Trait #3: Brilliant
"There she is! There she is!!! Ahhhh... not so wounded as we were lead to believe! So much the better!" -Khan, "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan One of the greatest aspects of Khan's character is his brilliance in battle, matched only by Captain Kirk's. Though they never truly came face to face in the cinema classic, the chemistry between the two characters is brilliant as they provoke and taunt each other in a veritable 'cat-and-mouse' game worthy of Sun Tzu's teachings in "The Art of War."
"We tried it once your way, Khan. Are you game for a rematch? Khan? I'm laughing at your superior intellect!" -Captain Kirk, "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" Seizing
Reliant, capturing and planting Chekhov and Terrell on the Regula I space station for the
Enterprise to find, Khan's chilling taunts towards a sweating Kirk as he claims Genesis as his own, the battle in the Mutara Nebula, everything about Khan's strategy reflects the old Sun Tzu proverb, paraphrased, "in order to defeat one's enemy, you must understand them." Until the explosion of the Genesis device, Khan enjoyed victory after victory showing that he is absolutely matched to Kirk's tact. Cumberbatch, on the other hand, while his initial strategy involving manipulating a Starfleet agent into blowing up a Section 31 installation using the agent's daughter as leverage, hijacking a gunship to attack Starfleet HQ, and manipulating Spock into handing over his crew was fair in true to Khan Prime's reputation of manipulation, however in a much more Machiavellian "ends justify the means" fashion. In other words, Cumberbatch just came out shooting to save his crew, which made for an exciting movie and works to his advantage against Montalban at the very end (more on that later), but it didn't feel as much like
Star Trek. Ricardo - 2; Benedict - 1