One of the common threads in the hype before every new Star Trek movie has been comparisons of the movie to Wrath of Khan and even attempts to integrate plot elements from the Wrath of Khan into the movie itself. The irony here is that Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan actually pulled in less at the box office than its predecessor and certainly less than Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home, which until JJ Abrams released his shiny reboot was the highest grossing Star Trek film (when accounting for inflation) and in the profit ratio, Star Trek IV may still beat JJ Abrams' Star Trek, considering the latter's huge production and marketing budget.
But even though Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was controversial when it first aired, its status as the greatest Star Trek movie ever has become so iconic that JJ Abrams and his crowd keep dragging around the notion of somehow sticking Khan into the reboot sequel. But is Khan actually needed in the movie? Aside from the logistical problems of putting Khan into the movie without using either time travel or rendering the original story of Khan null and void, which admittedly would be on the table considering that the first movie already trashed 90 percent of the backstory for everything from the Federation on down to the characters themselves.
But the reboot already had its Khan in Nero, a somewhat sympathetic enraged character who is angry over the death of his wife. And Nero was yet another Khan stand in and as a villain he ranged somewhere between confusing and meh. Dipping into the legacy well for Khan would be an admission that Abrams and Co. can't really create an original villain.
Nov 19, 2009
2 comments:
Abrams would only follow Berman, Braga, and Moore in trying to create a Khan-like villain. This gave us Soran, Rua'fo, and Shinzon - and all were compared to Khan by the media or the production staff in some way.
All of them, including Nero, fail at the comparison because none of these villains forced the hero, in this case, Picard, to confront the choices in his past - and wonder if life would have turned out differently. Khan does that with Kirk - through Carol and David Marcus.
This may be a case of having a "great" idea, but never bothered to take it to its logical conclusion. That kind of thinking gives life to movies like Generations (which is the second worst movie in the Franchise...and that's saying alot - and the worst isn't The Final Frontier). But the Abrams train has left the station. The end result is going to be a spectacular wreck. It's just the severity that's in question.
Good point, and it's a shortcut for every movie to try and find a Khan, instead of finding its own Khan
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