John Harrison was more interesting than (SPOILER)

[The Wormhole]

Been thinking, with all said and done and the supposed renegade Starfleet officer John Harrison revealed to be Khan, I've come to realize, I was more interested in the fiction of the John Harrison persona than I am in Khan. Khan's been done, and while STID didn't retread Space Seed or TWOK with what they did with Khan, doing something completely new doesn't hurt either. In all honesty, I believe the movie could have been improved had the villain actually been Commander John Harrison, renegade Starfleet officer turned terrorist fighting for ideology instead of Khan taking revenge out on an Evil Admiral.

And the movie wouldn't have to be changed that much. Harrison could still rip the transwarp beaming to go to Qo'nos. If they made his backstory some sort of Starfleet special ops badass that could explain how he'd last against the Klingons, and from there you can still have Evil Admiral Marcus wanting Harrison out of the way and making it personal. Kirk still decides to work with Harrison board Vengeance, Harrison still betrays Kirk and kills Marcus. No magic blood means Kirk couldn't die and therefore That Scene wouldn't have happened (I'm fine with that). It is kind of unlikely a regular human could have survived Vengeance's crash, just say Harrison somehow managed to transwarp beam out, so he's still out there, just not an immediate threat, which is basically the same situation we have with Khan.

Hell, all making the character Khan did was possibly make thing marketable, but then Khan was a secret so the movie didn't really captilize on that marketing potential, and even now the cat's out of the bag it isn't exactly bringing in money hand over fist.

So what does everyone else think? Would John Harrison be more interesting than Khan?

 

[BillJ]

I wouldn't have been against him being John Harrison or anothet Augment simply because I don't think they did a very good job distinguishing Cumberbatch as Khan.

There was nothing in the film that just screamed this needs to be Khan, besides Spocks scream.

Though I still love the film.

 

[The Wormhole]

There was nothing in the film that just screamed this needs to be Khan, besides Spocks scream.

Pretty much. Hell, Orci even said the creative process was to create a new character and then that character was named Khan. Should have stuck with the new character.

 

[BillJ]

It does feel like somewhere in the process they went from Harrison to the Khan/Harrison villain. Maybe as late as shooting the film.

I think the Harrison facade could have been done away with completely and wouldn't have changed the movie much, as well.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Khan beats John Doe Harrison in every shape or form. But I agree they should have just dropped the whole plot-twist angle. It wasn't a plot-twist. It was obvious over a year a head of time to anyone paying attention, and it added nothing to the movie.

If they would just gone Khan from the get go, I think everything would've been better for it. They could have honed Cumby's look a bit more, for one thing. But the big thing is it would have added badly needed publicity. The entire ad campaign (poster, trailers, commercials) would have all been changed for the better IMO.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

If this movie had been "nameless assistant villain gets used by evil Admiral to start a war" I'd have been bored.

 

[BillJ]

If this movie had been "nameless assistant villain gets used by evil Admiral to start a war" I'd have been bored.

I don't know. I think it would've depended on what type of background they built for the character. I definitely think that being either Harrison or Khan would've cleared up some of the problems that came from them using both. It felt muddled.

Plus, I think Cumberbatch could've made John Harrison an interesting character.

 

[The Wormhole]

If this movie had been "nameless assistant villain gets used by evil Admiral to start a war" I'd have been bored.

It would have been the same damn movie, pretty much. Is the name Khan really the only thing that kept your interest?

 

[newtontomato539]

Nope.

John Harrison IS Khan Noonien Singh.

The movie is making money hand over fist.

There is going to be a 3rd and 4th movie.

Bad Robot Star Trek Lives!

 

[The Wormhole]

The movie is making money hand over fist.

It's getting pwned at the box office by The Fast and the Furious. The Fast and the Furious. I think we have different definitions of "making money hand over fist."

 

[The Doctor]

The movie is making money hand over fist.

It's getting pwned at the box office by The Fast and the Furious. The Fast and the Furious. I think we have different definitions of "making money hand over fist."

Cripes. No one expected STID to gross more than Fast and Furious. At this rate, STID is on track to outpace the gross of Trek 09 by 50-90 million dollars. It will be the highest-grossing Trek feature ever made.

It's doing just fine. The next film will absolutely crush overseas.

 

[LobsterAfternoon]

I'd suggest putting aside whether it would've made more or less money with Khan present or absent. That's impossible to determine. Do I think it would've been a better creative choice to not have Cumberbatch be Khan? Yes. I'd prefer that he be a different augment, one who was woken by factors in the new timeline instead of Khan.

 

[Cyke101]

^Over on Oh No They Didn't, more than a few of their contributors have toyed with the idea that Cumberbatch should have been Joachim masquerading as Khan to throw off authorities. It would further add to the idea that Harrison can't be figured out and that Khan is again one step ahead. Indeed, Cumberbatch has a slight resemblance to Judson Scott.

Of course, that's Monday morning quarterbacking, and Joachim never did anything *nearly* as impressive as Cumberbatch's Khan in TWOK.

 

[LobsterAfternoon]

Ooooooh, I like that quite a bit.

 

[Squiggy]

The movie is making money hand over fist.

It's getting pwned at the box office by The Fast and the Furious. The Fast and the Furious. I think we have different definitions of "making money hand over fist."

Do some damned research and you'll see that the F&F franchise always makes tons of cash.

 

[starburst]

I have to admit I was hoping he was John Harrison, all the fan speculation from a year or so before kinda ruined it for me and the scene may have played out better for me if I had no idea before hand he was Khan until they discovered the "300 year old frozen man" in the torpedo.

To be honest make him just John Harrison and the rest of the film can be identical, make him an experiment of genetic engineering by Starfleet in the years after the Kelvin which explains his strength and his blood. The 72 (or whatever other oddly specific number) could be other test subjects that were frozen away that he wanted to save but were told were dead, an act that Kirks 'commanders' had done which he 'can not forgive'.

But in the end he was a pretty bad bad guy who if he hadnt been outsmarted (like Khan was) by Spock then he could have done some seriously bad things with that ship.

 

[ichab]

I enjoyed the movie but I never bought Cumberbatch as Khan. Sorry, but he never sold me on that one. At least with Kirk or Spock I can see at least SOMETHING in their performances that makes me say "Okay, that is him" . With this new Khan the accent was wrong,the look was wrong, mannerisms were wrong.... They should have created their own character rather than recycling Khan.

They also need to quite bringing back old Spock to explain everything. The torch has been passed. Let him fade into history already.

 

[marksound]

How about this?

In the next movie we find out that Harrison wasn't really Khan but another Augie Doggie who used Khan's name. The real Khan is stored away somewhere like the Ark at the end of Raiders.

Instant Retcon's gonna get you ...

 

[Ain Jalut]

I enjoyed the movie but I never bought Cumberbatch as Khan. Sorry, but he never sold me on that one. At least with Kirk or Spock I can see at least SOMETHING in their performances that makes me say "Okay, that is him" . With this new Khan the accent was wrong,the look was wrong, mannerisms were wrong.... They should have created their own character rather than recycling Khan.

They also need to quite bringing back old Spock to explain everything. The torch has been passed. Let him fade into history already.

I agree about Spock, that was completly unnecessary.

 

[BeatleJWOL]

but AWESOME. I just about jumped out of my chair right about then; didn't make the "New Vulcan" connection...