One of the best thing about this movie is the introduction of a whole new secondary character into Star Trek series, Jaylah who has special character to lead the whole plot of movie. She is a female alien who stay alone in USS Franklin after attacked by Krall on the Planet Altamid, a strange planet unknown to the federation. Family background wasn’t clearly mentioned throughout the movie even her origin planet. We just know that she’s one of the victim of Krall that trapped on Planet Altamid, finding her way to escape from this planet. In Stardate 2263, she met Montgomery Scott and became an Alliance with Enterprise Crew and the story goes on.
STAR TREK BEYOND
DIRECTED BY JUSTIN LIN
CAST DESIGN AND CHARACTER
She’s a mirror character who was created to help the protagonist, Kirk. This character was actually inspired by Jennifer Lawrence in Winter Bone. Saying "Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone" got kind of annoying so Pegg and Junn started calling her simply JLaw, then finally Jaylah. And, thus, a new member of the Enterprise's crew was officially named.
She’s a formidable warrior, skilled in martial arts and good in engineering. In order to protect herself in this unknown planet, Jaylah try to put many traps to stop enemy for approaching her base, which is USS Franklin. She's incredibly tough, independent, and resourceful. Jaylah never give up to find ways to return home. Thus, she try to fix USS Franklin with her engineering skill until she met Scott who’s good in engineering too.She seek for help and willing to let a stranger to help her. I admire her braveness being alone in a planet full with enemy and how innovative she’s to protect herself. Never give up on what you want, just like her. She want to go home, family are her only motivation to keep her trying to fix the spaceship.
What makes Jaylah truly a spectacular character, though, is not just her badass nature and awesome look, but that she's a very proactive character. Scotty doesn't happen upon her and recruit her to the cause. Instead, she specifically finds him and inserts herself into his life, and the lives of the other Enterprise crew members. She needs help, sure, but she's not a damsel, passively waiting to be rescued. The active nature of Jaylah's character can be attributed to the fact that she isn't just used as a plot device by co-writers Simon Pegg and Doug Jung.
Throughout this movie, I feel that the idea of feminism is very strong. Jaylah, a female alien could be able to escape from Krall and survive in Altamid without even one friend or ally. Being a women with so much of engineering skill is one of metaphor to show that actually women can be as good as man, where we all have the wrong stereotype towards a women. Jaylah has shown that women can be independent and brave.
Scotty is a minor character that add some colour into this movie. He’s an engineer who is so kind and funny at the same time. When Scotty meets Jaylah, the destiny of Jaylah being trapped in Altamid has been changed. Scotty needs help to find his crew while Jaylah needs someone’s help to fix USS Franklin too. That’s the reason why Jaylah and Scotty can become friend although that’s their first meet. This scene had promote a culture of helping people to help yourself. They both are in trouble and that’s a good reason why they willing to help each other.
“You have two hands. One to help yourself, one to help the other”. This quote really makes all sense in this situation.
The other pairing of character which I found that it’s interesting is Spock and McCoy. Two characters that are so diametrically opposed to each other, be forced into a situation where they have to depend on each other to survive”. I do enjoy any time that they get to argue, or the two of them get to have that great banter, it’s always a lot of fun. I particularly like the scene in the transporter where Bones discovers Spock has sold him down the river and requested that Bones accompany him on a dangerous mission. And Bones’ response to that is typically Bones.
Both of them are secondary character in the previous Star Trek but then for Star Trek Beyond, I feel that they’re just minor character because they doesn’t really helps a lot in this mission. They are designed to bring more fun into this movie. Somehow, the friendship between Spock and McCoy is real although they always argue for tiny little things. It so warm to see that how McCoy take care of Spock who’s injured during crash landing.
McCoy is one of the character who I like the most in this movie. He’s a doctor with lots of humor sense. McCoy manages to cauterize Spock’s wound with almost no actual medical equipment. Because he’s just that awesome. He also flies one of the hive ships by the seat of his pants, which enables him to rescue Kirk at the end. A doctor who can fly a hive ship is awesome right?
