The Star Trek 2 Bad Guy Is. . .John Harrison?

(Left to right) Zachary Quinto is Spock, Benedict Cumberbatch is John Harrison and Chris Pine is Kirk in STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS from Paramount Pictures and Skydance Productions.

I honestly don't like Star Trek including the original series, the spinoff series, or the movie series, with one notable exception: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Really, that's a great movie. If I taught a film seminar about that really rare occurrence known as "good blockbuster writing," it would be absolute blasphemy to do anything other than praise the first Star Trek sequel. That one really understood what it is that makes big movies so dumb. Most franchise films have no sense of danger (of course no one dies, right?), bland characters/dialogue, and are predictable beyond belief. Khan throws all the cliches of an extremely cliche-filled series out the window and brings a balls-to-the-wall thrilling revenge story to the series that is not afraid to kill off anyone as the ruthless Khan makes things much more personal and series than you'd ever expect.

Last year, as J.J. Abrams' then-untitled sequel to his 2009 Star Trek reboot/reinvention/sequel thingy began casting, we had no information about the plot other than Benicio del Toro had been approached to play the villain. Well, it didn't take long to throw out a few reasonable guesses about what villain Abrams could possibly want another Latino actor for, especially a Latino actor with a resemblance to Ricardo Montalban. It's KHAN! Things were lining up for a sequel that could potentially bring the franchise back to its, well, only high point. My interest went from apathy to excitement in a second. Abrams is no dummy. I trust what would essentially be a remake of the great sequel to him. Then, del Toro could not agree on a price so he dropped out of negotiations, only to be replaced by a lanky British fellow - Benedict Cumberbatch.

I know what you're thinking- hey, what's wrong with lanky British fellows? Well, nothing's wrong with British lanky fellows except for one thing: Khan was certainly no British lanky fellow. Khan was a buff Latino with no semblance of high culture despite his brilliance. So, why would Benedict Cumberbatch be playing Khan? Time went on, scenes were filmed and there was no official statement about who the official villain was going to be until today as Paramount Pictures released the above screenshot with the description of the character named John Harrison. (I notice he's talking to the heroes from behind a glass cage, probably because he planned to get caught in his ingenious chaotic schemes, a common plot in our post-The Dark Knight franchises). Some quick research will inform you that this John Harrison fellow was not one of the iconic bad guys from any incarnation of Star Trek to this point. Is it possible that Cumberbatch is in fact playing a brand new villain, the tall lanky fellow looking for revenge even though this new fleet hasn't really even been around long enough to keep pissing off all these people? I guess so. I mean, sure, why not, right? Except I don't think it could possibly be that simple.

So, who is John Harrison? I think the more important question we should be asking is who is John Harrison really? Remember when Warner Brothers announced that Marion Cotillard was not playing Talia, but just a boring board member at Wayne Enterprises? And remember how no one believed that and we were all right? Yeah, I'm smelling something fishy about this John Harrison scenario. That name certainly fits a lanky British fellow, but that's not who J.J. Abrams wanted initially, is it? Would you look at Benicio del Toro and believe that guy is named John Harrison? It is the future, though, so maybe ethnic names have died out in the hundreds of years between our time and the time of Star Trek. Or.  .  .John Harrison is really an alias for Khan like we all thought anyway. As far as I'm concerned, that'd be much more interesting and lord knows J.J. Abrams can't get enough of confusing and directly lying to his audiences.

So, is Star Trek Into Darkness the result of a reboot where a brand new British revenge plot has been hatched or are we witnessing a disguised remake of The Wrath of Khan? I suppose the actual coolest thing that could happen is if Benicio del Toro is actually a part of the movie as Khan, who gets revealed as the major villain in a huge surprise to everyone. That's not likely, however. Nonetheless, my interest is piqued just by the possibility that there might be something good still left in the Star Trek series. How's yours?