star trek:into darkness (WARNING: SPOILERS as of 4/23/13)

Re: star trek:into darkness

Yeah that's a good point, and based on the previous movie having a new villain I'm willing to bet that it will be a new villain once again.

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Well...they have said it's a canon character...

Doesn't necessarily have to be a standout ...

The interquel comics have ret-conned that "Cupcake", is one of the red-shirts that died of poison spores in one episode.
Except, he lived this time.

So...if they could flesh a background guy like that out of nothing, who knows where they're going to go.

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Ohhhh... shit. We've been leaving out another one who could pull it off. Charlie Evans.

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It's gonna be Korob and Sylvia.

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I stand by the "Khan without being Khan" notion. There will be allusions to genetic modification, and possible something which Trek fans will recognize (or retcon) as "Section 31" as a foundation for a "threat from within" situation represented by the Villain n the film.

At least, that's my initial guess based on the reveal.

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Karl Urban claimed in an interview he was playing Gary Mitchell, but it was denied.

But of course, it would be, wouldn't it?

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Reading what Urban said, it seems like either (1) deliberate misinformation or (2) Urban just messing with people.

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Let's also not forget the previous film's Star Wars influence. We could have a "not Section 31" activating an embedded army of "not Augments" throughout Starfleet" a la the Order 66 bit from Revenge Of The Sith.

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I don't give a hoot who the villain is as long as the movie is good. See, it doesn't matter anyway - the Trekkies will complain no matter what, and somebody like Mitchell... hell I had to look him up. He was in all of one episode so who the fuck would remember him anyway. If it's Khan I can almost hear the screams from thousands of basements already since Abrams would change just about everything.

Trek would do good with a new, memorable baddie.

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The villain is spock's brain.

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True.

And there aren't so many memorable baddies from the series because, by and large, the series wasn't space opera: good guys vs. bad guys in space. Hell, even Khan is treated somewhat sympathetically in "Space Seed;" Captain Kirk recognizes Khan's need to have an outlet for his ambitions.

Too many Trek movie baddies have simply been Khan retreads, someone with a grudge looking for revenge (Ru'afo against the Bak'u, Shinzon against Picard, Nero against Vulcans, Spock in particular). I think those villains (maybe I should say "antagonists?") who had some rational goal were more interesting (even if not all their films were the greatest): renegade Klingons seeking the Genesis device for use as a weapon, a Vulcan mystic who steals the Enterprise to pursue a vision of God, Federation and Klingon officials conspiring to prevent peace, a haunted scientist trying to return to a world of timeless joy, and, of course, the Borg, coming on like a relentless force of nature (artifice?) to assimilate humanity into their hive mind.

Thinking about it, I've come to the conclusion that the producers of Skyfall took the fairly facile idea of a former MI6 agent seeking revenge (in fact, that one's been done before in Bond) and made it far more interesting by making the target NOT Bond nor the world, but M. That raised the stakes high enough, but still kept the conflict personal. And Silva's motivations--stemming from the moral ambiguities that play in the world of espionage--were believable, maybe even understandable. That made for a good villain/plot (despite some absurdities, but, hey, it's Bond).

So, I hope Abrams and company have a little more nuanced villain than the cipher that was Nero. The "I'm-just-a-bad-guy-who-wants-to-destroy-Earth-for-no-real-reason-just-'cause-I'm-bad-holy-shit-look-at-the-size-of-my-goddamned-ship" thing is about played out.

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Well, again, the comics fleshed out Nero, and made him really sympathetic.
You damned near root for him with that knowledge.

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Yeah, I think it will be somebody new, but then again, this is probably the last chance to have an original timeline villain, because it won't be long before the timelines are too divergent to make such an event likely.

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As long as it's not Q.

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Am I the only one who thinks that TOS (& much of the other series') were more interesting because they presented complex, multi-dimensional antagonists rather than "baddies", and that we shouldn't be harking after the simplistic formulatic stuff? It seems that most of the Trek movies have tried to copy TWOK ever since that one was a success, largely due to a black-hat villain with a superweapon.

EDIT: I realise that you're making this point yourself somewhat, but I'd move even further away from the villain archetype than you seem to want to.

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i always thought that complexity was always more present in the tv series. the movies are big space adventures with some. cheesy 'message' tacked on

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The movies kind of have to be that way. The TV show works with a loyal audience that understands the characters and how they might react to the more subtle conflicts presented on the small screen. You can't expect that level of subtly to work with the general public that may only have a passing awareness of Trek.

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And the movies are mostly fairly mediocre.

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And 99% of the people who saw the film didn't read the comics.
I didn't even know there were comics.
The movie failed to set up Nero correctly. The fact that he lost his entire planet is just glossed over. They show his wife for a few seconds. He doesn't really seem driven by his loss as much as a flimsy script. The first time I watched the movie, I thought Nero looked like an incompetent simpleton who wouldn't pose a threat if he didn't have a magical super amazing gun ship.

... actually, the ship was the villain in that movie!

I still liked the movie for the action bits and the humor, but I am hoping for a more substantial villain, or at least one that is written well.

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Of all the old Trek movies, I have to say that my favorite is still TMP. It was the only Trek movie that tried to give space travel a sense of wonder, and it certainly was the most epic in scale. Sure, it had it's flaws, but it didn't succumb to studio pressure (nor rabid fan boys) to introduce black hat villains or mindless space battles (sorry Dayton). It tried to be more like 2001. And while I still enjoyed TWOK as a fun slice of cheese, I would have preferred that Trek stay in the direction of 2001 rather than Buck Rogers.

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No, you're not the only one. But the movies are space opera which doesn't lend itself to nuanced philosophical dilemmas as much as it does to stuff "blowed up real good."

I think there's room for both a complex antagonist and a very real threat. I often go back to the (hold your flames) Voyager episode "Year of Hell" where the antagonist (Kurtwood Smith to all you dumbasses ) was wreaking havoc with one region of the galaxy because he was changing the past in an effort to restore his civilization (which had been destroyed) and, particularly, his wife and family (who had been lost).

I also liked Spider-Man 2 and the recent The Amazing Spider-Man because they offered conflicted, troubled antagonists who were essentially decent people.

Maybe complexity doesn't sell at the box office. But I do kinda wish for a Trek movie with a little more substance to it. If they can do Batman and Bond that way, why not Trek?

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If you're not a fan of JJ Abrams' artistic vision of/for Star Trek, call him Jar Jar Abrams & his version of Star Trek star track.


But anyway, as to the topic at hand, perhaps Cumberbatch is playing Harry Mudd?

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That would be wrong on so many levels.

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Much smaller/more focused ensembles. One main character and a couple strong supporting characters give a lot more time to flesh out each than a 7 character ensemble with one lead and two supporting who are very nearly as important as the lead is.

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I would honestly love to see some more complex DS9 and Kurtwood Smith-type villains in the movies. If DS9 had been more popular, Gul Dukat could have gone down as a great mainstream pop culture villain along the lines of Moriarty, Blofeld, The Joker, Khan, etc.

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I'm tired of the idea that we have to have enemies with personalities and face to face interactions with the Enterprise crew.

That is one thing I loved about the Borg from Q Who and all but the last 15 seconds of The Best of Both Worlds pt. 1.

They were faceless, nameless, enemies that you could only fight, run from or hide from.

You could NEVER talk to them. I like a enemy you can NEVER talk to. An enemy that of course will never actually talk to YOU either. Just a remorseless, soulless, grinding attacker. More of a force of nature than anything else.

Like the Zulus in the movie "Zulu".

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That can make for a compelling story, certainly, but it's not the only valid nemesis.

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You want the villain to be black people?

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or like....zombies?

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This thought is at least similar too if not in the same vein as other idea's expressed but I'm gonna say it in my own way anyhow.

One of the best ways to get away from the "Black Hat" villain is to have an antagonist who is not, by his lights, a bad guy at all. Rather, just a person with an unshakable commitment to their agenda, which HAPPENS to be an agenda which threatens something our heroes want to fight for.

To an extent, that's what you had in Serenity. While The Operative freely admitted he was a monster, he believed his cause was just and noble - and that didn't make him any less compelling an antagonist just because he wasn't trying to get Mal's head on a pike.

If what we have here is such an antagonist, he might in some ways come off as something of a ripoff of Serenity - a living weapon sort of guy who served the interest of a secretive cabal within the Federation which kirk & Co. find it necessary to thwart.