Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
January 30, 2008
Rated: PG Runtime: 116 min Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
From hell’s heart, I stab at thee. For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee. - Khan
All but the hardest core Star Trek fans were very disappointed with the first Star Trek movie, a movie with a decent story but the pacing of a glacier. Condense it down to 30 minutes, and it might have been good. As a result, there wasn’t much hope for the franchise to continue… but then the title for the second movie came out, and fans had reason to hope. Wrath? That’s gotta be action, right?! Khan? Ooohh.. from Space Seed, Khan was good!
The fans were not disappointed this time as Star Trek II turned out to be a kick ass movie, full of action, drama and more than a few surprises. To this day it’s considered the best of the Trek movies by most fans. It achieved this status by understanding what the fans wanted, and giving them exactly that.
Action. Khan is full of action sequences, and has the classic space battle between the Enterprise and the Reliant where Khan forgets that space is more than just left and right turns. There are explosions, crew members die on both ships, hulls are ripped apart by phaser fire, and nacelles are blown apart by photon torpedoes. It just rocks.
I’ve done far worse than kill you, Admiral. I’ve hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me, as you left her: marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet, buried alive. Buried alive. - Khan
Drama. Trek fans like some drama too and we get that in spades. Ricardo Montalban’s Khan is a fantastic bad guy, smart, egotistical, and rather determined to get revenge. He’s a bit angry over being stranded and there’s no length he won’t go to to make Kirk pay. We also learn that Kirk has a son who doesn’t like him very much, we get Scottie upset over losing a cadet, and in the end, Spock dies. Come on, how much more drama do you need?!
Comedy. I’m a doctor not a bricklayer! Star Trek has always had humor as a core element, and while Khan was full of Wrath there were some great lines as well.
McCoy: Where are we going?
Kirk: Where they went.
McCoy: Suppose they went nowhere?
Kirk: Then this will be your big chance to get away from it all.
This isn’t the comedy fest that was Star Trek IV, but it’s got some great lines.
Over acting. Yeah, go ahead and admit it.. you love how over acted all those old episodes of Star Trek were, the slowly.. paced.. words… that.. came.. out of.. Kirk’s.. mouth when he wanted to make a point. The Wrath of Khan turns this up a notch with some fantastic over-acting by both Shatner and Montalban. Just look at Kirk in that picture. Awesome!
As a package Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is almost perfect. It’s easy to spot flaws of both a story and technical nature, but that’s true of all Sci-Fi movies, and misses the point. Khan was made for the fans, and the fans appreciated it.. and still appreciate it.
KHAAAAAAANNNNN! - Kirk
Seen it? How many stars do you give it?
(5 votes, average: 4.2 out of 5)
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Oh, hell yeah!! Wrath of Khan is in my top-10 of all time list!
[...] weeks selection is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Of the ten Trek movies, Khan is at the top of my list without question. Several of the others were [...]
KHAAAN!!!