Who is John Harrison? SPOILER ALERT!!!

Benedict Cumberbatch reveals who his character really is fairly early in the new Trek film, but I don't believe him.

Editorial Opinion
By Zuriel - May 16, 2013 12:05 AM EST
Filed Under: Star Trek

SPOILER ALERT!!! If you haven't seen the movie, go see it and form your own analysis, then read on.

I'm not sure for how long now, IMDB has listed Benedict Cumberbatch as playing John Harrison/Kahn, but given the reliability of the site, I disregarded this information and persisted that it was not true. Every magazine article that has said it, every source on this site that has claimed it over the past year, I scoffed at. Why? Because it didn't make sense to me given what we know about the rules of this new rebooted timeline.

So, being a huge Trek fan, and having faith in J.J. Abrhams, I held to the hope that John Harrison was just that: John Harrison. Then, tonight, I saw the film and screamed inside as Benedict spat the words on screen, "My name is Kahn."

"How could this be?" I wondered. It didn't make sense at all and it didn't follow the rules. Sure, given the new continuity, the SS Botany Bay could have been discovered earlier, as he suggests it was, and Kahn could have been awoken sooner. In fact, I have no problem with that aspect at all. It still all falls into the parameters set forth by the first film and the creation of the new time line. In other words, anything that happened before George Kirk crashed his ship into Nero's remains intact, which is further proven in an Into Darkness Easter Egg. (A model of Zefram Cochran's ship and the Enterprise NX-01 are on a table in Admiral Marcus' office.)

The problem is, this does not explain why Kahn would look so different and have a different accent. Sure, in Space Seed he was awoken and brought immediately onto the Enterprise, where as John Harrison's Kahn had years of god knows what going on before we saw him, but no mention of reconstructive surgery or further genetic manipulation was made. So, why does "Kahn" look so different.

The answer, for me at least, is this: He is not Kahn. He lied.

Given what we know about the rules of the rebooted timeline, which I won't go into in depth, he can't be Kahn. Therefore, he is not. "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." He does not look, sound or act like Kahn, so he is not Kahn.

I know what some of you might say, that they had to recast the role just as they did with Kirk and Spock and the others, and so what we are seeing is simply a different actor's portrayal of an old character, but that doesn't satisfy the equation. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy look and act very similar to the way the characters looked before so why not attempt the same with Kahn?

Admiral Marcus could have woken any of the Botany Bay crew, and surely he must have, which either makes John Harrison a liar, or means that Kahn is simply an idea (like the Mandarin in Iron Man3). It doesn't matter which. I just think using the name Kahn was lazy writing, and done simply because non-trek fans wouldn't get who he was if he was just one of Kahn's lackeys trying to protect his frozen leader, and the name wasn't said. Creating a whole new villain is just too much work I suppose, but the movie would have been better for it.

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MrSundayMovies
MrSundayMovies - 5/16/2013, 1:44 AM
Hey mate this is an interesting read. Just so you know I removed your picture as it kind spoils the twist for those not in the know. Good stuff though, that'd be an interesting twist if it turned out to be someone else.
Happy11
Happy11 - 5/16/2013, 2:54 AM
What you think he isn't khan because he isn't doing an impression of the previous actor who played him. The actor has made khan his own and if you honestly don't believe he is khan then you are a fool.
HouseSnow
HouseSnow - 5/16/2013, 1:08 PM
saw it last night

hes kahn
JorEllinator
JorEllinator - 5/16/2013, 1:36 PM
Because he's not doing an impression?
Ever heard of your own interpretation?
Ocelot
Ocelot - 5/16/2013, 2:16 PM
he's Khan ffs
Godkiller89
Godkiller89 - 5/16/2013, 2:27 PM
***SPOLIER WARNING*** SEEN IT HE'S Kkkkhhhhaaaannnn!
Zuriel
Zuriel - 5/16/2013, 4:22 PM
An actor's job is to sell you on the part they are playing. Zachary Quinto does not do an "impression" of Leonard Nimoy and yet he sells me that he his Spock. A character that has already been portrayed before. If you do not portray the character effectively then why not invent a new character? Benedict gave a great performance and was an incredible villain, even more menacing than the original Kahn, but nothing about that performance sells you on the Kahn character. In a movie where you are revisiting characters that have been done before and claim you are honoring a per-existing history, you don't have the luxury of making the character your own or re-inventing. It's lazy and it has nothing to do with race.
Wallymelon
Wallymelon - 5/16/2013, 5:12 PM
@zuriel, your logic is very faulty man, its an alternate timeline, everything is different.

and these are all different actors potraying the characters the way they would portray them.
Zuriel
Zuriel - 5/16/2013, 8:17 PM
You all obviously don't understand that in the new timeline, nothing 300 years before Kirk's birth would be different. You don't understand time travel, or the entire concept they established in the 2009 film. I guess that's what the creators were hoping for. They when.
Zuriel
Zuriel - 5/16/2013, 8:23 PM
*win* sorry. Kahn was frozen in 1996 and the timeline was not altered until Nero's ship came back from the future to 2233. These arguments make no sense.
Zuriel
Zuriel - 5/17/2013, 12:50 PM
Skin color is not the issue, but accent and mannerisms are. Are you really a great actor if you can't hide your British accent when it would be appropriate? I don't expect him to have a long black pony tail. It's a Star Trek movie about Star Trek characters. Reference the damn character you're portraying.

That being said, and that's the last I'm going to comment on it, I can't wait to see Smaug in the Hobbit.
Tainted87
Tainted87 - 5/18/2013, 4:30 AM
Saw it last night in IMAX. As in, MOSI IMAX. The only other movie I've seen in a dome theater was..... wait, that's my first.

He's the most Khan you'll ever get. Like Space Seed AND Wrath of Khan combined, with a few extras. I really like how he's also THE ONLY Star Trek villain to survive, although I'm sure he's not going to be woken up anytime soon.
Tainted87
Tainted87 - 5/18/2013, 5:47 AM
@Zuriel
The Cumberbatch was instructed to not only retain his native accent, but do specific things with his voice to produce a growl. So claiming that he's not doing a job of hiding his British accent is kind of silly.

Also, you know, EVERYTHING was in the trailer, a lot of things that are VERY spoilerific, indeed, are hiding in plain sight. Thing is, they are portrayed out of context, out of sync with expectations, and as a result, we get a good deal of "twists" that play with the minds of the audiences.

You see the glass separation between a human hand and a Vulcan salute, and you assume Spock is going to bite the dust. You see the Vengeance crashing into San Francisco Bay and think it's the Enterprise because the ship is roughly the same build, but a much larger scale. People like me watch a trailer, hang onto the trailers in our minds while watching the movie, and think "oh, this hasn't happened yet, so this character still has something to do". Into Darkness managed to subvert all of that.

So with that said, if the Cumberbatch spoke with a Mexican accent, I'm certain EVERYONE would know right off the bat that he was Khan, and his revelation would have been less. Thousands, perhaps millions of people had already guessed his identity based on the number of homages the trailer alone had paid to the classic movie, but it did so much more with the character than what anyone was expecting or anticipating.
AC1
AC1 - 5/18/2013, 1:26 PM
He says something along the lines of "John Harrison is a fiction constructed by Marcus. My name is Khan!"

Given the advanced technology readily available in the Trek series, which was accelerated by the creation of the alternate timeline, plus the fact that Section 31 was developing new tech, I think it's entirely plausible that they somehow altered his physiology and his voice as part of the disguise. It's not too much of a stretch to think up the conclusion for yourself, because they're not going to waste any time in the movie telling you.

Plus, outside of the in-movie reasons for changing his identity, if they cast an actor who looked and sounded like Ricardo Montalban, then there would be no secrecy surrounding the character, meaning no plot twist (and it was a plot twist, even though it happened fairly early).

In terms of character, though (as in how he acts) he's very much Khan, although a much angrier, more fearful and more ruthless Khan, as he's been separated from his crew. He's a desperate, on edge, and thus, more dangerous Khan.
Lhornbk
Lhornbk - 5/18/2013, 8:39 PM
Okay, I'm going to point out something that evidently no one has thought of. Khan is supposed to be Indian, right? (India, not American Indian.) In case anyone has forgotten, India was a British colony up until the 1940s. Most people there still speak primarily English, and many Indians in fact have at least somewhat of a British accent. And many Indians have lighter skin than others. After being awoken, Khan is sent to London for most of the time. He probably has a latent British accent that naturally comes out from being around others with the same accent. (for those who think this doesn't happen, I guarantee that my southern accent becomes more pronounced when I'm around others with a very distinctive southern accent.)

What ACira says makes sense too, since Khan was supposed to be a fairly well known historical war criminal, so plastic surgery was almost a requirement so that no one would realize that Starfleet had in fact freed such a person and had him working for them. Do you really think that if Hitler had been frozen and then some country woke him up hundreds of years later to use his supposed intellect in their favor that they wouldn't change the way he looks? Of course they would change it. (Of course, anyone waking up Hitler to use his strategic abilities has to be about the dumbest person ever, because Hitler was one of the worst military strategists of all time, but that's a different topic.)

That could be the "in-movie" explanation. The other explanation is what many others have said, that Abrams wanted to keep his identity a secret and hiring an actor who even remotely resembled Ricardo Montalban would have been a dead giveaway.
Tainted87
Tainted87 - 5/20/2013, 9:10 AM
Also factor in that this is, indeed, the FUTURE. Present nationalities may mean precious little. Mass Effect's Anderson (voiced by Keith David) is from London. He calls it his home, not just where he was born. Admiral Hackett is from Argentina, and he's voiced by Lance Henrikson, and is very much Caucasian.

Also, the technology available allows the quick application/manipulation of tissue. Dermal regenerator, anyone? Consider how quickly humans are made to look Klingon in Star Trek Voyager and tell me that such a process couldn't have happened with "John Harrison".

BTW, the actress who plays the wife from the VERY beginning - she's Indian. And she's also Canadian.

@Lhornbk
I'd like to take this moment to thank you for being intelligent.

@dellamorte1872
But you said it anyway.
HouseSnow
HouseSnow - 5/20/2013, 7:28 PM
to anyone who has a problem with cumberbatch- go lose your virginity, you will stop caring about things this trivial.
Zuriel
Zuriel - 5/23/2013, 8:58 PM
Oh House, you say this and yet you're on here with the rest of us. You found it, read it and commented on it. Star Trek is like a hobby for me and it does not interfere with me getting laid. That's my old lady's job. (the interfering part not the laid part) Hey-o!

Just kidding baby you know I loves ya!

Just kidding again, she would never waste her time reading this crap.
Zuriel
Zuriel - 5/23/2013, 9:03 PM
@ Tainted87 and Lhornbk

Very reasonable responses. Thank you. Should we really have to do this much back story in our minds to justify the filmmakers' laziness? You're doing Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof's workj for them! JJ should cut you guys a check.

It would have taken 3 seconds to say "...and Marcus changed my appearance to hide my identity."
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