Star Trek movie retrospective Part 2: Star Trek the Wrath of Khan
Now to the good stuff. As important and groundbreaking as the Motion Picture was, ultimately it was really a horrible movie, and not just for Shatnar in a body stocking. Overall it was as bad as the most mediocre Season 3 episode (cough cough Spock’s Brain cough cough), only with better special effects. However, it opened the door for TWOK, and for that I will always be grateful. (TWOK image courtesy of the sci fi t shirts category)
So, it’s now 1982. Gene Roddenberry, after the mediocre production of the Motion Picture, was more or less forced out of the movie. The great Nick Meyer was tapped to write and direct the film (this entire blog series, by the way, was inspired by an interview I heard with Nick Meyers on Geektime, Howard Stern’s nerd program on Sirius Satellite radio, where he talked about working on this and all the good Star Trek films (the even numbered ones. 2,4, and 6)). He wrote the script in 12 days. They worked on a shoe string budget, recycled miniatures and footage from the last film, and somehow produced brilliance. TWOK set a record for first day box office gross (which I contributed to) and was the first movie to use a sequence entirely done with computer graphics (suck it, Lucas).
What was happening in 1982? Well, I was in Jr High, the only two year period of my pre-collage education that didn’t resemble a year long water boarding experience. Reagan was president, and in spite of my father’s (a lifelong Democrat) objections seemed to doing good stuff for the country. All nine planets in our solar system aligned on the same side of the sun, and the longest lunar eclipse of the century occured yet in spite of mass doomsday predictions the planet did not blow up. Our good friends to the north were made completely independent from England. The Vietnam Memorial was dedicated. Thriller by Michael Jackson became the biggest selling record of all time (I admit it. I owned a copy). The Commodore 64 was released. And Argentina invades the Falklands Islands, sparking a minor war that was more or less treated like Monday Night Football by most Americans.
Overall, it could be called an ‘up” year, for lack of a better term. The only real downer was the big Tylenol scare, which was like the lottery only the prize was death. I think the cultural time was right for a movie that was, for lack of a better term, kind of a bummer. I am man enough to admit that I cried like a little girl when Spock died, and even to this day I get a little teary when I think about it. Sure, they stuck in that scene with his coffin on the Genesis planet (actually forced in by the studio over Nick Meyers and Leonard Nimoy’s strenuous objections). Nimoy only agreed to come back if they gave him an epic death scene that would end his character forever (I guess money cured that problem for him).
I won’t waste our time going in to the story too much. If you haven’t seen TWOK I don’t know what the hell you are even doing reading this blog. Odds are you should be watching Paris Hilton’s rereprehensible reality show. Khan Noonien Singh was dropped off on a planet by Kirk 15 years ago and then left to rot when the planet turned into a death world. He captures a ship and proceeds to use it to wreak havoc in the universe and track down Kirk. Stuff explodes. Ships fight. Spock dies heroically saving the ship, breaking my heart in the process.
I will say this about the story. I am not unsympathetic to Khan. No one really goes into it too much in the movie but Kirk royally screwed him and all his people. One thing you can say about this movie is that everyone’s motivations are “as clear as an unmuddied lake. As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer.”
Here’s what TWOK had:
The full cast. A great story. Khan Noonien Singh (I just like saying his name), played by the amazing Ricardo Montalban. Decent low budget special effects. A creepy creature that controls your brain from inside your ear. A call back to a great TOS episode (Space Seed). A non-Hollywood lame happy ending. The great Kobayashi Maru test (which Kirk beat). A great death scene. Kirks long lost son. A cool constructive tool used as a weapon of mass destruction. A computer animated scene.
Here’s what it did not have:
A lame excuse for Kirk to fight Khan face to face (they never actually meet). Annoying new characters, like the now obligatory hot chick for sex appeal (there were a couple, but they didn’t annoy me). Any hesitation to beat the hell out of the Enterprise. Body stocking uniforms (I actually like the Star Fleet uniforms from this film a lot. The best, IMO). Unnecessary aliens (as any zombie movie will teach you, the worst enemies humans have will always be other humans).
The story is tight and clean, with no extra stuff crow-barred in except for the Spock body/Genesis planet at the end. At the time (age 11, crying my eyes out, feeling like my best friend had just died and nothing on the planet was worth doing ever) I grabbed onto that scene like a drowning man grabbing a life saver, but with an adult eye and considering what would come to follow I think Nick Meyers was right and they should have let the scene stand alone. They could have probably forced his resurrection without it, and it would have made for a better stand alone movie.
Honestly, for me Spock’s death was when the series more or less ended for the TOS crew. Sure, there were some decent movies coming up, but the difference was this is where Spock (and to a lesser extent the rest of the crew) transformed from vibrant action stars and turned kind of into old men. In the following movies Spock would have to be the intellectual backbone, and in my opinion never really recaptured the Spock I grew up with. I’m sure there are those who will disagree with me, but that’s just my opinion.
Anyway, that’s the Wrath of Khan. Next up, Star Trek caters to fan boys (like me) with the Search for Spock.
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