In an interview with Esquire for his latest film Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Chris Pine (Captain Kirk) was predictably questioned about the trapped in a temporal vortex Star Trek 4.

In part his reply was the usual "I know nothing and still haven't seen a script" but he went an extra parsec and suggested both that it may never be made and that the franchise is cursed.

Pine’s first Star Trek came out a year after the first Iron Man; Beyond was released in 2016, after Marvel’s interlocking mega-franchises had moved the goalposts for what constitutes a hit. Beyond’s gross—nearly $344 million globally—was good money, but not Avengers good. “I’m not sure Star Trek was ever built to do that kind of business,” Pine says. “I always thought, Why aren’t we just appealing to this really rabid fan group and making the movie for a good price and going on our merry way, instead of trying to compete with the Marvels of the world?” He’d like to span more years as Kirk but wouldn’t be surprised if Beyond was the end of it. “After the last one came out and didn’t do the $1 billion that everybody wanted it to do, and then Anton”—Yelchin, who played Chekov—“passed away, I don’t know, it just seemed . . .” He pauses, looks out the window at the view Star Trek bought.

He doesn’t finish the thought but a few minutes later suggests that the franchise “feels like it’s cursed”—it shouldn’t be this hard to figure out how to do another Star Trek movie, yet it’s taken six years. Pine and crew’s return to the screen was announced in February 2022; when I speak to producer J. J. Abrams by phone, the search for a director is ongoing. Abrams is elliptical about the film, even by J. J. Abrams standards. “I will say it’s the first time [since the original reboot] that we have a story that feels as compelling as the first one.”

Death is tragic but also ordinary.

We'll forgive him the magical language this time in an interview where he's fronting a fantasy franchise.

But it sounds like he's floating the notion of Paramount simply cutting their losses with the Kelvin timeline.

Most fans are invested in the many years of television content and don't want it tossed aside by an alternate timeline.

While Avatar's success proves that audiences are receptive to big budget sci-fi action, for whatever reasons, Star Trek didn't swing it and having failed it may now be impossible.

Movie-goers who saw one or more of those films and decided not to continue with them would be extremely difficult to convince to return.

Personally we would have preferred to see the story resolved in a manner which restored the original timeline but the new series have continued to not be Star Trek.

We don't really care any more.

J. J. Abrams' Star Trek, Star Trek: Into Darkness and Star Trek: Beyond, are available to stream now on Paramount+, Stan and Binge.

[ Main Image: Star Trek Beyond - Chris Pine. Credit: Paramount via IMDb.com. ]

References

Pappademus, Alex (March 1, 2023). It's Chris Pine Time! Esquire.