STAR TREK II: THE CONFUSION OF KHAN

Damn Latino Review get the scoops don't they? Do they have compromising pictures of studio heads or what?

 

Del Toro as Khan would be seventeen shades of awesome.

Who knows at this stage. By this stage there's been so much 'back and forth'-ing on whether Khan's in or not that I kind of wish they'd just announce it either way and be done with it. Still, if Khan is involved I'm sure Abrams will come up with a re-interpretation that's interesting at least.

Agreed.  While I didn't really toss it out there in the article itself, I'm already tired of the whole "is he/isn't he" bit with Khan.  Casting is underway and shooting isn't that far off.........................just give us a nice little synopsis and the names of the "new" characters and be done with it.

I recently learned that the character Khan is a Sikh. And this business of casting a hispanic person exists only because of the casting from WRATH OF KHAN

 

If they're going with KHAN for this story, I'd hope they don't white wash it

I really hope they don't go with Khan at all. Trek needs new blood, not more rehashes.

   I agree. I want to see the new franchise do new stories. I would like to seem them make a movie that works in social commentary. Something like Star Trek 4.  Yet the environment message didn't keep the movie from being fun.

 

   While I didn't think there couldn't be another James T Kirk, Chris Pine proved me wrong. That said, no one could be a better Khan than Riccardo Montalban!

 

I have a friend that swears up and down that the next movie should have the Borg as the villains. You know, because the original crew never faced them. I keep trying to tell him the Borg have been done to death, but he's adamant. 

 

There are worse things than Khan.

The Daleks?

Yeah, I thought the point of the timeline-altering reboot was to take the characters in new directions, not give us "new" versions of the stories we've already seen. That being said, I can't wait for the fourth one when the whales are the villains and they travel back in time to kill Kirk's mother to prevent his birth.

While I understand the character was INTENDED to be a Sikh, I don't get the online uproar over chasing an Hispanic actor for the role.  Khan has appeared on screen twice.  Both times he was played by an Hispanic actor.  Both times he was played by the late Ricardo Montalban.  Writer's original intention or not, he was made iconic by an Hispanic man.  Now mind you, Khan is a cocktail of genetic perfection...........which can easily account for him being a Sikh and looking the way he does.  I also believe a bit of historical retconning was done in the EU trilogy of books about Khan to help iron out some of the cultural differences to make sense of him being a Sikh.  That doesn't matter though.  What matters is that it would be incredibly WEIRD if we had a bearded Indian actor playing Khan in one film and a Mexican playing him in the other two entries involving the character in the franchise. 

 

It'd be different if the 2009 was a straight-up remake of the original series, but that isn't the case.  J.J. Abram's Star Trek IS effectively Star Trek 11.  The next one is Star Trek 12.  This isn't like Bond where they started over from scratch.  Everything still takes place within the same universe and continuity.  The actions of Nero forever altered history, but we are still operating within the same franchise.  Going in an entirely different direction with the casting of Khan would be akin to Elmore Leonard writing Rum Punch 2 and someone adapting it as an official sequel to Tarantino's Jackie Brown....................only they decide to follow the source material more closely, keeping the character's last name as Burke and her being white.  It might be truer to the creator's intentions, but it wouldn't make a lick of sense in any other fashion.

 

I'm not going to do a follow-up piece on to my article on the following, as it is pointless to do so until someone is officially cast, but I figured I'd drop in and let everyone know that Latino Review is reporting that the following two actors are in the running to replace Benecio Del Toro in the role he was in talks for (be it Khan or someone else):

 

- Edgar Ramirez

- Jordi Molla

 

Personally, I would DEFINITELY go with Ramirez.  I like Jordi Molla, but the man literally does almost nothing BUT play Hispanic villains these days.  The man seems poised to take Joaquim de Almeida's throne as chief Latino baddie.  That's awesome for him, but we need someone who can bring something fresh to the villainous role (be it Khan or not)..........not someone who'll probably just do their normal evil routine that they use every other time they're on screen.  I'm also surprised that fan-favorite Nestor Carbonell isn't being looked at.

 

Also, it seems that Peter Weller is playing a "CEO"-suit type and could very well be one of the other villains of the piece..............which is all kinds of awesome.

Nestor Carbonell. He even has the Abrams connections.

Is there even money in the future of Star Trek? How would a CEO work in the traditional sense?

Count me amongst the anti-Khans, as far as building the movie around the character. Not that they can't make it interesting or anything, but this Trek needs something new.

At least the nature of the timeline means they can't just do a straight Wrath remake, and a semi-remake of Space Seed is at least mildly more interesting. But it's still a lame idea.

 

There are plenty of aspects of TOS era Trek that would be interesting to revisit, but they already nailed Khan. I really don't see any reason to bring him back, except as a lame attempt to cash in on the fact he's Kirk's most famous opponent.

Ewoks.

And I want to throw my vote in for seeing ScarJo as Edith Keeler, talking to Kirk about how someday men will look up at the stars and decide it's too damn expensive and spend their time making derogatory signs about their political leaders.

     Quote:

 

Officially, the "original" Roddenberry-verse is still chugging right along into the early 25th Century -- the Trek MMO is set following the destruction of Romulus (and the disappearance of Spock Prime and Nero from that universe).
 

But yes -- the Abrams-verse is a direct offshoot of the Roddenberry-verse, although not necessarily beholden to that continuity.

 

 

 

"Place you name -- money I got."

 

Also, Scotty mentions having just bought a boat in ST VI.

 

Also, Quark.

 

That said, as much as Roddenberry's untenable utopianist idealism preached against the "evils" of currency on the original sixties TV show, I can certainly see Abrams and his writers quietly disposing of that particular aspect of the early canon in the new movie-universe.

Money within the federation might be gone, but other planets/societies that are not included would most likely have a currency system.

 

 

The second that happens, the first hint I get that they've abandoned Roddenberry's grand vision, I'm out. I'm done with new TREK. Having grown up with STTNG, it is that very utopian vision of the future that to me above all else embodies trek. The idea that in the wake of the third world war, humanity came together after first contact with an alien species and within 50 years poverty ceased to exist - more than anything else, this is what trek is about. If you take that away, they're just a bunch of space faring federalists in funny uniforms. Check out my community profile here in the forum. In it I've included a reference to Picard's speech on 24th century economics. That is how strongly I feel about this issue. I was actually kind of ticked that the politics of trek were put on the back burners in the last film. If they were evet to change that most central element of the mythology, then I no longer see the point in calling it STAR TREK

 

Funny, Data's date for the end of television might turn out to be more or less accurate.

 

In the main chud Star Trek thread they really seem to hate Roddenberry and his overly optimistic ideals cos they don't make a lot of sense. I think that's being way too literal minded. You've just got to accept that human society in Star Trek is a vaguely defined utopia where we overcame all our problems and just go along with it. Getting bogged down in the logistics and realism is missing the point.

 

Id pay real money to see that.

 

 

Also I really don't want to see Khan I want some hot Romulan action.

I suspect Weller will be an alien, so there's no sense in getting miffed about the possibility of a human CEO.

 

As for the Romulans?  After two films in a row with Romulan villains, I'm guessing they'll be going a different route this time.