Though we’ve seen a teaser poster and trailer, details on Benedict Cumberbatch’s antagonist character in Star Trek Into Darkness have been scarce.
He shed some light on the question today – but he may be just trolling us. Did he learn his techniques from Steven Moffat?
Over the past few months the rumor mill has speculated that Cumberbatch will play Khan in Star Trek 2, the highly anticipated sequel from J.J. Abrams. Since then that answer has been clarified, with a John Harrison character being named.
When asked by Access Hollywood who he will play, the Sherlock star describes John Harrison as “a terrorist and an extraordinary character in his own right. He’s somebody who is not your two-dimensional cookie cutter villain. He’s got an extraordinary purpose, and I hope that at one point or other in the film you might even sympathize with the reasons he’s doing what he’s doing — not necessarily the means and the destruction he causes. But it was a great ride, not just because he’s the bad guy and the antagonist but also because he has a purpose and it’s hard not to see his point of view at certain points.”
It sounds like a pretty detailed explanation to us, yet some continue to believe that Cumberbatch and Abrams are staying mum and throwing us off the trail in order to surprise everyone. Skeptics point to Marion Cotillard lying about her Dark Knight Rises character prior to the release. Cotillard said she would play someone named Miranda Tate, but once we saw the film we learned she actually plays Talia al Ghul.
Elsewhere in the interview, the actor admits he wasn’t a Star Trek fan until seeing the 2009 film and believes that this sequel will live up to expectations. “Without a doubt, it is truly epic,” he said. “It’s a big film. The scale of it is so much bigger than the first.”
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