"Star Trek Beyond" (2016)

Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban
Written by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung
Directed by Justin Lin
Rated PG-13 — Violence, language
Running Time: 122 Minutes
Trailer

As his birthday approaches, Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) is in a funk. The strain of spending years in deep space is taking its toll on him, his ship and his crew. After the failure of a diplomatic mission, Kirk is ready to throw in the towel and trade the captain’s chair for a desk chair. But a distress call sends the Enterprise to a mysterious planet where a trap has been laid for them.

A man named Krall (Idris Elba) awaits the Enterprise. His forces tear the ship to pieces, sending it and its crew crashing to the surface. With most of the Enterprise crew imprisoned, Kirk, Spock (Zachary Quinto), McCoy (Karl Urban), Scotty (Simon Pegg) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) team up with the survivor of another crash, Jaylah (Sofia Boutella) to free their friends and figure out just who Krall is and why he hates the Federation so very, very much.

"Independence Day: Resurgence" (2016)

Starring Jeff Goldblum, Liam Hemsworth and Jessie Usher

Written by Roland Emmerich, Dean Devlin, Nicholas Wright and James A. Woods

Directed by Roland Emmerich

Rated PG-13 — Violence, language

Running Time: 120 Minutes

Trailer

Twenty years after “The War of 1996,” humanity stands (mostly) united. Salvaged alien technology has helped rebuild and enhance defenses around the planet, including a moon base and satellite systems with massive energy cannons. In Central Africa, though, one ship managed to land, and the people there fought a decade-long land-war against the invading aliens looking to reap our planet of all its natural resources.

This is where David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) discovers that the aliens managed to send a distress signal 20 years earlier that has no been answered by an even larger alien mothership. And so, on July 40, 2016, the aliens return and the war to stave off the destruction of humanity begins anew. But this time, even with all the advances in defense and weapon technology of the last two decades, the people of Earth may not be able to stave off the overwhelming forces stacked against them -- including an alien queen piloting a ship the size of the entire Atlantic Ocean.