Star Trek Beyond Official Trailer Brings On Lots Of Questions

Allow us to be unapologetic conspiracy-baiting skeptics for just one moment: is the premiere STAR TREK BEYOND trailer so spare with juicy plot reveals out of ambition to enigmatically show more while actually telling far less, or because J.J. Abrams’ strategically duplicitous “Benedict Cumberbatch is not playing Khan” denial while promoting STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS didn’t exactly go down unanimously smoothly?

Either way, director Justin Lin’s introduction to leading the rebooted STAR TREK franchise looks shape the third installment as an adventure conspicuously closer to the tone of creator Gene Roddenberry’s original visions of his characters’ escapades.

Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, John Cho and Anton Yelchin all return as the U.S.S. Enterprise crew’s heart and soul cast into a face-off with unnamed, thus far unrevealed menace Idris Elba after something evidently shreds the ship and maroons our heroes on a strange new world with a possibly new-ish civilization.

Guess what? That’s all we really know.

That isn’t entirely fair. We can say with reasonable assurance that hopes this third film would pit Capt. James T. Kirk and friends against the Klingons for the very first time or feature a Romulan rematch have just been dashed. Additionally, the Enterprise’s core “away team” racing seemingly against time to repair a crashed vessel on an unknown, mysterious and hostile world harkens to many of the most compelling stories of The Original Series and STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION.

However, that’s about it. We still know next to nothing about Elba’s anonymous villain or the threat he poses. The trailer is rife with moments of mounting destruction and furious combat, but not much hinting at just what the crew of the Enterprise has meandered into this time.

We won’t be waiting long to find out. STAR TREK BEYOND hits theaters every July 22, 2016.