Quentin Tarantino’s R-Rated ‘Star Trek’ Wasn’t Made Because He Didn’t Want it to Be His Final Film

In December 2017, Quentin Tarantino pitched an idea to J.J. Abrams for an R-rated ‘Star Trek’ movie. Tarantino had a completely different timeline from Abrams’ Trek movies, with Patrick Stewart and William Shatner both eyed to return for their respective roles.

During a recent interview, screenwriter Mark L. Smith gave Collider more details about the ‘Trek’ script he'd worked on with Tarantino:

Tarantino came in to the Bad Robot offices, meeting with Smith and Abrams, and he had this pitch, this idea of a version of Star Trek that he wanted to make. However, it seems as though Tarantino wanted a co-writer, so he and Abrams asked Smith to write a draft, which he did.

However, Tarantino eventually backed away for the simple reason that he didn’t want ‘Star Trek’ to be his final film, having already determined that he would direct 10 movies and then retire. Smith explains:

It was a different thing, but this was such a particular different type of story that Quentin wanted to tell with it that it fit my kind of sensibilities. So I wrote that, Quentin and I went back and forth, he was gonna do some stuff on it, and then he started worrying about the number, his kind of unofficial number of films. I remember we were talking, and he goes, “If I can just wrap my head around the idea that Star Trek could be my last movie, the last thing I ever do. Is this how I want to end it?” And I think that was the bump he could never get across, so the script is still sitting there on his desk. I know he said a lot of nice things about it. I would love for it to happen. It’s just one of those that I can't ever see happening. But it would be the greatest Star Trek film, not for my writing, but just for what Tarantino was gonna do with it. It was just a balls-out kind of thing."

So, we want details. What was going to be in this QT Star Trek? Smith does say that it would've been a “Hard R" with violence similar to that in “Pulp Fiction”:

But I think his vision was just to go hard. It was a hard R. It was going to be some Pulp Fiction violence. Not a lot of the language, we saved a couple things for just special characters to kind of drop that into the Star Trek world, but it was just really the edginess and the kind of that Tarantino flair, man, that he was bringing to it. It would have been cool.

In May 2019, Tarantino confirmed that his ‘Star Trek’ script had been written and that he intended to direct the film after 2019’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”. However, as Smith mentions above, what happened the following year was that Tarantino decided he was going to direct only one more movie before retiring, one that wouldn’t have anything to do with Trek. He officially exited the project in January 2020.

This whole notion of retiring after 10 movies stems from the Tarantino’s theory that a director’s quality of work only worsens as they get older. Tarantino wants his filmography to be perfect or, as he puts it, “without a misfire.”

The problem is that it’s a flawed theory. Forget the fact that some filmmakers have released their best films in their 60s. Altman directed “Gosford Park” at 76. Kurosawa directed “Ran” at 75. Scorsese gave us “The Wolf of Wall Street” at 72. Hitchcock released “Frenzy” at 74. Varda was 79 when “Faces Places” premiered at Cannes. Buñuel turned 77 when “The Obscure Object of Desire” shocked audiences.