When news broke this week that Quentin Tarantino had struck a deal with J.J. Abrams and Paramount to make a new Star Trek movie, based on an idea that wowed Abrams apparently, the wheels of punditry were spinning as to how Tarantino would play in the Roddenberry sandbox. Turns out, he’s not really; instead, he’ll mostly be bringing Roddenberry’s creations to his sandbox. Deadline is reporting that after meeting with a writers room containing Mark L. Smith (The Revenant), Lindsey Beer (Godzilla vs. Kong), and Drew Pearce (Iron Man 3), Tarantino’s ready to go…provided it’s an R-rated Star Trek movie.

While evidently leaning toward Smith to actually write the screenplay based on his idea, the stipulation for Tarantino to direct the film is that it gets that 17 and under rating, to which Abrams and Paramount seem to have agreed. Tarantino has only ever directed R-rated films, and has made them hard-R at that, so that is apparently very important to him, but I certainly don’t need to tell you that the Star Trek films have never gone to that level of content, staying firmly in the PG and PG-13.

Most tentpole franchise movies need to adhere to the PG-13 rating to maximize butts in seats, but with the unprecedented success of Deadpool and the strong showing both financially and critically for Logan as well, more Hollywood execs are open to the idea of pushing the envelope. I would hasten to add that the success of both of those X-Men franchise films were in keeping with their respective source materials.

Star Trek began as the brainchild of Gene Roddenberry who wanted to show a utopian future where Earth had become a united and peaceful place and universal exploration and diplomacy were key. While the later series and films certainly got a lot more grown up, and often fairly violent (Star Trek: Nemesis is a particularly dark, and altogether unsuccessful, outing), the brand succeeds when Roddenberry’s core tenets remain intact. It seems pretty unlikely that Tarantino would be able to adhere to those, especially if he’s insisting on an R rating. A “dark and gritty” Star Trek is maybe not what the world needs right now.

Obviously we’ll have to wait and see, but it certainly sounds like this’ll be a Tarantino movie far more than a Trek movie.

Image: TWC/Paramount/CBS

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He is the writer of 200 reviews of weird or obscure films in Schlock & Awe. Follow him on Twitter!

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