After Quentin Tarantino reiterated the fact that he wanted to end his career at 10 movies I, justifiably, prayed and begged that he didn’t end it with his R-rated Star Trek movie, a passion project which seems to have started a few years back.
Just to recap: Tarantino had pitched an idea to ‘Trek’ producer J.J. Abrams about an R-rated ‘Star Trek’ movie. This set off Abrams into sending scribe Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant,” “Overlord”) down QT’s way so that they could collaborate and share ideas. Which they have been doing ever since.
Speaking with CinemaBlend just a few hours ago, Tarantino confirmed that he is willing to end his career directing his R-rated ‘Star Trek’ movie, but that he also could find a loophole to prevent it from being movie number ten:
“I guess I do have a loophole, the idea was to throw a loophole into it,” said Tarantino. “Which would be [to go], ‘Uhhh, I guess ‘Star Trek’ doesn’t count. I can do ‘Star Trek’… but naturally, I would end on an original.’ But the idea of doing 10 isn’t to come up with a loophole.”
He continued, “I actually think, if I was going to do ‘Star Trek,’ I should commit to it. It’s my last movie. There should be nothing left-handed about it. I don’t know if I’m going to do that, but that might happen.”
On why ending his career with ‘Star Trek’ would actually be an interesting way to call it a day:
“There also is another thought process going on where it’s like, yes, [my last movie] could be original,” said the filmmaker. “On the other hand, maybe that could show a different career I could’ve had. Whereas maybe [‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’] is my last original — I’m not saying this is the case — but maybe this is my last original, and ‘Star Trek’ or any other thing, a book or something like this, is the career I could have had if I wasn’t just writing everything all the time. Writing always originals.”
He added, “Maybe I could have had a different career if I looked for other people’s scripts, or if I wanted to find a book to be inspired by, and do an adaptation of. That would’ve been a different career. And maybe that could be fun to explore on the 10th [movie]. I don’t know. I mean, I’m making all this up as I go along, but those are two different ways I could look at it.”
A few readers sent me this URL today, and the reaction was mostly confusion. "A very weird list,” one wrote. Many of these are not “defining” but rather a display of taste.