I’ve written a fair bit about the Star Trek series, both in television and film form (I recently talked about both The Voyage Home and The Final Frontier), and have spent time listening to fan wisdom about the movies. General consensus is the odd-numbered Trek aren’t very good, but–at least in terms of the original cast flicks–only Final Frontier really fits that bill. Search for Spock is all right, but I will die on the hill of defending The Motion Picture. It appears the marketing people behind Star Trek Beyond like it too, judging by this new poster.

That is a pretty badass poster, with primary colors engulfing Captain Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), and new alien lady Jayrah. This is a very deliberate reference to the original theatrical poster for the 1979 first movie, with Shatner and Nimoy’s faces in red and blue and the alien crew member Ilia/the embodiment of VGER (Persis Khambatta) in yellow. Compare/contrast:

Though the most recent trailer keeps up the self-serious action movie vibe of the last couple movies, the poster campaign seems really dead set on evoking the wonder and discovery of the TV show and first few movies. The other main poster we’ve seen, which was released the same day as the trailer, has that spirit in spades, with the wooshing ship going up, up, up through the gloriously sunny and cloudy sky.

I know the Star Trek movies basically have to be action movies now, which will no doubt be the case with Justin Lin directing, but it’d be pretty darn great if Beyond channeled The Motion Picture more than a little bit, and the movie actually spent some time trekking the stars.

Let me know your thoughts on this badass poster, and whatever else, in the comments below!

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Images: Paramount

Kyle Anderson is the associate editor for Nerdist. He likes his sci-fi slow and dull. Follow him on Twitter!