Interesting analysis! I agree with pretty much everything you said, and I've been thinking many of these things myself without putting words to them. Often who's seen as "good" and who's seen as "bad" is determined by who is the main character of the movie. I myself sometimes have a tendency to fall for villains or anti-heroes if they're written and played in a way where you can see their side of things. This is definitely the case with Khan. ( Also the fact that he's so attractive sort of helps... yeah, I find it easier to overlook a fictional character's bad sides if he's pretty..! ;-)
Kirk definitely did, or wanted to do, things that could be argued were not the actions of a "good guy", but I believe that's how the movie's moral and learning experience is set up: The difference between good guys and bad guys is where they stop. Like Kirk's speech at the end. But heroes' / main character's speeches like that often sound so smug and self-congratulatory it just makes me want to smack them. With the shades of grey in human behaviour and motivation, who is to say that Kirk is really so much better than Khan, when their circumstances are so different that you can't really judge? Kirk was not perfectly morally squeaky-clean in this movie.
Looking at the events of the movie and what's said to have happened after Khan was thawed, it's obvious that he's been a victim of terrible injustice from the start, used as a tool in the hands of a man who couldn't get his peers in Starfleet to agree with his ideas/paranoia. He was used out of some strange notion that "savagery" from a less civilized time would help in designing a warship ( which may or may not have been true. Surely there are other people in Section 31 with that same "predator/warrior" mindset? ) and literally enslaved, kept controlled by the threat to his people.
But there's the question of the circumstances under which they were frozen in the first place. I got the impression from "Space Seed" that they actually chose to be frozen because they'd lost power over Earth and knew they couldn't get it back so they took the chance that some other time and place would allow them to have their perfect society. But from this movie I got the impression that they were frozen as punishment... or something. They were "sentenced to death for war crimes" I think. So how did they end up frozen and sent into space?
And what exactly were these "war crimes", and what were the reasons for them? These genetically superior people were created for a certain purpose, born and bred to be manipulated to their creators' wishes. If a childhood like that, combined with actually being superior in many ways to the people who created and use you, doesn't screw somebody up, I don't know what will! ( You said you'd seen all the movies, so I assume you remember Shinzon... and how being bred for a specific purpose and being enslaved will screw up even people with the same genes as "good guys". ) I think "Space Seed" said that there was no genocide or massacres during his reign, he wasn't particularly evil, just... very autocratic. Then again I seem to remember at some point in STID that somebody said he had wanted to / tried to exterminate all genetically inferior people?
I own Greg Cox' Khan trilogy but haven't read it yet. I sort of see nuKhan and Classic Khan as two different people, even though I know they aren't supposed to be, so I want to wait for the upcoming Khan backstory comic, to see what background and motivations they feel shaped the Khan we see in STID. From what I've read, the comic is going to show at least some of what happened before they were frozen. ( Hoping for "childhood in secret lab" flashbacks... )
Kirk definitely did, or wanted to do, things that could be argued were not the actions of a "good guy", but I believe that's how the movie's moral and learning experience is set up: The difference between good guys and bad guys is where they stop. Like Kirk's speech at the end. But heroes' / main character's speeches like that often sound so smug and self-congratulatory it just makes me want to smack them. With the shades of grey in human behaviour and motivation, who is to say that Kirk is really so much better than Khan, when their circumstances are so different that you can't really judge? Kirk was not perfectly morally squeaky-clean in this movie.
Looking at the events of the movie and what's said to have happened after Khan was thawed, it's obvious that he's been a victim of terrible injustice from the start, used as a tool in the hands of a man who couldn't get his peers in Starfleet to agree with his ideas/paranoia. He was used out of some strange notion that "savagery" from a less civilized time would help in designing a warship ( which may or may not have been true. Surely there are other people in Section 31 with that same "predator/warrior" mindset? ) and literally enslaved, kept controlled by the threat to his people.
But there's the question of the circumstances under which they were frozen in the first place. I got the impression from "Space Seed" that they actually chose to be frozen because they'd lost power over Earth and knew they couldn't get it back so they took the chance that some other time and place would allow them to have their perfect society. But from this movie I got the impression that they were frozen as punishment... or something. They were "sentenced to death for war crimes" I think. So how did they end up frozen and sent into space?
And what exactly were these "war crimes", and what were the reasons for them? These genetically superior people were created for a certain purpose, born and bred to be manipulated to their creators' wishes. If a childhood like that, combined with actually being superior in many ways to the people who created and use you, doesn't screw somebody up, I don't know what will! ( You said you'd seen all the movies, so I assume you remember Shinzon... and how being bred for a specific purpose and being enslaved will screw up even people with the same genes as "good guys". ) I think "Space Seed" said that there was no genocide or massacres during his reign, he wasn't particularly evil, just... very autocratic. Then again I seem to remember at some point in STID that somebody said he had wanted to / tried to exterminate all genetically inferior people?
I own Greg Cox' Khan trilogy but haven't read it yet. I sort of see nuKhan and Classic Khan as two different people, even though I know they aren't supposed to be, so I want to wait for the upcoming Khan backstory comic, to see what background and motivations they feel shaped the Khan we see in STID. From what I've read, the comic is going to show at least some of what happened before they were frozen. ( Hoping for "childhood in secret lab" flashbacks... )
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