My Gripes with STID!
- Thread starter DeMilburn
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^ I'm not saying that explanation doesn't make sense. IMO the character's behaviour is incoherent even if you accept it. They're his "family" and as a brilliant strategist the best plan he can come up with is stuffing them into explosive devices that can be armed? What exactly was he going to do if Kirk didn't have all 72 torpedoes with him? And the same "brilliant strategist" turns on his allies of convenience and tries to destroy them for almost no discernible reason, then blithely beams over these torpedoes without the possibility of betrayal occurring to him? This is supposed to sell his brilliance better than TWOK?
No. Doesn't work for me. If it works for you that's fine, but you've got an extremely tough row to hoe to convince me that's a better and more convincing character than any incarnation of MontalKhan.
(EDIT: And look, I'm not saying you can't come up with workarounds for any of the above, or that TWOK was flawless. Take TWOK: in realistic terms it doesn't make sense for Khan's "inexperience" to have him maneuvering in only two dimensions in space, because how could the third dimension not occur to you once you're actually in space; that plot point only makes sense as a riff on the old show's primitive effects and a chance for the strictly equally-needless "surfacing and firing" maneuver that provides a cool shot thereafter. Likewise with CumberKhan, one can fanwank plausible explanations for some of his mistakes to one's heart's content; maybe after he was thawed out he heard the rumour that Vulcans supposedly can't lie and the possibility of bad faith or crafty omission from Spock didn't occur to him. All of that can be quite diverting, but what I'm basically getting at is that there's no very convincing reason to throw MontalKhan under the bus in defense of the NuTrek version.)
No. Doesn't work for me. If it works for you that's fine, but you've got an extremely tough row to hoe to convince me that's a better and more convincing character than any incarnation of MontalKhan.
(EDIT: And look, I'm not saying you can't come up with workarounds for any of the above, or that TWOK was flawless. Take TWOK: in realistic terms it doesn't make sense for Khan's "inexperience" to have him maneuvering in only two dimensions in space, because how could the third dimension not occur to you once you're actually in space; that plot point only makes sense as a riff on the old show's primitive effects and a chance for the strictly equally-needless "surfacing and firing" maneuver that provides a cool shot thereafter. Likewise with CumberKhan, one can fanwank plausible explanations for some of his mistakes to one's heart's content; maybe after he was thawed out he heard the rumour that Vulcans supposedly can't lie and the possibility of bad faith or crafty omission from Spock didn't occur to him. All of that can be quite diverting, but what I'm basically getting at is that there's no very convincing reason to throw MontalKhan under the bus in defense of the NuTrek version.)
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And the weather, the stock market and if Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow.
I get you want to be all "science" about it, but in the long run either the reviewers like it or didn't. The audience score is from RT users. So I think those opinions are in the same "context". The pro ones are the product of the time they were written.
I don't have to convince you of anything. I'm not trying to make you like the movie. I'm just pointing out that you said his actions didn't make sense, and I pointed out the context of those actions. Yes, they were based on desperation, and if Khan had more control over his situation he might have done things differently. But his first priority based on what he was allowed to do was to get his people away from Marcus, and smuggling them in the torpedoes was the best way he had at the time to do so. Actions based on desperation don't always have to make perfect sense.
How was Khan brilliant in TWOK?
You know, I don't even need it to be purely "science," I would just like some level of honest comparability and I don't think it's there, is all.
He successfully operated a Starfleet ship on the fly with basically no prior experience. I think I'd have to score that as pretty impressive.
That you're intentionally missing the point of his being an Ahab-analogue isn't at all an impressive point about "brilliance." His character arc is about a lack of sanity driven by his exile in the wilderness, so of course his quest for revenge is insane and counterproductive and ultimately suicidal. That is the whole point of the story; his genetically engineered intellect can't compensate for or overcome his madness and obsession.
I'd recommend at this point that you just go back and look at the edit to my post of 10:43 if you haven't already, because I don't think I'll have much more to say about that subject.
Highly-regarded, but not universally so. Also not nearly so highly-regarded as to be above criticism.
You don't think there's going to be a range of opinions about a Star Trek movie on a Trek forum?
WOK is a highly regarded Trek film.
Ludicrous? Not at all (and Ludacris is a rapper.)
Could have been interesting, maybe, but it's not the story they went with.
How about it? It was pretty surprising for television at that time, but I'm just as happy that that sort of effects shot didn't become a regular thing in televised Trek or Trek generally.How about when two sustained phaser blasts make a head explode, obliterating it, and exposing the chest cavity so that the back of the rib cage and spinal column are visible? On-camera.
Sorry, I meant this one. Forgot about time zone differences. (Kinda like Khan and the third dimension, I guess.)
Thanks
How about it? It was pretty surprising for television at that time, but I'm just as happy that that sort of effects shot didn't become a regular thing in televised Trek or Trek generally.How about when two sustained phaser blasts make a head explode, obliterating it, and exposing the chest cavity so that the back of the rib cage and spinal column are visible? On-camera.
On this point, I recently re-watched STID and that skull crushing scene was one that needed no graphic on screen head popping. Nope, sorry, off screen with Carol's and Kirk's reaction was plenty enough for me, thank you very much.
In my opinion, it was too much. We had scene what Khan could do, his physical superiority when taking on S31 goons, and Klingons.
As for performance, Cumberbatch is Cumberbatch and Montalban is Montalban. I would never dare equate the two, any more than I would equate Sarah Brightman's performance in Phantom of the Opera to the current performance. But, that doesn't mean that I don't enjoy both (I do) or that the characters are not compelling to me. Both are, for different reasons, and both actors deliver convincing performances.
Obviously, YMMV
Carol's scream and Kirk's "Holy fuck...!" look sold the horror of what Khan did far more than seeing brains everywhere would have.
They really should have shown Khan wiping his hands on something afterwards, though. They would not have been clean!
They really should have shown Khan wiping his hands on something afterwards, though. They would not have been clean!
If Kirk's clothing hadn't been so dark for the commando raid, Khan could have wiped his hands on Kirk's clothing and put a "Peter Preston splotch" there.
I'm pretty sure those are the scores of people and critics in the here and now for that part of the equation. So there is no context in that part of the equation. People and critics, in the here and now, have seen and liked both.
It is a credit to the work that Meyer and Bennett did that The Wrath of Khan continues to rate so well thirty-plus years after it was made. But the movie does have some pretty glaring flaws but is incredibly fun to watch. It sucks you in to such a degree that the flaws don't really matter. I feel the same way about Star Trek Into Darkness. Just watched it again last night, easily my 15th time seeing the film.
Will Star Trek Into Darkness have the same staying power over the course of the next thirty years? There are none of us here who can honestly see that far into the future.
I'd have given anything to hear Cumberbatch trying to rub off the blood and deliver the line, "Out, damned spot! Out, I say!" Can never go wrong with a little Shakespeare in our Trek.
On the Khan in the TWOK thing, Ahab aside, Khan had Kirk and let him off the hook. If he were so obsessed with him, he could've beamed Kirk aboard the Reliant instead of the Genesis device. Hell, he could've gotten both. At the climactic moment of the movie, when Khan momentarily has Kirk at his mercy, he doesn't indulge the obsession that was driving him the entire movie up until that point. Frankly, I find that a WTF moment. Highly irrational.
Both Khans were emotionally compromised by events in their lives. Neither was as sharp as he used to be. They both had tremendous flaws which showed. Both were something other than brilliant. Frankly, each in their own way, TWOK Khan and STID Khan were psychotic.
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