Rick Berman Chimes in on Trek XIII

[Dukhat]

I'm not sure I'd say "most" but yes, it was Lindelof who kept insisting on using Khan, even after an original villain was created.

Huh? If John Harrison wouldn't have been Khan, then what would have been his motivation? Harrison's every action was motivated by those 70 people in those torpedoes.

A different guy with 70 people in those torpedoes.

Those 70 people were the crew of the Botany Bay. Why else would Harrison have been trying to save them if he wasn't Khan?

 

[wulfio]

You were impressed with the Rhino ending?

TASM2 actually took the time to show the effects of grief on Peter, unlike most other outings where the hero would get his sh*t together inbetween sequels. I appreciated the effort at being different.

As to the rest of the film, I think the biggest letdown was Electro himself, epsecially the events following the prison breakout. The conflict and relationships between the protagonists were the biggest draw for me, much like TASM1

There was only 1 protagonist.

 

[Mytran]

protagonist
prəˈtaɡ(ə)nɪst/
noun
noun: protagonist; plural noun: protagonists
1.
the leading character or one of the major characters in a play, film, novel, etc.

I'm pretty sure there was more than one main character across the two films, but YMMV

 

[drt]

Huh? If John Harrison wouldn't have been Khan, then what would have been his motivation? Harrison's every action was motivated by those 70 people in those torpedoes.

I'd assume the decision to use Khan came fairly early, I don't think they changed Harrison to Khan at the last second.

"The last second" is of course an exaggeration, but the decision also wasn't made "fairly early." Orci has explained the creative process in that they did first create the original villain John Harrison, renegade Starfleet officer turned terrorist, who they then turned into Khan, primarily due to Lindelof's nagging. All this is confirmed fact.

Sorry, I meant "fairly early" in the sense it was allowed to shape a fair amount of the rest of the plot surrounding the character.

Those 70 people were the crew of the Botany Bay. Why else would Harrison have been trying to save them if he wasn't Khan?

The assumption would be that if the villain had remained Harrison, there wouldn't have been people in the tubes (and maybe no tubes at all). Harrison's motivation would have been completely different.

 

[fireproof78]

You were impressed with the Rhino ending?

Should I not be?

TASM 2 was far more interesting as a character analysis of Peter, Harry, Gwen, and even the general populous relationship to Spiderman, represented in both Electro and the kid at the end.

As for Khan (since I forgot which quote I was referencing), the writers came up with an original villain, a renegade Starfleet officer who turns to terrorism, and they worked out the details. Then, as I understand it, and I can find quotes, Lindelof came in and asked if the villain they came up with would fit with any preestablished villains in Trek. They felt that Khan was the best fit. YMMV on that one, for sure

 

[F. King Daniel]

That's at odds with the director's commentary at the end of ST'09, where they say they nearly ended the credits with a shot of the Botany Bay floating in space. Khan was always the plan, IMO.

 

[drt]

The pop-culture expectation was they'd need to do Khan at some point. So they were always going to be damned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

[thumbtack]

Khan was always the plan, IMO.

Yep.

 

[fireproof78]

That's at odds with the director's commentary at the end of ST'09, where they say they nearly ended the credits with a shot of the Botany Bay floating in space. Khan was always the plan, IMO.

Yes, Khan was in a plan, but he was not slated to be THE villain when the first couple of drafts of ID were produced.

Not trying to split hairs, but he was not the only villain considered for ID.

 

[The Wormhole]

That's at odds with the director's commentary at the end of ST'09, where they say they nearly ended the credits with a shot of the Botany Bay floating in space. Khan was always the plan, IMO.

However, the reason they didn't end XI with a shot of the Botany Bay was so they wouldn't be required to make the sequel a Khan movie, they'd have freedom to do whatever they wanted. And of course, they do a Khan movie anyway.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Why is it sacrilegious Rick? I doubt you'll find many who aren't more excited about new glowsticks.

 

[The Wormhole]

Why is it sacrilegious Rick? I doubt you'll find many who aren't more excited about new glowsticks.

I suspect he means sacrilegious because he used to be Star Trek's top dog.

 

[Dukhat]

The assumption would be that if the villain had remained Harrison, there wouldn't have been people in the tubes (and maybe no tubes at all). Harrison's motivation would have been completely different.

And that's my point. It would have been a completely different movie because Khan and the Eugenics element would have been gone, including Admiral Marcus's motivations and the existence of the Vengeance. But those things were staples right from the start of production. I'm just not buying that the villain was ever going to be anyone else but Khan, even with what Wormhole is claiming. Orci may have been the one to insist on Khan, but I doubt that was a very long meeting:

Kurtzman (right after debut of Star Trek '09): "So who's going to be the villain in the next movie, as if we didn't already know?"

Orci: "Well, we're in negotiations with Benicio Del Toro, so we're all set to start writing the Khan story."

Kurtzman (chuckling to himself): "But are you sure we shouldn't have another villain, since everyone's going to think Khan will be the next villain? Somebody like, maybe that dude that was in the pilot episode with the glowy eyes?"

Orci: "Larry Mitchum? Nobody's going to care about that guy or even remember who he is. We gotta do Khan."

Kurtzman: "But, what about that other dude, the fat guy with the mustache with the annoying wife and prostitution ring?"

Orci: "Well, then we'd have to make Del Toro bulk up and make him grow a silly-looking 'stache. We don't have time for that!"

Kurtzman: "Okay, okay, quit the browbeating, we'll do Khan!"

 

[drt]

The assumption would be that if the villain had remained Harrison, there wouldn't have been people in the tubes (and maybe no tubes at all). Harrison's motivation would have been completely different.

And that's my point. It would have been a completely different movie because Khan and the Eugenics element would have been gone, including Admiral Marcus's motivations and the existence of the Vengeance.

It's actually pretty easy to remove the Augment angle.

Harrison could just be one of Marcus' agents who became disillusioned/betrayed by some action of Marcus. The whole "Marcus needed Khan's savagery" for his plans is a bit silly, it would take years to build Vengeance (frankly the existance of a Romulan supership is probably a good reason to start the construction of the dreadnought anyway).

 

[Ryan8bit]

The assumption would be that if the villain had remained Harrison, there wouldn't have been people in the tubes (and maybe no tubes at all). Harrison's motivation would have been completely different.

And that's my point. It would have been a completely different movie because Khan and the Eugenics element would have been gone, including Admiral Marcus's motivations and the existence of the Vengeance. But those things were staples right from the start of production. I'm just not buying that the villain was ever going to be anyone else but Khan, even with what Wormhole is claiming. Orci may have been the one to insist on Khan, but I doubt that was a very long meeting:

Kurtzman (right after debut of Star Trek '09): "So who's going to be the villain in the next movie, as if we didn't already know?"

Orci: "Well, we're in negotiations with Benicio Del Toro, so we're all set to start writing the Khan story."

Kurtzman (chuckling to himself): "But are you sure we shouldn't have another villain, since everyone's going to think Khan will be the next villain? Somebody like, maybe that dude that was in the pilot episode with the glowy eyes?"

Orci: "Larry Mitchum? Nobody's going to care about that guy or even remember who he is. We gotta do Khan."

Kurtzman: "But, what about that other dude, the fat guy with the mustache with the annoying wife and prostitution ring?"

Orci: "Well, then we'd have to make Del Toro bulk up and make him grow a silly-looking 'stache. We don't have time for that!"

Kurtzman: "Okay, okay, quit the browbeating, we'll do Khan!"

You can actually read what Orci said here.

OK, I’ll do a deep dive with you. In a way, (fellow co-writer and co-producer) Damon (Lindelof) and I were the biggest debaters about this. He argued for Khan from the beginning and I argued against it. The compromise that we came to was, let us devise a story that is not reliant on any history of Star Trek. So, what’s the story? Well, we have a story where our crew is who they are and they’re coming together as a family. Then, suddenly, this villain arrives and his motivations are based on what happens in the movie. They’re not based on history. They’re not based on Star Trek. They’re not based on anything that came before. They’re based on his used by a corrupted system of power that held the things he held dear against him and tried to manipulate him. That story stands alone with or without Star Trek history. That’s how we approached it, and God bless Damon for going down that road.

So, once we had that, that’s when Damon came back and reared his ugly head and said, “OK, now that we have that, is there any reason why we cannot bring Star Trek history into this?” And he was right. So we ended up sort of reverse engineering it. We started with, “What’s a good movie? What’s a good villain? What’s a good motivation? We cannot rely on what’s happened before. Now that we have that, can we tailor this villain into something that relates to Star Trek history?” And that’s what we did. So, step one was “Don’t rely on Star Trek.” Then, step two was “Rely on Star Trek.”

What that sounds like to me is that they came up with a basic outline of what they wanted for the story, not that they wrote a complete screenplay and then just changed the names to Khan. It was likely chosen to be Khan very early on.

But it's true that the general concept of the movie could work without Khan. The same general theme would remain without the need for all the superficial elements that come with Khan. And that's really all that they were.

 

[dswynne1]

The assumption would be that if the villain had remained Harrison, there wouldn't have been people in the tubes (and maybe no tubes at all). Harrison's motivation would have been completely different.

And that's my point. It would have been a completely different movie because Khan and the Eugenics element would have been gone, including Admiral Marcus's motivations and the existence of the Vengeance. But those things were staples right from the start of production. I'm just not buying that the villain was ever going to be anyone else but Khan, even with what Wormhole is claiming. Orci may have been the one to insist on Khan, but I doubt that was a very long meeting:

Kurtzman (right after debut of Star Trek '09): "So who's going to be the villain in the next movie, as if we didn't already know?"

Orci: "Well, we're in negotiations with Benicio Del Toro, so we're all set to start writing the Khan story."

Kurtzman (chuckling to himself): "But are you sure we shouldn't have another villain, since everyone's going to think Khan will be the next villain? Somebody like, maybe that dude that was in the pilot episode with the glowy eyes?"

Orci: "Larry Mitchum? Nobody's going to care about that guy or even remember who he is. We gotta do Khan."

Kurtzman: "But, what about that other dude, the fat guy with the mustache with the annoying wife and prostitution ring?"

Orci: "Well, then we'd have to make Del Toro bulk up and make him grow a silly-looking 'stache. We don't have time for that!"

Kurtzman: "Okay, okay, quit the browbeating, we'll do Khan!"

If this is true, then the reason to use Khan is asinine. Before TWOK, Khan was just another villain of the week in TOS. The producers of TWOK made us care about Khan by giving him depth during the film to the point that you don't need to have seen "Space Seed" to get the feeling that Khan hated Kirk. Bad Robot could have done the same with another TOS villain, but, no, they took the easy way out and rehashed TWOK with a twist. Oh, well. At least Lindeolof isn't a part of the ST3 this time around...

 

[ihno]

Berman should have used his knowledge of "what we all want" when he made Nemesis. That movie made me deeply ashamed of being a Star Trek fan.

Trek 2009 didn't touch me in any way but at least it didn't embarrass me.

 

[fireproof78]

The assumption would be that if the villain had remained Harrison, there wouldn't have been people in the tubes (and maybe no tubes at all). Harrison's motivation would have been completely different.

And that's my point. It would have been a completely different movie because Khan and the Eugenics element would have been gone, including Admiral Marcus's motivations and the existence of the Vengeance. But those things were staples right from the start of production. I'm just not buying that the villain was ever going to be anyone else but Khan, even with what Wormhole is claiming. Orci may have been the one to insist on Khan, but I doubt that was a very long meeting:

Kurtzman (right after debut of Star Trek '09): "So who's going to be the villain in the next movie, as if we didn't already know?"

Orci: "Well, we're in negotiations with Benicio Del Toro, so we're all set to start writing the Khan story."

Kurtzman (chuckling to himself): "But are you sure we shouldn't have another villain, since everyone's going to think Khan will be the next villain? Somebody like, maybe that dude that was in the pilot episode with the glowy eyes?"

Orci: "Larry Mitchum? Nobody's going to care about that guy or even remember who he is. We gotta do Khan."

Kurtzman: "But, what about that other dude, the fat guy with the mustache with the annoying wife and prostitution ring?"

Orci: "Well, then we'd have to make Del Toro bulk up and make him grow a silly-looking 'stache. We don't have time for that!"

Kurtzman: "Okay, okay, quit the browbeating, we'll do Khan!"

You can actually read what Orci said here.

OK, I’ll do a deep dive with you. In a way, (fellow co-writer and co-producer) Damon (Lindelof) and I were the biggest debaters about this. He argued for Khan from the beginning and I argued against it. The compromise that we came to was, let us devise a story that is not reliant on any history of Star Trek. So, what’s the story? Well, we have a story where our crew is who they are and they’re coming together as a family. Then, suddenly, this villain arrives and his motivations are based on what happens in the movie. They’re not based on history. They’re not based on Star Trek. They’re not based on anything that came before. They’re based on his used by a corrupted system of power that held the things he held dear against him and tried to manipulate him. That story stands alone with or without Star Trek history. That’s how we approached it, and God bless Damon for going down that road.

So, once we had that, that’s when Damon came back and reared his ugly head and said, “OK, now that we have that, is there any reason why we cannot bring Star Trek history into this?” And he was right. So we ended up sort of reverse engineering it. We started with, “What’s a good movie? What’s a good villain? What’s a good motivation? We cannot rely on what’s happened before. Now that we have that, can we tailor this villain into something that relates to Star Trek history?” And that’s what we did. So, step one was “Don’t rely on Star Trek.” Then, step two was “Rely on Star Trek.”

What that sounds like to me is that they came up with a basic outline of what they wanted for the story, not that they wrote a complete screenplay and then just changed the names to Khan. It was likely chosen to be Khan very early on.

But it's true that the general concept of the movie could work without Khan. The same general theme would remain without the need for all the superficial elements that come with Khan. And that's really all that they were.

This really needs to be repeated. Orci and Kurtzman started out with an original villain, and then they were asked to fit a previous Trek character in to that villain role, not just because "Star Trek"

Also, given the popularity of TWOK, is it any surprise that they would visit the idea again. I don't think it needed to be Khan, at all, but I don't think it was the worst idea ever either.

I think there was a genuine effort to make a new story, but given the reaction to Trek 09 as "not being Star Trek Enough" I can understand why they would err on the side of caution.

In any case, ID works just fine for me, and others. Come on number 13!

 

[GalaxyX]

Berman should have used his knowledge of "what we all want" when he made Nemesis. That movie made me deeply ashamed of being a Star Trek fan.

Trek 2009 didn't touch me in any way but at least it didn't embarrass me.

Same here.

Even TNG, which is my favorite Trek series (and probably favorite TV show period) was at its best when Berman was less involved in it.

TNG shone the brightest when doing straight up high concept sci-fi, and using the characters, visuals, and music to support the story.

When it became more Bermanized, it started turning into the droll wallpaper we ended up getting in the later seasons, and then all the bad was rehashed in Voyager (with very little of the good)

I remember thinking Nemesis was going to be a kick ass movie, and I even convinced one of my coworker friends who was not a trekkie at all to come watch it.

As the movie played, I started getting a knot in my stomach. The ending was probably the most depressing thing I have ever seen in a sci-fi based movie.

My buddy tells me afterward "The Two Towers is going to RAKE that movie over the coals in a week".

And it was true.

So I find it ironic that Berman has to put in his two cents on the new movies.

Fuck you Berman

 

[xavier]

[Lengthy portion of post edited out, as it is not being addressed by xavier's reply. - M']

This really needs to be repeated. Orci and Kurtzman started out with an original villain, and then they were asked to fit a previous Trek character in to that villain role, not just because "Star Trek"

Also, given the popularity of TWOK, is it any surprise that they would visit the idea again. I don't think it needed to be Khan, at all, but I don't think it was the worst idea ever either.

I think there was a genuine effort to make a new story, but given the reaction to Trek 09 as "not being Star Trek Enough" I can understand why they would err on the side of caution.

In any case, ID works just fine for me, and others. Come on number 13!

visit WOK yes but not directly copy the most important part of the film to the point of it blurring the line of serious drama and parody like spock screaming Khan.

WOK is a film that should be left alone once and for all. writers and fans need to move on and make another classic star trek film that will rival wrath of khan.