By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Who do you think the biggest villain in Star Trek is? You might be tempted to say the Borg, the Dominion, or even those pesky Romulans, but the ultimate bad guy is Alex Kurtzman, the guru in charge of all things NuTrek. He’s tied to every bad decision the franchise has recently made and even produced Section 31, but here’s some news that made us sigh with relief: according to Kurtzman himself, he won’t have anything to do with the next Star Trek movie.
No Kurtzman, But Still Problems
This info came to us courtesy of CinemaBlend, who asked Kurtzman directly about his involvement; in turn, the producer clarified, “I actually have nothing to do” with the Star Trek movie and joked, “Those decisions are made by people above my pay grade.” It’s a clarification that comes as a relief to all fans who have been unimpressed by the NuTrek era. And in its own way, Kurtzman’s confirmation that he won’t have anything to do with it finally gave us a reason to be excited about the upcoming film.
While Paramount spent years toying with the idea of making a fourth Kelvinverse film starring Chris Pine and his rebooted Enterprise crew, it looks like the next Star Trek movie is going to be a kind of origin film. But back in November, TrekMovie reported that the film on track to get an official green light in early 2025 was an origin movie that will focus on Earth’s early contact with aliens and the formation of the Federation. Paramount wants to draw new fans into the fold, but they’re facing a big problem: namely, that older fans will hate the new movie.
The reason older Star Trek fans will most likely hate the new movie is simple: it’s covering ground the franchise has already very thoroughly explored. We had a movie about humanity’s first contact with aliens. It was called (fittingly enough) First Contact. The Enterprise TV show, meanwhile, continued to show us humanity’s rocky early relationship with alien races like the Klingons and the Andorians, and the final episode showed us the signing of the charter for the United Federation of Planets.
Another Star Trek Origin
A new Star Trek origin movie, then, will do one of two things: at best, it will be a lame retread of what we have seen before. At worst, it will offer sweeping retcons of existing Trek lore, which is the quickest way to signify to the fandom that over half a century of canon is completely meaningless. Either way, old-school fans will reject this new film even quicker than they unsubscribed from Paramount+.
As you can tell, we’ve been dreading this Star Trek origin movie ever since it was announced, and the recent failure of Section 31 made that dread even worse. According to Rotten Tomatoes, that stinker of a direct-to-streaming film is now the worst entry in the franchise’s cinematic history. Afterward, we couldn’t help but think that if this depressing film was the limit of what Paramount could create, Star Trek would be better off without any future movies.
However, Alex Kurtzman produced Section 31, and he recently clarified that, unlike with everything NuTrek, he won’t have any involvement with the upcoming Star Trek origin movie. That doesn’t mean it will be a good movie, mind you, but it’s relieving that the man with the reverse Midas touch is staying far away from it. After all, the Kurtzman era of Trek has driven one depressing fact into audiences again and again: no matter how bad things are now, it can always, always get worse when this notorious producer is involved.