The general reaction to the news that it’s looking like Paramount might go ahead with Quentin Tarantino’s R-rated Star Trek feature film can be summed up in three letters. W, T and F. How on earth can the famously idiosyncratic director, know for his absurdly violent genre cinema, slot neatly into the pristine and sober world of Star Trek?
Then again, they say opposites attract and perhaps Tarantino could be just the guy to inject a shot of adrenaline into the venerable sci-fi property’s bloodstream. Understandably, this news has created a considerable buzz around the project and in a recent interview, THR asked Patrick Stewart whether he’d consider returning to the franchise to reprise his role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, to which he said:
“One of my dreams is to work with Tarantino. I admire his work so much and to be in a Tarantino film would give me so much satisfaction. So, if he is going to direct something to do with Star Trek and there was the possibility of dear old Jean-Luc showing up again and doing that for Mr Tarantino, I would embrace it.”
If Captain Picard were to return to screens, it’d be his first appearance in the franchise since 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis, which is widely reviled amongst Trek fans as betraying the Next Generation characters. That’s mostly because director Stuart Baird notoriously refused to watch any episodes of the TV show before filming.
The movie simply doesn’t give Picard the send-off he deserves, and I’m sure Tarantino has the dramatic nous needed for the job. At the very least, it’d be nice to get a scene where Picard calls a borg “motherfucker,” don’t you think?
For now, it’s still early days on QT’s Star Trek pic, but it’s clear that the project is starting to heat up and with Stewart now making public his interest in being involved, it’ll be interesting to see if Paramount’s able to make it happen.
