Marcus Errico

New 'Star Trek Beyond' Trailer: 'This Now Reflects What We Were Hoping to Achieve'

·Editor-in-Chief, Yahoo Entertainment

May 21, 2016 at 4:04 PM

Star Trek Beyond is trying to get beyond its underwhelming first trailer, a preview the film’s star and co-writer Simon Pegg admitted he “didn’t love.”

That initial clip, released in December, was powered by a Beastie Boys soundtrack and loaded with slam-bang action, but wasn’t what Pegg felt he, co-writer Doug Jung, and director Justin Lin intended. “There’s a lot more story and a lot more character stuff and a lot more what I would call ‘Star Trek stuff,’” Pegg told British website HeyUGuys shortly after the trailer dropped.

Now, Team Trek has hit the reset button and is back with a revamped preview you can watch above. The second trailer got its world premiere Friday night at a fan celebration event on the Paramount Pictures studio lot in Hollywood before finding its way online. To underscore the change in tone, Pegg was front and center to give the new clip his seal of approval.

“I wanted to introduce the trailer for you to see,” Pegg said via a recording from Budapest, where he is on location filming. “It’s something I think really now reflects what Justin, Doug, and myself were hoping to achieve with this movie, which is to create a Star Trek for the ages; something which embodied what Gene Roddenberry hoped for back in 1966 with the resources and the technology and the extraordinary vision that we can achieve here in 2016. So strap yourselves in, it’s time to go beyond.”

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The trailer finds the Enterprise three years into its vaunted five-year mission and Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) in the midst of some soul-searching. As Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) observes, “You’ve spent all this time trying to be your father, now you’re wondering what it means to be you.”

At that point, the starship comes upon one of those strange new worlds whose civilization apparently doesn’t take kindly to interlopers. We see the Enterprise torn apart by the “Swarm,” an attacking alien horde unlike anything the crew has faced before, under the command of Krall (Idris Elba, unrecognizable in makeup).

Forced to abandon the obliterated ship, the crew is dispersed and must find its way back together and defeat Krall.

Along the way, they encounter a fierce, striped warrior named Jaylah (Sofia Boutella), who comes to their aid.

She is one of 50 new alien species introduced in this film in honor of the Trek franchise’s 50th anniversary. She is also not afraid to sit wherever she darn well pleases.

Finally, we even see a brief buss between Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Uhura (Zoe Saldana). Perhaps that’s what Pegg meant by “more character stuff.”

The trailer premiere capped an evening-long celebration, which featured appearances by J.J. Abrams (who directed the previous two Treks and produced Beyond), director Lin, and stars Pine (who said the new film has more of the “pop fun” of 2009’s Star Trek and that “there’s a buddy-comedy aspect to this”), Quinto, and Urban. Lin announced that he was locking the film after he left the party, while Abrams told the audience that the Beyond world premiere would take place at San Diego Comic-Con on July 20.

Meanwhile, the event also revealed many of the film’s new costumes and props, which you can see below.