Star Trek: Into Darkness

[Deledrius]

Fine though an actor Cumberbatch is, that wasn't the sort of role suited for him. Think they cast him just because they could, and he was a "name" for box office. Not actually for being the best actor for that part. They were as well making him Gary Mitchell, and going with a variation of how all that played out.

Given how they had [url=http://i.imgur.com/G033d.jpg]Carol Marcus be a perfect image of Elizabeth Dehner[/url], I still can't believe the connection to Mitchell wasn't intentional. I firmly believe the movie would have been better if Cumberbatch had been playing John Harrison all along, and not Khan. They've apparently even admitted that they wrote the story about a non-Khan character and then rewrote him into it later; they would have been better off making him someone else in the end.

[CharlesPhipps]

The story works much better without Kahn, IMHO.

Just keep him as random evil Section 31 agent and have a twist that he's actually trying to prevent a war with the Klingons being organized by Admiral Marcus.

Save Khan for something else and actually get him portrayed by a actor of the character's ethnicity.

[Karha of Honor]

The story works much better without Kahn, IMHO.

Just keep him as random evil Section 31 agent and have a twist that he's actually trying to prevent a war with the Klingons being organized by Admiral Marcus.

Save Khan for something else and actually get him portrayed by a actor of the character's ethnicity.

Why would the last sentence be important?

[CharlesPhipps]

Why would the last sentence be important?

Because I think Khan played by an Indian or South Asian actor would be better for a character that is supposed to be a Sikh. Ricardo did an amazing job but I feel like they should cast a character to their ethnicity or vice versa. I wouldn't support a white Ben Sisko either.

[Nealithi]

The story works much better without Kahn, IMHO.

Just keep him as random evil Section 31 agent and have a twist that he's actually trying to prevent a war with the Klingons being organized by Admiral Marcus.

Save Khan for something else and actually get him portrayed by a actor of the character's ethnicity.

Why would the last sentence be important?

And it sidesteps the accusations of white washing. By well, not.

[Nealithi]

The story works much better without Kahn, IMHO.

Just keep him as random evil Section 31 agent and have a twist that he's actually trying to prevent a war with the Klingons being organized by Admiral Marcus.

This statement reminds me of Chuck's analysis that the Duras sisters brought nothing to the table any villain could in Generations.

What does Khan's involvement actually bring to the story itself? His motivation seems decent. But the hiding his people in the torpedoes seems weak. And his retreat to Qo'nos seems like he was working for admiral Marcus. Setting up Enterprise and starting the war. What does his augment abilities give? He is great in hand to hand. But most of it felt like James Bond super agent than super man. His people are just a prop to motivate him. His life restoring blood? That felt like deus ex machina.

Okay simple exercise. Let's write him out as you suggested. John Harrison offers to aid a family save their daughter. Instead of his blood, he opens a case that in small letters can be seen 'Genesis'. Using the small matter in a vial the girl is restored. The bomb distraction allows him to steal another case and flee. Using an emergency transporter he gets off Earth to an orbiting ship and rigs an unknown tube to a transporter and sets it up for transwarp beaming. Letting him get to Qo'nos
Change the long range torpedoes to have an unstable core. Making them WMD's that violently rewrite areas they hit. Carol Marcus wondering what her father was doing discovers the warheads were taken from a medical theorem she had been postulating. And her own father weaponized it. Harrison has been trying to expose this. But long term exposure has been driving him mad. And bolstering some of his training so he can recover from stun blasts quicker. You can keep the Kirk sacrifice and Spock chase. Carol goes to work with McCoy to use the last of the Genesis material on hand to restore Kirk. While Uhura has to keep Spock from killing Harrison so the radiation in him is not discharged on his death and damages Star Fleet headquarters and the city.
Final moments you have Kirk and Carol Marcus saying good-byes as she is going back to study the effects. Perhaps explore the terraforming properties.

Okay wrote out Khan, and altered the phlebtonium macguffin. Took about fifteen minutes. (I type slow.) Thoughts?

[CharlesPhipps]

I think the story becomes a great deal less complicated and more streamlined.

Yes, it's still, "9/11 Truther" but you know what, False Flag Operations aren't a bad premise for a Star Trek story.

I'd enjoy it more.

Genesis may a bit too much continuity, though.

[Admiral X]

i would take out Kirk's death altogether. Restoring him right afterwards makes his death completely pointless and basically just there for melodrama.

[CharlesPhipps]

Weirdly, there was a thing I would have liked to have explored me if they actually did do a Khan reboot and that's the fact that Khan actually makes an interesting foil for SPOCK as well as Kirk. Khan represents the idea of a ubermensch that is actually every bit as superior as various assholes throughout history have claimed to be. He is stronger, smarter, faster, more aggressive, and so on. A superhuman being that claims this gives him the right to rule.

Spock is every one of those things as well. Vulcans are every bit as superior to humans as the Augments plus have psychic powers too but they choose to consider themselves no more fit to rule than any other species and prefer to work in cooperation with other races (Romulans, Logic Extremists, and the High Command aside). It's why I liked Spock beating the crap out of Khan in the movie.

Spock is a living challenge to Khan's entire worldview.

[Admiral X]

Unfortunately in doing so, they destroyed Spock's character. One of the biggest failings of Abrams Trek is that the people making it didn't seem to understand that they were ruining one of the things that made Spock the icon that he is by making him practically human.