Ever since the first movie, I had wanted Pike to be a villain in the second movie, perhaps becoming bitter at needing to pass the big E on to someone else. I was wondering how that would fit in the newest movie. I could see Pike being in the role of Marcus instead, and feel it would have made for a better movie. Having Pike in control of Khan instead of Marcus would have been shocking, much like Vulcans destruction in the first movie. This is all just fan-wank obviously, but was curious to what people here on the forums would think of this idea.
It would be extremely out of character based on the first movie. Pike was the one who pushed Kirk towards Starfleet and towards being a Captain. He's likely the main reason that Kirk got the Enterprise at the end of the movie in the first place. That's why he gets upset in Into Darkness, he seemed to think that Kirk could be a truly great Captain and breaking the Prime Directive was him letting himself down. He's also the first to try and salvage his career by making him his Commander.
I don't think it's necessarily out of character with the first movie. Pike's stance on the prime directive doesn't come up in the first one. If they chose, they could have spun it so that Pike recruited Kirk to be an asset to starfleet knowing full well how much of a hot-head he was. And that he recruited him to specifically work with him on the vengeance. So I don't think it's a bad idea, however I liked Pike better this way because he got a nice emotional death scene. Plus his disappointed speech to Kirk at the beginning is great.
It's bad enough they killed him off in STID, but making him the villain would have been even worse than that!
Pike would make no sense as a villian, his character was someone who saw good in things and had high regard to doing the right thing. I thought Peter Weller / Admiral Marcus made a great villian, he was truely badass but without the pantomine-esque stuff with past Trek villians.
Yep. I'll pass on the villain Pike idea. His character was good as it is, no need to unnecessarily ruin it.
Although I get the reason they killed him in STID, I wish they had merely critically wounded him. Just leaving the door open.