I wish I could be a professional writer, but I'm the kind of person who thrives on feedback...and when I don't have that, I lose interest very quickly.
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
- Start date
Who's work is being disregarded?
This is what I mean by nebulous. The standard is inconsistent.
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There are a lot of things that don't bother me.
Robert April being black? Sure. It makes no difference to the character.
Khan being white? His specific history indicates he is not white. And he was famously played by an actor who, while not Indian, was most certainly not white.
The problem is, Abrams knew if he cast an Indian actor, or just a non white actor, it'd be pretty obvious the villain was Khan. He wanted the thrill of surprising us, so much so that he lied to all of our faces. He specifically said "Oh, it's not Khan, no no, it's a dude named John, but he's someone the fans will know, wink wink WINK" .
He insulted all of us, and disrespected the entire concept of the character. That's why it's a big deal.
Good example: In Nemesis, Worf is there. At tactical. No mention of why he apparently ditched out on being an ambassador to Qonos to take a lower-ranking position than he had on DS9 and essentially slide backwards into where he was over half a decade ago. Because they wanted Worf on the Enterprise doing his usual thing, and screw whatever else happened.
Same thing happened in Insurrection.
Originally, Benicio del Toro had the role.
In Insurrection, he happened to be in the area. And there were scenes cut detailing that he was on leave because of his wife's death. It's weak, but at least some lip service was paid to him having a life somewhere else.
There was a little cleverness to that set up, though.
That would have been so, so much better.
Still wasn't Indian, though even Khan in Space Seed as Skih was not really confirmed.
Um, what?
"Mr. Worf, what the hell?"
And Geordi interrupts them.
Not Indian, but similar enough to Ricardo Montalban as to acknowledge what was previously established. And give respect to the previous actor to boot.
SNW made him fully Indian. So if we ever see adult Khan again (I'm ambivalent to the idea) I hope that's the trend we'll see.
It was a wink and a nod to the audience. I liked it. Don’t even bother making up some excuse.
Yeah, like I said, it was weak, but it was an acknowledgement.
And honestly, it may have been for the best. Casual audiences and TNG only fans would just breeze right over it. But anyone in the know could easily fill things in.
Plus there was the line, "I don't know how they do things on Deep Space Nine, but here..." to acknowledge that yes, he is not supposed to be here normally.
Yeah, me too. An acknowledgement and a dismissal at the same time. As if to tell viewers 'this is only entertainment, just enjoy the movie'.
I find it problematic either way. Khan shouldn't have been Sikh with Montalban's history.
It was stupid and awkward.
Well, 1960's Hollywood. It's better than John Wayne as Genghis Khan, or Mickey Roony as Mr. Yunioshi.
Gene wanted a Sikh, as part of his worldwide vision. The casting director...probably did the best he could with what was on hand.
Doesn't make it ok, sorry. I've disagreed with it for a long time. The limits of the time do not make me more sympathetic. Nor am I'm going to be negative towards Into Darkness due to a casting change based on availability and budget.
No offense, bit that seems like, literally, a backwards way of looking at it. Be offended that they tried to be diverse, but give them a pass on whitewashing.
But hey, you do you! You clearly see it differently than I do.
Because a justification is built in to the film.
If we justify Roddenberry due to limits of availability and budget then why does Into Darkness get schelacked over it?
Two reasons:
1) The 1960's had very few non-white actors to choose from in general. Gene was literally pushing against racist tropes to get any non white characters on there. I'm not going to chastise someone for trying to be inclusive and representative just because it isn't sufficient for our standard 60 years later.
2) Into Darkness had no reason to race-change Khan. Oh, you couldn't reach an agreement with del Toro? How about Banderas? How about any of the massive numbers of non-white actors working in Hollywood in the 2010's? They had a plethora of suitable non-white actors for the role and still chose Cumberbatch.
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