Quentin Tarantino Almost Made a 'Star Trek' Movie with a 'Pulp Fiction' Vibe (variety.com) 87
A fourth movie in the rebooted Star Trek franchise will be produced by J. J. Abrams and star Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, according to an announcement this week by Paramount.
But Variety remembers how Quentin Tarantino once approached Paramount with his own Star Trek idea with a "Pulp Fiction vibe" in 2017 — and both Paramont and J.J. Abrams loved it. Tarantino ultimately partnered with "The Revenant" screenwriter Mark L. Smith, who was tasked with writing a "Star Trek" film script based on Tarantino's idea while Tarantino was busy finishing post-production and touring the world for "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." Smith revealed on the "Bulletproof Screenwriting" podcast in April 2021 that J.J. Abrams' production company Bad Robot gave him a call on Tarantino's behalf. "They just called me and said, 'Hey, are you up for it? Do you want to go? Quentin wants to hook up.' And I said, 'Yeah,'" the screenwriter said. "And that was the first day I met Quentin, in the room and he's reading a scene that he wrote and it was this awesome, cool gangster scene, and he's acting it out and back and forth. I told him, I was so mad I didn't record it on my phone. It would be so valuable. It was amazing."
Tarantino intended to bring a "Pulp Fiction" vibe to "Star Trek" with an idea that was a largely earthbound story set in a 1930s gangster setting. Tarantino's pitch appeared to take inspiration from "A Piece of the Action," the 17th episode of the second season of "Star Trek: The Original Series." The installment, which aired in 1968, followed the Enterprise crew as they visit a planet with an Earth-like 1920s gangster culture.... According to Smith, Tarantino's "Star Trek" idea was "really wild" and like "its own very cool episode." The plot included "a little time travel stuff going on" and "had a lot of fun" with Chris Pine's Captain Kirk.
But Variety remembers how Quentin Tarantino once approached Paramount with his own Star Trek idea with a "Pulp Fiction vibe" in 2017 — and both Paramont and J.J. Abrams loved it. Tarantino ultimately partnered with "The Revenant" screenwriter Mark L. Smith, who was tasked with writing a "Star Trek" film script based on Tarantino's idea while Tarantino was busy finishing post-production and touring the world for "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." Smith revealed on the "Bulletproof Screenwriting" podcast in April 2021 that J.J. Abrams' production company Bad Robot gave him a call on Tarantino's behalf. "They just called me and said, 'Hey, are you up for it? Do you want to go? Quentin wants to hook up.' And I said, 'Yeah,'" the screenwriter said. "And that was the first day I met Quentin, in the room and he's reading a scene that he wrote and it was this awesome, cool gangster scene, and he's acting it out and back and forth. I told him, I was so mad I didn't record it on my phone. It would be so valuable. It was amazing."
Tarantino intended to bring a "Pulp Fiction" vibe to "Star Trek" with an idea that was a largely earthbound story set in a 1930s gangster setting. Tarantino's pitch appeared to take inspiration from "A Piece of the Action," the 17th episode of the second season of "Star Trek: The Original Series." The installment, which aired in 1968, followed the Enterprise crew as they visit a planet with an Earth-like 1920s gangster culture.... According to Smith, Tarantino's "Star Trek" idea was "really wild" and like "its own very cool episode." The plot included "a little time travel stuff going on" and "had a lot of fun" with Chris Pine's Captain Kirk.
Would have loved to see it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Would have loved to see it. (Score:5, Insightful)
To each his own. I hated that episode. I've enjoyed Tarantino's films, but I'm not unhappy this idea wasn't carried out.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Would have loved to see it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: Would have loved to see it. (Score:2)
They were just cops, they don't count.
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Tarantino does not glorify violence, and certainly not "constantly." Rather, his best movies show the consequences of violence.
With lots and lots of heavily stylized violence?
I mean he's not quite at the point of the John Wick movies, basically ramping up the body count as much as possible, but his protagonists are typically violent people who are really good at violence.
There are violent films that do actually show the consequences of violence, war films can often pull this off (since the protagonists aren't being violent by choice) and you can even do it outside of war if the protagonist actually regrets the violence and its cons [wikipedia.org]
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... his protagonists are typically violent people who are really good at violence.
As if Tarantino ever had a more violent protagonist better at violence than Capt. James T. [youtube.com] himself! I don't recall the Bride or Butch or Mr. Pink ever laying out a fool with a double fist chop. Amateurs!
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"Me neithe - I enjoyed some of his work but he is kind of repetitive in his constant glorification of violence, that alone goes the opposite way of Star Trek's vision in my opinion."
Star Trek was for children, can't have violence.
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Sure, you're very manly for liking violence. /facepalm
Re: Would have loved to see it. (Score:2)
To accept that violence is a reality is adulting. To pretend violence will be vanquished by some communist utopian revolution is childish.
ST has several ongoing wars, trade spats, slavery, and even outright genocide; but it all gets put into the neat little package that pretends problems all get solved with diplomacy. That's not a mature way of seeing the world. It's a fantasy. And that's fine.
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One of the non-canon Star Trek "reference" books... I think it was Worlds of the Federation... suggested that the Iotians did exactly that. I wouldn't buy into that theory though. It wasn't just the society, Iotia's technology level was equivalent to the 1930s as well. You didn't see those Tommy guns actually shooting phaser blasts, after all. The cars were contemporary to '30s tech. And they were baffled by the Enterprise's ships phasers on their stun setting. So... 1930s tech all-around. And TOS ca
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The original incarnations were the Odyssey or Huck Finn, traveling dow
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Nah.
There is a concept in media (both films and video games in particular) called "re-skinning", where you take IDEA A, and IP B, and try to prop up the idea by using the IP as the selling point. That doesn't make the idea good, and it can also tank the IP if it's bad enough.
That's why a lot of "game" tie-ins are trash. Because up until, oh Kingdom Hearts, the vast majority of game tie-ins were IDEA A, IP B. I don't care how much I like match-3 games, I'm not going to spend money on a match-3 game just beca
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One nitpick: in a recent episode of "Discovery", a synth body is created for Gray so that his consciousness can be extricated from Tal's mind.
That body is derived from Altan Soong's work, and they made a point to say that Picard himself received one of Soong's synth bodies.
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Sounds like it would have been a welcome departure from the general ST style and given them a chance to develop the characters in some different directions. "A Piece of the Action" was one of my favorites.
Long time Star Trek fan here. I was going to say "Nobody wants to see this" but that's clearly not true. OK, three people want to see this - You, the writer and Tarantino.
I have to give Tarantino credit though in playing this with the skill of a Romulan. At first he was saying "I'm going to write it and direct it!" Then he said he didn't have time to write it, but he might still direct it. Then he said no to writing and directing. So if it somehow works, and believe me Trek fans are not ent
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I'd give Tarantino's movie a go if it had been made. He's a great film maker and honestly anything to get away from the hyper blandness that's been Star Trek movies since Wrath of Kahn. A terrestrial bound story set in a vaguely historic setting sounds a hell of a lot more fun and original for the series relative to yet another completely forgettable alien villain with bumps on their forehead.
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I'd give Tarantino's movie a go if it had been made. He's a great film maker and honestly anything to get away from the hyper blandness that's been Star Trek movies since Wrath of Kahn. A terrestrial bound story set in a vaguely historic setting sounds a hell of a lot more fun and original for the series relative to yet another completely forgettable alien villain with bumps on their forehead.
I agree. They've become afraid of venturing outside of the tried and true and become stale as a result.
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Tarantino probably loved TOS and studied the hell out of it from every angle - that's who he is. And it's a complete 180 from JJ Abrams' self-avowed dislike of Trak and a desire to make it less cerebral.
Exactly. Take what made TOS so good and put your own imprint on it. Boldly go in a direction that is true to the spirit yet an original take on ST. Beats the hell out of another evil alien who will destroy / conquer / merchandise the universe until we save it after sacrificing enough RSE.
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Please stop (Score:2, Insightful)
It's already dead [youtube.com].
J.J. Abrams is the wrong choice (Score:5, Insightful)
J.J. Abrams is the wrong choice for anything with canon.
His idea of making a movie (from a book, series, or mythological lore) is "let's take all the canon of the series and build a big bonfire!!!"
He's great at making up his own story lines (viz "Lost"), but doesn't value of the history of anything.
Take for examples: Kirk beating the Kobyashi Maru by being a complete dick, Spock calling out "Kahn!" over the death of Kirk, unexplainable and illogical scenes such as a starship underwater or blood [Kahn's] that will bring a character [Kirk] back from the dead, and generally eye-rolling dialog.
Also: lens flares. Lots and lots of lens flares.
For comparison, check out "Spiderman no way home", which is all kinds of awesome, and has a ton of interior logic, pays homage to previous canon, and even uses actors from previous movies.
One thing is for certain: the J.J. Abrams version of the next Star Trek movie will be make enough money to be a success, but be an unremarkable "discount bin" sale 6 months later.
(Apropos of nothing: Entering the extended yell text for "Kahn!" runs afoul of the slashdot ASCII art filter.)
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> He's great at making up his own story lines (viz "Lost"), but doesn't value of the history of anything.
Lost didn't even value its own history. Hence why so many things were left unexplained or hand-waved away.
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Hence why so many things were left unexplained or hand-waved away.
I kind of thought the entire show was just a bunch of hand waving. I'm pretty sure they just wrote each episode with zero idea where anything was headed, and then just stopped after a while.
Re: J.J. Abrams is the wrong choice (Score:2)
"...unexplainable and illogical scenes such as a starship underwater..."
https://youtu.be/O4RLOo6bchU [youtu.be]
Oh man, I teleported Marvin into a wall. (Score:4, Funny)
Good thing my friend Q has a dead martian depot.
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And, what do they call a "Quarter Pounder" on the Klingon home world? People need to know!
Re:Oh man, (Score:1)
Almost (Score:3)
Too bad (Score:4, Insightful)
If he had a script or an idea just let him write it and put it in production. If I was a producer and Taratino put a 100 pages of anything in front of me I would give it $70m without even reading it. You can love Taratino or hate him but his films and scripts are always interesting at the very least and things that polarie people are better than another movie that will be forgetten as soon as you are back in the car.
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70 million is nowhere near enough to make a Star Trek movie.
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You can love Taratino or hate him but his films and scripts are always interesting at the very least
90 minutes of almost non-stop, stylised violence can be both disturbing and boring.
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I hope the new movie with be woke with lots of diversity and social justice themes and zero story or entertainment value. Lots of cgi too!
I'd guess all that is guaranteed.
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Heh... I guess that it IS Star Trek: Discovery's turn for a feature film. You just described that show perfectly.
Re:Woke (Score:4, Insightful)
Phew... no Tarantino (Score:3)
I liked Tarantino in his earlier days, but his ego is a bit much -- he's good at a certain type / style of film, but he's imo a bit too convinced of his own greatness. His style and vision would be a mess for Star Trek. Amazon is already screwing up LOTR, don't need ST getting 'reimagined' too, SW already is dead to me.
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hey, Kirk would fuck one. Isn't that good enough?
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Nonsense, for every colonizer having sex in foreign lands there was usually a hot wet horny minx spreading her legs. Most of it was consensual. Natural for some women to want that hybrid vigor.
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pfft, males who worry about new pronouns aren't even men. Women want real men.
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don't need ST getting 'reimagined' too,
You mean *again* -- (three words) ST: Discovery
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Point taken, I actually haven't seen ST: Discovery, fan friends said it was a pass.
Is that the one where I heard they did to Picard what SW did to Luke Skywalker (basically screw up his character and turn him into a loser/jerk/sad sack?)
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Picard isn't in ST: Discovery, he's in - appropriately enough - ST: Picard.
Re: Phew... no Tarantino (Score:2)
Discovery is fine, certainly a lot more ethnic and female representation if that's your bar of a "bad show", but if you don't like the plot, just wait a season and it'll be entirely different. They're certainly the most distinct star trek in terms of exploring new stories, which was welcome for me coming from largely stale stories from the more recent shows. This from someone who found the Abrams movies super generic action movies in space
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Discovery is fine, certainly a lot more ethnic and female representation if that's your bar of a "bad show",
This is is exactly the argument flying around the new LOTR production by Amazon. Please don't use it.
I haven't watched Star Trek Discovery, but, as an example, I understand that they introduced a story considering a proper use of pronouns for the new character. That's like considering the issue of unionizing to raise minimum wage or to provide universal healthcare on a spaceship. Important but from the wrong century.
Abrams movies super generic action movies in space
That they are.
Look, I was a trekkie once. Can we all move on? (Score:2)
Movies - hey, cool. I get to see the Enterprise done with proper FX (and . . . we'll jus
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the original series was great in its day. Kinda like a blending of sci-fi and war movies (with just a hint of western thrown in to satisfy the networks, who really wanted a lot more Wild West in the show).
Like Firefly? Good thing Fox wasn't around then to cancel Star Trek during its first season ...
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I'm old enough to remember how groundbreaking TOS was. Yes, it's showing its age. Some episodes were bad to begin with. Some have aged worse than others. Some are still excellent stories.
TNG was a worthy reboot. It's just starting to show its age. Some episodes were truly brilliant. Most were competent. A few clunkers.
DS9 had its moments but the creativity well was starting to run dry.
I found Voyager unwatchable. I wondered why Enterprise existed.
Of the new crop I revelled in the 2009 movie, even th
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THANK YOU! Finally, someone else who understood how offensive it was to make Phelps the bad guy in the reboot... did no one else understand how this poisoned the entire reboot franchise from the start?
What Star Trek means (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't care who makes the movies or TV shows as long as they understand what Star Trek means. The current crop of garbage was made by people who don't have a clue, and who clearly don't care. The closest to capturing the Star Trek vibe these days is The Orville. The TNG DNA is obvious. Flawed and uneven, but still fun.
Of the various crowdfunded fan productions I give Star Trek Continues the nod. They have the TOS look and feel down pat: it's the fourth season that never happened.
...laura
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Lower Decks stands as proof that Paramount still knows what Star Trek used to be, and they've decided to poke fun at it. It's almost like they're giving us a subtle "Ok boomer".
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I'm not sure you'll find three people to agree on "what Star Trek" means...
I've certainly run afoul a few individuals who insisted I was a degenerage monkey for saying ST was never about equality but about hard work, never giving up until your heart did and using your brain as long as it would function.
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I'm not sure you'll find three people to agree on "what Star Trek" means...
Isn't there a Tinder clone for that?
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I don't care who makes the movies or TV shows as long as they understand what Star Trek means. The current
crop of garbage was made by people who don't have a clue, and who clearly don't care.
A few months ago I noticed the latest Star Trek film on Netflix so I decided to give it a watch. Near the conclusion of the movie I suddenly realized I'd already seen it. And now, several months later... I can barely recall it again.
There's something seriously wrong with those movies.
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What Star Trek means to me. It peaked during DS9 and hasn't remotely been near it since. Avery Brooks was great as Benjamin Sisko. He nailed both commanding and compassionate, a roll model for anyone to look up to. Not once did I ever feel that he or is family were token blacks to make the series more "woke".
Another aspect that deserves respect was portraying men as good fathers in the series(even Rom in his own way). Something that seems to be increasingly uncommon these days.
It's not hard to guess wh
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>The closest to capturing the Star Trek vibe these days is The Orville.
Orville does Star Trek better than *any* of the TLA spinoffs.
It's kind of like, "what if it wasn't just Kir that's incompetent, but everyone else, too?"
Make Fizbin Great Again! (Score:1)
#MFGA
I hate JJ (Score:2)
The only thing I remember from Star Trek is flashing lights and dumb things like orbital entry in a space suit.
And I am in therapy to try to forget Episodes 7-9.
like "its own very cool episode." (Score:1)
Boring Boring (Score:3)
If there's one thing I dislike it's boring sci-fi set in the past on planet Earth. Take Dr Who, they do this all the time probably because the BBC are cheapskates, anyhow the non-earth-setting episodes are always more exciting IMO.
If Tarantino wants to do something in 1930s USA fine, but leave Star Trek out of it.
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If there's one thing I dislike it's boring sci-fi set in the past on planet Earth. Take Dr Who, they do this all the time probably because the BBC are cheapskates, anyhow the non-earth-setting episodes are always more exciting IMO.
If Tarantino wants to do something in 1930s USA fine, but leave Star Trek out of it.
Voyage home [imdb.com] was one of the best movies and City of the Edge of Forever [imdb.com] was one of the best episodes.
You have to pull it off, but there's a lot of benefit to be gained by not having to explain the rules of the alien world to the audience.
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Matter of opinion, I find episodes like that to be dull.
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Klingon, ... (Score:3)
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tlhIngnan'e' Hol, petaQ! Dajatlh'a' jay'?!
Would Pass - Not Sci-Fi (Score:2)
dammit, Jim (Score:1)
Holy shit I'd have stayed away (Score:1)
I've seen one Tarrantino film: Kill Bill.
The man is clearly mentally ill and I would pay to see any of his other films only after I pay money to see live gladiatorial combat. And possibly a lobotomy.
"Time travel" - Please everyone, no (Score:3)
And if you're postulating a Galaxy with many, many, more species that are more advanced than humanity, take a minute to consider why even if time travel was possible, they'd crush us like bugs if we dared use it.
Everyone's present gets mucked up if you change the past, albeit the butterfly effect could take millennia to reach other races, though with FTL travel, maybe not.
Diverted from the mission (Score:2)
One of the reasons why TNG and TOS are my faviorite of all the series is because it brought hope that humans had finally gotten their shit together, and broke away from the pettiness and primitive additudes that lead to all of the wars on Earth.
DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise- yeah those were much darker than the first two, but it shows that humans are not perfect, and especially in DS9's case, they were dealing much more with other species who were more often than not not so enlightened as the Federation.