The big news for April was Paramount’s new CEO announcing that the studio had not just one, but two Star Trek films in development. One was the previously announced follow-up to Star Trek Beyond, and the other was a new (and “separate”) film, based on an idea from Quentin Tarantino. While this may look like it’s part of expanded “Star Trek Cinematic Universe,” Scotty actor Simon Pegg says it at least didn’t start with some grand plan.
Speaking to Film School Rejects while promoting his new film Terminal, Pegg explained why there are two films currently in the works:
I think it was a coincidence. We were gearing up for [Star Trek 4] and getting ready for that and then Quentin strolled into Bad Robot one day and said listen to this. It was just really interesting and I think it just got out and so everyone started talking about it. And also, Star Trek is kind of, with Discovery and stuff, it’s in the public conscious. It never left it, really. It’s entering its second 50 years. I think it’s great that it’s being talked about so much.
Turning a corner towards production on Star Trek 4
Pegg also clarified again that he and his Star Trek Beyond writing partner Doug Jung are not involved with penning Star Trek 4, as that is being done by John Payne and Patrick McKay. The actor also noted the recent hiring of director S.J. Clarkson was a sign that production on Star Trek 4 is nearing:
With S.J. attached, it feels like we’re starting to round the corner on actual production. I am hoping to get more info soon. They keep us in the dark as much as they can because they know we always get asked questions.
Doesn’t think Tarantino Trek will be Pulp Fiction in space
With regards to the Tarantino Star Trek project, currently being penned by Mark L. Smith, Pegg again talked about being excited by the notion and tried to allay any fears fans may have that the film could introduce the kind of over-the-top violence which Tarantino is best known for. Speaking to ComingSoon Pegg said:
Everyone sort of assumes it’s gonna be like “Pulp Fiction” in space, but I think his devotion to “Trek” and his understanding of it… It won’t be ordinary, it’ll have him all over it, but it won’t be anything a “Star Trek” fan will have to worry about. He has an acute understanding of the story and he’d never do anything to tear it down.
Recently Pegg has noted that he doesn’t even know if he will be in the Tarantino Trek film, but that may soon change as he told ComingSoon he could soon be in the loop:
I haven’t read the treatment yet, but I might be able to in the next couple of weeks, so I’m excited about that.
Keep up with all news on both Star Trek 4 and the Tarantino Trek project at TrekMovie’s upcoming films category.
As with all the JJVerse films, I am setting the bar low. The first one was OK, but flawed. The second was a unmitigated disaster. The third was disappointing. Just my opinion, I could be wrong.
You’re not wrong to have an opinion – I enjoyed BEYOND. I think if BEYOND had been the second film and come out sooner than STID, it might have fared better. STID was wholly unnecessary and a terrible idea ( entertaining though it was ).
Actually, I liked all the films. I just wish that they weren’t so “rehashed”.
I think Beyond’s main problem was that Pegg and co were given too tight a timeframe to work with after Orci’s script was binned. Beyond is a competantly written movie but a little too simplistic when compared to the other two. I hope Pegg and co get another shot in the future.
I know that most people hate into darkness, but what made it an unmitigated disaster?
It has flaws but at least it was a rehashing of previous Star Trek films.
Unlike the 09 film which was a total rip off of a new hope.
I think you answered your own question there, for me at least. I think it was a bad film because it needlessly rehashed a superior previous film. I had thought that with the new crew we would see different adventures and not just rehash the older ones. I mean what is the point of telling the same story again if you’ve already done it better the previous time. In the end I prefer originality and creativity more than just rehashing old stuff. This just seems like an easy way out for me, like the producers haven’t even really tried to come up with something new. It’s like they couldn’t cook a new meal and instead I am being served leftovers from a previous day.
But the 09 film was just a rehash of a new hope.
It was also not original nor creative. Vast portions of the 09 film were basically lifted from a new hope.
I don’t get why the 09 film gets a pass when it’s a remake of Star Wars whereas into darkness is hated for combining previous Star Trek films.
I wouldn’t say ’09 gets a complete pass. There are some fun parts and some not so fun parts. JJ definitely seemed like he would have prefered to be directing Star Wars, though that wasn’t an option back then. STID had even less fun parts. The ’09 movie at least has more energy to it, making it an easier watch.
That’s interesting because I feel like STID is relentlessly paced, but you do have a point that 09 was pretty energetic too, lots of running through the corridors
I didn’t say I fully liked Star Trek 09 too.Star Trek 09 was your typical introduction film that needed to bring the characters together, once you get them together then the sky is the limit. They also got a new universe to play in so why in the hell would they rehash the same things that happened before. This is the definition of lazy film-making and I am sorry but I don’t tolerate this. If you got more than 100 million dollars budget to play with then you owe it to your audience to at least try to be creative. This is not just a problem about Star Trek, I think this is a general problem in modern day entertainment and I don’t like it one bit.
I think the issue is that JJ in general makes his name in nostalgia — and nostalgia is just retreading the same material, whether homage, pastiche, etc. The Kelvin films are the postmodern version of Trek: self-referential, intertextual, meta. The Force Awakens was a tired rehash too. It’s all just to make a shit zillion dollars. But you’re right, Trek deserves something new. At least Disco tried that.
I think Disco could have done it better though, they are also technically a prequel, while it is not a bad show, I think I would have appreciated Discovery more if they had taken the story to an unknown time in the future and create some truly original, unseen stories.
So true, he remade a new hope twice. Once for trek 2009 and again in 2015 for force awakens.
Exactly that is why I do my best Spock eyebrow raise when someone tells me that JJ Abrams is a visionary director. Visionary of what exactly? Except for Super 8 all the movies he directed were Nostalgia fests.
Even that was a mash up of close encounters and E.T., and i loved super 8 but it was not original it was a Spielberg rehash. Would be great to see him make a non George Lucas or Steven Spielberg inspired film that is science fiction.
Shouldn’t these films roughly track the original films though? If not for Nero time traveling and destroying Vulcan events would have played out exactly as they did in the prime timeline.
So it stands to reason that anything Vulcan unrelated which originally happened should happen again in some manner right?
That’s like saying if 9/11 didn’t happen the 21st century would be more or less the same
They should roughly track with the original films if it was merely time travel.
But the 09 films also seem to be set in an alternate dimension, it’s an alternate timeline of the original timeline of the 09 films.
Plus according to Pegg the red matter affecting the entire timeline not just from when Nero turned up, it effect when backwards in the timeline as well.
So things should be different due to the timeline changes and being set in a different dimension.
@David — it’s more complicated than that. STID in particular shows how Marcus rose to power in Starfleet, and helped re-direct its resources and goals around a sphere of paranoia resulting from Nero’s original incursion into the past, with the net effect of Starfleet being run by a shadowy Section 31. Add to that the affect it had on the Klingons, and who knows what Nero communicated to the Romulans? In addition, Vulcan was a major player in the Federation and it’s events — canon suggests they have far wider influence in the galaxy than Earth, which only makes sense as they were out traversing the galaxy far earlier than Earth. So the loss of Vulcan would likely significantly affect the entire galaxy, and many of the other events we witnessed in TOS. You are correct however that the events of certain TOS episodes on isolated planets like Miri, and A Piece of the Action, and The Apple would continue to unfold as they did previously — however, had the Enterprise not shown up exactly when it did, Miri likely becomes a grump and dies, and so on.
The plot just didn’t make any sense. Spock and Kirk had no reason to like each other yet we’re supposed to believe they would still have the “…always shall be my friend” moment. Yet another revenge plot (coupled with another admiral gone bad). Carol Marcus being a physicist but also having a pointless underwear scene which feels like a step backwards for female representation in Trek (while Khan’s sexy shower scene was cut for being too gratuitous). Same with half of Uhura’s scenes consisting of arguing with Spock about their relationship. Khan being whitewashed (acceptable in the 1960s doesn’t mean it is ok now) and the Khan reveal itself adds nothing to the plot. The magic heals death blood (which is somehow the same blood type as both humans and tribbles) and the beaming from Earth to Qo’noS create plot holes for future movies. Spock Prime being shoehorned into the film with a pointless cameo that looks like it was recorded on Skype. Spock forcing a mindmeld on Pike as he is dying. The rehash of the skydiving scene from the previous film to be the same as Nemesis.
In Beyond there were plenty of throw away lines that referenced previous Trek moments. STID referenced them with plotlines which just felt tired and unoriginal.
Why would Spock and Kirk not like one another? They both interacted with Old Spock so they knew that in the original timleine they were best buddies. Maybe that knowledge caused their friendship to grow deeper quicker.
The 09 film was also just another revenge plot film.
There are no excuses for sexism.
Since lots of people claim/argue visuals are not canon there is nothing actually wrong with Khan being played by a white man.
Just because he had an Indian name and ruled over a chuck of Asia. This does not mean he had to have dark skin matching the complexion of people who live in India. His family may have been immigrants to India hence the white skin.
The beaming from earth to Qo’noS was no worse than beaming onto a starship moving at warp speed which was a vast distance away from the planet Kirk was marooned on. Not to mention marooning some one rather than confining them was a bit excessive.
Pointless cameos/references were done in the 09 film as well from Orions being in starfleet merely because they are an iconic race from tos to references to Cardassian drinks.
Spock forced loads of mind melds in tos and in Star Trek 6, besides he was still suffering from the fall out of nearly his entire species being wiped out.
What’s wrong with magic blood? How it is any worse than red matter? What exactly was red matter anyway? Khan’s blood was enhanced through genetic engineering so there is at least some rationale to it healing/reviving Kirk.
They redid the skydiving because it was popular, and anyway it they also reused it in beyond when Kirk was floating around fighting Krall.
I wouldn’t say the final fight of Beyond was a rehash of the orbital skydive. But you’re right in that STID in many ways feels like a carbon copy of ST09: same sendoff at the end, “punch it”, and the spacesuit jumps, which they literally referenced in STID, “I’ve done it before.” Do something different FCOL!!!
@GQMF — My main beef (and there are so many) with STID, which you also point out, was that they decided to make Starfleet the corrupt bad guys. One of the things I think made TOS valuable was the ability to criticize current world events metaphorically. Starfleet was always on the good side, and exposed the current event’s mirror corruption in an alien civilization. It didn’t point the finger at the audience so directly, and made the preaching and lecturing a little more palatable. In the end it’s still entertainment. I think it would have gone over better if they hadn’t undermined Starfleet so directly, and instead focused on an alien race undermining itself, in which Kirk and crew got caught. That was the formula for many classic episodes of TOS which are infinitely re-watchable, and for my money: more entertaining.
How was Starfleet always on the good side in tos?
What about the episode “the omega glory”? Or “the enterprise incident”?
Or how about “patterns of force” where an instructor from starfleet academy turned a whole planet into nazis?
Or in “court martial” where they tired to rail road Kirk out of starfleet.
Starfeet was not always on the good side in Tos.
An observation: this Curious Cadet person loves to just say whatever comes to his/her mind regardless of accuracy, and then his/her pal, Disinvited, shows up to try to clean up his/her messs.
They also change their story completely after a bunch of posts and insist that not only have they been saying the opposite to what they previous wrote. They also claim that the person they were interacting with wrote the opposite to what they wrote.
Yep…been there, done that with those two.
Well that’s something at least, I’m not alone in my experience 😁
Into Darkness was the best of all three movies.
You’re welcome to my copy.
Preach
Finnegan
You’re not wrong.
Take heart. None of the three was nearly as bad as the last three star wars offerings.
it’s an exciting time for Star Trek any way you look at it. Excited to see what comes next.
“It’s entering it’s second 50 years.” Kind of dig that line.
But I’ll second what Finnegan said to the point where I’m not expecting much out of this next KU film. Though I liked Beyond faaar more than STID, it wasn’t much more than a fun romp. Maybe they’ll surprise us, here’s to hoping.
Although Tarintino films aren’t always to my taste, I have so much more faith in an iconic director with a love for the franchise taking the helm than I do the committee board production approach of the JJ-verse films. No contrived ‘go faster racing stripes’ and change for the sake of change, ‘sexy reboot’ type stuff, my instinct tells me a Tarintino type director would come in with a legit vision he was passionate about and he’d be big and trusted enough for the production company execs to stay out of his way. I’m still nervous it would be more of a dilution of my beloved Trek… but after the cosplay reboot films, with pouting Spock and ugly Enterprise… after joyless, uninspiring, dingey Discovery… I wish Tarantino’s film was next in the pipe line, not Bad Robot’s fourth instalment. I still can’t get over Into Darkness. Such an insulting mess. Then Beyond’s lack of coherent villian. What a disservice to Trek. I watched The Last Jedi and it was classy, coherent and visual continuity was celebrated not shyed away from. The Star Trek brand is being deluted, mishandled and that rich 50 year tapestry pulled apart.
The Last Jedi was coherent? I respectfully disagree.
TLJ was entertaining – but entertaing GAR-BAGE.
Guess I’ll have to finally watch TLJ. I’ve been avoiding it because I’ve heard from so many sources it’s just awful.
Well, it depends on how you feel about Luke Skywalker in general. I actually liked it better than The Force Awakens but I don’t know if I would re-watch it.
Caravan of Courage is better than TLJ.
To my dying breath I will say that the hate towards Last Jedi wasn’t so much that it was flawed but that it didn’t adhere to canon and nostalgia.
I also loved that prior to it opening the handwringing was all about it being a rehash and remake of “Empire”. It opened, “OMG! IT WAS DIFFERENT AND TOOK CHANCES!”
As on OG fan of both Trek and Star Wars (saw the original well over a hundred times) I find it odd that the new films and series for both are awesome while you darn meddling kids get flustered over minutiae. The stories were getting old and tired and needed freshening. Especially Trek.
This is why I actually liked The Last Jedi more than TFA, it at least tried to be original and if you look at the family history of the Skywalkers I think what Luke considers doing in the film is not as much out of the realm of possibility as people would lead you to believe.
‘forget the past, kill it if you have to’
I live by these words now. Old people holding onto 20th century ideas need to leave, or at least step aside. I appreciated the message of TLJ and although it’s a flawed movie it’s leagues ahead of TFA which was pure uninspired garbage. Entertaining garbage, to quote Mr. Jenkins.
Looked up “John Payne” and “Patrick McKay” and they were both uncredited writers on “Star Trek: Beyond” and not much else, so this doesn’t bode well.
…was thinking the same thing. Their IMDB credits don’t exactly blow one away, either.
@Muldfeild — add to that Orci “discovered” them.
This sounds like it could be the same mistake as what happened on Nemesis. Someone’s friend (in that case Brent Spiner) is given the job, ignoring their lack of experience.
On the other hand, maybe everyone felt that these guys contributed enough on Beyond that they warranted a script of their own.
Hmmm, I wouldn’t say John Logan lacked experience on Nemesis. He had come off Gladiator, which earned him an Academy Award nomination.
True, he did have general writing experience and did go on to do good work on many films. When he wrote Nemesis however, the only other science fiction experience was The Time Machine which was not so well received and nothing Trek related. Maybe more fair to say then that he lacked related experience.
Logan’s work on GLADIATOR is limited to Commodus’ dialog, everything else is other people’s work. His last work on THE AVIATOR was turned in several years before production started, so I don’t know if ANY of his work is in there, but he somehow used WGA rules (first writer on is hard to displace, which is why Dan O’Bannon gets credit on ALIEN instead of Giler and Hill, which has always seemed like a disgrace to me) to get credit and awards for it.
I think Logan might outAkiva Akiva Goldsman when it comes to being a terrible writer who can only do a serviceable job with cut-&-paste, like RKO 281, which in my opinion would have been hard to screw up, given you had a documentary and a ton of research books that already covered the Kane/Hearst thing.
While the writing left a lot to be desired I give much of the fault of Nemesis to that useless hack of a director Stuart Baird. He took a potentially epic film and turned it into a mess. I had heard that the actors had such a miserable time with Baird that they wanted to create their own “Actors cut” of the movie.
To clarify. Payne and McKay were not actually the writers of the Star Trek Beyond we ended up with. They were the writers of the first script, along with Orci, that was scrapped late in the process. Pegg and Jung then wrote a brand new script, which is what we got in 2016.
I wonder if the Tarantino one will be based on the Roddenberry treatment wherein Spock has to assassinate JFK and make love to Marilyn Monroe to restore the timeline, or whatever. Could be good.
I know you’re being facetious, but you do know MM was in the ground already at the time of JFK shooting, right?
@MG — all kidding aside, I would have really enjoyed watching that movie. Maybe not as great Star Trek, but just as a cool merging together of mutual interests. It’s for the same reason I loved watching Trials and Tribblations, but don’t want to see them depict that cheesy 1960s art direction in modern productions of Trek.
People thinking that Tarantino is going to turn Star Trek into a highly violent movie with 70s funk music needle drops and an over-abundance of profanity are ridiculous. There is no way that Tarantino, as a Star Trek fan, would do that. In fact, his version would probably more Trek-like than either the JJ-Kelvin-verse films or Discovery. I would imagine his version would be like a mix of First Contact and The Undiscovered Country: a balance of action, drama, and comedy with focus to what makes Trek great. He also admitted he loved Yesterday’s Enterprise and City on the Edge of Forever, so I am sure there will be time travel.
that scene in ‘crimson tide’ when denzel was asking ‘warp speed’ shows he has a handle on ‘trek’.
but i hope he gets that there needs to be more exploration done this time, not just cool battle scenes.
I think Tarantino’s film will probably be somewhere between First Contact, Logan, and Mad Max. I figure that means an authentic but dark movie that probably drops the F-bomb twice to secure an R-rating.
I think something key is that he will likely employ older or less conventionally young and attractive actors, which will recover some of the old feel.
My overall gut feeling is that the movie he’d want to make would be a mix of Yesterday’s Enterprise and “Generations done right”. I figure something like the Enterprise gets thrown forward and encounters a Picard at the end of his life and a mouthy severed Data head Picard uses as his PADD. We get an epic speech or three from Picard, an epic death scene, and alt. Picard imparts wisdom to Kirk that changes history for the better.
Basically, though, Kirk makes a brash screw up, travels forward and sees his brash screw up played out in the form of a hagrid, anti-hero Picard who fights him before teaming up, and Kirk goes back to fix his mistake.
And Stewart gets a death scene and closure without impacting the “Prime” Picard.
Tarantino Trek Will be Pulp Fiction in Space and most certainly something the Whiny Star Trek Fans have to worry about, at the end of the Day they lose because Star Trek is Changing and evolving and there is nothing they can do about it Ha Ha Ha.
Star Trek died with Gene Roddenberry. Give it up.
they said that about ds9 too.
We found the only true Trekkie on this site! Unless that’s just a screenname
Clearly they don’t understand the concept of “when you find yourself in a hole, the best thing to do is stop digging”
In fact they’re literally doubling down
All the complaining and writing off the future projects before they are made is just sad.
Love the JJverse. And really stoked about QT getting behind a Trek film…bring it, I need something good to wash the bad taste of Discovery out of my mouth!
I’ll only watch if it promises to be the most woke Trek film to date! And I’m only slightly kidding because lord that underwear scene in STID is detestable.