By Josh Tyler | 8 years ago

We’ve all been speculating for months now over who the villain in Star Trek Into Darkness might be and the film’s first trailer, released moments ago does a good job of keeping the film’s bad guy a secret.

But the movie’s Japanese trailer spills everything.

The Japanese version of the first Star Trek Into Darkness trailer is nearly identical to the one being released everywhere else, except for an additional scene at the end which basically spoils the identity of Benedict Cumberbatch’s character. If you don’t want to know, don’t play the following video and leave this page now.

SPOILERS FOLLOW!

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So there you have it. The villain Benedict Cumberbatch is playing in Star Trek Into Darkness is indeed Khan. More than that, they also seem to be remaking Spock’s death scene from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. How do we know? Because of this:

That screenshot, taken from the Japanese trailer, is basically a shot for shot remake of Spock’s death scene in Wrath of Khan and the narration around it could be construed as a round about reference to Spock’s “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” speech, given to Kirk as the friends say goodbye.

Here’s the full, heart-wrenching Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan scene they’re so callously referencing…



I guess there’s always a tiny chance here that JJ Abrams is just screwing with us, but it’s pretty unlikely. That kind of bait and switch would be flat out bad marketing. Even if Abrams wanted to do it, I can’t believe the Paramount suits who have invested millions in the project would let him.

If this were just a massive redirection, then I could be convinced to believe that Cumberbatch is actually playing an original series villain named Garth of Izar. The narration fits Garth precisely, since he was an insane but brilliant starship captain sentence to an asylum. Garth views his fellow inmates as his family and would indeed have cause to return to Earth seeking vengeance… which seems to fit what’s going on in the trailer.

Other elements in it seem to suggest that this could be a redo of the Original Series Star Trek episode, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. If that’s what they’re doing, then Benedict Cumberbatch would be playing Gary Mitchell, a man gifted with godlike powers. This image, sent in by GFR reader Michael Large seems to lend credibility to that theory. It compares Alice Eve in the trailer to Dr. Elizabeth Dehner in “Where No Man Has Gone Before”…



Of course, nearly everything in the trailer could be applied to Khan as well and since we have that Wrath of Khan clue at the end I’m inclined to believe Abrams isn’t screwing with us. It just wouldn’t make sense to build a marketing campaign based on a lie that big. This means the rumors are now almost certainly true: They’re redoing Khan and oh maybe they’re killing Spock again while they’re at it. I’m sure they’ll put some sort of different twist on it, maybe they’ll even find a way to explain why Khan is now a white man (though probably not). It doesn’t matter. It’s still Khan. To me that means rebooting Star Trek was never about telling new and exciting stories in the Star Trek universe, it was really about cashing in on the popularity of the old ones, by doing them all over again. I guess this trailer is their confession.

What do you think? Does this trailer confirm that Benedict Cumberbatch is playing Khan? Let us know in the comments below.