Star Trek into darkness was so cool that I read some articles online about it and last night I tried to watch Wrath of Khan. There were a lot of complaints about the new "into darkness" and after watching half of Wrath of Khan, I have to say that those are invalid and that the authors are delusional. Wrath of Khan sucked real bad. It was disturbing to see that not only did the special effects look ridiculous for our time but... the acting was bad too. You can even say "for it's time though...." because I've seen plenty of black and white movies where I was glued and engaged and where fight scenes were believable and awesome. Akira Kurosawa's movies were all fantastic, even the ones about bureaucracy, even the gangster film he did where the fight scenes were bad. The fight scenes were supposed to be bad, that was the point. It was depicting gangsters for what they were. In fact the only movie that I couldn't even watch 30 minutes of by Kurosawa was the one made with a big budget, in the 80's by an American studio.... just like Wrath of Khan.
The only thing good about Wrath of Khan was Khan. In fact I had dreams of Khan last night. I think I was supposed to be Kirk. Except I had a car or something instead of a Starship, and after Khan tried to kill me, I passed him on the street in the winter and he was carrying plastic bags of groceries like old Chinese women do. We talked. I asked why he had tried to kill me, and as he left he said, "Hey at least I'm interesting right? Okay see you."
Some of the complaints about the whole Khan character is that he is played by a Mexican actor. I didn't think this was an issue before I watched the movie. But watching it, I noticed he had aver slight Mexican accent, which is sort of weird if he is supposed to be from India. But isn't it more weird that he's supposed to be from 1996?
Anyway, since Star Trek is science fiction, is it that hard to believe that a guy could have an Indian and Muslim last name, and not be that Indian or Muslim in appearance. Saying that Cumberbatch (the very white, very British Sherlock Holmes actor who was extremely bad ass in this movie btw) can't play Khan because he is white, is like saying that I would not be able to play a character named Cheung because I'm white and don't have a Chinese accent. And since in the new movie Khan is not necessarily from 1996, and since in the real 2013 there is a lot of mixes, namely our President, the jump is not that hard.
Plus did anyone really think that a dark skinned Indian actor would be more politically correct considering the very 9/11-esque Kamikaze Starship scene near the end? It's much more politically correct to have someone like Cumberbatch be that guy, so that it doesn't feel like the movie is at all about racial stereotypes of OUR time.
Anyway, I could write a whole other post about how bad ass Cumberbatch was in the new movie. Another time. Wrath of Khan was terrible. But Khan really is so interesting that I might just have to skip to the end to see what all this is actually about.
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