Tarantino’s Star Trek would have had Pulp Fiction-esque violence

The days of Quentin Tarantino being tied to a Star Trek movie go back to 2017, with the project in development for a handful of years before being scrapped. And although it wouldn’t have been written by him — an out of character move for the auteur — it still would have had those QT touches…like violence. So would we have gotten the surely iconic line, “Ah man, I shot Spock in the face!”?

Screenwriter Mark L. Smith recalled meeting with Tarantino at J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions, pitching an idea that felt authentically QT. Smith would play a key role in writing the script, with Tarantino of course bringing his voice to it. As Smith put it, “I think his vision was just to go hard. It was a hard R. It was going to be some Pulp Fiction violence. Not a lot of the language, we saved a couple things for just special characters to kind of drop that into the Star Trek world, but it was just really the edginess and the kind of that Tarantino flair.”

Tarantino would eventually back out of the Star Trek project, which Smith said would have been the greatest in the franchise’s history. (The fun in that writers’ room has been documented by those on the team before.) This primarily came down to not wanting the final frontier be his final film. “Quentin and I went back and forth, he was gonna do some stuff on it, and then he started worrying about the number, his kind of unofficial number of films. I remember we were talking, and he goes, ‘If I can just wrap my head around the idea that Star Trek could be my last movie, the last thing I ever do. Is this how I want to end it?'”

I think I can speak for most of us when I say I’m glad Tarantino’s last film isn’t a Star Trek movie. Come to think of it, while a QT spin on that universe is cool in theory, would it truly work within his oeuvre? Most of his movies have been originals (cue your rip-off jokes here), with Jackie Brown being the only true adaptation; but that worked since he was exploring the crime genre heavily at the time. The most sci-fi QT has ever really gotten was Jack Rabbit Slim’s alt universe versions of Buddy Holly and Mamie Van Doren (as we know, Jayne Mansfield had the night off).

Instead of Star Trek, Tarantino will direct The Movie Critic, centering around the titular critic in ‘70s California. Considering Tarantino has been dabbling in published film criticism with “Cinema Speculation”, this is far more fitting to cap his career.

Would you have wanted to see a Tarantino-directed Star Trek movie or does it sound better on paper? Give us your thoughts!