[Black Wolf]

OK, just got back from IMAX - I'm going to use spoiler tags, but read on at your own risk.

Spoiler:

Awesome film. They took one of the best bits from the TV series (Section 31), suggested a not-unrealistic response to the events of the last movie, and integrated the coolest bad guy from the movies remarkably well. The homages were there to the original but they definitely, definitely didn't just do a boring remake of Wrath of Khan. There were so many little details to like in this movie, both new and familiar. I loved that the dreadnaught was clearly based on the Excelsior, and I loved when the Enterprise came up through the clouds, and I loved the Kirk/Spock flip (I did what you would have done)... but I also loved that the new warp core was this massive sprawling device that actually looked like the incredibly complex piece of engineering it would have to be rather than the glowing tube from the series - they've done this all through this movie - everything looks far more like engineered, working technology rather than the seamless techno-magic that they did with TV budgets - they started doing this in the previous movie, but it's pushed out to a to a far greater extent here and I like it.

There were some issues that kept the film from being perfect - there always are. The klingons went down too easy, and the ships shouldn't have been called D-4s - plus their makeup looked weird - IMO faker than the later TNG era Klingons - of course, enterprise is canon in this continuity, so that may have been a deliberate allusion to the virus storyline. And new Spock seems... remarkably poor at controlling his emotions compared to classic Spock. He's less a classic Vulcan and more a sort of super-stoic human - I know that Vulcans are supposed to have these super strong emotions, but they're not supposed to show them except under the most extreme of circumstances. The loss of his planet and entire species - yeah, forgiveable. The death of a close friend... well, frankly, that should be within his range of control. And apparently Quo'nos is only about 5 minutes from Earth now. They could have really amped up the tension of the chase back to earth if it had taken place over the hours or days it should have. Finally, I wasn't too happy about Kirk being so blase about the Prime Directive. That was... unnecessary.

Still, those gripes aside, as someone who's far more of a TNG/DS9 fan than a TOS fan, I found this to be a great action movie, a great Sci Fi movie and a good Star Trek movie. I liked the previous Abrams outing, and in this case the plot was better, the villain was better, and everything felt far more connected and coherent. I also like the real, grounded, technological look the film has. So, go see it (as if you weren't already going to ).

[watsisname]

Boooo, we still got another week here in the US.

Really looking forward to this one.  RT is also giving it favorable reviews so far.

[The E]

Just came back from seeing it. It's a rather good and entertaining movie.

Spoiler:

I really liked this one. Cumberbatch and Quinto are, as usual, quite good at what they do, the setpieces are well-shot, the score is beautiful, and the dialogue only occasionally cringeworthy.

That being said, I have the feeling that the writers tried to do too much too soon in this one. The plot takes elements from Wrath of Khan (Duh) and Undiscovered Country and tries to mash them together, but it's not as coherent or snappy as it could have been.

[Fury]

What the hell, I still have to wait almost a month before it comes to theatres here.

[watsisname]

I don't understand why we can't have a global release date in this day and age.  I mean seriously, what the hell.

[Black Wolf]

Seems like a weird choice in thus day and age - seems like it'll encourage piracy

[General Battuta]

There's some kind of reason for these staggered releases but I'll be damned if I can remember what it is. I do know there's a concerted effort with this one to increase Star Trek's overseas gross, where the franchise has traditionally been weak.

[AdmiralRalwood]

I can't give this movie money due to the simple fact that re-casting Khan as a white guy is incredibly racist.

[General Battuta]

I can't give this movie money due to the simple fact that re-casting Khan as a white guy is incredibly racist.

Honestly I'm pretty sympathetic to this point of view. It's really disappointing that they whitewashed one of the few iconic POC roles in science fiction. But there's always the 'buy a ticket for a different movie, go into a STID theater' trick.

[The E]

Gonna have to go into spoilers here, but I really don't think this is much of an issue.

In this film, Khan (And he has no other name, he never calls himself anything but "Khan", it's only Original!Spock that refers to him as Khan Noonien Singh) is found and reanimated by Section 31 to spearhead a militarization effort, he's given a cover identity and all that.
Let us not forget that in the ST timeline, Khan is a "Worse than Hitler"-type of war criminal, a product of a transhuimanist genetic engineering effort that went so far off the rails that genetic enhancements are a big nono in ST. Why would even Section 31 let someone this recognizable run around?

[Black Wolf]

Gonna have to go into spoilers here, but I really don't think this is much of an issue.

In this film, Khan (And he has no other name, he never calls himself anything but "Khan", it's only Original!Spock that refers to him as Khan Noonien Singh) is found and reanimated by Section 31 to spearhead a militarization effort, he's given a cover identity and all that.
Let us not forget that in the ST timeline, Khan is a "Worse than Hitler"-type of war criminal, a product of a transhuimanist genetic engineering effort that went so far off the rails that genetic enhancements are a big nono in ST. Why would even Section 31 let someone this recognizable run around?

Nobody recognized him in Space Seed either, and there's always the possibilty of surgical manipulation in the ST universe to make him unrecognizable even to those who would. Remember too that the eugenics wars were hundreds of years before ST, and a lot of records were lost - there's a lot of reasons to accept that he could "run around" - especially since I highly doubt he was permitted to move around much outside of Marcus' and Section 31's requirements.

[Phantom Hoover]

I can't give this movie money due to the simple fact that re-casting Khan as a white guy is incredibly racist.

Because casting him with a Mexican actor was so much better?

E: a Mexican actor whose parents were both first-generation Spanish, too. Seems to me he was already pretty Europeanwashed, at least.

[AdmiralRalwood]

I can't give this movie money due to the simple fact that re-casting Khan as a white guy is incredibly racist.

Because casting him with a Mexican actor was so much better?

E: a Mexican actor whose parents were both first-generation Spanish, too. Seems to me he was already pretty Europeanwashed, at least.

I concur that it would have been better to cast an actor actually from India... but there are degrees of wrongness, and you have to admit that "Caucasian" and "Mexican" are two very different degrees of wrongness here.

[The E]

Actually, no, I don't.

Don't get me wrong, I know that whitewashing is an issue, but honestly? When someone like Cumberbatch puts out a really great performance, I don't care about how he isn't indian enough to portrait a character whose in-universe background is acknowledged to be somewhat sketchy.

[Phantom Hoover]

By my reckoning he was being played by a 'Caucasian' actor beforehand anyway; or do Spaniards not count as Caucasian? I mean, I understand that there's a problem here, I just think you're being entirely unfair to this film by singling it out as incredibly racist and boycotting it.

[General Battuta]

A Hispanic actor and a white actor do not face nearly the same difficulty in finding substantial roles in Hollywood. They are not both Caucasian in Hollywood's eyes.

I don't think he's being unfair at all. This is a huge systemic problem in Hollywood and it only goes one way. POC roles are given to white actors, white roles are hardly ever given to POC actors. In the US if you're from a Spanish-speaking country (less so Spain, but still) you are not part of the racial majority.

[An4ximandros]

 It's not about being Caucassian, it's about being part of the Caucassian Anglo-Saxon master race phylum.

 Seriously? I could understand if there was malignant intent behind the decision to recast Khan, but just because a "Non-Mexican" played the role of a man from Northern India is foolish. If anything, they should have gotten someone from Bollywood to cast Khan.

[The E]

But here's the thing for me: Benedict Cumberbatch is pretty good in the role. I enjoyed watching him be evil and superhuman. As far as this film is concerned, he was a good choice to play the main antagonist. I do not doubt that there are actors of other, more appropriate skin tones who could do the same job, but none of them were cast for the role. Whether that is an expression of JJ Abrams' or the Hollywood casting system's basic racism is not really relevant to me enjoying Cumberbatch's performance here, and I quite simply do not care enough about these issues, or Trek continuity, in order to do things like buying tickets to one movie and watching this one instead (Not that that would be possible in the cinemas around here anyway).

[Al-Rik]

I can't give this movie money due to the simple fact that re-casting Khan as a white guy is incredibly racist.

Because casting him with a Mexican actor was so much better?

E: a Mexican actor whose parents were both first-generation Spanish, too. Seems to me he was already pretty Europeanwashed, at least.

Well, Indians (the real ones, not the Native Americans) are Aryans too, so  it's not racist to let play a white actor the role of a transgenetic Indian Übermensch.

The Problem with Kahn in that movie is an other one:
He is just an ordinary villain. Even after he gets everything he wants he tries to kill Kirk and the Enterprise - without any good reason.
The Kahn of Space Seed was more ambivalent.

[Mongoose]

I understand the concerns over white-washing when we're talking about roles where the character's original race is important, or where the story environment suggests that characters should be of a certain race, like that godawful live-action The Last Airbender mess.  But when it comes to Khan, we have a character with an Indian-derived name who was originally played by a Mexican actor, and the character's specific race didn't have any impact at all on who he was, so I don't see how this is an issue.