'Star Trek 4' Might Not Be About Time Travel, Now That Tarantino’s Involved
The most recent episode of Star Trek: Discovery totally changed the show’s status quo, and things are looking very uncertain for Michael Burnham and the rest of the crew. But, in the real world, things are looking just as uncertain for the next Star Trek movie, now that it’s looking like Quentin Tarantino will actually make an R-rated Star Trek. Chris Hemsworth, who played Kirk’s dad in the first of the new Trek movies, was supposed to come back for the fourth film in the series, thanks to time travel, but now he’s not so sure.
Hemsworth, who is best known for playing Thor in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, played George Kirk, the Starfleet officer who heroically sacrificed himself to save the fleeing crew of the USS Kelvin in the first scene of 2009’s Star Trek. In 2016, shortly before Star Trek: Beyond hit theaters, the studios behind the new movies released a statement teasing that the next movie would reunite father and son thanks to time travel.
“In the next installment of the epic space adventure, Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk will cross paths with a man he never had a chance to meet, but whose legacy has haunted him since the day he was born: his father,” the press release explained.
In December of 2016, Beyond screenwriters Simon Pegg and Doug Jung teased they were writing the script for the fourth movie. But, a month later, in January 2017, Hemsworth said he was unsure if the time travel plot involving him would actually happen, though he said J.J. Abrams’s pitch was “amazing.”
Now, almost exactly a year later, and things are looking murkier than ever, especially now that Tarantino seems poised to take over the series with an R-rated movie. While speaking to IGN, Hemsworth once again said he wasn’t sure if the fourth move would involve a time-traveling George Kirk.
“I don’t know. It’s a reminder to call J.J. and ask the same question because I haven’t heard any updates on it either,” he explained.
“Just the fact that he had a way of reinserting the character into the world. I can’t say too much — there’s not even a script — but I always thought, maybe, there was a possibility of him coming back in some way,” Hemsworth continued, once again saying that the plan for the possibly canned film sounded great. “I didn’t know how or what, but he was pretty enthusiastic about what they had planned.”
It’s unclear if Tarantino’s proposed movie would have a connection to the existing Star Trek films, to say nothing of whether or not it would incorporate the time travel plot.
