They did write some fair characterisation for Nero - unlike Marcus - but Nero's backstory and his motivations and so on, struggle for space with the blasted FX and all the other things going on in that film. Nero's characterisation, if they were able to present it, is adequate but they just weren't able to present it properly. I certainly didn't know what on earth Nero was about whilst watching the film. I wasn't alone as none of my non-trek friends (who otherwise enjoyed the film) knew what Nero was about either. He was just an angry guy getting a kick out of blowin' up planets willy-nilly. I had to charge home after the film to ask wiki to get the backstory on him.
Marcus isn't a LeMay. LeMay was someway insane but he was responding to a perceived atomic threat heralded by what was understood by many to be limitless Soviet planetary expansion. The Klingons attack a couple of planets? OK but there's no sense of apocalypse posed to sweep the Fed as there was in the early atomic era in respect to America. And it's difficult to imagine LeMay pleasurably butchering his own soldiery as Marcus does in this film, which annoyed me the most about Marcus' characterisation. I saw that, I saw cartoon characterisation. As mad as LeMay was if you think that's what LeMay was about, you are misreading him. But his species of jingoistic general are gone. Generals today are defacto human resources managers and technocrats; not particularly noble figures but they're not maniacal Marcus types either.
But if you could ferret out an equivalent of Marcus from history it's by accident rather than some subtle tip-of-the-hat to some figure or other; or a moral analogy or whatever. Let's face it, Marcus is just a plainly poorly developed villain whose characterisation is too absurd to speak to us in any meaningful way.
Marcus isn't a LeMay. LeMay was someway insane but he was responding to a perceived atomic threat heralded by what was understood by many to be limitless Soviet planetary expansion. The Klingons attack a couple of planets? OK but there's no sense of apocalypse posed to sweep the Fed as there was in the early atomic era in respect to America. And it's difficult to imagine LeMay pleasurably butchering his own soldiery as Marcus does in this film, which annoyed me the most about Marcus' characterisation. I saw that, I saw cartoon characterisation. As mad as LeMay was if you think that's what LeMay was about, you are misreading him. But his species of jingoistic general are gone. Generals today are defacto human resources managers and technocrats; not particularly noble figures but they're not maniacal Marcus types either.
But if you could ferret out an equivalent of Marcus from history it's by accident rather than some subtle tip-of-the-hat to some figure or other; or a moral analogy or whatever. Let's face it, Marcus is just a plainly poorly developed villain whose characterisation is too absurd to speak to us in any meaningful way.
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