The original Star Trek movies, the ones with Shatner and Nimoy and the rest of the ’60s cast, were distinguished by their straightforwardly descriptive titles. If you went into Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, you knew you were going to get a movie about a vengeful guy named Khan. The Search for Spock? Self-explanatory. The Voyage Home? No surprise that it was set on Planet Earth. The last two were more metaphorical, but they had clear referents in the specifics of the plot — The Final Frontier described the quest for God; The Undiscovered Country was the promise of Federation–Klingon peace.
The titles in the new, rebooted Trek franchise, whose third installment bowed into theaters this month, are not nearly so pellucid. The last one was called “Star Trek into Darkness” (no colon, note); its sequel is called “Star Trek Beyond.” Both titles are portentous, and both are empty. The only “darkness” in Into Darkness is conventional villainy, the only “beyond” in the newest installment is just a normal outside-Federation-territory venture by the Enterprise, and honestly you could have switched the titles without anybody noticing.
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