Telling clue: Anyone still insisting, at this late date, that the movie is a ripoff of "The Wrath of Khan" has never seen more of it than a single 2-minute excerpt (if even that much.)
Or maybe this is revisionist history, since its clear that they took Spock’s sacrifice and Kirk emotional outburst from TWOK. And intended to further suggest that this was their take on TWOK by including Khan and Carol Marcus as characters. They even had a space battle where the Enterprise battles a Federation vessel, even though the vessel in ID was unregistered. TWOK was blatantly the inspiration for this film.
At the end of the day, its clear that Khan – particularly the writing for him - really is the weak link of the film. All the weak parts of ID involved Khan.
Rewatching Khan talk to the dad of the sick girl at the beginning of the film further highlighted this weak writing. Khan speaks to the distressed, desperate dad. He then takes all day to draw his own blood and store a vial of it in a container with an explosive device presumably stolen from Section31. Why did it take Khan all day to draw his own blood? It doesn’t even take all day for someone to drawn their own blood now! And if he didn’t take all day, then what was he doing with his free time and why was he taking his sweet time to deliver his magic blood to the family?
Then there is the reveal that he is in fact Khan instead of remaining as the more interesting John Harrison, and that Khan just goes along with being the villain, even though its much more ambiguous this time around that he himself is the villain. Admiral Marcus is the clear villain of the film and once he dies, Khan seamlessly takes the mantle. He doesn’t even point out that Kirk betrays him in the Vengeance. He just goes with it. Its around this point that the movie completely falls apart. Before then, it was a strong film.
And his magic blood; the issue is not because blood therapy isn’t real, but what it implies about Khan in the prime universe and all the research that could have been done in Starfleet Medical on it. There are a lot of red shirt deaths that could be undone. The death of Scotty’s nephew could be undone. Tasha Yar’s death could have been undone. Prime timeline Kirk’s death in GEN could be undone, as could Joe Carey's in VOY. Research the properties of Khan’s blood, and the Federation could make blood that resurrects Spock without the Genesis planet or Jadzia Dax or K’mpec. A Federation rival could make their own version of Khan's magic blood and revive Duras, Gowron or Shinzon. Give it to a time traveller, or allow it to be used as a weapon in the Temporal Cold War, and a bunch of historical figures that died have their deaths reverse and screws with the timeline in general. Even someone like Edith Keeler or Gabriel Bell could get revived thanks to Khan’s blood. Why not go back in time to earlier in the film and save Pike’s life with it? Or the first Kelvin film to save Robau? Theoretically, old age can be conquered too, so someone like Archer could live for centuries. Maybe that’s why Archer’s still around in ST’09. And let’s not get into how it affects the entire series of Picard. This revelation regarding Khan’s blood is timeline breaking and much more significant than how its played in the film.
The only time Khan is written strongly is in those series of Disruption videos to hype up ID.
Imagine if they had saved this as dialogue in the film! It works for both John Harrison and Khan.
No one had complaints about Admiral Marcus. No one had complaints about Carol Marcus aside from her underwear scene, of which I wasn’t one of those critics. If they had left the shower scene with Khan in the film, I would have been fine with that too. There were some complaints of how the Klingons looked when they took their helmets off, particular that they were wearing jewelry. But no one complained that they had ridges at all.
Everything boils down to turning the film into a retread of Khan and TWOK. We learn nothing about his childhood in India prior to the Eugenics Wars – that is left in the Khan comics. We don’t see him struggle to remember that his real identity is Khan either while being John Harrison – that too is left in the comics. And they disregard John Harrison has an interesting character on his own, and leave his planned backstory of being one of the survivors on Tarsus IV in the Kelvinverse on a Star Trek app. Even though it would have made for a great role reversal having witness the disaster on Tarsus IV shaping the man John Harrison becomes instead of shaping Kirk.
And its not like Cumberbatch did a terrible job playing Khan. But if Cumberbatch was playing another character he is famous for playing, Dr Strange, or a wizard based off of Dr. Strange in the film, it would have made for a much more interesting and fun film to watch. And would have showed that the reboot films are committed to fresh ideas.
Ignore everything about Khan after the reveal midway through the movie, and it’s a strong movie with a good soundtrack to it.