Co-writer says Quentin Tarantino’s R-rated version would have been the “greatest ‘Star Trek’ film”

Quentin Tarantino is reportedly ready to call it a career with his 10th directorial effort, the forthcoming The Movie Critic. But that likely means fans will never see what he would have made of Star Trek.

According to Mark L. Smith, who co-wrote the “hard-R”-rated script with Tarantino, the project would have gone where no Star Trek adventure had gone before.

“I would love for it to happen,” Smith tells Collider. “It’s just one of those things 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.”

Smith added, “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,” the writer says.

Smith says wistfully that the film’s “different vibe” would have “changed things” in same way as Thor: Ragnarok, Taika Waititi‘s skewed take on the God of Thunder that became that hero’s biggest box office hit.

Ultimately, however, Tarantino’s focus on ending his run with 10 films may have sealed Trek‘s fate. “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?'” Smith explains.

“And I think that was the bump he could never get across, so the script is still sitting there on his desk.”