Abrams: Khan And Magic Blood
2 min read
Star Trek into Darkness‘ J.J. Abrams explained why Khan was chosen as the villain and how the idea of using Khan’s blood to save Kirk came about.
Some fans expected a reboot to explore new stories, but Abrams wanted to explore Khan further.
“I think the thing was that Khan really is the most iconic villain of the series,” Abrams said, “and it felt like an opportunity to see another side of Khan and to something that, like the first film did, use elements that people were familiar with but in a new [way].”
Using Khan’s blood to save Kirk was an idea that came out of the events of the beginning of the film, although that had not been originally planned. “Well, it’s funny,” said Abrams, “we had this idea in the beginning of the film of this girl who is sort of being brought back into good health as a means of coercing her father to do something horrific, and it was sitting there. And we knew we wanted to do something that was going to kind of push Kirk to a limit where he was tested in a way he never had been before where he really had to appreciate the kind of chair that he was sitting in. And it ended up just coming out of realizing that we had this thing that was sitting there that was already set up in the movie.
“The idea for me with Khan that was so powerful was this was a sort of monster that we made – he was someone who, having been sort of genetically engineered and banished, he was someone who just like Kirk, loved his crew, and would do anything for them. And we realized that Kirk and Khan were very much in a similar position, and then finally we put them in a situation where you really question, can I trust him? Can I work with him at all? That to me was a fun thing, especially after the first movie where we had a wonderfully-performed bad guy, but a sort of simpler one, where it was just about a raving, vengeful, angry Romulan. So it was a fun thing to have a character that was able to have illuminating, deep, emotional, unexpected conversations.”
What’s next for the crew of the Enterprise? “It’s a valid argument that it’s about time for them to go off and discover and see things that have nothing to do with what we’ve seen before, and I think we’ll always have some overlap,” said Abrams. “But I’m excited about the next chapter.”
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Oh, I generally agree with you and Milo, I just don’t think Nemesis should be used as a measure of quality Trek… ever…
I still don’t know that I agree about their intentions for the Anij junk… I would have to rewatch Insurrection… I’ll probably have an answer for you on this in the next decade or so. But, if Picard and Anij are both experiencing a slowing of time, such that they can interact in real-time with each other, such as the touch of her hand and their thoughts, but the world around them has slowed to their perception… well, contrary to my point later, here I will use a Star Wars quotation: perception determines reality. It would be one thing if everything were slowed down, but neither Picard, nor Anij are… which means the world around them has slowed according to their perception… Well, what’s the practical difference between that and the episode of TNG where Enterprise is coming to the aid of the Romulans as their singularity is being attacked by those aliens that use singularities as nurseries… To Picard’s team, time seemed to be barely moving forward… They could interact with each other as long as they had those bands… Sure, one is pure science fiction and one is science fantasy… and that’s why I hate it… Star Trek isn’t fantasy… So, either their joint perception of time was actually slowed, or it was just a really, really stupid part in a Star Trek movie. I tend to believe the former because I reject fantasy as even being in Star Trek, but also because Picard wasn’t experiencing the altered perception alone… and whether time was slowing or not to the outside world and them is irrelevant. If they could interact in seeming real time, but within a fraction of a second, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a different perception, the outcome is the same. In the Matrix, time isn’t actually slowing when we see “bullet-time”, but the impact of them being able to react to a differently perceived motion of time certainly had consequences…
It was sarcasm
Why only Khan’s blood? What was wrong with all the 72 other people that were contained on those torpedoes?