Benedict Cumberbatch defends character reveal in Star Trek Into Darkness

Yesterday we reported that J.J. Abrams had suggested that the reveal of Benedict Cumberbatch’s character in Star Trek Into Darkness had been a mistake, with the director suggesting they should have come clean about Khan from the get-go.

However, Cumberbatch himself has moved to defend the tactic, making the point that for those who hadn’t been following the film’s every development on the internet, the reveal had the desired effect.

“What a dickhead,” chuckled Cumberbatch when informed of Abrams’ comments by IGN . “The amount of times we had to lie for him… the amount of times I had to talk about it not being my character!

“No, I love him,” continues the star, “but I don’t know if it was a bad or a good thing… the intention was to have a reveal in the audience that was going to be thrilling. That worked to an extent.

“Not everybody knew what they were in for when they went into the theatre… for those people it was a good thing… There was a verbal and physical reaction to it [ in theatres I saw it in ], so it kind of works.”

It all seems like a bit of a storm in a teacup to us, and while there’s an argument that it was a twist for the sake of a twist, we were just happy to see Khan back in business. Put us down as Team Cumberbatch on this one…

George Wales

George was once GamesRadar's resident movie news person, based out of London. He understands that all men must die, but he'd rather not think about it. But now he's working at Stylist Magazine.