Tarantino’s Star Trek Movie Just Keeps on Getting Weirder

One of the weirdest pieces of news to come out of 2017 was Quentin Tarantino pitching a Star Trek movie - and possibly even wanting to get behind the camera on it. The latest development on the news is that he has managed to convince Paramount to make the movie R-rated. Insiders were putting rumours out there that Mark L. Smith, whose writing credits include The Revenant, was the top choice of the studio to pen the screenplay.
The rumours were clearly true, as it has now been confirmed that Smith is on board. He’ll get to work on the script, while Tarantino continues to work on his Charles Manson project. The latter project has yet to be named but features the 1969 Manson family murders as a backdrop in the film, which is in the midst of pursuing major acting talent after Sony won a hard-fought bidding war over distribution rights. Tarantino has reportedly approached Margot Robbie about the idea of playing Sharon Tate, a woman who was murdered by the Mansons. Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, and Brad Pitt are all looking to make the cast.

"Quentin Tarantino" (CC BY 2.0) by Slackerwood

Dialogue or no dialogue? That is the question!
If Tarantino does indeed direct the movie, it will be one of a limited number of occasions that he would direct a movie that he didn’t write. With Smith’s script for The Revenant being short on dialogue compared with Tarantino’s verbose style (the director has been known to pen 165-page screenplays of mostly dialogue), the movie should make for a very interesting result. This is likely to be especially true when you throw in producer J.J. Abrams’ own unique style.
The strange gets stranger
Star Trek has always had a reputation for being a bit on the strange side: strange actors, strange uniforms, strange fans. And now it boasts a strange filmmaking partnership. Still, it hasn’t stopped the franchise from being one of the most beloved in popular culture; not just in the movies, of course - its roots are steeped in the enormously popular TV show, which has spawned an endless amount of spin-offs. It has also made its mark with a plethora of merchandise, from mugs and toys to board games and puzzles. Numerous video games have also been released, including 2017’s Star Trek: Bridge Crew. There are even Star Trek online casino games. For instance, Oddschecker features casino sites with free bets and no deposits, such as 888casino, which include a Star Trek slot game.
And now we have one of the most exciting and strangest teams in recent movie memory so we can certainly expect lots more news to come out of the project in the coming weeks and months.




Tarantino’s swansong?Tarantino had previously vowed to make no more than 10 films. Star Trek would be his 10th so whether he has made his final film or not remains to be seen.
If you’re still trying to wrap your brain around this project, you’re not the only one. Tarantino is an odd choice for the latest big-screen instalment in the classic Gene Roddenberry franchise, and details remain somewhat thin. Long before news of the project came to light, however, Tarantino confessed that he was a huge fan.
Tarantino also clearly has appeal at the box office - something which Paramount could use. With sci-fi being dominated by Disney of late, via the endless Marvel and Star Wars movies, Star Trek is Paramount’s key franchise. Deadpool was evidence that an R-rated version of superhero fare is capable of pulling in the big numbers so Tarantino’s Star Trek could be just what Paramount need.

Read more »

The Last Jedi Review

Read more »

The Most Bad Ass Star Wars Moments Ever

We're just over a week out from Star
Wars: The Last Jedi finally hitting the big screen with the force
(heh heh) of a fully functioning space station, and already our tiny
little minds are already racing to think of what the long awaited
sequel has in store for us and our favorite inhabitants of a galaxy
far, far away. While a VERY healthy opening box office is a foregone
conclusion, predicting what director Rian Johnson has planned for his
first stab at Star Wars is a much harder job. But taking into account
over forty years of stories across all types of media, he'll be hard
pressed to deliver something crazier than these bad ass moments from
Star Wars history.

The Yuuzhan Vong Invasion

Long before JJ Abrams said, 'Let's call
it The Force Awakens', the adventures of Luke Skywalker and company
continued in the Expanded Universe, an ever growing series of novels
that opened up the Star Wars universe in a way George Lucas never
dreamed of. While most of the books consisted of our heroes fighting
a seemingly never ending parade of former Imperials and the odd
galaxy destroying weapon, things were thrown for a loop with the
introduction of the Yuuzhan Vong, a race of warrior aliens from a
galaxy farther away than we could ever imagine. Religious zealots who
viewed anything mechanical as blasphemy, they existed outside of the
Force and thus untouched by most Force based attacks, which the New
Jedi Order discovered in their disastrous first encounter. With
powerful, gentically engineered, purely organic weapons, the Yuuzhan
Vong soon made short work of the galaxy, conquering every planet in
their path. They also nutured a deep hatred for the Jedi, possessing a
power they had been denied, and offered freedom to those they
captured in exchange for turning in any Jedi Knight. Their years long
invasion had a lasting effect on the Star Wars universe, not least
the death of Chewbacca, and the beginnings of Jacen Solo's, son of
Han and Leia, descent into the Dark Side.

Anything Involving Grand Admiral Thrawn

Step aside Darth Maul, there's a new
ultimate bad ass in the Star Wars Universe, and his name is Grand
Admiral Thrawn. First coming to our attention in Timothy Zahn's Heir
to the Empire, the book that kicked off the whole Expanded Universe,
Thrawn is one of the Emperor's most ruthless allies, commanding the
entire Imperial navy with a mixture of ruthless cunning and tactical
brilliance, while lacking the megalomania that proved to be his
master's undoing. With deep blue skin and piercing red eyes, he made
quite the first impression when he was first introduced, taking the
broken Empire we saw at the end of Return of the Jedi and making it
once again the most powerful force in the galaxy. Not even his death
at the end of what is now lovingly known as the Thrawn trilogy could
stop him, with the character being used time and time again, from
prequels in the expanded universe to even jumping media to appear in
computer games and the third season of the fantastic Star Wars:
Rebels cartoon.

That Twist In Star Wars: Knights of the
Old Republic

Long before Bioware took the gaming
world by storm (then ruined all the goodwill they garnered with the
ending of the third game) with Mass Effect, they had delivered
possibly the best Star Wars game ever with Star Wars: Knights of the
Old Republic. A role playing game set almost 4000 years before The
Phantom Menace, players found themselves in control of a Jedi tasked
with taking down Darth Malak, a Dark Lord of the Sith who is razing
the galaxy with The Star Forge, an endless source of military
resources that once belonged to Malak's ruthless former master, Darth
Revan, who is long since dead. While it's boundless amounts of fun
traveling the galaxy with a mismatched group of soldiers, scoundrels,
and droids, every choice you make leaving you on the edge of the
light or dark side, the true beauty of the game comes about halfway
through. Nearing the Star Forge, the player themselves is revealed as
Revan, left for dead after being betrayed by Malak and brainwashed by
the Jedi council to no longer pose a threat to the galaxy. The reveal
is masterfully handled, and gives a new meaning to the moral choices
the player is presented with: will you go down the light path as
penance for your evil ways, or pick up where you left off down the
path of the dark side.

Read more »

One of our most IMPORTANT Episodes EVER

Following on from our article yesterday on The Movie Bit.com regarding written content on the site, here we explain the decision more in depth and discuss where we're going!

This is our latest, epic, episode!

Read more »

That's all we wrote!

Hello beautiful readers. Just over 8 years ago I started The Movie Bit. It was a passion project. It was a labour of love. Writers came and went and contributed some wonderful and thought provoking content. You lovely folks commented, tweeted, downloaded and swore at us :)

However, over the last few months I find myself not only having less and less time to work on the site, but I’m also finding my passion and love for movies dwindling. I’ve been a movie fan since I was shitting myself nearly 40 years ago. Movies have been a huge part of my life and no doubt they’ve forged my personality along the way. I always blame Mel Gibson for my kissing techniques. I blame Marty McFly for my driving and I blame Darth Vader for my lightsaber skills.

I find myself getting more and more frustrated as time goes on as certain studios more or less ignore sites like us completely. Sites with passion for film. As opposed to hap hazard portal sites where movie related news is as disposable as the cat memes the same sites deal out. While these sites do well, and that's fine people will be left without intelligent, insightful and legitimate movie punditry, reviews and so on.

The likes of Disney and Warner Bros along with Paramount have been exceptional to deal with and work alongside, as have some of the Irish distributors like Element Pictures and Eclipse Pictures. The rest of them however….well..I’m keeping the swearing to a minimum.

When you step back and look at things, it’s a crazy world, this whole movie website thing. Studios need you to talk about their products. They moan when things are critical. Some will even black list you when things get too opinionated. And, like most things in Hollywood, you’re only flavor of the month for a short while. And then they move onto the next movie site. And eventually the circle starts up again. And, as much as that annoys me, I get that. In years to come, we'll probably be in a bunch of Adam Sandler movies as opposed to a Tarantino classic!

Then there is the complete switch to social media where people are literally consuming as much content as they can shove into their eyeballs while on the toilet. That's fine, but unfortunately as a bi-product sites like us find it harder to get audiences. And find it harder to get good content from studios and everywhere else. Far from an excuse, but that's they way things are going. Again, I'm not blaming anybody, but this is the digital environment that we all live in.


All that said, we’ve had an amazing ride here. We’ve brought some of the biggest names in movies to you in exclusive interviews, the majority of which are on our podcast...all for free. I’ve been privileged to talk to some of my heroes. We won awards. We had the highest rated, number one movie podcast on iTunes countless times. We hosted exclusive screenings. We did full on Facebook live videos, professionally produced. We did a damn lot. Nobody got paid, everybody did this for a labor of love. Which was probably the biggest problem….in hindsight.

So, what does all this mean, considering you’ve waded through the above horse poop. The site will be producing very little written content moving forward. And when I say very little, I mean next to nothing. As of typing, this will be the 10,368th article that we’ve published.
Which is a phenomenal amount of content when you think about it. Is it our last article? More than likely. Any other articles may just be links to future podcasts..but more on that in a bit.

As for the much loved podcast, things are a bit up in the air there. I haven’t quite decided on which way to go with this. In a perfect world, it’ll stay on it’s weekly upload schedule. It may move to every other week or monthly, or it may go away completely. Ultimately, I’m finding it incredibly hard to put all of this down. The site and the podcast have played such a part in my life for nearly a decade. Whether it’s ego or what,  I don’t know. I just don’t want to pull the trigger on this old dog. But I know, that's the right thing to do.

I’ve developed other projects that are taking my time, I’ve two kids, a wife, an amazing day job and no life. Something's gotta give.

So to all the writers that have passed through, thank you. You’ve made this site what it is. Especially to Tom White. Tom has been the glue that has held The Movie Bit together for so long. He worked without asking. He worked harder without encouragement. He worked his ass off. The dude gave such a fuck about this place.

Quick story. A while back myself and Tom shared a room attending a movie event. It may well have been a Disney Day. I generally wake early, so I was lying in bed listening to a snoring Tom. Not long after, he woke up. I stayed motionless. What’s the first thing he did? Picked up his phone and started logging onto the site looking at stats. This blew my mind, that anybody would care so much. So, thanks, buddy!

Most of all, thank you to YOU. You’ve read, you’ve lingered, you’ve enjoyed and you’ve endured. You’ll never know how much it meant and still means to know that you guys read and loved what we produced. THANK YOU!

So, that’s it. That’s all we wrote! I’ll leave you with a parting quote from a certain, scruffy looking nerf herder!

“You’re all clear kid, now let’s blow this thing and go home!”

Vic Barry

Editor

Read more »

The reasons why Dunkirk isn't that good!

Episode 318 looks at why Dunkirk isn't as good as it's being made out to be. And more bad news for the DC Universe, movie wise at least!





This is our latest, epic, episode!

Read more »

The reason Spider-Man Homecoming has Iron Man in it #317

Cars 3 and Spider-Man Homecoming get reviewed. And is Robert Downey Jr. the biggest problem in Spider-Man Homecoming? Find out in the latest episode!





This is our latest, epic, episode!

Read more »