Mola Rob
Sr Member
Pegg hates the prequels. Good man there.:thumbsup
Star Trek Into Darkness (Post-release)
- Thread starter Vivek
- Start date
Pegg hates the prequels. Good man there.:thumbsup
greatwazoo42
Master Member
Barring Darth Maul I'm not all that deep into them either.
Mola Rob
Sr Member
Good man. :thumbsup
Maul was cool if a bit depth challenged. Poor guy should have won at the end seeing as he had the higher ground.
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Alright Solo, I'm going to take this bit on. When you look at Khan's background and trying to find how that's relevant to the story, you're looking in the wrong places. His background isn't supposed to be important to Khan himself, but to a completely different character. Marla Mcgivers. It was her fascination with old Earth history and other Earth cultures that peaked her interest in Khan. So much so that, as mentioned previously, she even started to paint a Sikh which Khan found flattering. She was so enamored with his that she allowed him to take over the Enterprise. His background and ethnicity is important because that's what Mcgivers was into. In conclusion....
Bryancd said:
It does have meaning. And with that, I can put this argument to rest.
ghostryder
Legendary Member
Hehe. Robert Meyer Burnett had this to say on Twitter.
Robert Meyer Burnett said:
I don't drink, but I need to buy this guy a round.
Agreed, talentless hacks should drink together.
Zombie_61
Master Member
Technically, Star Trek Into Darkness is the reboot version of Space Seed; they just changed how the events played out.
This is a guy who loves Star Trek, made a film about Star Trek fans with William Shatner, was involved in the documentaries for some of the Collectors Edition DVDs of the original movies AND is currently involved with the special features on the TNG BluRay discs. You do not call this person a talentless hack when he's doing a better job at keeping Star Trek relevant than JJ Abrams is. And unlike JJ Abrams, Robert loves what he's doing because he loves Star Trek.
And just to be clear, I don't think JJ Abrams isn't a talentless hack. His mystery box is.
Solo4114
Master Member
I don't disagree with you. It pissed me off that Prince of Persia had Jake Gyllenhall cast as the lead when someone like Pej Vahdat would look the part, can act just as well, and can get just as buff. It sucks, but that's Hollywood.
So what?
You're fixated on a few lines of dialogue from a character who ISN'T Khan, and ONE reaction from Khan to a pretty girl who's behaving in a manner that makes it clear she's smitten with him (and hey, might be able to help him take over the ship! Bonus!) and...that's it. We've got his look, we've got a few lines of dialogue, and that's all we have about Khan the Indian Sikh who's played by a Mexican dude. And that's your reason to get your shorts in a twist about them casting a white British guy in a role with the same name and a vaguely similar backstory? Really? Get some perspective, man.
Neither the Montalban version nor the Cumberbatch version really do anything with Khan's ethnicity. It's not like he talks about his martial honor as a Sikh. It's not as if he's mortified that his hair is visible, or pissed that someone shaved his beard. It's irrelevant in Space Seed except for that one VERY minor point you address, it's even less relevant on TWOK, and it's TOTALLY irrelevant in STID.
Key factors about Khan:
- He's ruthless.
- He's brilliant.
- He's genetically engineered to be better than just about everyone else.
- He had a crew of other genetically engineered super people.
- He's a conqueror.
- He's manipulative.
- He was found asleep by someone in Starfleet and thawed out. Oops!
- He was ultimately defeated in the past, and wants to take over the world again.
Things that don't mean sod all about his character:
- He's Indian/Sikh.
- He has brown skin.
- He's a big Melville fan.
- He has a buddy name Joaquin who has FABULOUS hair.
- He's fond of showing off his chest, which is NOT a prosthetic.
Other things which may or may not be true about Khan and are also irrelevant:
- He has a lovely singing voice.
- He always ties his own bowtie; never a clip-on or pre-tied.
- He's lactose intolerant, but has a weakness for cheesecake. Mmmmmm.
- As a child, he had a pet parakeet named Henry Hotspur.
- Huge fan of Air Supply; his go-to karaoke song is "All Out Of Love," but he never gets to sing it because no one will duet with him.
- Totally regrets the spiked glove look from the 80s.
- Was a brutal dictator, but made the trains run on time.
- Loves dogs and children.
So, refresh my memory. Why again does it mean a ******* thing what the ethnicity of the character or the actor who plays him is? Answer: IT DOESN'T. It might've been a nice hat-tip for them to cast an Indian actor or an American or British actor of Indian descent in the role. But the fact that they didn't doesn't really matter because the character's ethnicity doesn't really matter.
Look, don't get me wrong. As I said above, it bugs me when Hollywood whitewashes stuff. But in this case, slavish devotion to a few lines of dialogue from ONE episode of the series, particularly set against the rest of that episode plus the events of an entire film, none of which really use his ethnicity seems...nitpicky in the extreme. It doesn't matter. To the extent that the villain even really represents Khan (as opposed to basically just being a manipulative super-warrior with the same name), the ethnicity doesn't matter in terms of accurately portraying the character.
Bingo.
Solo, I find details of a character, no matter how relevant or irrelevant they are to the story, to be important. If you were to strip all the details of a character that were not important to the story, well, you're going to end up with 2-dimensional stick figures.
When Khan was Khan, he was someone who was more than just a strong human who could break a phaser with his bare hands. He was a ruler and a dreamer. He was not some evil soldier who wanted to rid the world of lesser beings (ty STID), he was someone who was convinced that his idea of world order was the best thing for the humanity. When history was written of him, and by the ones who defeated him no less, there were no massacres under his rule and started no wars until war was waged on him. He was not a savage that, as Spock Prime described in STID, someone who would kill every member of the crew without hesitation.
Actually, it's not a more apt comparison because Space Seed was not about a Khan seeking vengeance. In Space Seed, the Enterprise crew were the ones to discover and awake Khan. In STID, they were not. In TWOK, Khan explains through exposition how he and his crew were found by the Enterprise, just as Khan explains through exposition how he and his crew were found by Admiral Marcus. TWOK's Khan was on a quest of vengeance. STID's Khan was on a quest of vengeance. TWOK's Khan was a crazed madman who killed mercilessly. STID's Khan was a crazed madman who killed mercilessly. Space Seed's Khan was NOT.
There's more TWOK in STID than there is Space Seed.
When Khan was Khan, he was someone who was more than just a strong human who could break a phaser with his bare hands. He was a ruler and a dreamer. He was not some evil soldier who wanted to rid the world of lesser beings (ty STID), he was someone who was convinced that his idea of world order was the best thing for the humanity. When history was written of him, and by the ones who defeated him no less, there were no massacres under his rule and started no wars until war was waged on him. He was not a savage that, as Spock Prime described in STID, someone who would kill every member of the crew without hesitation.
jlee562 said:
Actually, it's not a more apt comparison because Space Seed was not about a Khan seeking vengeance. In Space Seed, the Enterprise crew were the ones to discover and awake Khan. In STID, they were not. In TWOK, Khan explains through exposition how he and his crew were found by the Enterprise, just as Khan explains through exposition how he and his crew were found by Admiral Marcus. TWOK's Khan was on a quest of vengeance. STID's Khan was on a quest of vengeance. TWOK's Khan was a crazed madman who killed mercilessly. STID's Khan was a crazed madman who killed mercilessly. Space Seed's Khan was NOT.
There's more TWOK in STID than there is Space Seed.
Really?! The last two films have grossed over $1B and have need widely well received both critically and from the film going public yet this guy has done more then JJ to keep Trek relevant? Even for you this is an absurd observation. And I love Simon Pegg and would much rather have a drink with him.
840 million is not more than one billion Dollars Bryancd, and two stories over the span of four years is not my idea of keeping Star Trek relevant in today's media heavy world. For a film like STID to cover the exact same territory and end the exact same way as the last Star Trek film did is not going to do either film any favors in the long run. In the end, all you'll have is a movie that made money, and an audience that was more than willing to put both in the bins.
You know what other movie made almost as much as these two Star Trek movies combined? 2012. Anyone still talking about that movie?
Solo4114
Master Member
Except I didn't suggest anything of the sort and I have no idea why you'd claim as much. What I said was that his ethnicity is irrelevant. There are other much more relevant qualities about the character which are essential to his portrayal. The fact that he is (or at least is supposed to be) a Sikh? Not one of 'em. Ergo, your gripe about casting Cumberbatch in the role is really just nitpicking.
Now, you want to talk about how Cumberbatch's portrayal had other deficiencies (or how the writing didn't really do much to translate Khan's personality over from the old stuff to the new), ok, go for it. Your point about Montalban's passion, for example, and how Cumberbatch's more subdued portrayal was really lacking in that respect. It's been a bit since I saw Space Seed, but I don't recall Khan being a benevolent guy who just wanted to be left alone -- I thought he was supposed to be a conqueror who wanted to dominate the globe along with his other supermen buddies. But whatever. That's not really the point here, unless your point is far more wide ranging than the simple issue of casting that it seemed to start off as. But complaining about why they cast a white guy to play this OBVIOUSLY super-ethnic role (but apparently it's ok to cast a Mexican guy in "brownface," 'cause, hey, brown people are all brown or something?), that's a bit of a reach. Khan isn't super ethnic. His ethnicity isn't really a big deal in any of the material we have -- old or new -- so casting a white dude isn't suddenly going to miss some essential element of his character.
Personally, I think they could've simply named Cumberbatch's character something else, and had him be alluded to as one of the architects of the Eugenics Wars (which, given when Nero showed up, would still have happened), and simply done a passing reference to "Khan Noonien Singh was one of his allies in the attempt at global domination."). That'd give the audience the familiarity with his backstory, while freeing the character up to pretty much be exactly who he was. Except, you know, no moment where one of the two leads yells "KHAAAAAAAAN."
greatwazoo42
Master Member
This made me thankful I didn't have a mouthful of coffee at the time of reading otherwise I'd be cleaning my monitor, keyboard and probably the wall behind right now and also made my day. Thank you very much!
This made me thankful I didn't have a mouthful of coffee at the time of reading otherwise I'd be cleaning my monitor, keyboard and probably the wall behind right now and also made my day. Thank you very much!
X2, inspired.
Solo4114
Master Member
This made me thankful I didn't have a mouthful of coffee at the time of reading otherwise I'd be cleaning my monitor, keyboard and probably the wall behind right now and also made my day. Thank you very much!
X2, inspired.
Happy to be of service.
Happy to be of service.
Putting a smile on my face while blowing The Trolls argument all to hell= Winning.
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