In fact, he's got some decidedly "alien" looking features
Yeah I noticed, he's got
great Elephant Man-ish bone structure for makeup & prosthetics. That's why I wanted him to being playing a Klingon, DAMMIT!
Or Romulan. But I figured the Rommies were last time, right? But Khan is a hew-mon, so it's all going to waste.
Here's what's been bugging me about Cumberbund playing Khan. In the original, when we saw Khan and his merry band of genetic supermen and women, they were all freakish specimens of physical perfection, as conventionally defined, because it wouldn't really get the point across unless it's conventional - something everyone in the audience can agree on and say, "yeah it looks like a damn Mr./Miss America competition."
That's crucial because it immediately sends the message that this is
creepy and weird, seeing all these too-damn-perfect looking people, all buffed out like they live in a gym. Their perfection is how the audience knows "there was something jes' not right about that Eugenics War."
Just having the characters tell us about this bad thing in their history isn't going to have the same impact. Visual media are show, don't tell. (Plus they've got two hours and zero backstory, so they'd have to talk themselves blue in the face to get it all in, by which time everyone's bored and in the lobby for more popcorn.)
So now we have one guy who just looks like some guy you wouldn't look twice at on the street. How does he convince the audience that he's a "superman" whose backstory means something dangerous and threatening to Our Heroes? His looks aren't very impressive, so is he going to do things that are super-smart?
Well, did Khan ever originally do anything super-smart? Uh, not really.
In TOS, he got the upper hand via his seductive looks. The audience could agree, "yeah Ricardo is an amazing looking guy" so that sorta worked. For Khan to ever be impressive via his smarts, means the writers must be that smart, so they can give him smart things to do. Sorry, I don't have that much faith in their ability.
And Khan definitely can't have the Mr. America posse trailing behind him, because what, are they all going to look like people Abrams hired from off the street, too? If they don't, then Cumberbund will look that much fuglier.
So we got one guy, who won't look impressive, isn't going to pull any Braniac moves, so - how is he going to be anything other than Generic Trek Villain #2 in a series of 3?
Nah, they should have gone with a Klingon.
Anybody remember when Trek was about big ideas, and not 100% focused on evil villains and space combat?
Yeah, when it was on TV. Summer popcorn movies are all about action and splosions. Till Trek is back on TV, we have to be happy with that (sigh).
When the crew of the Enterprise were explorers, not space cops?
Kirk & crew were always space cops (and space soldiers and occasionally space diplomats - the stories were more often about those things than "exploration," which was usually an excuse to have something/somebody to fight.)