[3.8/10] The unending debate among Trekkies is whether the latest new project “feels like Star Trek”. The arguments go at least as far back as *The Next Generation*, and extend all the way to current disputes over wacky animated sitcoms and gritty, heavily-serialized dramas. I’ve always found the debate a little silly, because since the time of the 1960s series, Star Trek has been a big tent, able to encompass a variety of tones and styles and motifs. It’s a big universe out there. That's a feature, not a bug. And it ought to make your average fan more ecumenical than exclusionary.
So I hope you don’t take me as a dime-a-dozen, closed-minded chud when I say: *Section 31* feels nothing like Star Trek, in the worst, dumbest sort of way.
It is an off-the-shelf, generic action movie with a few Star Trek concepts haphazardly stapled onto it. If for some reason the powers that be decided they didn’t want it associated with the world of Kirk and Picard and Janeway, you could shave off the Federation serial numbers and lose nothing in the process. Hell, despite being a spin-off of a show that already pushed boundaries in terms of tone and attitude for the franchise, *Section 31* doesn’t even feel much like *Star Trek: Discovery*.
Instead, the closest big screen analogue to *Section 31* comes not from the final frontier, but instead from the D.C. Extended Universe in the form of 2016’s middling-to-awful [*Suicide Squad*](https://trakt.tv/comments/93079) film. The shallow take is that Trek’s latest cinematic outing is cut from the same cloth simply because it features a group of misfits and ne'er-do-wells going on a dangerous, off-the-books mission. Unfortunately, *Section 31* has a lot more in common with its supervillain-fronted predecessor: shallow storytelling, embarrassingly bad dialogue, idiotic twists, and an unearned sense of camaraderie that the film tries to pass off by the time the credits roll.
Suffice it to say, this is an embarrassing outing for Star Trek, that somehow manages to sink below the worst of the original cast films, *TNG* films, and J.J. Abrams film to reach a new low among the franchise’s cinematic output. Because even the biggest stinkers among those flicks still come off like they’re at least *trying* for something Trek-y. *Section 31* is an off-the-shelf sci-fi action flick, trying desperately to be cool, and failing on that and pretty much every other measure.
The film’s deepest problem is its tone. *Section 31* is awash in empty, pointless action, perpetrated by stock, cringey characters, who regularly spit out the worst banter ever heard in the franchise (which is saying something).
Some of that might at least be entertaining if the action even approached “decent’. It’s fair to question whether a contemplative franchise like this one ought to even go for a movie that is at least sixty percent action, but *Section 31* is hardly the only offender among the franchise’s filmography. But if you're going to go that direction, you need to offer the audience something other than the most bog standard, indifferently-presented jumble of combat and explosions imaginable.
Part of that isn’t *Section 31*’s fault. The direct-to-streaming movie borrows *Discovery*’s aesthetic, and the truth is that it’s long had an antiseptic, immersion-breaking, often downright ugly quality that's been a drag on even the best live action outings in the Alex Kurtzman era. It is, essentially, modern Trek’s house style. And as unconvincing as the phase-pod fight looks, as unconvincing as the surfeit of computer-generated backgrounds and environments seem, as chintzy as the bleh CGI sheen looks when actors are awkwardly composited into scads of shots, you can't really blame this production team for taking what they’re given there.
Even so, every fight is chopped up to hell in the editing bay. Every explosion plays as superfluous and gratuitous. Every space fight is overblown and forgettable. For a movie practically dripping with action, so much of it is static and forgettable. Even if the aesthetic of *Section 31* was preordained, the direction and cinematography weren’t, and yet the visuals here still can provoke little more than furrowed brows and zoning out.
Though hey, maybe it would be easier to invest in those fights and fireworks if I cared about anyone involved in them. *Section 31* picks up where *Star Trek: Discovery* left off, following the adventures of former Mirror Universe Terran Empress Philippa Georgiou, having been sent to another time and place after proving she has a soul to none other than the Guardian of Forever. (If you don’t know; don’t ask. It’s not worth your time.)
Despite having a performer of the caliber of Michelle Yeoh, that already starts *Section 31* on its back foot. Mirror Georgiou has never been a great character, with more Mirror-verse tics and teases than actual substance. And this story does nothing to change that. The best it can muster is a slapped-together *Hunger Games*-style backstory for her, and a warmed-over love story (attempted twice, kind of?) that play as shallow and spackled-on. The movie mostly wants Yeoh to preen and throw taunts at the rest of the cast, which is itself a problem. But even when the script goes for ballast with regrets over love and past mistakes, it fails to build up a version of the character who could sustain that. (Which, in fairness, is nothing new for Georgiou. See: the aforementioned dance with Guardian of Forever.)
Despite that, she’s still probably the best of the bunch in a Trek-based suicide squad composed of operatives who are some combination of stock archetypes and shallow gimmicks, and little else. There’s a generic tough leader guy with a faux-tragic backstory, a by-the-book Starfleet observer (whose fate is already known to venerable Trekkies, creating a sense of false jeopardy when she’s in danger), an anxious shape-shifter, a run-of-the-mill tough in a mech suit, and a few other cardboard cut-outs who mostly exist to be cannon fodder.
Every other player here has essentially one characteristic that's announced to the audience and then beaten into the ground. Heaven forbid there’s a hint of depth or actual humanity here. No, these disposable mooks all exist to have tedious, dry-cool conversations with one another, show off some gimmick, and probably die.
But special attention must be paid to Fuzz, a tiny alien piloting a mechanical Vulcan-suit, who may very well be the most annoying character in all of Star Trek. (And again, that's saying something.) Every bit of faux-comical shtick he does, every cheap accent he attempts (particularly his cheesy pirate patois(, every over-the-top face he makes and stupid line he delivers, makes you wish that one of these theoretically amoral cretins would blast him out the airlock and spare the audience any more of his incessant irksomeness.
Sadly, he’s not the only offender in the “bad line” department. The dialogue in *Section 31* is a far cry from the heady back-and-forth the franchise is known for, or even the looser style of Star Trek on the big screen. Instead, most of it feels like it’s been written by horny teenagers, or, worse yet, a bunch of studio executives trying to appeal to horny teenagers. There is a cheap quippiness to everything that takes away from the gravity of these situations, broken up only by the occasional shopworn monologue that not even Patrick Stewart could make sound good. Almost every exchange here vacillates between “cringey” and “awful”, and it makes the movie a chore on a moment-to-moment basis.
With those fundamental problems, the rest of the film doesn’t stand a chance. The script offers a paint-by-numbers “find the macguffin to save the galaxy” plot. The few twists the movie has to offer are either overly-telegraphed or nonsensical. The tale of lost love between Georgiou and San, her one-time *Hunger Games* paramour, falls flat at each turn. The closing feint toward self-sacrifice is cheap as all hell. And the tired attempt to suggest the surviving operatives are all good buddies now at the end of the film is entirely unearned.
Those are the same type of problems that *Suicide Squad* labored under, and somehow *Section 31* fails even harder. What the two movies share beyond their basic premises and basic failures is something simple but extra devastating for an installment of Star Trek; both are trying desperately to be cool.
*Section 31* wants to be hip, and saucy, and full of venom-tinged playfulness. The results are downright embarrassing. Star Trek is many things, but it’s rarely, if ever, been cool in that way. Maybe there’s a corner of the final frontier where you could make that approach work, or a moment when it might be called for. But it feels so divorced from the usual tone of even the most adventurous prior outing, and so botched in the attempt, that this movie can do little more than crash and burn (in some cases, literally).
I don’t know why it exists. If it’s meant to attract new, younger viewers to the franchise, I can't imagine them being dazzled by such obvious dreck. If it’s meant to appeal to longtime fans interested to see one of the franchise’s darker concepts explored, they’ll surely be disappointed with the cringeworthy tone and shallow approach. For a franchise that's been around for nearly sixty years, it’s good to try to chart new territory. But *Section 31* plays, at best, as painfully off-brand, and at worst, as an outing so stupid, so empty, so disastrous, that you can imagine the studio hiring its own crop of off-the-book agents to destroy this cinematic dumpster fire. Suffice it to say, they could be forgiven for refusing to acknowledge the existence of *Section 31*.
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