I’ve been having an ongoing discussion with a friend about Quentin Tarantino and his possible R-rated Star Trek movie. She’s not a fan of his, nor of him doing Trek, thinking it wouldn’t be in the spirit of the long-running franchise. Me, I’m fine with it, and see it as no different than JJ Abrams swooping in and making a series of movies that were distinctly his. That’s what filmmakers do. And that’s certainly what Tarantino plans to do, but what we didn’t know is the animosity he has towards Abrams’ movies, revealed in a recent edition of the HappySadConfused podcast.
As you well know, Tarantino could be directing his own Star Trek movie, which features a script by The Revenant‘s Mark L. Smith. It shouldn’t be a shock that Tarantino would want to do his own thing and put his own take on the classic sci-fi material, but he’s going to keep the cast led by Chris Pine around. However, that’s about the only thing of Abrams’ that he intends to use, showing a real disdain for the director’s time travel shenanigans in particular…
“Now, I still don’t quite understand how—and J.J. can’t explain it to me and my editor [Fred Raskin] has tried to explain to me and I still don’t get it—about… something happened in the first movie that now kinda wiped the slate clean? I don’t buy that. I don’t like it. I don’t appreciate it. Fuck that. I don’t like that.”
I don’t think any of us should be surprised that Tarantino digs the original Star Trek stuff best, and he was asked if that was the reason he disliked Abrams’ run so much…
“I want the whole series to have happened! It just hasn’t happened yet. And Benedict Cumberbatch or whatever his name is, is not Khan. Khan is Khan. And I told JJ, ‘I don’t understand this, I don’t like it’ and he said, ‘Ignore it! Nobody likes it! I don’t understand it! Do whatever you want! If you want to do it the exact way it happened in the [original series], it can.’”
Other than 2009’s Star Trek, much of what Abrams and later Justin Lin did is pretty bland, if you ask me. I don’t care what happens to it, and based on the dwindling box office I’m not in the minority. But does that mean everything should be ignored? Sure, but only if Tarantino brings in an all-new cast. Why keep the actors identifiable as Abrams’ cast if you’re just going to do something new, anyway? I guess we really don’t know what Tarantino is doing yet, or even if the movie will happen at all, do we?
