STAR TREK BEYOND
After watching Star Trek Beyond alone, all kind of different thoughts came flooding in my mind because I watch this movie with a heavy heart thinking what should I write for this particular assignment. Nonetheless, I managed to sort out all my thoughts when I got back home and finally writing this.
I was assigned to compare the story of Star Trek Beyond to one of the eight basic stories I learnt in class, which I missed. After going through the lecture notes, I found out that there’s almost a little bit of every basic stories is included in the movie Star Trek Beyond, only Archilles has a stronger point proving the concept of this movie.
ARCHILLES
In my point of view, the movie concept is named Archilles because Archilles is an Ancient Greek hero that defeated Trojan hero Hector during the Trojan War. However he died from a small wound on his heel despite being invulnerable in all of his body. Therefore come the concept, quoted from the lecture notes “The fatal flaw that leads to the destruction of the previously flawless individual”.
“The fatal flaw that leads to the destruction of the previously flawless individual”.
Similar to Archilles’s story, Star Trek Beyond also has its very own hero. Captain James T. Kirk (played by Chris Pine) who volunteers Enterprise to help Kalara (who claims her ship is stranded in Planet Altamid) shows the spirit and act of heroism. Little did he know it was a trap set by Kalara & Krall to lure him into handing over the artifact. Enterprise is attacked by a swarm of thousands of small heavily-armed alien ships, and eventually crashed on Altamid. Heroism is once again shown when Captain Kirk leads his crewmate Chekov, Scott, Spock, McCoy and Jaylah to infiltrate Krall’s base in order to save the remaining survivor of the ship. This heroic act of Captain Kirk is very similar to what Archilles did back when he fought Trojan War, only Captain Kirk didn’t die fighting the enemy. Their plan succeeded and this proved that not only Kirk is the hero here in this movie. Everybody else who sacrificed and helped make the rescue mission a successful one deserved to be called a hero. Unlike Archilles who took all the credit for defeating the Trojan Hero (he fought the war with his fellow war mates), individualism is not portrayed in Star Trek Beyond. Captain Kirk rescued his people with the help of his crewmates and they fought together hand in hand. At least we know they succeed as a team, not individually.
“We change. We have to. Or we spend the rest of our lives fighting the same battles.” – James T. Kirk
Now let’s talk about Archilles’s invulnerable in all of his body part except for his heel. He died at last just because of a wound on his heel. Nobody’s perfect in this world, not even in fictional movie like Star Trek Beyond. There must be a flaw to every flawlessly seeming individual. One of the flaws that I found on Captain Kirk is that he trust people too easily. When Kalara asked him to help retrieve her ship which is stranded in Altamid, Captain Kirk agreed to volunteering Enterprise for the rescue mission and ended up walking straight into Krall’s trap. This happened because Captain Kirk trust too easily. Other than that, that’s what you get from not thinking clearly, twice, before making any decision.
Sometimes life lessons from movie is the best as people interpret it differently according to their own situations. Thats why I love watching movies.
As a conclusion, I think movie nowadays couldn’t just include one basic concept or story to build up the whole storyline. Movies should spice up the plot by including bits of every concept as one though one of the concepts should be the major one that stood up from the others and has a strong point behind it. As for Star Trek Beyond, in my point of view, it’s a brilliant use of Archilles concept, as well as Faust portrayed by the antagonist Krall and Karala in this case. A pinch of Romeo & Julliet was used and shown by Spock and Nyota-Uhura while they deal with a time-out in their relationship. Successful combination of all these is what makes a movie watch-worthy.
Scenes where Captain Kirk to the rescue!
Scenes where Captain Kirk in control of ship.
Scenes where Captain Kirk plans to infiltrate Krall's lair.
Archilles - Greek warrior
:D