It's one scene. And that scene isn't the climax in either film.
Into Darkness comparisons (Spoilers)
- Thread starter indianatrekker26
- Start date
It's one scene. And that scene isn't the climax in either film.
That's why the blood was injected into the movie's plot in the sequence of events right after the title card.
The Tribble-scene was just a reminder for the audience, and a welcome distraction for Kirk as he was losing his argument with Khan.
Exactly so.
Well, the audience knows about Khan's blood, but McCoy doesn't.
STiD, as fun and enjoyable as it was, is NOT superior to TWoK.
Not even equivalent.
sarcasm mode - The new scene, as you call it, is so new that none of us identified it for its similarities to the climax of TWoK. /sarcasm mode
It's not the same at all in meaning or in context at all. It's actually a great exercise in how just by changing a couple of things, you can create a completely different story. It's like if I said "She's gone"- well, context matters. If the context is that someone's elderly mother passed away, well, that's sad. But if the context is that of someone's daughter, that's much worse. So context matters, and in this case, there is a completely different context in each situation.
I've always thought Wrath of Khan to be extremely overrated. It's enjoyable, but IMO no classic. Into Darkness blows it out of the water.
Just whipped this up, simply for the LOLZ.
I have it in avatar form if anyone wants it.
I have it in avatar form if anyone wants it.
Just whipped this up, simply for the LOLZ.
I have it in avatar form if anyone wants it.
Holy shit! Took me a moment to realize what you did there. Good one!
Might actually be a fun idea, photoshopping Cumberbatch's face onto various images of Khan, see how it works out. I'd especially be interested to see if it can work with images of Khan from Space Seed.
Well, that second paragraph is the key, isn't it? You have to add speculation not mentioned in the film to assert that Dougherty was working for Section 31. If you go purely by what is established on screen, Trek has had several examples in film and TV of rogue or corrupt admirals serving as antagonists for our heroes, and you could easily speculate like you did above that many of them were working for or with Section 31 (and in fact, some novels have).
Just off the top of my head:
- Admiral Cartwright in STVI: TUC
- Admiral Pressman in TNG Pegasus
- Future Admiral Janeway in VOY Endgame (briefly until joined by Capt. Janeway)
- Ret. Admiral Norah Satie in TNG The Drumhead
- Admiral Leyton in DS9 Homefront/Paradise Lost
- Admiral Jameson in TNG Too Short a Season
- Admirals Quinn and Savar in TNG Conspiracy (to be fair, they did have a really bad case of crabs)
- Admiral Stocker in TOS The Deadly Years (more incompetent than rogue, but he did violate the Neutral Zone)
- Admiral Ross in DS9 Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges (as mentioned, he actually was working with Section 31)
I'm sure there are more I'm missing. If anything, the "admiral as adversary" thing is a cliche in Trek rather than something unique. And that's not even counting all the admirals who were just dicks or incompetent but not necessarily rogue or corrupt, which would be a whole other long list of lesser antagonists for the crews.
Indeed, some even think Admiral Pressman was with Section 31 since in TATV Riker makes reference to a "specialized division of Starfleet Security" or something like that.
Life From Lifelessness.
Khan Literally Is Genesis.
Khan Literally Is Genesis.
We also saw a ton of crazy captains in TOS. Tracy, Garth, Decker... Starfleet must hire borderline sociopaths. Or maybe it's something in the (replicated) food?
Decker was actually a Commodore, and therfore would be placed in among the Admirals. Commodore is after all, a flag rank. And besides, he was only "crazy" because he'd just witnessed the death of his entire crew.
No one is saying they're identical plots (well, some people might be, but most aren't). If they were identical, then STID might have actually made some sense.
It's a ripoff in that the writers were (IMHO) banking on nostalgia and gimmicks to transfer the perceived quality of WoK over to STID. Apart from the genetic engineering, Harrison was a very different character from Khan. Making him turn out to be Khan was jarring for me as a viewer, and in some ways an admission that the character as written didn't hold up on it's own. I mean they even have to call Leonard Nimoy later in the film so that he can tell the audience how dangerous Khan is, I'm assuming because the script prior to that point hadn't done a particularly good job of establishing the fact. Similarly, the stolen scene pretty much took me completely out of the film because I knew why it was in there. And maybe that could have worked in a universe without WoK, but then you have Spock do the scream, and it's just so awkward and forced in that even if this were the first ST film I'd ever seen, it still would have felt wrong.
So the problem isn't that STID is WoK. The problem is that STID tried to take the best known elements of WoK, mixed them in with some stuff from TUC and one too many fight scenes and yes, some stuff that was legitimately new and interesting, and ultimately failed to do anything particularly well. You want to reboot Trek? Then don't revisit stuff we've all seen before. It probably won't be as good, and it'll distract from the the stuff you're doing that's actually fresh.
It does have its flaws, but it's the movie that got me really into Star Trek, and remained my all-time favourite movie for almost two decades. Give it some props.
