I enjoy the Tarantino films, but I don’t want them anywhere near Star Trek.
I really dislike what’s happening with ST lately; what was in my childhood a hopeful message for how much humanity could achieve when we finally get our shit together, is now just another action movie / drama template. Government bad, corruption everywhere, war for the sake of war, etc.
I’m certain Tarantino would double down on that and I just don’t want it.
Government bad, corruption everywhere, war for the sake of war, etc.
I’m certain Tarantino would double down on that and I just don’t want it.
Tarantino is kind of a bellwether for the mostly apolitical right-wing (but non-fascist) middle-class majority of the US population, the movie “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” convinced me of that. It also convinced me that Tarantino himself has lost the plot, or actually never really had it. He reminds me a bit of Beavis and Butthead, kind of just watching movies and TV all the time, sorting everything into the binary categories “cool” or “sucks”, except he actually goes out and makes films that glorify all he thinks is “cool” which happens to be a cross-section of all media that glorifies violence and toxic masculinity.
So he likes Star Trek. Congratulations Tarantino, your “geek” bona-fides are authentic, but like the rest of the right-wing (non-fascist) middle-class majority, you really have no fucking clue and don’t care about the political origins of Star Trek and are just itching to erase them so you can make it into another “cool” movie that glorifies violence and toxic masculinity. You can fuck right off, Tarantino.
right-wing (but non-fascist)
you keep using these words but they don’t mean what you think they mean… People who are right wing support fascism. Full stop. They don’t have to mean to, but they actively do, and what I assume is an attempt to spare their feelings (though the reason doesn’t really matter) is just more confirmation for their cognitive dissonance that they’re not doing anything wrong.
I very much agree with everything else you said, but I can’t grasp why you would make the extra effort to pander to them like that, it’s bizarre.
People who are right wing support fascism. Full stop.
I very much agree with everything else you said, but I can’t grasp why you would make the extra effort to pander to them like that, it’s bizarre.
You are right, and I also agree with you, so let me just clarify… there is a difference between people who unconsciously support fascism merely because they are apolitical, and people who are very deliberately fascist, as in enthusiastic supporters of the Republican party.
Most fans of US movies are indifferent, and do not think of themselves as political beings. They think of themselves as just “ordinary.” Like a fish not knowing what water is, “ordinary” for an average US citizen is about as close to fascism as a person can possibly be without enthusiastically actively waving around swastikas – but there is still a difference between “ordinary” apolitical people like Tarantino and all of his fans who think of him as edgy, and someone actively wishing to purge the world of all non-white people. That is what I mean by “right wing” and not fascist.
I think it is important to draw that distinction because I don’t like blaming apolitical people for being the victims of US mainstream cinema brainwashing.
Ok, so you’re not talking about right wing people then (or more accurately - conservatives), you’re talking about centrists and liberals (who are not left wing) (edit to add: while claiming to be “apolitical”, looks like Tarantino has donated to the DNC in the past, so that tracks).
I know that’s uncomfortable to hear, but it’s the truth, and to those willing to sit with that discomfort and challenge their bias, I recommend taking the time to read this and this.
Show me a moderate Democrat in the US and I’ll show you a moderate right winger in the world. From a world perspective, the US hasn’t had a left leaning president in the last 30 years or more. The US lost its left at some point, and advocating for sensible policies became its new left. Outside looking in, Bernie is a centrist or at most left-of-center.
So if your reference is the full spectrum, the majority of the US population is right wing, a good portion of it radicalized fascists. Now if your reference is the severely skewed Overton window of the US, then yeah, all right wingers are fascists.
Just a side note: American fucked up definitions of words and ideologies are not “how things are called”. Liberals are not non committed leftists.
you’re talking about centrists and liberals.
I suppose I am, though I think it is accurate to call centrists and liberals “right wing.”
Those are both good articles, I have actually read them both before.
I think it is accurate to call centrists and liberals “right wing.”
Oh yeah, I agree in principle, but practically it becomes a bit confusing, as this exchange has demonstrated lol, glad we cleared it up…
And yeah, fuck Tarantino.
Such hard bigotry, you left wing fascist
I understand hesitancy for an R-rated Star Trek movie, and I also understand that Tarantino’s style isn’t for everyone, but that said- he always puts a lot of effort in to crafting a good story, and there’s always a ton of attention detail. His movies are never shallow pandering cash grabs like certain other directors who will remain nameless here.
So while a Tarantino Trek movie sounds very weird on the surface, I think he’s far and away earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to making any movie at this point and I would welcome his perspective.
Not that it’s ever gonna happen, of course. But if we do ever see a new movie, I would far prefer an auteur over a plug-n-play disneyfied cash grab like we see with the MCU, Star Wars, and basically any other pop culture franchise.
Pure marketing piffle.
Paramount would never let a Hard R Trek get made. Not only is it the completely wrong tone for Trek (even if you rate the JJ Abrams movies) but it would seriously harm ticket sales as kids and young teens would be prohibited from going to the theater to see it. Imagine Kirk and Spock sitting around, smoking weed, talking about their favorite obscure 2200s films while holding knives to each other’s nutsacks.
They only started talking about Tarantino directing a Star Trek movie in order to build hype for the new Trek shows that are of dubious quality.
FWIW, I recall an interview with Tarantino on YouTube somewhere in which Trek came up, and he was asked to name one of his favourite episodes.
To my surprise he named Yesterdays enterprise. He genuinely seemed to love it and remembered a lot of details about the plot. The other he mentioned is city on the edge of forever.
So while many might react to the idea of an R rated Tarantino Trek film negatively, I’d be quietly optimistic that he has good taste in Trek and would have a good core of a premise and story. I suspect he’d also handle the characters well, knowing how to balance campiness, seriousness and comedy.
EDIT: Found the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyD7CFnFH3A
It’s from 2015. Go to 3.47 for the relevant section. Interestingly, rewatching it, the prompt of the conversation was “what Star Wars movie would you like to do” and Tarantino responds with he’d rather do a Trek film.
And to further my point, he’s main point is that so many good episodes from Trek, especially the original series, could be made into movies.
I feel like in the best case it would have been a catastrophe that somehow manages to fall together in a way that actually works, and in the worst case it would have just been bad to the point of being offensively bad, appealing to neither regular filmgoers whole also pissing off established fans.
… But it also feels like giving a chainsaw to a bear: You know whatever’s gonna happen you’re not gonna like, but also you kinda want to do it just to see what it is.
