If you think these are all coincidences … well, maybe. Despite what conspiracy theorists say, not everything that happens in the universe has to have a sinister meaning behind it (or, you know, any meaning). That said, we’re pretty sure this isn’t one of those cases because this movie happened to be written by one of those conspiracy theorists. In fact, we know the exact mindset co-writer Roberto Orci was in while writing this movie because he left dozens of posts arguing about conspiracies on the comments section of TrekMovie.com right before turning in a draft in 2011.
Aside from implying that bin Laden was framed for 9/11, Orci also used his now-deleted Twitter page to do tasteful stuff like looking for conspiracies about the Boston Marathon bombings right after they happened or informing random people that they’re slaves to the military-industrial complex. He was your typical “just asking questions” poster who gets aggravated when he doesn’t like the answers. Orci was even more insufferable on the TrekMovie.com comments, where he ended up telling fans to eff off because they dared to dislike his movies (worth noting that he also co-wrote gems like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Cowboys & Aliens).
The weirdest part of all this is that Star Trek Into Darkness was dedicated to “our post-9/11 veterans” when it came out in cinemas. The dedication seems to have disappeared from home video releases … much like Orci’s screenwriting career. In 2014 it was announced, to the frustration of many fans, that he would write and direct the next Star Trek movie, but that never happened. Since then, he has produced a few shows (nothing since Hawaii Five-O ended in 2020), but the last movie he worked on is apparently Tom Cruise’s bafflingly horrible The Mummy from 2017, where he was an executive producer and uncredited writer. Did the Deep State get him? Maybe he’s been ghostwriting for the Alex Jones show since then?
Orci’s former writing partner Alex Kurtzman is still involved with the franchise as writer and producer in Discovery, Short Treks, Picard, and even the new Strange New Worlds, but Orci himself doesn’t appear in the credits for any of those. Did the studio cut ties after realizing they let him make Loose Change in Space? Stuff like 9/11 Trutherism almost seemed like a quaint pastime at one point, but the pandemic has driven home the reality that spreading easily debunked misinformation under the guise of “just asking questions” can have costly consequences — in terms of human lives and, perhaps more pressingly for the studio, of financial liabilities, as the Alex Jones/Sandy Hook trial demonstrates.
Anyway, now that Chris Pine and the rest of the cast have been confirmed to be in negotiations to come back for at least one more movie in this timeline, maybe they’ll start it with a 10 minute PSA on why you can’t trust what any random blog on the internet says about world events (and why cussing out fans on comments sections for no reason is bad for your movie career).
Follow Maxwell Yezpitelok‘s heroic effort to read and comment on every ’90s Superman comic at Superman86to99.tumblr.com.
Top image: Paramount Pictures
Related: Is ‘Star Trek’ Promoting a 9/11 Conspiracy Theory … Again?
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