Chris Hemsworth reflects on the idea to reunite Chris Pine's Captain Kirk with his father in Star Trek 4 and explains why the movie didn't happen. After more than four decades' worth of Star Trek movies and TV shows, director J.J. Abrams released his own, big-budget take on the franchise in 2009. The movie opens with a sequence of Kirk's father, George, played by Hemsworth, sacrificing himself in order to ensure the survival of his pregnant wife. Hemsworth didn't reprise his role for either of the two Star Trek sequels, but writers Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne revealed earlier this year that their failed pitch for Star Trek 4 involved Kirk and George embarking on an adventure across the galaxy after being reunited by a cosmic event.
In a recent interview with Josh Horowitz as part of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Hemsworth opens up about his reservations regarding the execution of the father and son pitch for Star Trek 4. While not offering any additional information about the scrapped storyline, the actor does reveal he was open to improving and revising the idea, but that scheduling ultimately kept things from getting off the ground. Check out Hemsworth's full comment below regarding why Star Trek 4 didn't happen:
A few reasons, but it wasn’t what I was thinking it would have been or could have been. And I thought, ‘Oh, cool, let’s figure that out and keep going’ and then I think everyone just got busy and so on. It’d be a bit weird now to flash back to your father and ‘Why is he so much older than when he died?’
What Star Trek 4 Could Be About
Although Payne and McKay's Star Trek 4 idea with Kirk and George seems fairly definitively dead in the water, interest remains in getting original cast members like Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldaña, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, and John Cho together for a fourth movie in the franchise. Momentum seemed to be building regarding Star Trek 4 earlier this year, but the film was recently removed from Paramount's release calendar after director Matt Shakman left to direct Marvel's Fantastic Four. Many cast members have expressed their interest in returning for Star Trek 4, but there are no details just yet on what the movie could actually be about.
The three existing Star Trek movies in the Kelvin Timeline have featured villains like the Romulan Nero (Eric Bana) and Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch), but there are many foes from the original series that could feature in Star Trek 4. The Borg, for example, are a group of cyborgs who frequently served as antagonists in the show, and could make for exciting villains in the next Kelvin Timeline installment. Similarly, certain episode plot lines could also feature in Star Trek 4, including fan-favorite "The Doomsday Machine," in which Kirk and the Enterprise encounter a large mechanical space monster hellbent on destruction.
It's unclear whether Star Trek 4 will ever come to fruition, but most of the central cast members seem to be open to returning, should schedules allow. It doesn't look like fans will be seeing Kirk and George reunite anytime soon, but thankfully there is no shortage of ideas to adapt from Star Trek: The Original Series, including the show's many villains. With actor and fan interest in the project remaining generally quite high, there is reason to be optimistic that Star Trek 4 will eventually happen.
Source: Josh Horowitz/YouTube