Recently, someone ridiculously named Benedict Cumberbatch who happens to be playing the villain for the new Star Trek film claimed his villain had shades of Hannibal Lecter, The Joker, and Jack Torrance. These are three of the greatest film villains of all time, and are great inspiration if you want to play a mentally deranged badass iconic villain.
Well, this is great for the actor to say during a publicity tour, but let's not get carried away. Just because I call my screenplay a mix of The Godfather, Citizen Kane, and The Graduate doesn't mean it's true at all, or that my screenplay will be any good. How about we look at the previous Star Trek film and examine that villain.
Chances are, you barely remember the villain. I was shocked when I just looked it up and found out that Eric Bana played him. Quick, what was the character's name? Exactly, nobody fucking knows, because he was so forgettable and flat. How would you describe Nemo (yes, that's his name)? He looked weird, was really pissed off, I remember him being green or something. The fact is that they paid little attention to creating a villain. Granted, most of this was due to the plot centering on establishing Captain Kirk and Spock's relationship, but can't we get just a slightly respectable antagonist for our heroes to fight? The original Spider Man (with Toby Maguire, so not really the original) had Dafoe playing the Green Goblin, and I can remember him. He certainly wasn't the best villain, but he was memorable and had a substantial back story, despite the film really being an origin story.
Obviously there could be an improvement from the first Star Trek's bad guy to the second's. There was a jump from Batman Begins to The Dark Knight, although there was a much higher base. So I'm not writing off the character just yet, I'm simply pointing out that we can't have the same expectations for him as we did for Bane, because the history just isn't there.
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