I finally got to see Star Trek Beyond on Friday, and it reminded me of Halo 4. A lot. I'm pretty sure one of the writers played the game, and it bubbled to the surface during the creative ideation stages of making the film. Let's break it down (spoilers for both).

First, the Enterprise is sent into this nebula where no one has gone before (or so they think). They come across this habitable planet just sitting in there, like Requiem. And then they're attacked by these aliens, who board the ship, and then there are scenes of fighting aliens through a damaged militaristic spaceship while in orbit of this planet, like fighting the Storm Covenant in the Forward Unto Dawn with Requiem in the background in "Dawn".

Then the idea is to land on this planet with their broken spaceship and various shuttles. It's a mess, but they do it. And then they're on this beautiful planet with white stone contrasted against green plant growth, and large pieces of broken ship wreckage--like in "Requiem".

There's a classic Star Trek bit with pairs of characters wandering around, and then everyone comes together with a bit of transporter usage--like the translocation portals. They end up laying siege on the enemy's establishment in a manner similar to a Halo player running around the Forerunner structures in the level "Forerunner".

The villain of the piece is an ancient alien--Krall--who was built for war and inappropriately applies a warrior's mindset to the modern day peace--like the Didact. Krall turns out to really be human--like the "Forerunners are human" theme running through most of the series, only to be cut off with the Forerunner Trilogy novels. Krall has a fleet of humanoid drones--like the Didact's Prometheans. Krall has an ancient superweapon that in a glowing CGI storm fragments people into nothing--like the Composer. Krall takes said superweapon off of the planet and to the space station outside the nebula to kill massive amounts of Federation people--like the Didact using the Composer on Ivanoff Station mixed with his assault on Earth because of the Enterprise crew's efforts to stop Krall. There are some shots of flying through a mess of ship parts similar to flying a Broadsword through the stuff on the Didact's ship. The climax pits Krall and Kirk against each other in this low-gravity environment where they have to jump across large distances from platform to platform--like the Chief facing the Didact at the conclusion of "Midnight".

I'm not the only one who sees this, right?

I found it kind of annoying because once I picked up on the pattern, I could predict the plot beats. The good thing about the knockoff, though, is that it takes the elements and does something different with it with regard to its anti-war theme. Halo will continue to be "War is hell... but also glorious when you play the Chief and kick ass", but Star Trek really committed to its message of war being inappropriate for the modern world, and it did so without any 9/11 Truther plot like Star Trek Into Darkness did.