Quentin Tarantino's 'Star Trek' Movie Would Have Been a "Balls-Out Hard R" Movie
Quentin Tarantino's 'Star Trek' Movie Would Have Been a "Balls-Out Hard R" Movie
I enjoy the Tarantino films, but I don’t want them anywhere near Star Trek.
I really dislike what’s happening with ST lately; what was in my childhood a hopeful message for how much humanity could achieve when we finally get our shit together, is now just another action movie / drama template. Government bad, corruption everywhere, war for the sake of war, etc.
I’m certain Tarantino would double down on that and I just don’t want it.
Government bad, corruption everywhere, war for the sake of war, etc.
I’m certain Tarantino would double down on that and I just don’t want it.
Tarantino is kind of a bellwether for the mostly apolitical right-wing (but non-fascist) middle-class majority of the US population, the movie "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" convinced me of that. It also convinced me that Tarantino himself has lost the plot, or actually never really had it. He reminds me a bit of Beavis and Butthead, kind of just watching movies and TV all the time, sorting everything into the binary categories "cool" or "sucks", except he actually goes out and makes films that glorify all he thinks is "cool" which happens to be a cross-section of all media that glorifies violence and toxic masculinity.
So he likes Star Trek. Congratulations Tarantino, your "geek" bona-fides are authentic, but like the rest of the right-wing (non-fascist) middle-class majority, you really have no fucking clue and don't care about the political origins of Star Trek and are just itching to erase them so you can make it into another "cool" movie that glorifies violence and toxic masculinity. You can fuck right off, Tarantino.
right-wing (but non-fascist)
you keep using these words but they don't mean what you think they mean.. People who are right wing support fascism. Full stop. They don't have to mean to, but they actively do, and what I assume is an attempt to spare their feelings (though the reason doesn't really matter) is just more confirmation for their cognitive dissonance that they're not doing anything wrong.
I very much agree with everything else you said, but I can't grasp why you would make the extra effort to pander to them like that, it's bizarre.
You should check out Strange New Worlds then, it's a return to episodic form
I kinda feel like I just don’t have the heart for ST anymore. Picard was the final nail in the coffin, I am all out of trust for the modern generation of writers.
I’ll just watch TNG through every couple of years and be happy in my bubble.
Yeah, I prefer the positive role models & society present in 90's trek. You don't get that much in nutrek.
You must have hated DS9.
I see TNG with mostly 2D characters where the Federation and its ideals are the main driving force of the plots. When they deviate from that is when you get bad episodes (cough Sub Rosa cough). The characters had to shed some of their depth and become idealized for message to shine through.
On DS9, you have a gritty view of a frontier without the influence of the Federation. The evolution of the characters and how they react to the changing reality around them is the center stage, and for that you need 3D, flawed characters to build development arcs upon.
Then on DSC you have perfect 2D characters in a corrupt world and the show is about Michael Burnham but she's also perfect and I can't see what message they're trying to send.
I think DS9 set a precedent that was bad for the franchise, but I don’t hate it; the show felt like it understood its roots. I took DS9 as a way to explore how federation values addressed a galaxy not quite there yet.
It didn’t diminish the hopeful future by saying that “actually the federation is evil" it just said “listen, we still have work to do”.
Watching Cisco wrestle internally with reconciling who he knew he was supposed to be while the galaxy tested that was at least interesting on an intellectual level.
I think that bit of nuance got lost though, so I do kinda wish it had never happened.
So I agree mostly, but classic Trek also had plenty of looking at the present and past showing how bad things were/are/can be. It's a hopeful message in that we can change and solve problems, but it doesn't totally ignore issues either.
I do agree the drama and action is a negative for it though. Some amount of its fine, but ST is about considering our reality through the lense of sci-fi and aliens, not just brainless entertainment. Star Wars already exists in that market. ST needs to do what it does well and not worry about trying to be as big as Star Wars. Endless growth is only going to kill the franchise.
It apparently would have been a direct follow-up to "A Piece of the Action", the gangster planet episode. Which is probably the one Star Trek plot that would make sense for Tarantino.
Meh, it is not like a Tarantino Star Trek movie is going to diminish the older series.
I'd say let him try, and if it turns out bad, throw it on the pile of bad Star Trek movies.
No real harm done.
FWIW, I recall an interview with Tarantino on YouTube somewhere in which Trek came up, and he was asked to name one of his favourite episodes.
To my surprise he named Yesterdays enterprise. He genuinely seemed to love it and remembered a lot of details about the plot. The other he mentioned is city on the edge of forever.
So while many might react to the idea of an R rated Tarantino Trek film negatively, I’d be quietly optimistic that he has good taste in Trek and would have a good core of a premise and story. I suspect he’d also handle the characters well, knowing how to balance campiness, seriousness and comedy.
EDIT: Found the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyD7CFnFH3A
It's from 2015. Go to 3.47 for the relevant section. Interestingly, rewatching it, the prompt of the conversation was "what Star Wars movie would you like to do" and Tarantino responds with he'd rather do a Trek film.
And to further my point, he's main point is that so many good episodes from Trek, especially the original series, could be made into movies.
Pure marketing piffle.
Paramount would never let a Hard R Trek get made. Not only is it the completely wrong tone for Trek (even if you rate the JJ Abrams movies) but it would seriously harm ticket sales as kids and young teens would be prohibited from going to the theater to see it. Imagine Kirk and Spock sitting around, smoking weed, talking about their favorite obscure 2200s films while holding knives to each other's nutsacks.
They only started talking about Tarantino directing a Star Trek movie in order to build hype for the new Trek shows that are of dubious quality.
I also don't think Captain Picard needs to drop the N-word while gazing at alien feet tbh
Tarantino movies do tend to feature the hard r pretty prominently.
Romulan?
Jesus, man, Omulan please.
Man, now I'll never find out how many times Samuel L Jackson can be called the n-word on the bridge of the Enterprise...
When you came to space dock here, did you notice a sign out in front of my station that said "Dead Romulan Storage"?
Don't you mean feet out? Preferably, women's feet. Covered in oil?
Quentin's pitch: "So there's an entire species where they're all feet. And Kirk says the n-word. Like, a lot."
It would have been like the mirror mirror episode only with more of Uhuras feet.
I feel like in the best case it would have been a catastrophe that somehow manages to fall together in a way that actually works, and in the worst case it would have just been bad to the point of being offensively bad, appealing to neither regular filmgoers whole also pissing off established fans.
... But it also feels like giving a chainsaw to a bear: You know whatever's gonna happen you're not gonna like, but also you kinda want to do it just to see what it is.
Your last analogy made me snort my 3 sleeping partners (human canine and feline) awake.
Also spot on. But I really don't want to see it. But I'm sure I'd be entertained by reading about the result.
I understand hesitancy for an R-rated Star Trek movie, and I also understand that Tarantino's style isn't for everyone, but that said- he always puts a lot of effort in to crafting a good story, and there's always a ton of attention detail. His movies are never shallow pandering cash grabs like certain other directors who will remain nameless here.
So while a Tarantino Trek movie sounds very weird on the surface, I think he's far and away earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to making any movie at this point and I would welcome his perspective.
Not that it's ever gonna happen, of course. But if we do ever see a new movie, I would far prefer an auteur over a plug-n-play disneyfied cash grab like we see with the MCU, Star Wars, and basically any other pop culture franchise.
If he really wanted to do it he could do a sci-fi movie without it being attached to Trek and it would still make a billion dollars.
I like Tarantino movies and I like Star Trek, but they don’t need to mix
I like star trek, and I like R-movies. I don't know if they will mix well.
I'm a big Qentin Tarantino fan, but I never felt he was right for Star Trek. Not his type of movie IMO. But what the fuck do I know.
I just left a comment with more detail elsewhere, but at this point I think he's earned the benefit of the doubt. Tarantino-Trek sounds like a weird combo, but based on his spotless track record, I would be surprised if he somehow managed made a stinker.
Either talk about the plot, set a production date or stop writing these nothing articles.
I mean, no duh Tarantino would do a Trek movie that has lots of blood. To be familiar with his name is to know that's his style. Just tired of years teasing how great something WOULD'VE BEEN but not saying why.
A team of section 31 assassins armed with katanas are beamed aboard the enemy starship with orders to take out the top leadership?
For anyone interested, Tarantino spoke ad lib about the idea of making a Trek film back in 2015. I mentioned this in another comment here but didn't have the link to the interview.
The interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyD7CFnFH3A
Go to 3:47 for the relevant section. Interestingly, rewatching it, the prompt of the conversation was "what Star Wars movie would you like to do" and Tarantino responds with he'd rather do a Trek film.
He's main point is that so many good episodes from Trek, especially the original series, could be made into movies, and cites specifically City on the Edge of Forever and Yesterday's Enterprise, which certainly indicate that he has some good Trek Taste.
As a longtime Trek fan, I’m certainly in favor of it. There’s plenty of things to work with; things implied but never really shown. Which is why I also liked more recent Trek projects like Strange New Worlds and Picard. They have a bit more grit to them.
Tarantino’s trek would not have been for everyone… but it certainly would’ve been a massive hit. Even if you hate his other work, you can’t help but be intrigued.
With Tarantino you're also guaranteed to have a well-crafted product. It would never be a shallow cash-grab like certain other movies in the franchise.
So, set on Qo'noS?
I mean, of course it was going to be R-rated, Quent doesn’t exactly make family-friendly pics.
But also, why is everyone always trying to make Star Trek edgier these days?
Re: edgier Trek:
For me, I feel like we’ve had so much ‘positive utopia’ Trek, that more of the same just gets a bit boring. There’s also the fact that life today is different compared to when Trek first aired. We’re more aware of some of those sharper edges and want to see them represented in media.
From a practical standpoint, there’s also ‘we can, so we do’. When Trek aired on regular TV, you couldn’t drop an F-bomb, much less show actual gritty stuff. With streaming, there’s no reason to hold back. Which gives writers more room to explore.
Pretty much every trek since 9/11 has been edgy.
Lucky they made DS9 before TNG had even finished, then.
We didn't really get more of the TNG side of things with the TNG movies. Then they moved on to JJA Star Trek, which wasn't much of anything, not dark, not utopian, just references.
While Discovery was in part based around rescuing an ultra-fascist from another universe.
It took bringing back Picard himself to approach doing what they once did decades ago. And I guess not let the actor have too much say over the script, if that's what messed up the movies.
I'm guessing it would have really leaned into the colonial pulp fiction aspect of the original series.
I’d still love to see him make it!