Amph JJ Abrams' Star Trek Into Darkness

My discussion of this film will not be complete until I get a chance to hear you complain about it in person, though, Evan. And bring First Contact!

 

QFT.

 

On Khan's ethnicity:
He's a genetically enhanced superman from the eugenics wars in the 1990s. You must remember, we rounded up all the supermen and blasted them into outer space in an interstellar spaceship. It was in all the papers.

On the box office:
Sequels are generally expected to make less money than their originals; diminishing returns are part of the business plan. Taking $5 less in its opening is really no big deal. As far as I can tell, it's made more money than any Trek film except Trek 2009, so if it stops selling tickets right this minute it will still turn a profit.

Like Star Wars, Trek has a built in fan base of millions who will buy the DVDs - not just forum lurking obsessives but general film fans too - and you can bet that the marketing people will think of ways to sell the same product in a dozen different ways with limited edition box sets. I doubt that any of the Star Trek films have actually lost money after factoring home rentals and video sales (even Nemesis).

I just checked IMDB - STID is still playing at 31 cinemas near me. It should do okay.

 

Sure, but it was totally fine for him to play the son of the Hindu Raja of Bundelkund (descendant of Sultan Fateh Ali Tipu of the Kingdom of Mysore), Prince Dakkar (aka Captain Nemo) in 2005's Mysterious Island.

He's like Sean Connery, he can play any nationality, race, creed or colour exactly the same.

 

JoinTheSchwarz is going to **** you up for that.

 

Why does one country in Europe get to declare itself not white. Huh? Huh? They interbred with all the same cousins everyone else did WHY DOES SPAIN HAVE TO BE SUCH A WEIRDO?

 

I don't think Armenians call themselves white... give it a try, though. Cal Varouj a white man.

 

Yeah, don't call Caucasians white.

 

It may have to do with the fact that the Iberic Peninsula was occupied, to lesser or greater extent, by the Moors during about 800 years, and that the city of Cordoba was a cultural and scientific center during that time, playing an important part in the transmission and preservation of knowledge in the Middle Ages... Which, of course, has almost no bearing on how Spanish people see themselves nowadays, as, no matter how swarthy - or pale - of complexion, more than 80% of them declare themselves to be Catholics, and, the economic crisis notwithstanding, they still staunchly consider themselves European.

Cheers,
Lauré

 

God, I love derailing threads.

 

Who signs their post anymore?

 

It's not the Moors, it's the Moops.

 

I thought the reason Khan went from a Sikh to Cumberbatch was because Marcus and Section 31 gave him plastic surgery and a new identity? I mean if we found Joe Stalin frozen and needed him to build nukes you think we could just call him Chad and let him be our top CIA agent and expect no one to notice one of the greatest monsters in history is walking around?

I always just assumed they made him look Caucasian so no one would suspect he was actually Khan.

 

Like I mentioned, no one seemed to know who he was even when he told them his name.

 

Well it was just Kirk and Spock. I doubt Kirk studied much history and the history of Earth's war criminals is probably not one of Spock's areas of study.

I mean 100 years from now if someone said 'my real name... is Asad.' would many people remember?

 

I don't know, I'd assume someone who controlled a quarter of the Earth during one of the world's worst wars would be well known, even from 300 years earlier. Napoleon plunged Europe into war and his name is quite well known.

 

Humans-- especially Starfleet officers-- are supposed to be well-educated. Earth is a "paradise" free of poverty... er, disease, and... violent crime... sigh...

Well, anyway, Khan and the Augments would be well-known. He wasn't a run-of-the-mill dictator or the leader of a relative backwater like Syria. He also controlled a large swath of the Earth population and was genetically engineered. I'm not a big fan of TOS's Eugenics Wars (except that the character Khan came from that) and World War III (I prefer First Contact's vague exposition), but there's no reason to think STID changed the background.

 

That's what you get from a libertarian writer.

I did like the not-quite-subtle condemnation of the extrajudicial drone strikes in this movie.

 

We call ourselves white.

 

Oh but if WE call you white we're racist. I see how it is.

 

Again, though, you keep saying this when... it's (at the moment) demonstrably not true. Look, you can keep going on and on about how you expected a full reboot -- and I would agree with you that would have made the most sense. When Star Trek (2009) came out I posted how the only way it really works (timeline-wise) is if Spock Prime entered an already different alternate universe to begin with, which would solve basically this entire thing somewhat.

But the producers and writers, G-d love 'em, went out of their way to at first say it was the PRIME universe -- changed because of Spock Prime's actions and they are now backing away from that slightly and going with a (wrong) explanation of quantum mechanics to get from Spock Prime created an alternate universe from the point of the Narada entering the Prime universe while simultaneously keeping the Prime universe intact (not how it works, at least in Star Trek, but sure).

So, again, still everything was supposed to be the same -- but different. So yes, they said this Khan was supposed to be an Indian man, even if played by a Spanish god (not JoinTheSchwarz) because it's supposed to be the same Khan. You may not like it and I don't like it, but it is what it is.

 

I don't think that's what it is.

What about the Prime universe is intact according to the latest films? Spock Prime hasn't gone back there....

The nature of Kirk's very birth was changed in the 2009 film...by time travel. From that point on, nothing has to be consistent with the original show.

It doesn't matter if it works in the real world or not ("wrong explanation of quantum mechanics")--the show has established it's own internal logic--that's what matters.

My sister's a Trekkie and she loves the new films--she just accepts that they take place in a new universe. Furthermore, she didn't care about what ethnicity Khan was portrayed as--she cared about whether or not the actor selected was good...and he was. He was awesome.

Honestly, I don't understand why this is even being discussed....who cares!?

Given that Khan in the new universe (at least) is an artificially engineered person....he could have been given any number of "ethnic" looks. However, it's not as if this character grew up in some common ethnic culture--he was made to fight in some scifi war. He didn't grow up in modern day Pakistan. His only family consists of other people who were also artificially created for the scifi war. God forbid that person appear BRITISH! (everyone knows that the supersoldiers created for the scifi war were all made to have darker skin--THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!)

 

Well, I guess you could theorise that in this new timeline the events of Tomorrow is Yesterday didn't happen, the Enterprise never went back to 69, and it was this incursion that altered the natural course of history, replacing Cumberbatch-Khan with Montalban-Khan; now that TiY didn't happen, or happened in a different way, this alteration never took place and we are left with the "original" Cumberbatch-Khan. Convoluted and unlikely? Sure, but this is Trek.

 

I'd say in the new universe....nothing from the prime universe has happened (at least since Nero came into the picture).