Would Into Darkness have been a better film if Khan was not the villain?

[Kor]

Nobody ever said Khan was Indian, to be sure. A Sikh, yes - if we are to trust Lt McGivers, who would have been motivated to deceive our heroes. Her claim of "probably a Sikh" is never ever repeated elsewhere in Trek...

That Cumberbatch and Montalban look nothing alike is the source of concern here (dodged by "Agent Harrison must have worn three dozen faces on his missions"), not any firm knowledge of who Khan must or must not be.

Timo Saloniemi

Well, McGivers' exact words were, "From the northern India area, I'd guess... probably a Sikh." So yes, she assumes he is Indian. And by extension, we as the audience are supposed to take this dialog at face value and assume the same thing.

As far as his particular ethno-religious background, he has the longer hair, but doesn't have other identifiable traditional Sikh accoutrements such as turban, beard, and metal bracelet. So her additional assumption about him "probably" being a Sikh, based on looking at him in the sleeping chamber for five seconds, seems to be a stretch from a real-world perspective. We do find out later that he has the name Singh. But, while all male Sikh initiates have the surname Singh, there are also non-Sikhs who have the name.

Of course, it was basically a throwaway line to give the character an "exotic" air for the typical American casual viewing audience of the day, who was not sitting there with a pile of reference materials (or the internet at their fingertips) ready to fact-check and nitpick stuff like this like we are doing fifty years later.

Kor

 

[valkyrie013]

I liked Benidict Cucumber's Khan, was the best villian in the Kelvin trilogy.. (on second thought.. thats not saying much.. Nero completly sucked, and Idris was wasted on that charactrer..)
Just saying that I'm not into diversity hire to just fill a quota or etc. but if the previous material (book, tv, comic) has that character as i minority ( well there are over 1 billion Indians.. Not quite a minority.. but i digress..) that one should try to cast along those lines. Given that McGivers said Indian, the Sihk thing would just be added fluff, that the movie should try to find an Indian actor for the part. ( I am big into giving more oportunities to non american minorities.. Asians speicificly. )

But all this is just a bunch of hot air.. movie was 7 years ago

 

[fireproof78]

But all this is just a bunch of hot air.. movie was 7 years ago

Have you met Star Trek fans? We discuss everything for 50 years!

 

[Tenacity]

Well, McGivers' exact words were, "From the northern India area, I'd guess... probably a Sikh."

Assuming she had the faintest idea what she was talking about. Khan obviously lacks a large beard if nothing else.

 

[DonIago]

...we do have a cut-off though, right? "Oh, I'm sorry, that issue is now 51 years old; further discussion of it is prohibited."

 

[M'Sharak]

Assuming she had the faintest idea what she was talking about. Khan obviously lacks a large beard if nothing else.

Not so much "large" as "untrimmed".

The traditional Sikh prohibition against cutting hair means that the ends of the beard and moustaches are gathered up and coiled underneath the turban, along with the rest of the head hair.

Someone displaying a large, bushy beard may be doing so in accordance with their cultural / religious tenets, but that person will most likely not be a Sikh.

 

[fireproof78]

...we do have a cut-off though, right? "Oh, I'm sorry, that issue is now 51 years old; further discussion of it is prohibited."

We don't know. It's never happened before

 

[Timo]

Assuming she had the faintest idea what she was talking about. Khan obviously lacks a large beard if nothing else.

She might have been misleading her boss, already intending to elope with the hunk and not wanting to complicate this with the revelation that he was Napoleon. But if so, why hit so close to the mark? Khan Singh was said to have ruled "From Asia through the Middle East". Declare him an obvious Apache or something instead. Although no doubt there were Apache Augments in existence, too...

She might have been mistaken, too. But again, Khan did appear to have ruled India.

The opposite in fact appears likely. What about this guy would suggest a northern Indian and Sikh identity, besides the (perhaps obvious to her) fact that he was Khan Singh? McGivers was dubbed simply "historian", but if that is actually the same as Palamas' "archaeology&anthropology", perhaps she had human phenotypes down pat, including advanced future knowledge not available to us ("this arching of the nostril is statistically almost unique to Kashmir, due to the b32x gene").

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kor]

Assuming she had the faintest idea what she was talking about. Khan obviously lacks a large beard if nothing else.

I did note the lack of identifiable visual markers of the Sikh religion a little further down in my post.

Kor

 

[valkyrie013]

Greg Cox's Khan books were quite good, and laid out what happened, and that Khan was just 1 of a Diverse set of kids, all nationalities.. probably because the leaders of the thing were looking to rule the world..
So if they Really wanted to use Mr Cucumber, they could have wiggled a way in, most without him being Khan, a Lieutenant, or maybe even an adversary..
What might have been interesting is that They find the Botany Bay, and Admiral Buckaroo could know history and seen that they were genetically engineered, and not have waken them but taken some DNA and made his own augments, and Mr Cucumber be a "New Breed" hell maybe He is the admiral that found him and eliminate Buckaroo Banzai from the movie, but still have him as Marcus's Papa,
But superior drive, ambition etc again.. so it kind of goes like the movie with them eleminating the admiralty, and Kirk and Co. doing an investigation, eventually finding Khan in his meat locker and wake him up, and he tells kirk of the new augments, and that they augment the admiral, make him younger fitter faster, more insane etc., and they try to eliminate any oposition in Starfleet, and then have a fleet and go kill klingons, Kirk finds a few ships, and with Khan's augments they fly out to Klingon space, and save the klingons from the new augments, With Carol Marcus after she develops a prototype genisis device that the Admiral intends to test out on Qonos.. maybe show Gorkon, or Commander Kruge.. then of course Khan betrays Kirk, and the old augments take off in there ship.. the Reliant.. for greener pastures..

 

[Khan 2.0]

Greg Cox's Khan books were quite good, and laid out what happened, and that Khan was just 1 of a Diverse set of kids, all nationalities.. probably because the leaders of the thing were looking to rule the world..
So if they Really wanted to use Mr Cucumber, they could have wiggled a way in, most without him being Khan, a Lieutenant, or maybe even an adversary..
What might have been interesting is that They find the Botany Bay, and Admiral Buckaroo could know history and seen that they were genetically engineered, and not have waken them but taken some DNA and made his own augments, and Mr Cucumber be a "New Breed" hell maybe He is the admiral that found him and eliminate Buckaroo Banzai from the movie, but still have him as Marcus's Papa,
But superior drive, ambition etc again.. so it kind of goes like the movie with them eleminating the admiralty, and Kirk and Co. doing an investigation, eventually finding Khan in his meat locker and wake him up, and he tells kirk of the new augments, and that they augment the admiral, make him younger fitter faster, more insane etc., and they try to eliminate any oposition in Starfleet, and then have a fleet and go kill klingons, Kirk finds a few ships, and with Khan's augments they fly out to Klingon space, and save the klingons from the new augments, With Carol Marcus after she develops a prototype genisis device that the Admiral intends to test out on Qonos.. maybe show Gorkon, or Commander Kruge.. then of course Khan betrays Kirk, and the old augments take off in there ship.. the Reliant.. for greener pastures..

That makes alot more sense than the movie.. like had STID gone through more rewrites in light of using 'cucumber' (actually might as well have delayed it couple more years to get it right, hired bardem as khan, and released it in 2016 for the 50th )

 

[fireproof78]

Although it is an interesting story, I would prefer that Admiral Marcus just be making his own augments to fight Klingons, and no name dropping of Genesis, Reliant, etc.

 

[Kor]

Perhaps they could have fit in Arik Soong's additionally augmented augments somehow as well, to weave various threads of Trek continuity together into one big, beautiful, all-encompassing tapestry.

Kor

 

[NCC-73515]

^^And understandably so, in-universe. If you engineer somebody to dominate the world (for you, supposedly), you don't neglect ethnicity - you engineer that to be either attractive or then at least not offensive to the masses your champion is supposed to lead...

Overall, Khan's supposedly diverse crew is quite an exercise in inoffensiveness. We fail to see a single identifiably "Oriental" or "Latin" type as specified by Scotty. Not a single black guy or gal there, either. Himmler would rub his hands in glee with this all-Aryan selection... But OTOH so would a Hollywood executive.

Timo Saloniemi

I don't get it - do you think there are "attractive" and "offensive" types of ethnicity?

 

[Timo]

Well, obviously - if you want to lead the Klu Klux Klan, you absolutely need to be shining white, and the Panthers will place the opposite entry requirement, without exceptions. (Which is simple as such, but if you want to lead India against Pakistan or vice versa, you need to pick your ethnic particulars with considerable care.)

"Ethnicity" exists as a concept exactly because it is attractive/offensive - it would not warrant even a footnote in anthropology textbooks if not for its central role as an excuse for conflict and mayhem. It is all about us vs. them, and indeed basically solely about us vs. them.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Charles Phipps]

I think so.

I think that Khan distracted from the conspiracy thriller plot that was fine on its own. I mean it's not a DEEP one, being basically just the "False Flag Operation/Spanish Civil War" one but it's one that worked in the Winter Soldier.

 

[Lance]

In short: yes. Yes, it would be a better movie if Khan were not the villain.

On some levels it barely matters (Bananadick Cucumbersnatch barely seems to be playing Khan Noonian Soong anyway, even in the finished film), but I'd say that making him explicitly *the* Khan, presumably for name recognition purposes, was one of the bigger mistakes the film-makers made, as it makes the movie bigger stakes than it's capable of actually meeting with that poor script. Him being Khan takes the audience out of the movie, because even if we are going along with it, there's a wee itch in the back of our brains constantly telling us, yeah, right, this guy is Khan? And we're talking about one of Star Trek's most iconic adversaries, both in-universe and out, so simply revealing that he's Khan sets up the movie against what is already a mass popular consensus. They shot themselves in the foot. Conversely, the movie works perfectly fine all the way up until the reveal. John Harrison the special agent gone bad is perfectly compelling on it's own, and the mystery surrounding his origins etc is nicely conveyed... right up til that point where we all collectively say, "Oh, it's Khan", and the movie unravels.

IMHO.

 

[Smellmet]

In short: yes. Yes, it would be a better movie if Khan were not the villain.

On some levels it barely matters (Bananadick Cucumbersnatch barely seems to be playing Khan Noonian Soong anyway, even in the finished film), but I'd say that making him explicitly *the* Khan, presumably for name recognition purposes, was one of the bigger mistakes the film-makers made, as it makes the movie bigger stakes than it's capable of actually meeting with that poor script. Him being Khan takes the audience out of the movie, because even if we are going along with it, there's a wee itch in the back of our brains constantly telling us, yeah, right, this guy is Khan? And we're talking about one of Star Trek's most iconic adversaries, both in-universe and out, so simply revealing that he's Khan sets up the movie against what is already a mass popular consensus. They shot themselves in the foot. Conversely, the movie works perfectly fine all the way up until the reveal. John Harrison the special agent gone bad is perfectly compelling on it's own, and the mystery surrounding his origins etc is nicely conveyed... right up til that point where we all collectively say, "Oh, it's Khan", and the movie unravels.

IMHO.

The appreciation of fanwank by myself means I'm kind of glad he was Khan, but you and others all make valid points.

 

[Khan 2.0]

what if when the 'my name .. is khan!' reveal happened Cumberbatch ripped his face off Mission Impossible style to reveal CG 1966 Montalban and then had the rest of the movie with CG *real* Khan (complete with classic Montalban voice)

 

[Smellmet]

what if when the 'my name .. is khan!' reveal happened Cumberbatch ripped his face off Mission Impossible style to reveal CG 1966 Montalban and then had the rest of the movie with CG *real* Khan (complete with classic Montalban voice)

It's a bit... Scooby Do.