Unneeded for Marla McGivers? Or some of the others who died on Ceti Alpha V? It was something the Into Darkness people made up to have their cake with Kirk's death but to then quickly bring him back that had no precedent in what we had seen before with Prime Khan, or even the Augments on Enterprise. It was a cheap quick fix solution that weakened the story.
Would Into Darkness have been a better film if Khan was not the villain?
- Thread starter The Overlord
- Start date
Since we don't know how Marla died, we don't know that blood, magical or otherwise, would have been in any way effective at restoring her.
Also, I do believe that while genocide may not have been part of Khan's plan, it would have eventually ensued. I think non-Augmented individuals would have been marginalized and eventually wiped out through attrition if nothing else.
Also, I do believe that while genocide may not have been part of Khan's plan, it would have eventually ensued. I think non-Augmented individuals would have been marginalized and eventually wiped out through attrition if nothing else.
And Joaquin Phoenix's Joker is in no way the same as Health Ledger's or Jack Nicholson's. If they're all The Joker, Cumby is Khan Noonien Singh just the same.
Those different takes on the Joker are not necessarily even the same character, unlike Cumberbatch who was playing the same character that Montalban did. Granted, the alternate reality allowed for changes, however, the Into Darkness writers changed Khan's motivations/behavior from the Eugenics War era, which should not have been touched. Everything before ST: Enterprise (that we had seen before or been mentioned before in live-action) was still canon in the Kelvin reality. So it's not the same thing as different actors playing say Superman, Batman, Joker, etc. Exceptions here are Brandon Routh who was playing the same Superman that Christopher Reeve did, and arguably Val Kilmer and George Clooney who were playing the same Batman that Michael Keaton did. But Bale, Affleck, Cavill, and then Mazouz, Glen, Hoechlin, Welling, and Cain are not playing different takes on their respective characters.
Cumberbatch's Khan was supposed to have the same history as Montalban's Khan. Further, while I was okay with some personality changes, the cold Cumberbatch approach did not mesh well with the charming, charismatic Montalban-Khan.
To be fair here, I thought the Cumberbatch-Khan felt like a mash-up of "Space Seed" and "TWOK", but still it didn't feel like Khan to me. There was no charm in Cumberbatch's Khan. It would've been better if they had gotten Javier Bardem.
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You're right about McGivers. We don't know how she died, or the others. But it seems strange to me that this was never explored, if it existed in the Prime Universe. And it's not something even addressed on Enterprise either. Or DS9 with Bashir and the Jack Pack either.
I also agree with you that genocide might have eventually happened under Khan, but based on how he was described as the 'best of the tyrants' that's not what he was necessarily about at the time he was defeated and escaped Earth. Into Darkness ignored that history, and just turned him more into a run-of-the-mill genocidal madman.
But Khan is not analogous to the Joker? Kirk is not Batman. Khan is Khan, and Joker is Joker, they have different modus operandi and different goals. Joker is a smart psychopathic killer who thinks Batman is a good enough challenge. Khan is a dictator who keeps losing. He is Star Trek's fear of Napoleon coming back, or Hitler, or Stalin, or Saddam, an untied loose end from a prior time.
Revenge, honestly, always felt a little beneath this Superman, Kirk is his enemy because Kirk is the one who found him and got in his way, not because he is Kirk or he lost his wife because of being exiled by Kirk; or going after Marcus for being used to make super-duper mean weapons. Kirk is only a problem because Kirk has two hundred years of tech on Khan and a loyal crew and up-to-date thinking, but to Khan he's just one captain to fight against, maybe get some experience against, if he's going to take on the rest of the modern world. Khan should always be thinking bigger, aiming higher. To Kirk as well, Khan is another threat, to Khan, Kirk is a road bump.
Khan's time on Ceti Alpha V is explored in the novels...and I believe also in the comics. Yeah...yeah...not canon... Not sure why Marla's death would have been brought up on any of the other series though?
It may be that genocide was essentially an ultimate goal or would have been an ultimate result of any of the tyrants, and Khan may have just been 'the best' in that he wouldn't outright slaughter the non-Augments. This is explored in one of the Myriad Universe stories.
She was killed by the ceti eels, IIRC. Platelets won't help against a squished brain
Only few experts like Soong would probably know in ENT. Bashir and his friends weren't augments like Khan.
He's a character interpreted in different ways by different actors. Same thing.
His motive was to rescue his people, a situation Prime Khan was never in.
And for what it's worth, Spock's reference to Khan's final solution was likely a reference to @Greg Cox's Eugenics Wars novels, which ended in Khan planning genocide prior to being exiled to space. Roberto Orci posted repeatedly that he was reading the books during the development of Into Darkness.
I disagree. McCoy notes that there is something about him that refuses to die. Both Khan and McCoy in Into Darkness craft a serum based upon it with equipment. Also, Khan states that several of his own people died due to the Ceti eels. So, either the variation in Khan's blood was unique, or the blood didn't help.
I'm going by the tempered praise that Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty had for Khan in "Space Seed". And they didn't say anything about Khan being genocidal, certainly tyrannical, but that he wasn't the same kind of tyrant that the Eugenics War era Cumberbatch Khan was described as being.
It's okay to disagree of course, however I see it differently. I see it as the Into Darkness writers pulling something out of their behinds to have a major 'death' and then reverse it. But going back to Prime Trek, there's no precedent for the magic blood in any of the other augments in Prime Trek. Certainly Khan was special among augments but that seems to be not because of his blood but because of his charisma and intelligence. Granted, Khan's blood could've been special as well, but there's no precedent for it in Prime Trek, so why introduce it in the alternate reality? If Khan's blood had been changed due to whatever Marcus had subjected him to, then no problem, but it's never explained. We are just supposed to go with it.
The changes in Khan's behavior wrought by his circumstances in Into Darkness are not an issue for me, but the changes to his motivation or behavior prior to be reawakened are. That should not have been changed. Perhaps Orci was making a nod to the novels, and if so, that's great. I wish more Trek creators would look to the novels and comics, but I, like the vast majority of people, did not read those novels. (I did read the Ruling in Hell comic miniseries though). And so, going off of "Space Seed" and "TWOK" seeing Cumberbatch's cold take on the character didn't jibe with this being the same character Montalban played, and then when you added the revisionist motivation to his actions, it was another reason I didn't buy him as Khan. If anything, it turned him into the Trek version of Michael Shannon's Zod. The Stamp-Zod was a conqueror, similar to Montalban-Khan, whereas they turned Shannon-Zod genocidal. I didn't have as much of a problem with that because these are two different versions of the character, and not supposed to be the same person.
One could say that Cumberbatch's Khan was pressed for time and that's why he wasn't so charming. He was concerned about his people, and as I wrote before, that's why I felt that he was a mix of "Space Seed" and the more desperate, deranged Khan in "TWOK". Cumberbatch, good actor, but the wrong one to play this role. Though I didn't think Benecio Del Toro would've worked either, he might have been a bit better when it came to having charisma.
No one analyzed the regenerative abilities of his platelets in prime.
Cumberbatch could have just been John Harrison or a different Augment, and they could have panned over to a computer-generated image of Ricardo Moltanban in the cryochamber at the end or in a post credits scene. Would have saved the whole movie for me, and they could have used Khan again down the line.
I don’t see why Bones would ignore that when doing a check up on Khan in the prime universe. And if Bones noticed this in prime Khan, surely he'd send it to Starfleet Medical for further research.
I don’t see why Bones would ignore that when doing a check up on Khan in the prime universe. And if Bones noticed this in prime Khan, surely he'd send it to Starfleet Medical for further research.
Fair enough. I don't think it requires a full explanation, but that's largely because I don't see it as a huge magical thing. Blood therapy is a real thing and more believable, to me.
But, I'll grant that it would have done better if Harrison had just been Harrison. If Marcus had decided to be inspired by Khan (like Weller's character in ENT) and was genetically engineering people for soldiers to fight against the Klingons. Augmented blood happens to be a side effect.
I appreciate the disagreement point, but I think that the augmented blood is an acceptable extrapolation from Space Seed dialog. Mileage, etc.
It is something Abrahams loves. Like in The Rise of Skywalker, a couple of characters apears to have died and then they are not or are resurrected
