Well, if they want to stay true to canon (as they claimed all the time), Khan would be a problem anyway.
Khan or no Khan?
- Thread starter Temis the Vorta
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Well, if they want to stay true to canon (as they claimed all the time), Khan would be a problem anyway.
I keep hearing the comment that the general public would be interested in Khan. I plan on asking a few people I know that are vaguely familiar with Trek on their opinion instead of just assuming what they want to see. It's hardly a representative sampling, but it's a lot better than the guesses I see here.
I started by asking my wife, who isn't very Trek-knowledgeable about what she thought the next movie should be about and the conversation went something like this:
Me: What do you think the next Trek movie should be about?
Her: Does it have to be about the original series?
Me: Yes, the same crew in that time period.
Her: Uh, how about Tribbles?
Me: How do you make a movie about Tribbles?
Her: Ok, then Klingons.
Me: Well, some say the Klingons have been done a lot.
Her: How about Data? Is he around in this time period?
Me: ...no... There's a lot of speculation that the movie will be about Khan.
Her: Oh, the guy played by Charlton Heston?
Me: ...
Her: Shouldn't they do something different?
The Data and Heston comments had me particularly wowed, but this might be what to expect from an average moviegoer. They might not really care who the villain is. Star Trek isn't Batman or X-Men.
I plan on asking several more people just to get a well rounded group of opinions.
The thing is, how much different could the story really be? Khan is a really two dimensional character that was only made classic by Montalban and the directing. There aren't infinite realms of storytelling with a guy who wakes up and wants to take over, especially as it relates to the Enterprise crew.
I started by asking my wife, who isn't very Trek-knowledgeable about what she thought the next movie should be about and the conversation went something like this:
Me: What do you think the next Trek movie should be about?
Her: Does it have to be about the original series?
Me: Yes, the same crew in that time period.
Her: Uh, how about Tribbles?
Me: How do you make a movie about Tribbles?
Her: Ok, then Klingons.
Me: Well, some say the Klingons have been done a lot.
Her: How about Data? Is he around in this time period?
Me: ...no... There's a lot of speculation that the movie will be about Khan.
Her: Oh, the guy played by Charlton Heston?
Me: ...
Her: Shouldn't they do something different?
The Data and Heston comments had me particularly wowed, but this might be what to expect from an average moviegoer. They might not really care who the villain is. Star Trek isn't Batman or X-Men.
I plan on asking several more people just to get a well rounded group of opinions.
The thing is, how much different could the story really be? Khan is a really two dimensional character that was only made classic by Montalban and the directing. There aren't infinite realms of storytelling with a guy who wakes up and wants to take over, especially as it relates to the Enterprise crew.
Self-evident and irrelevant. The character is now one of the franchise's more useful assets in terms of cutting through the media background noise, which is what every movie of this scale needs to do.
It doesn't much matter how familiar the details may be to Trek fans, because the target audience - the people Trek needs to draw into the theaters in order for it to be worth Paramount's while - are attracted by the familiar.
That is gold and reflects similar conversations I had.
Oh, fans had all kinds of significant conversations with friends and co-workers a few years ago...most of whom were remarkably opposed to Trek doing a prequel about Kirk and Spock. "Shouldn't they do something new?" was the gist of much of this.
Remarkably, these opinions tracked those of the posters pretty closely - and all turned out to be wrong.
Khan, or Kirk and Spock or whatever gets the attention of the public and the entertainment press. Khan is worth a big, big opening weekend, and - just as last time, just as always - the eventual success of the film is then determined by how much fun folks really have or don't have watching the actual movie.
Remarkably, these opinions tracked those of the posters pretty closely - and all turned out to be wrong.
Khan, or Kirk and Spock or whatever gets the attention of the public and the entertainment press. Khan is worth a big, big opening weekend, and - just as last time, just as always - the eventual success of the film is then determined by how much fun folks really have or don't have watching the actual movie.
Turned out to be wrong, why? Nobody has proven yet that "something new" would have bombed.
That doesn't cover my wife's situation. She was excited to see the movie and so was I, and she liked it a lot. But that's besides the point. The point is, she doesn't give a rat's ass if it's Khan, Tribbles, Klingons, whoever. Nothing in particular is going to sway her any more than every other average Joe who has little interest in Trek.
In fact, I got the feeling from her that she thinks the whole Khan character/movie is just way too cheesy. I'm sure Abrams' team could totally pull it off in a non-cheesy way, but again that was the whole allure of the movie: it's cult status. Any attempt to try and replicate or redo something with that kind of status will usually get people's eyes rolling.
Our opinions did vary. I'm kind of on the fence on the Khan issue. I think both sides have good arguments. She seemed to think it was a silly idea, which is pretty different.
Very, very believable. That's exactly how people speak. I'm particularly tickled by how Data would be fine, but Khan is a character we've already seen. I'm uncertain about Khan myself, but let's stop pretending the writers are complete imbeciles who can be swayed by condescending internet posts from the spinoff fans.
Hee-hee.
.
This is kind of the point I've been trying to hammer home. Just like you can reuse Kirk, Spock, and McCoy in new stories so to can you use Khan in a rebooted universe, in an totally "original" way.
Half the people here screaming "but I want something original" it would not even occur to them to do so if they were say "borrowing" from a piece of literature, like say "Heart Of Darkenss" (INS. Granted that movie would have been better had they stuck to the source story they were... borrowing...)
doubleohfive
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No Khan. Let's have something original please. And by "original" I mean coming up with a new story, a new villain and a new threat for the crew to face.
Don't have to stay true to canon, that issues been overcome and part of the reason the first movie took place the way it did so they would no longer be restrained by "canon".
So "staying true to canon" in no longer an issue. On purpose.
That's A-OK if this were just another Trek movie with a Roman Numeral beside it, not so alright for an event film such as Paramount seems to be striving for with Star Trek.
All this has happened before...
Some of these argument are looking rather familiar, along with the screams of doubt that went with them a year or two ago.
For one, it was paraphrased. And I have no idea why she mentioned Data at all. I was kinda scratching my head on that one. It's true that for her to say yes Data but then no Khan sounds conflicting, but I think it's just preference for her. She probably didn't like TWOK in the first place. She did like the latest movie.
These kinds of people exist and they are probably a good portion of who sees the movie. Not everyone has their head buried in Star Trek's ass.
It is, because how did Nero's time travel affect Khan?
The biggest difference I see here would be that in reusing the big three, you don't just have them interacting with each other and nothing else. In this first movie, they interact with each other in relation to the crises at hand and with some unknowns. If you bring back Khan, the story potential is somewhat limited. There would have to be some drastically new variables involved to make it work.
So it's possible, it's just more difficult to pull off. You'd think the writers would want something a little less hard considering all the shoehorning they had to do just to get the first movie to work.
Time ripples: Khan's ship got discovered by someone else, much weaker than Kirk ever was and years "before he was supposed to come out of hyphenation" and he established an augment empire on some planet we've yet to hear of or maybe even we have but at the moment its a paradise.
Nero need not to have directly affected it but if you must have it explained directly you could always work in that the Narada "bumped" into the Botany Bay while it lay in waiting for 25 years and that alone triggered Khan'a awakening.
If the entire thing is not up for grabs and in play than the whole premise of the first film is undermined and canon remains a strangling noose around what stories they want to tell. But we know already from their reasoning behind the first film that everything is in play and destines (canon) no longer are fixed to taking place as they did before.
Not really as I said time ripples. The game board is already new so don't expect how things transpired in the main timeline to much matter. We can expect a whole new first meeting (likely only) between Kirk and Khan. Me, I'd like to see Khan as head of an empire with augment troops to boot and an actual face to face off between the two at the climax of said film.
But canonically, Khan left Earth with a space ship in 1996. How did Nero change that?
Why would that be an issue? Star Trek is not our universe as it should be plain to anyone watching. If they feel the need to retcon, I'm all for it. Though I also don't feel a need to cram Trek history into real life history.
Or its fine and ok to have real life events incorporated into Star Trek, its quite another to pretend as if Star Trek is real life history and we must rewrite its fictional events to fit within the narrow confines of "real life". There's really no need to do this.
Its not as if Star Trek has never fudged dates around before and been rather none specific about events or contradicted said dates when it is specific.
In Space Seed Spock was rather specific that "The Eugenics Wars" was our last world conflict Archers grandfather even fought in them, so they must have been an open conflict and well known part of the Trek verse history. I'm fairly sure no real life Eugenics Wars took place. Which does not at all hinder me enjoying a story about them - even if its during the 1990s.
Yet TNG rolls around and tells us: No there was this one other "Last World War" and no it wasn't the Eugenics Wars - but rather some ambiguous nuclear exchange between some undefined powers. Go ahead and retcon, but I don't think they need to. Anyone watching realizes its a fictional canvas intended to tell stories within and not our actual universe.
There's no need to mention dates. Discuss the Eugenics conflict and Khan vanishing. Dates really aren't important. Since the general audience could care less what random numbers you sting together and mention on screen.
Given they've referenced The Dark Knight as the direction they want to take things and I doubt they mean in terms of tone, Khan's involvement seems self evident. You should note an informal poll at the link sort of goes against the trends here - but that's inclusive of none Trekkies.
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While the desired effect may be the same, time doesn't really ripple according to these movies. It sort of ripples but mends itself. The writers themselves have said that many things remain constant. So technically it doesn't really follow any rules except to follow the whims of the writers. Like I said, the effect is the same. They could easily say X happens to Botany Bay, where X can be just about anything, and they lean on that crutch.
It's hard to say what events could have set things in motion from a logical point of view. They should probably flesh out the back story quite a bit if they go some crazy different route with it.
It sounds interesting, but is it even plausible?
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