Star Trek Into Darkness opened this week. My review in a nutshell is that it's essentially alternate-timeline Wrath of Khan, for anyone who has seen it and is familiar with the character of Khan from the Star Trek universe. The main villain is a mysterious super-man named John Harrison, portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch, who then reveals himself to be Khan.
If he really is Khan Noonien Singh, then I am not laughing. Khan, the Khan, is of Sikh/East Indian heritage. In Star Trek: the original series (1966-1969), he's portrayed by Ricardo Montalban, a Spanish-Mexican actor, who also portrayed him in Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan. Montalban, as talented as he was, was a white actor in brownface.
Fast forward to this movie, and the same Indian character is being portrayed Cumberbatch, a white, pale-skinned, British actor. We have a classic case of brownface on our hands here. Brownface, for those who don't know, is the brother of Blackface, which involves casting an actor, usually white, to portray a "brown" character (South Asian, Native American, etc).
Why did director J.J. Abrams and his team not cast an Indian actor for the role of Khan? Off the top of my head, I can come up with these Indian actors: Naveen Andrews, formerly Sayeed on ABC's Lost. There's the Maori actor (not South Asian), Cliff Curtis, and even the Pakistani actor, Faran Tahir who played the captain in the first sequence in Star Trek 2009.
On the Star Trek movie board, Damon Lindeloff, the head writer for the movie, left a message saying he'll be back to discuss Khan's race-change, but so far, he's been quiet. I am curious about the bogus excuses he'll use if he ever gets around to addressing the issue. Will he try to say Northern Indians are/were white, like the director of The Prince of Persia, after he was confronted about casting Jake Gyllenhaal? There are too many excuses being passed around already. On IMDb, the excuses range from, "Ricardo Montalban was white, so Khan is white" to "it doesn't matter. Only the actor matters."
The only excuse that's remotely plausible is that it's not the same Khan. He's simply using the title, Khan, as homage to Noonien Singh. Yet, this is without explanation in the movie, as Harrison simply says he's "Khan." It's obvious that we're supposed to accept that he's Khan Noonien Singh of "Space Seed" and "Wrath of Khan." Why would J.J. Abrams and his writing crew of Lindeloff, Kurtzman and Orci purposely mislead people by referring to the character as "Khan"? And why would they use the Spock Prime (Leonard Nimoy) cameo to confirm/discuss Khan?
In this day and age, they still don't care that people don't like brownface or blackface, etc.
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