Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Plot: Admiral Kirk is supervising a training mission for the new crew of the Enterprise, a bevy of green cadets trained by Captain Spock and led by a female Vulcan officer, Lt. Saavik, when the ship is called away to Regula I. A research station, led by Carol Marcus, has received a strange message, disrupting its work on the Genesis Project, a device with the power to reorganize genetic matrixes and create new life out of barren worlds. Little does Kirk realize he is walking into an ambush set by Khan Noonien Singh, the old enemy he left exile on Ceti Alpha V in the original series episode “Space Seed.” Khan is determined to capture and use the Genesis device for his own purposes, but only after taking his revenge–served cold!–on Kirk.
Thoughts: Star Trek II’s place in the pantheon as the greatest Star Trek film is something of a retcon. Its respectable lifetime gross of $79 million is less than the $82 million earned by Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and far less than the $110 million earned by the actually more popular Star Trek IV. Quentin Tarantino came out as a big booster of the film some ~15 years ago, and his enthusiasm spread out from websites like Ain’t It Cool News over the world wide web, where it became embedded in the public consciousness beside irresistible jingles like “the even Star Trek films are the best!” The “fact” that The Wrath of Khan is the best Star Trek film seems now to be something everyone knows, part of the received wisdom, with equal adherents among serious Star Trek fans and the general public. Unsubtlely aping Star Trek II was the central narrative strategy of Star Trek Into Darkness, which grossed $229 million in 2013, inspiring the creation of this community (although there were lifts from Star Trek VI mixed in there as well).
While I don’t have much truck with things that “everybody knows,” the fact remains that The Wrath of Khan is a very strong film, with a tight script, good action, and far more satisfying characterization than its predecessor. It manages to summon the high-mindedness of STTMP with concepts like the Genesis device, the liberal use of literary quotations from the likes of Dickens and Melville (a trick later Trek films would emulate), and repeated overt thematic references to the task of facing death, anchored by the unforgettable opening Kobayashi Maru sequence, that are really quite clever.
I didn’t like Star Trek II so much when I was younger. I found it too disturbing. The film is gory, violent, and full of death. The revelation that Kirk has a son he hasn’t seen for 15 years is unsettling. And the Ceti eels–those are still disturbing!
While Wrath of Khan takes violence to previously unseen levels, I was wrong to believe (as I used to) that there was nothing like it before in Star Trek. Revenge as a theme is explored in the Original Series episodes “The Conscience of the King,” “Obsession,” and “The Doomsday Machine,” with the latter two episodes going so far as to invoke Moby Dick, just as in this film. Kirk’s ship-to-ship battles with Khan are largely modeled after “Balance of Terror,” itself inspired by submarine warfare movies. Khan was, of course, first revealed to be capable of ruthless killing in “Space Seed,” where he attempted to asphyxiate the crew before torturing them.
Call me a curmudgeon, but vengeance is a cheap motif to build a film around. These days, it’s hard to find an action film or thriller that isn’t built around some variation of an ultra-bad guy (or anti-hero) who seeks vengeance against the heroes (or villains) over some gripe. Both of J.J. Abrams’ reboot films and Star Trek: Nemesis follow this tired formula. Quentin Tarantino’s love of ST2 is no doubt founded on his famous obsession with vengeance films. I am a fan of Quentin, but I would be just as pleased if everyone else left this subgenre to him for a while, and we all tried to think of different ideas.
At least “Obsession” and “The Doomsday Machine” do not try to glamorize vengeance. If I had young kids, Wrath of Khan is the kind of film I would not be anxious for them to see until they were older. I was not quite 9 years old when the film was released–I wish that I had been older.
Still, there’s no denying that Ricardo Montalban is a delight to watch. ST2 manages to be about quite a bit more than “there’s this villain, and we have to fight him.” It’s also about “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” and whether you believe in no-win scenarios. How would you respond to the Kobayashi Maru? How do you like Spock’s solution? It’s also about a collection of uncommonly well-rounded characters: the fascinating psychology of Khan, Kirk, Carol, and David. And yes, I shed a tear (again) at Spock’s funeral. It would take more concentration than I can muster to hate this movie–it won me over years ago.
There are plot holes you can nitpick, but why? The movie works. I don’t know whether I would say that it’s better than The Motion Picture, but it certainly earns its place as one of the great Star Trek films, which helped pave the way for the four television series and ten more feature films that followed.
What did you think?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_II:_The_Wrath_of_Khan
Leave a Reply