Saturday, December 9, 2017

Tarantino-oh no!

Um...no? Like, I know I shouldn't judge a movie before it even comes out, but I have some pretty strong, possibly unfair feelings about the prospect of the next Star Trek movie being an R-rated Quentin Tarantino joint.
"Yeah, I look at Star Trek and think, you know what this
needs? More guns and characters shouting motherfucker."

-Quentin Tarantino
(probably)
In my defense, the last one had
Krang. Krang! I'm only human.
I don't necessarily have anything against Quentin Tarantino, I mean I, like most people, had a brief flirtation with his gritty, dark humor and ultra-violence in college, but I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting old and curmudgeonly, but I kind of outgrew his two hour murderfests around my late twenties. It's weird to say since I outgrew anything since I'm a grown-ass adult who still plays video games and saw not one, but two Michael Bay directed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies.

Unless you're infested with alien parasites,
in which case it's set phasers to head'splode.
There's something about a Star Trek film with 'from the director of Inglorious Basterds and Death Proof' plastered on the poster that just doesn't sit well with me. It's not that Star Trek's never had violent scenes before, I mean red shirt jokes aside, the original Enterprise had a serious crew fatality problem. It's just that Tarantino characters tend to approach violence with gleeful enthusiasm and most of his movies are about bloody revenge rampages. Starfleet officers on the other hand tend to treat violence as a last resort.

No really. Go ahead, name something
Star Trekkier than that. Well? 
Of course, Tarantino is purportedly a huge trekkie and there's no reason he couldn't make a Star Trek movie in line with the series philosophy, but according to this, he's only agreeing to make the film if he can have an R-rating which...look, I'm not against R-rated movies. I mean, I really could care less about your kids, but Star Trek? Sure, Deep Space Nine was pretty gritty for what it was. Half the series was taken up with the Dominion War, but that war ended because-and this is a spoiler-our heroes taught the Dominion's leaders about what we humanoids call 'love.'

I guess I have a hard time reconciling something like that with whatever Tarantino has in mind that's going warrant an R. But on the other hand, the new show, Discovery is rougher than previous incarnations, what with its casual swearing, Klingon war and a seriously uncomfortable sex/torture scene, but it's still recognizably Star Trek.
Sure, this guy did eat Michelle Yeoh's character, and his ship
has a corpse room, but I think Captain Lorca has a tribble...
Sadly, not even a Rihanna tie-in music
video could save Beyond from a
 mediocre domestic performance. 
Ok, so maybe it'll work. Just because his Star Trek would be full of the swears and murder sprees doesn't meant it can't also explore strange new worlds or whatever. But it still seems like a dramatic 360 after the bright and colorful J. J. Abrams series, so what gives? Money. Try to act surprised. Star Trek Beyond was pretty good but didn't do as well at the box-office as the studio hoped. In fact, and this is the nutty part, it might have been disappointing enough to re-reboot reboot-universe altogether. With me?

Oh yes, buckle them nerd belts because noted blowhole enthusiast and actor Sir Patrick Stewart says he'd love to play Picard again if it means working with Tarantino. If it pans out, it would mean abandoning the alternate reality of the Abrams movies and picking up up where the TNG movies left off. Which I'm all for, but more importantly it would mean Captain Jean-Luc 'Let's Work it Out Over A Cup of Earl Grey' Picard in a movie directed by the guy who brought us Reservoir Dogs.
"It's like I always say Mister Data: fuck the prime directive, phasers on kill."
-Jean-Luc Picard,
about to make it so

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