In an interview with The Huffington Post, Chris Pine praised Chris Hemsworth’s small role as Captain James T. Kirk’s father, George Kirk, in the 2009 Star Trek reboot. But in the process he let slip an incisive criticism of the entire premise of the upcoming sequel to Star Trek Beyond, which we’re calling Star Trek 4 for now.
“It’s such a trip that, in the first one, Chris had such a small but super important part and he knocked it out of the park. He’s only on-screen for so little time and he’s really emotionally the centerpiece of that film,” Pine said.
The 2009 Star Trek doesn’t open with James Kirk and the Enterprise , but aboard the USS Kelvin. Captain Robau and his crew are confronted by a massive ship, the Narada , captained by Nero, a pissed off Romulan. Nero kills Robau, forcing first officer George Kirk to take the helm and fight off the Narada as his crew and pregnant wife evacuate in the escape pods. George Kirk dies in the confrontation, saving his son’s life, but leaving James Kirk with an impossibly heroic standard to live up to.
Star Trek 4 will bring George back, probably with some sort of time-travel plot uniting the two Kirks. Pine expressed his excitement for working with Hemsworth. “I’ve only really seen him a couple times since then strangely, so it would be fun to reunite with him. I was honestly quite happy where the end of that father-son storyline ended, but I’d be happy to work with Chris again. He’s a great actor and a really nice man.”
Let’s pull out a clause from the middle of Pine’s kind and diplomatic answer: “I was honestly quite happy where the end of that father-son storyline ended.”
Pine’s right: Star Trek Beyond put Kirk’s daddy issues neatly to bed. At the beginning of Beyond Captain Kirk is feeling dissatisfied as captain of the Enterprise. He’s lost sight of his purpose. Sharing a drink with Bones on his birthday, now older than his father ever was, Kirk says, “My dad joined Starfleet because he believed in it. I joined on a dare.” Kirk goes so far as to ask after a desk job at a space station.
Star Trek Beyond is partially about James Kirk finding his own reasons for believing in the Starfleet mission, apart from simply following in his father’s footsteps. By the end, having seen Starfleet’s philosophy mangled by Krall, Kirk is once again ready to explore the galaxy, this time for himself and the United Federation of Planets. The ghost of his father no longer haunts him.
So what could Star Trek 4 add by dredging it up again?
