This blog is taking a very brief moment to remember Christopher Plummer, who has died at the age of 91. One of the most prolific and popular actors of the past 60 years, most will remember him for his role in The Sound of Music as Georg Von Trapp.
However, for the purposes of this blog, he will be remembered as General Chang, the chief antagonist in 1991’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Outside of Khan, Chang is probably the best antagonist in Trek cinematic history, and Plummer’s performance really speaks to the aura of the character. He was cunning, intellectual, but also very dramatic and hammy, all characteristics that are aided by Plummer’s captivating and enjoyable performance.
There’s definitely an aura of Khan there – Trek tried to recapture lightning in a bottle – but Plummer’s performance does differentiate Chang and Khan in a rather poignant way. Khan was more tortured, a more nuanced antagonist straight out of classic literature, a symbol of WoK‘s personal story. Chang was less personal and more of a symbol, in the best way – the character is more allegorical, a symbol of the hard-line communists in the Soviet Union trying their damnedest to keep a falling order alive. (Contemporary events made the character even more poignant – within weeks of the movie’s premiere, the Soviet Union officially reached endgame.) Plummer’s performance is a very slightly different type of dramatic compared to Montalban’s a decade earlier, but it really speaks to the political nature of his character, the drama that can be found in some ideologues. Even if the character was a symbol of then-contemporary politics, the performance still makes him fun to watch thirty years down the road.
Christopher Plummer isn’t the first actor to go from Shakespeare to Space, but he did cement the idea that a truly versatile actor can inhibit the realms of high and pop culture. For that and his services to the Star Trek canon, this blog thanks him.
Oh, and one more fun fact. Director Ridley Scott wanted Plummer to portray J. Paul Getty in the 2017 movie All the Money in the World. However, the studio went with Kevin Spacey, partially due to Plummer’s advanced aged and Spacey’s apparent marketability. Weeks before the movie was released, Spacey was dropped from the film due to sex abuse allegations, Plummer was cast… and much of the movie was reshot. Plummer, for his effort, became the oldest man ever nominated for an Oscar in an acting category – adding onto his record for being the oldest man to win an acting award a few years earlier. Respect.
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