But more often than not, you have J.J. Abrams able to successfully convince much of the movie-going populace that Khan was *not* the villain in Star Trek Into Darkness, a feat made much easier by casting Benedict Cumberbatch in a role made famous by Ricardo Montalban.
Benicio del Toro was first offered the role of Khan in J.J. Abrams’s Star Trek sequel.

But since he is the only English-speaking Hispanic person currently pursuing a career in film acting, the Bad Robot clan had no choice but to seek out the whitest white guy they could find.  With as much pressure as Paramount was putting on the film to deliver overseas box office, you’d think there would have been an incentive to make the film’s cast a bit more ethnically diverse to appeal to differing overseas markets.  Nothing against Cumberbatch, but why no one at Paramount thought “Hmm, let’s ask recent Oscar nominee Demián Bichir if he’d be interested in playing one of the most famous villains in modern American history?” remains to be answered.

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