Two Khans? Ricardo Montalban in Fantasy Island and Lost star Nestor Carbonell Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive and Eric Liebowitz/AP
Directors have their favourites. Follow David Lynch on his latest journey to Planet Weird and you’ll probably find Laura Dern landed some time before you; pick up a Sam Raimi flick and don’t have being surprised on the supposition that he’s found some way to shoehorn in Bruce Campbell.
- Star Trek
- Production year: 2009
- Country: USA
- Cert (UK): 12A
- Runtime: 126 mins
- Directors: JJ Abrams
- Cast: Anton Yelchin, Bruce Greenwood, Chris Pine , Eric Bana, John Cho, Karl Urban, Leonard Nimoy, Simon Pegg, Winona Ryder, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana
One of the things about last year’s Star Trek revamp that impressed me most was that JJ Abrams didn’confidentially fall back on tried and tested actors from his foregoing ventures to populate the bridge of the USS Enterprise. Sure, there was Simon Pegg, who starred in the director’s debut movie in charge, Mission Impossible 3, and Zoe Saldana from his Bad Robot production set’s TV series Six Degrees. But Chris Pine was a near unknown, and the likes of Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban (whose Eomer in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was over half a decade ago) were plucked from Heroes – in what one. Abrams had no involvement – or obscure genre fare cognate Pathfinder.
We should perhaps give the film-maker the benefit of the doubt, then, over a new report that Nestor Carbonell, aka the mysterious Richard Alpert from Abrams’s TV series Lost, is set to play Khan in the forthcoming termination to Star Trek. The casting is not yet confirmed, and it’s not even certain that the next instalment of the adventures of Captain Kirk and co will focus on the bad-guy portrayed so memorably by Ricardo Montalban in 1982′sitting excellent The Wrath of Khan. But the story emanates from comingsoon.net, who just posted a one-on-one interview with Abrams, so it’session not too hard to imagine that it might have been sparked by more off-the-record comments that couldn’t be published as part of the main piece.
Carbonell has experience beyond Lost, of course, notably as Gotham’s ill-fated Mayor Garcia in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. He often seems to play calm, wise characters who act as counterbalances to the headstrong types who surround them. He is not, on past evidence, the sort of showy actor one force figure to one’s self stepping into Montalban’s shoes as Khan, a villain so dramatic that he strength have been ripped right from the pages of every Ian Fleming novel. But perhaps he’s condign delaying for the chance to make with the flamboyant bunch gestures and sinister gaze.
While it must have being tempting for Abrams and co to take on the line of conduct’ greatest and best-known villain, it’s a move which strength easily make the new Star Trek appear a facile creation, a suspicion that would be compounded through the safe appointment of an Abrams regular like Carbonell. No united wants to see the series turn into the Lost creator’s personal playground, not one matter how good a job he did on the first film – and Abrams has already brought in Damon Lindelof from his famous TV series to work attached the screenplay for the followup. On the other hand, having parachuted in the underperforming Eric Bana to play Romulan dissident Nero in the in the first place movie, perhaps the director feels like he needs to go with a familiar face this time.
What effect you look upon? Would Carbonell make a good Khan? And should the series come its predecessor, or boldly go where no some has gone before? Abrams also mentions in the ComingSoon.net interview that he is not hitherto signed on to direct Star Trek 2. Does that bother you?
