STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS - Grading & Discussion [SPOILERS]

@Mr. Laser Beam: I like this idea. I will think of it when I watch the movie. I just watched Space Seed last night and when they first board the Botany Bay and Khan's cryochamber is activated it starts to sputter. Scotty says it could be due to dust in the mechanism... makes sense to me...

 

Can't "Khan" be a title as well as a name? If so, then he could be someone who took the title but isn't Noonien Singh.

 

^ That works. Noonien Singh would be the real Khan's actual name, and Khan was his title (as leader of the Augments). So if his Abramsverse counterpart died in cryosleep, and Harrison took over, naturally *he* is Khan.

 

Or based on Spock Prime's information, decided to wake up a different Botany Bay augment. One that would seemingly be more willing to work with Starfleet.

 

I really do not give a fuck that Khan is a pale white guy, I have to be honest. Performance is more important than looking the part.

 

Yes and no.

If a part is designed for certain characteristics, then you should be looking for actors that have those characteristics. If you decide Spock is a man, then you pretty much rule out female actors no matter how talented.

I'll wait and see who Cumberbatch is actually playing and how well he performs before making any determination if he was right for the role.

 

Utterly tiresome.

By your reckoning, they got it right, they cast a man as Khan. A Mexican man was cast as someone from the sub-continent almost 50 years ago, they've cast a British guy based on the FACT that Bad Robot thought he was the best bloke for the job.

Khan is a concept, what he represents is a notion of a particular type of person with a particular backstory. Obviously, Desilu should have had the foresight to think that he might be recast some 50 years later and called him Jones when he was written all those years ago so as to stop this incessant whining from grown men.

I suppose I've misunderstood this again.

Only in the same vein as some of you utterly miss the point, like a poor marksman.....

 

Do we find out if this Khan states that he has altered his appearance or simply assumed the title of 'Khan' during the movie? Or does Spock call up a historical computer file and sees an image of CumberKhan?

 

Yep, this.

 

Jones? WTF was I thinking?

This would clearly limit the casting of such a character to a particular street in the western suburbs of Cardiff where the correct type of Jones lives.

Jones the Baker would be all wrong, it needs to be Jones the Sweep.

 

Which is why I said I'd wait and see how it turns out...

Yes you have. But that's nothing new...

 

Clever but no, he's Khan Noonian Sing

 

Just from the artistic angle, not the social justice angle:

I was very, very skeptical until I'd seen all of the clips/trailers. Learning he was Khan after that, didnt bother me. But it would have bothered me before.

Because whoever Cumberbatch is playing is absolutely chilling, and I'm willing to try to take him on his own merits. And bringing in the issues of eugenics and Section 31 makes this bigger than just your "typical angry-bad-dude-vs-the-good-dudes" story that we keep seeing and are tired of.

The other option would have been to not use Khan at all. If they got someone who didnt have plausible deniability as not being Khan - we all would've figured out who he was and then would've been all "but is he Khan enough". This way, we get to take this character on his own merits without comparing him to Khan Prime.

And from what I know of the story, having it be anyone else would've meant an entirely different story.

I really love this idea - I even more love the idea that he's still out there and is a bit more antihero than classic villain. Plus, the Bond Villain type they have him written as, is (to me) how a Khan type would be written nowadays. Our concept of the megalomaniac has changed, and warfare has changed. Leaving aside the issue of being a white guy, he fits more with Greg Cox's portrayal of Khan as having risen to power via subterfuge and influence. The books really captured his idealism in ways that don't entirely come through in the series or WOK.

There are other baddies out there who are within Starfleet, and there are bad guys who may be good guys in this universe (like Garth, Tracy, etc). We now have more of a chance to see them and tread new ground now that Khan is out of the way.

Khan was always going to be the elephant in the room.

 

Nerds can fuss over whatever they like; it's not going to affect the public acceptance of the movie or its success one whit.

 

It's probably been mentioned, but perhaps they had access to all the original treatments and drafts of "Space Seed" when preparing the script. The use of the name 'John Harrison' might have evolved just from reading Memory Alpha's background on the episode.

 

If you give nine straightforward answers in an interview, but on the last one when they ask you specifically if the villain is Khan you say "no comment," the interviewer and the readers will assume that he or she hit the mark and that the villain is Khan. Saying no comment to such a specific question after answering so many others might as well be like saying "yes" from the perspective of entertainment magazines, websites, and fans with their rampant speculation, exaggeration, and misinterpretation.

The choice would be to either say no comment on everything, in which case you're doing a bad job of promoting and building excitement for your movie, or to do a rope-a-dope or a denial when it comes to the really important stuff, while still talking about the less important things.

Plus, can you imagine the tedium of having to give the same response over and over again in the hundreds of interviews that the top tier cast and crew have to do leading up to the movie? I'm sure after a while they just start screwing around to break the boredom of answering the same questions.

Either way, there's nothing malicious about it, any more than a magician is being a malicious liar because he fools you with a trick. It's all about maintaining the illusion and keeping the audience entertained.

She said if you're shooting something openly it's rather silly to deny it, and she said it's sometimes a good idea to include the fans in on the process. Nowhere did she completely rule out keeping secrets or using misdirection and denials to conceal major character and plot points.

I don't think Abrams would disagree with any of that. Despite his accurate reputation for secrecy and misdirection, he does actually share a lot of information with fans when it gets closer to the film's premiere, he just tightly controls which information that is going to be. So you might get a preview of the first nine minutes of the film, but you're not going to find out who the villain is.

Abrams is quite adept at promoting and building up anticipation for his films and TV shows (some of his critics would say that's what he's best at, in fact), so why should he change a formula that works for him?

Khan is a title. It's not part of his name.

Yeah, I mentioned that's one of the reasons I thought Khan was the main villain way back before all the spoilers started pouring in.

 

Dull wrecking argument as per, that's nothing new either.

I'm willing to bet money on it that Cumberbatch will nail the role, and blow Montalban out of the sea straight back to Fantasy Island, because let's be completely objective here, Montalban was a bit part actor for whom this role was probably the best thing in a long career of being an almost man.

Cumberbatch is on an upward trajectory, and in 20 years people will gasp that he ever stooped to play a role in a Star Trek film.

Montalban, the Mexican guy that played someone of undefined nationality from the Indian sub-continent in a 1960's sci-fi show, reprised in a low budget 1982 sci-fi film, and who apparently defined a role by playing it for about 3 hours over 50 years. The guy, who more importantly, to the TV watching public, played the straight man to a comedy midget on a low budget TV series.

Take your pick, define your place in fandom, perhaps you should confine yourself to the other Star Trek Movies forum on BBS, you know, the one where the films and crapola TV shows led to Star Trek's demise before JJ came along and redefined it.

You sir are a one eyed fan.

 

Possible, but I don't think it was the original intent.

When Khan introduced himself in Space Seed, he says that his name is Khan. Furthermore, when they read the name "Khan Noonien Singh" out of historical records, they put the accent on Khan. When we say "Queen Elizabeth", "Prince William", "King Lear", "President Obama" or "Doctor Strangelove," we put the accent on the name, not the title or honorific.

 

I mean, how on earth can anyone other than Adam West play Batman?

 

Well, I certainly never suspected that he'd turn out to be Khan.