Why didnt they include a Khan flashback in STID?

My oldest daughter, 14, loved STID. She never saw "Space Seed" or TWOK before STID. Cumberbatch is her Khan and she's cool with it. Might was well try to explain to her why the TOS Khan looks different than Cumberbatch. It works both ways, after all.

Further, why would it add anything to the story to use precious screen time try to explain the difference in Khan's looks? Might as well take a moment to explain why nuKirk has blue eyes, too. And let's not even start on Chekov. Where is the line drawn?

 

Chekov is no problem at all, since he wasn't even a twinkle in his father's eye when the timelines diverged.

 

At the casting of Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan.

The colour of Kirks eye's is a minor discrepancy that this 40 year old Trek fan had never really noticed until I frequented these boards.

 

I don't know. I still think it would be jarring to see a clip of Montalban in the rebooted Trek. "Hey, just when you're getting used to the new Trek, we're going show you a clip from the old version with the other actors."

Honestly, that sounds more distracting than casting Cumberbatch. And less conducive to maintaining that suspension of disbelief.

Better to just pretend that Khan always looked like Cumberbatch, the same way we pretend that Uhura always looked like Zoe Saldana . . .

 

Although there is no canonical information about Uhura's age, she is presumably younger than Kirk by more than nine months. So, as with Chekov, she is not genetically identical to her Prime Universe counterpart and doesn't have to look the same.

 

I know someone's said it on here before, and I know it wasn't really possible, but if they'd have cast the guy who played the Kelvin captain in ST09, that would have done the trick for me. He would have made a good Khan looks wise at least.

 

+1000

 

Re: Why didnt they include the IDW Khan flashback in STID?

Continuity porn to satisfy six or seven geeks' psychological need to have several totally disparate TV and film productions all fit together into one cohesive whole and reinforce the delusion that Star Trek is somehow "real" is definitely what ID needed to be a mainstream success.

 

Marcus would have been, what, a year younger? He would probably look pretty much the same.

By the same token, just when the audience is getting used to the new Spock, it should be jarring to see Leonard Nimoy.

 

Perhaps, but I think the massive age discrepancy between Nimoy and Quinto mitigates against that. Any differences between Quinto and Nimoy can be chalked up to the fact that one is very visibly much older. Heck, even Nimoy doesn't look like TOS-era Nimoy anymore.

You'll note that they didn't include any flashbacks from TOS in the mind-meld scene in the 2009 movie. Possibly so that we wouldn't be distracted by shots of the young Shatner and Nimoy.

 

True of any fiction. Like Huck Finn just happening to show up at Aunt Polly's, and who else is there? Why, it's Tom Sawyer. Or Jim escaping slavery by going deeper into the south instead of north?

One must believe in suspension of disbelief.

Besides, Shatner's 1960s image doesn't do cameos, either.

 

I'm all for suspension of disbelief, and the ship crew casting totally works for me. It's the fact that they made NO effort to make this Khan resemble the original in looks or performance. They have gone to great lengths to intertwine and integrate 'canon' with the stories in this new universe, then go and do this with one Trek's most famous characters, it just came across as just wrong.

If these films were a total 'reboot' like the Batman films I couldn't give a toss, but they're not. They should respect the source material more or have have done totally new films.

 

Only in X-Men films.

 

The thing is, Shatner did come very close to appearing in Star Trek 2009... they wrote a scene involving a hologram of him belonging to Nimoy Spock. Supposedly used as a way of reinforcing to the younger Spock that they would become friends. And had Shatner said yes, you can bet they would've totally have included it in the film's final scenes. It was his reluctance to a cameo and less involvement than Nimoy that quashed it. Not the filmmakers unwillingness to invite comparisons between the original and younger version recasts. The new actors were very carefully thought about when they were chosen, and came with the approval of the originals or their son in a certain case. By enlarge it's the alternative universe lives that have been occasionally criticised (again rationalised onscreen particularly in Kirk's case) and not that they don't bear any likeness. So Khan remains the odd one out, even alongside yet another recast addition, Carol Marcus... whose English accent, again explained... albeit in a deleted scene. So, it's deliberate change in approach for Khan only, in a film continuing to be consistent in other areas.


I still think a blink and you'll miss it glimpse of a very different Khan, some disorientating flashbacks of Marcus finding Botany Bay, some futuristic medics busying themselves around that one unconscious person and Cumberbatch awaking, wouldn't have hurt a thing. It would've meant a lot to those who like such hidden easter eggs. All the while the exposition is coming thick and fast in the brig, with Kirk and Spock trying take it all in... it's just one more thing to hammer his real identity home. Better than... just off to one side... a prolonged, extreme closeup of the actor twisting and contorting his expressions. I'm still not sure whether they applied somekind of morphing effect to his face there, to be honest. Or if that's all the actor's doing. Pretty unsettling either way!

 

I think that would have been great too, it didn't have to be particularly detailed it could have been like the Wolverine stuff in X2

 

I didn't even like ID, but I didn't give two shits about Cumberbatch not resembling the original Khan. I actually wish they'd done the same thing with Spock, given us a Spock that wasn't quite so familiar. Kinda hard to do with Nimoy in the movie playing an older version of Spock, but I'd like the Spock character to recalim a little bit of the wonder and mystery he must have had for audiences in the 60s and 70s.

Personally, I wish Cumberbatch had been cast as Spock, and that he looked as Spock exactly as he looked in ID as Khan, with the addition of some pointed ears.

 

Except that they did give us a Spock that wasn't quite so familiar. One that has lost his mother, his home world, and by the looks of it his control over his emotions too.

 

The TUC flashbacks were awful IMO, because we got nothing new... just misty images pulled from elsewhere in the film. Very jarring.


I have not seen nor read the comic explanation for Khan's change. Was an explanation also provided for the change in voice?

Again, I'd rather not have any of this. I'd rather just accept Cumberbatch as nuKhan. He grows on me every time I watch.

As for the name Khan not belonging to a man who looks like Cumberbatch, please tell me why exactly this is a problem??? Who is to judge that an ethnic name must associate to an ethnic appearance? It's just not true, not even today.

 

Yes.

But are accepting Cumberbatch and accepting the comic to be seen as mutually exclusive propositions? Khan predates the change in the timeline which created the Abramsverse.

Because no one would ever look at Cumberbatch and think, "Probably from northern India."