Quentin Tarantino has a long, long history of talking about movies he wants to make that never materialize. Remember his “Vega Brothers” movie, belatedly uniting John Travolta’s Vincent, from Pulp Fiction, with Michael Madsen’s Vic/Mr. Brown, from Reservoir Dogs? He’s been talking about doing his own Star Trek for a few years now and, to his credit, he’s still talking about it. The other day he told Cinema Blend he’s even considering making it his final film. And in a wide-ranging interview with Deadline for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, he went into a little more depth.
For one thing — and he’s mentioned this before — a Quentin Tarantino Star Trek would be rated R. If that sounds like going too far, he cited a certain recent hit that could inspire him to go beyond a PG or even a PG-13.
“Deadpool showed that you can rethink these things, do them in a different way,” Tarantino said. “So really, even before JJ [Abrams] knew what the idea was, his feeling was, if it wants to be an R rating, fine. If it wants to be The Wild Bunch in space, fine.”
So there’s that, but then there’s this: Not only will it very much feel like a Tarantino film, it will feel like a specific Tarantino film. He brought up Simon Pegg, our resident movie Scotty (and, by the way, it sounds like he’ll be keeping the current cast), who has tried to allay any Trekkies’ fears that a Tarantino Star Trek wouldn’t be too Tarantino.
“I get annoyed at Simon Pegg. He doesn’t know anything about what’s going on and he keeps making all these comments as if he knows about stuff. One of the comments he said, he’s like “Well, look, it’s not going to be Pulp Fiction in space.” Yes, it is! [laughs hard]. If I do it, that’s exactly what it’ll be. It’ll be Pulp Fiction in space. That Pulp Fiction-y aspect, when I read the script, I felt, I have never read a science fiction movie that has this sh*t in it, ever. There’s no science fiction movie that has this in it. And they said, I know, that’s why we want to make it. It’s, at the very least, unique in that regard.”
So perhaps Tarantino will close out his filmmaking career with an ultraviolent, very long, structurally experimental, cuss-word-heavy Star Trek picture, riddled with Ennio Morricone music and ’70s A/M deep cuts and featuring at least one once-ubiquitous legend who hasn’t been seen in a while. Or maybe he’ll make something else. Or maybe he’ll make a Star Trek movie than keeping making movies because he realizes the world only ever receiving 10 Tarantino films is a bit cruel.
(Via Deadline)
