There’s still no official word on who the villain in JJ Abrams’s Star Trek 2 is, although it’s been great fun to track all the frantic speculation over recent months.
Recently it may have slipped that the bad guy could be Gary Mitchell, who was the villain in the very first episode of Trek, and talk of Khan still keeps going on and on, even though it’s being denied left and right by the Trek powers that be.
Being that Star Trek 2 is a JJ Abrams production, and this is the long awaited sequel to one of science fiction’s biggest franchises, major secrecy is a given, maybe even more so than The Dark Knight Rises, which was kept very tightly under wraps until it hit theaters.
Considering Trek 2 is due May 17, 2013, it’s clearly going be tough to keep everything under cover that long, and I’m willing to bet by the end of the year, if not sooner, we’ll know for sure who the villain is, one way or another.
The questions about being a Trek villain will of course keep coming, because Benedict Cumberbatch is starring in a new drama on BBC, Parade’s End, but at the beginning of an interview for Shortlist, he smashed a bug and said, “As you can see, Mr Miyagi was my trainer on Star Trek [2].”
Actually, as it turned out Cumberbatch worked with Tom Hardy’s trainer, Patrick P-Nut Monroe, but when asked about who the villain, he laughed and said “It’s another thing I can’t talk about. I’ll tell you this, it’s iconic and it’s exciting.”
Cumberbatch of course had to say, “I’m bored of denying that it’s Khan now, because people keep saying it,” which nipped that question in the bud. At the same time, he said it’s “really, really good fun” to play a villain. “It’s a great part and it’s really well written.”
Cumberbatch also revealed he did motion capture and voice work on The Hobbit for Smaug the dragon and the Necromancer. Working on both Trek 2 and The Hobbit? Cumberbatch has got to be the object of geek envy everywhere right now.
So again, everyone’s tight lipped about who the Trek 2 villain is, although we know the Khan denials will go on and on, and if the cat is indeed out of the bag with Gary Mitchell, we won’t know for certain for a while.
