Abrams and Cumberbatch tease his Star Trek Into Darkness villain
Seems to us that the more we're getting closer to Star Trek Into Darkness' release date, the more we're getting tantalizing bits and pieces about J.J. Abrams' highly anticipated sequel and its extremely enigmatic villain, John Harrison, played by Benedict Cumberbatch.
The Sherlock actor and Abrams are at it again and are once more teasing us about the upcoming Trek sequel's Big Bad.
In video interviews from Korea (from the Korean site Naver Movies), brought to us by TrekMovie, both Cumberbatch and Abrams have offered more enticing details about "John Harrison."
About his villain character, Cumberbatch says:
He is an extraordinary terrorist of sorts. He uses himself as a warrior with weapons and close hand combat to just reap devastation and havoc wherever he goes and a trail of destruction follows him. What is interesting from an acting point of view — beyond doing the stunts and choreographed fight sequences....was also the psychological warfare that he acts out. He has an incredible ability to control people's minds to his bidding and make them — well confuse the radar of their loyalties and prerogatives, so that was great fun. So it was a great mixture of intense acting scenes and action scenes.
Trek director Abrams also pondered Cumberbatch's villain and what the actor brings to the role:
Benedict is an amazing actor. He is someone who brings this incredible intelligence and depth and truth to whatever he does. When I saw Sherlock I thought "here is a guy who is making Sherlock Holmes into a character that I absolutely relate to, love watch, makes me laugh — I really feel for him. It's Sherlock Holmes but someone Benedict Cumberbatch is completely bringing it to life and making it real. We needed someone for this character who is going to ground the character and make him relatable and be frightening and intense and believable. Not because he is raving and insane but because he is rational. And he brought this incredible sense of sophistication and psychological complexity to the role and we were very luck to get him.
The best and greatest Star Trek villains have always been the ones we've been able to somewhat relate to, such as Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban) from the original series' episode "Space Seeds" and The Wrath of Kahn and even Gul Dukat (Marc Alaimo) from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine—villains who always think they're actually doing the right thing and believe that THEY are the heroes of the story.
We don't know about you guys, but this is making us even more excited for Star Trek Into Darkness to finally hit the screens full warp speed ahead. Are you?
Star Trek Into Darkness will be released on May 17, 2013.
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