dandelion puff balls floating through the air.
 A long line of men and women are herded into some sort of containment area as slaves and we later see a man and a woman hanging head down, surrounded by electrical cables; an alien steps between them, touches them and sucks out all their energy as they scream and the scene ends.
 Several red-shirted men lie dead in a dark corridor after we see green light beams approaching the men. A man wearing a red shirt lies dead, with a badly burned and red-raw face.
 Aliens wearing body armor and glowing helmets board a ship, shooting energy pistols that emit green beams as the alien leader stomps around and growls, breathing heavily; a few brief fistfights occur and we see some kicking and a tackle (the human suffers some facial scrapes). A man rides a motorcycle around an alien warrior compound artificially multiplying his image to confuse the enemy; aliens fire lasers at him and miss as we see blue waves of cloaking effect around men, a ship, and the man on the motorcycle; a woman fistfights with two alien warrior men, kicking and punching them before one of them throws her against a wall and down an incline, and then chokes her but she escapes unhurt. An alien soldier lifts a man off the floor by the throat and slams him into a ceiling; they fistfight three times and the ship tilts causing them to slide through corridors and ship's crewmen shoot at aliens, felling a few of them (two aliens fall over a metal balcony and off-screen); crew people eject in escape pods and the ship explodes in balls of orange and yellow flame that fill the screen. A man confronts three aliens and an alien woman appears with a knife and an electronic staff; she throws two discs that become clones of her and all three of her kick and knock out the three aliens. A warrior alien pushes and punches human men and chokes one of the men.
 A starship's saucer separates from the ship's body, burns and smokes while entering a planet's atmosphere, slides down a rocky ravine, throwing up sparks, and crashes to the ground, glowing in embers; before crashing, two men shoot through a window and slide down the hull, jumping off to safety and aliens and a few other humans are thrown out of a hole in the hull, presumably dead. An alien woman kicks a man, he falls, and another man points a phaser at her back; she escapes to the outside of a wrecked Starfleet saucer and is presumably crushed when it slams into a mountain spire. Two men run from black smoke bursting from the ground and another man finds them and a woman alien aims an electronic staff at them and we see them trapped on a rock wall under resin-like material (the staff melts and shatters the material to free them). Two men release hundreds of slaves from an enclosure and fire phasers at aliens, causing a few to fall off metal platforms. A man points a phaser at an alien woman, but does not shoot.
 Two men in a shuttle fly into an area where one of the men pulls another man out of an air distribution hub; later we see that the third man has a black eye.
 An alien transforms to a man with ridges on his scalp, he climbs into an anti-gravity chamber that leads to an air distribution system on a space station and plants an explosive device; another man fights with him several times after shooting him in the leg (we see no blood) and they fall through a shattering glass window and land on a tower, then glide back to the air distributor on the wind (one man has a bloody mouth and says that humans will die); the other man kicks away large shards of glass, kicks the man away, releases four locks on the air distribution hub, and the man sails up into the air toward a device that emits waves of black shards like iron filings and flies into space with the man, where he is engulfed by the shards and presumably dies.
 A man and a Vulcan climb out of an escape pod and we see a length of metal sticking out of the Vulcan's side where bluish blood has soaked his uniform; the human has blood on one temple as he heats a piece of metal and cauterizes the wound off-screen (we hear the Vulcan man scream twice) and then the Vulcan collapses, groaning in pain three times. A man falls out of an escape pod tilting at the edge of a canyon and clings to the edge by his hands and the scene ends (we see him unharmed later).
 A starship is damaged in a confrontation with a swarm of small metallic "space bee" ships; thousands of these ships penetrate the hull of the starship at high speed and knock people out of the way (we see a few men thrown off-screen in smoky debris and sparks).
 Ships fly through a rocky nebula full of smoky debris in three scenes. A starship chases an alien ship and we hear that its crew kidnapped an entire crew of another race of aliens. A hologram of an alien woman begs for help in an S.O.S. and a starship beams her aboard.
 An alien woman opens the many crab-leg protrusions on her scalp and releases an alien artifact; a warrior takes it and places it into another device in a pool of black liquid. An alien woman is trapped in a room with a device and black metal pieces like many iron filings engulf her and make her disintegrate after she shouts in fear. A man on a motorcycle jumps off and grabs an alien woman who has jumped from a platform just as a transporter beam catches them and they fall to the floor of the transporter room, groaning in pain. Men and women fly a ship to a space station, following three alien warriors in small ships accompanied by a larger swarm of space-bee ships causing men, women and children to run and scream in two scenes.
 We see on an electronic device with a man's etched face and birth and death star dates. We hear that a man's father died on the day the man was born. An alien woman says that her father died fighting an evil warrior alien so that she could escape alive; she says that the evil alien kills everyone who lands on his planet. A man says that the fear of death keeps humans alive. A human woman has her arm in a sling.
 A man on a rocky spire surrounded by three small alien ships says. "At least I won't die alone" as another man disappears in a transporter effect and then, so does the first man; they end up on a Starship and the first man twice shouts and complains about transporting.
 Crew members in pairs argue loudly several times. A video log shows a man shouting madly into the camera, then slurring his words in anguish and pain. We hear that a man was a soldier hero who lost his sense of purpose when the military was eliminated and sought to start a new war. A man has painful inner conflicts about his purpose in life and he tearfully mourns the death of his mentor. A man sheds a few tears in several scenes.
 Space-bees break a line of skyscraper windows and glass floats through the air. Two men in a shuttle chase alien warriors and track their course. Space-bees disintegrate in yellow fire balls after approaching another ship in a huge ocean wave-like formation.
 An alien engineer with a wide, knobby head sneezes loudly into the camera, spraying the lens with green slime; the camera cuts to a round wall clock that is melting from the mucous. An alien woman spits on the ground and we hear the spitting but do not see it.

LANGUAGE 2 - 2 scatological terms, 1 anatomical term, 20 mild obscenities, name-calling (green-blooded ingrate, untrustworthy, thieves, monstrosity, snowball), exclamations (in a pig's eye), a possible religious profanity (GD), 8 religious exclamations (e.g. God, My God, Oh My Good Lord).

SUBSTANCE USE - Two men in a dim room hold and drink glasses of whiskey while a third glass of whiskey is seen on a small bar top (in tribute to a dead man), a man holds a glass of Saurian brandy briefly and does not drink, several men and women (some of them aliens) drink colorful cocktails in tall thin glasses at a birthday party, and an alien woman sits with 11 empty glasses on a coffee table and says that she drank them and did not lose her "edge" feeling.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Space exploration, alien beings, danger, murder, death, loss, mourning, regret, being stranded, war, slavery, inner conflicts, duty, finding one's purpose, family, friendships, camaraderie, teamwork, dedication, loyalty, helping others, sacrifice, revenge, mental illness, PTSD among war veterans.

MESSAGE - Take time to find your purpose in life. Unity and the capacity for sacrifice are strengths.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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