My Gripes with STID!
- Thread starter DeMilburn
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Nope. That one's definitely for the fans. That said, the new viewer would learn from exposition and context in this movie enough to make the character and his motivations clear.
That's what Bennett tried to do with TWOK and TVH - establish onscreen everything that a new viewer needed to know in order to follow the movie.
Here are my couple of gripes with Into Darkness. I loved the story actually but my only problem with using Khan was that the audience knows he is a big threat only because of other episode/movie that have nothing to do with this movie. To this crew and time-line Khan had not earned that reputation yet. So to me the threat of Khan didn't feel authentic. I think the entire death and re-birth of Kirk was forced and really didn't have the emotional bang Spock's death had in TWOK. We hardly knew this Kirk. All in all through I did like the movie a lot.
I agree, in part. I really don't think Harrison needed to be Khan. Marcus was plenty of villain for the film, and Harrison would be fine as Harrison, serving as the genetically engineered weapon who went wrong.
However, Kirk's death was still one of my favorite scenes in the whole of the two films. It worked so well for me.
But did of course go out of its way to explain, with the phone-call to PrimeSpock, that he's the same character as the original continuity. And since those elements were part of the original character I think Franklin's idea is ultimately stronger if you're really determined to evade the problem (but see above about why it's determination to evade the problem that's... well, the problem).
No reason why not - it's a movie. Since everyone's been recast, everyone looks and sounds different.
About whom it's unnecessary to know a single thing that this movie doesn't tell you. Every Trek movie, every Trek episode is someone's first - and it damn well better entertain that new viewer first and foremost or the studio is fucked.
About whom it's unnecessary to know a single thing that this movie doesn't tell you. Every Trek movie, every Trek episode is someone's first - and it damn well better entertain that new viewer first and foremost or the studio is fucked.
As an Italian American, should I be offended that they cast Andy Garcia (a Cuban native) as an Italian in The Godfather Part III? Was that racist?
Up to you really. James Caan and Marlon Brando aren't Italians either.
I don't think Khan was the greatest enemy of the original crew. The greatest enemy was James Kirk, who made mistakes that placed his crew in jeopardy twice. If he hadn't made those mistakes, Khan would have been easily defeated. He is really a rubbish villain.
I understand why audiences needed to be told that Khan was the greatest enemy faced by Kirk and his crew. I am not sure how many of the people watching the shows, especially overseas, had knowledge of the Classic Trek. If they had knowledge, it would be superficial - the characters (the crew and the ship) and some of the thematic elements.
As I get older, I am seeing bigger issues with Classic Trek than who plays what. For instance, as I am learning about NAZI Germany, I am reevaluating the Classic Trek and Modern Trek shows. Lenin wasn't fundamental to the overthrow of the Tsar - the October Revolution was in motion when he was sent by the Germans to Russia. Leon Trotsky played a greater role in the revolutionary coup; if Lenin had been assassinated, than Leon Trotsky, who was Lenin's opponent, might have become the face of Communism. If the lady from "The City on the Edge of Forever" had talked to FDR, she wouldn't have changed his mind. There were many peace and isolationist groups in the 1930s. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, these groups lost their influence and were marginalized.
NAZI Germany was managed by idiots. Hitler didn't value the Navy - at one point, late in the war, there were plans to scrap the Navy and use the scrap metal for tanks, their government wasn't even close to developing a nuclear bomb , and they considered the assembly line as an abomination of the capitalist world and built their equipment by hand and made changes individually, not in blocks. While the Allies were capable of buiding nearly 200,000 tanks, the Germans built less than 45,000 tanks. The German government put their money into big expensive projects that didn't work or were too late to the battlefield. I giggled when I saw Ju-87 Stukas attacking the Enterprise. The plane, which wasn't designed for this type of mission, was obsolete by 1944. One of their successors, the FW-190, was a superior product and was a threat to the end of the war. Finally, Germany would have attacked Soviet Union. Hitler was vehemently anti-slavic and considered the Soviets more of a threat than the Western Allies. For two years, the Soviet Union supplied Germany with valuable resources. Then, within hours of a supply train being sent to Germany, this nation launched Operation Barbarossa. The Battle of the Bulge was an attempt to relieve pressure on the Western Front, so that if Germany had succeeded, they would have contained the Western Allies and concentrated its assets agains the Soviets. (Germany wasn't interested in taking on America. They declared war on us because of treaty obligations with Japan. Many of the top staff couldn't locate Pearl Harbor on a map.)
Based on how poorly the Star Trek writers understand history and how history works, I think they should stick to sci-fi fantasy and totally forget about writing pseudo-historicals and alternative histories set in the past. Many of their best stories weren't of this type.
I understand why audiences needed to be told that Khan was the greatest enemy faced by Kirk and his crew. I am not sure how many of the people watching the shows, especially overseas, had knowledge of the Classic Trek. If they had knowledge, it would be superficial - the characters (the crew and the ship) and some of the thematic elements.
As I get older, I am seeing bigger issues with Classic Trek than who plays what. For instance, as I am learning about NAZI Germany, I am reevaluating the Classic Trek and Modern Trek shows. Lenin wasn't fundamental to the overthrow of the Tsar - the October Revolution was in motion when he was sent by the Germans to Russia. Leon Trotsky played a greater role in the revolutionary coup; if Lenin had been assassinated, than Leon Trotsky, who was Lenin's opponent, might have become the face of Communism. If the lady from "The City on the Edge of Forever" had talked to FDR, she wouldn't have changed his mind. There were many peace and isolationist groups in the 1930s. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, these groups lost their influence and were marginalized.
NAZI Germany was managed by idiots. Hitler didn't value the Navy - at one point, late in the war, there were plans to scrap the Navy and use the scrap metal for tanks, their government wasn't even close to developing a nuclear bomb , and they considered the assembly line as an abomination of the capitalist world and built their equipment by hand and made changes individually, not in blocks. While the Allies were capable of buiding nearly 200,000 tanks, the Germans built less than 45,000 tanks. The German government put their money into big expensive projects that didn't work or were too late to the battlefield. I giggled when I saw Ju-87 Stukas attacking the Enterprise. The plane, which wasn't designed for this type of mission, was obsolete by 1944. One of their successors, the FW-190, was a superior product and was a threat to the end of the war. Finally, Germany would have attacked Soviet Union. Hitler was vehemently anti-slavic and considered the Soviets more of a threat than the Western Allies. For two years, the Soviet Union supplied Germany with valuable resources. Then, within hours of a supply train being sent to Germany, this nation launched Operation Barbarossa. The Battle of the Bulge was an attempt to relieve pressure on the Western Front, so that if Germany had succeeded, they would have contained the Western Allies and concentrated its assets agains the Soviets. (Germany wasn't interested in taking on America. They declared war on us because of treaty obligations with Japan. Many of the top staff couldn't locate Pearl Harbor on a map.)
Based on how poorly the Star Trek writers understand history and how history works, I think they should stick to sci-fi fantasy and totally forget about writing pseudo-historicals and alternative histories set in the past. Many of their best stories weren't of this type.
Andy Garcia didn't change his accent either for the part though, so I think it's a good parallel. I just want to get Dennis' take on it since he likes to wave that flag. I am wondering if he draws lines somewhere or his opinion is truly absolute that this is something that is always racist.
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I suppose it depends on how far apart the character and the actor are.
So whitewashing the character (moreso) was really necessary to entertain new viewers?
I don't even believe that you believe that.
I mean, I hope we're all understanding that the complaint with whitewashing isn't that the resulting movies are terrible. It's that the constraining or ignoring of diversity isn't necessary to entertainment. Native American actors gained ground in Native American roles as opposed to guys like Henry Brandon in The Searchers, but that's not because Brandon was a bad actor or The Searchers a bad movie.
Ummm....they got a German to play a Latino in The Magnificent Seven....is that racist?
It's whitewashing, yes.
I mean, the question isn't about "Can we fanwank a justification not to have to talk about this." It's about there being limited roles for actors of colour in Hollywood as it is, which range of opportunities is further squeezed by whitewashing and by an apparently outmoded attitude which still believes (or wants to believe) that white male stars are necessary to commercial success. We can approach this question from a standpoint of "how can we best argue Khan's ethnicity is irrelevant and it was fine to cast him as a white guy" or from a standpoint of "the character of Khan presented a golden opportunity for more diverse casting, why wasn't this taken advantage of?" I obviously think the second question is the more interesting one; at any rate it's the point of the critque of whitewashing.
I mean, the question isn't about "Can we fanwank a justification not to have to talk about this." It's about there being limited roles for actors of colour in Hollywood as it is, which range of opportunities is further squeezed by whitewashing and by an apparently outmoded attitude which still believes (or wants to believe) that white male stars are necessary to commercial success. We can approach this question from a standpoint of "how can we best argue Khan's ethnicity is irrelevant and it was fine to cast him as a white guy" or from a standpoint of "the character of Khan presented a golden opportunity for more diverse casting, why wasn't this taken advantage of?" I obviously think the second question is the more interesting one; at any rate it's the point of the critque of whitewashing.
They also had Eurasian Russian playing an Cajun named "Chris Adams" and a Lithuanian-American playing an Irish-Mexican.
How would casting an actor such as Naveen Andrews in the role of Khan have affected the box office for STID?
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