Did skaparna av Into Darkness forskning Khan?

Det verkar som författarna, Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman och Damon Lindelof, var medvetna om Ricardo Montalbans ursprungliga skildring av Khan i The Original Series och The Wrath of Khan em>, men valde uttryckligen att avvika från det.

Först och främst erkände de att Khan var en karaktär av enorm betydelse i Star Trek canon:

Lindelof said that Khan was considered a character they needed to use at some point, given that "he has such an intense gravity in the Trek universe, we likely would have expended more energy NOT putting him in this movie than the other way around."

Uttalandet om att behöva spendera energi för att hålla Khan ur filmen är ganska konstruerad, men det innebär att de var minst medvetna om karaktärens betydelse.

References to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan were eventually added to the script, but Lindelof, Orci, and Kurtzman "were ever wary of the line between 'reimagined homage' and 'direct ripoff'." Orci and Kurtzman said they wanted a film which would work on its own and as a sequel, not using ideas from previous Star Trek works simply "because you think people are going to love it".

Så det verkar som om de fattade ett medvetet beslut att avvika från teckenets tidigare tecken.

( Källa för utdrag )

För att kasta mer ljus på processen genom vilken Khan - eller åtminstone en version av karaktären - kom in In Darkness och varför han var porträtt som han är, inkluderar jag följande fragmentar från en intervju med Orci från den officiella Star Trek webbplatsen:

INTERVIEWER: Let's talk about Khan (Benedict Cumberbatch). Take us through why you went with Khan as the villain and, also, can you clarify why he does what he does?

ORCI: OK, I’ll do a deep dive with you. In a way, [fellow co-writer and co-producer] Damon [Lindelof] and I were the biggest debaters about this. He argued for Khan from the beginning and I argued against it. The compromise that we came to was, let us devise a story that is not reliant on any history of Star Trek. So, what's the story? Well, we have a story where our crew is who they are and they're coming together as a family. Then, suddenly, this villain arrives and his motivations are based on what happens in the movie. They're not based on history. They're not based on Star Trek. They’re not based on anything that came before. They're based on his [being] used by a corrupted system of power that held the things he held dear against him and tried to manipulate him. That story stands alone with or without Star Trek history. That's how we approached it, and God bless Damon for going down that road.

So, once we had that, that's when Damon came back and reared his ugly head and said, "OK, now that we have that, is there any reason why we cannot bring Star Trek history into this?" And he was right. So we ended up sort of reverse engineering it. We started with, "What's a good movie? What’s a good villain? What’s a good motivation? We cannot rely on what's happened before. Now that we have that, can we tailor this villain into something that relates to Star Trek history?" And that’s what we did. So, step one was "Don’t rely on Star Trek." Then, step two was "Rely on Star Trek."

( Källa )

Inom detta finner vi att Khans uppträdande skiljer sig från hans motsvarighet i Prime Timeline (det vill säga tidslinjen som skulle ha utvecklats om det inte var för Nero: s störningar i 2009-filmen) på grund av

• Den manipulation och missbruk som Khan fick i händerna på admiral Marcus (det här är svaret i universum
);
• de tänkte på sin skurk och hans egenskaper innan de bestämde att han skulle vara Khan Noonien Singh (det här är out-of-universes svaret
).

Vad gäller frågan om Khan som gråter verkar det vara förenligt med denna förklaring. Med detta sagt var det antagligen inkluderat som ett sätt att lägga till en extra dimension eller ett lager till karaktären - även om jag håller med OP-enheten att den är oskadd i bästa fall.