Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So today I'm going to be talking about Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Before I get into it though, if you follow me on social media you may have noticed that I announced that I would not be doing a review of the season premiere of Star Trek: Lower Decks as I found one of the storylines of the episode to be problematic and couldn't write the review without completing bashing the episode, which is unfair since the main storyline centered around Mariner, Freeman, and Ransom was actually quite good. I just couldn't talk about the Rutherford and Tendi storyline for personal reasons. So with that out of the way, let's get into The Wrath of Khan!
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan has never been my favourite Star Trek movie. In fact, it's my least favourite one next to Star Trek: First Contact and Star Trek Into Darkness. Mainly because both Wrath of Khan and First Contact scared me as a kid and Into Darkness is a lesser rehash of "Space Seed" and Wrath of Khan. However since I've been watching it as an adult, particularly this time around, I've grown to appreciate The Wrath of Khan (and First Contact, but that's another story) alot more than I did when I was a kid. Though I still think Khan is an overrated villain.
One of the thing that I love about this movie is that it finally moves Kirk and his crew forward as characters. One of the things that bugs me about TOS is that the characters don't change. There's no character development, no growth, they're just the same in the third season as they are in the first season. And that ended up carrying over in not only Star Trek: The Animated Series, but into the first movie, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. But Star Trek II finally shows us the crew aging and dealing with the fact they're aging. Particularly Kirk, though Spock deals with it in a way too.
I like that Kirk's actions have consequences to them. One such consequence is Khan wanting revenge on him for the death of Marla McGivers due to a geological accident that destroyed Ceti Alpha VI and turned Ceti Alpha V into a desert wasteland. Apart from my reasons for hating Khan that I mentioned in my review of "Space Seed", this is another reason for me not liking Khan. His reasons for revenge against Kirk are petty and irrational. Yes, Kirk exiled Khan and his followers to Ceti Alpha V, but he had nothing to do with the event that killed Marla, and so Khan is acting stupidly, even for an intergalactic dictator. Which is something that his second in command, Joachim (played by Judson Scott) pointed out to him several times throughout the movie, but Khan ignored him as evil dictators tend to do when they're doing something REALLY stupid.
I thought Saavik was a great character too. I do wish she'd gotten more to do. Especially since the novelization of the movie includes an entire subplot where Saavik is tutoring Peter Preston and they become really close friends. But, I understand why that was either an exclusive thing to the novel, or why it was cut out of the movie. Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer had to keep the focus on Kirk and the rest of the established TOS cast. Not that Uhura, Sulu, and Scotty got very much to do. That was par for the course on TOS back in the day as well. But, I thought Saavik was still a pretty great character. Though I think I prefer the more Vulcanlike Saavik as played by Robin Curtis in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock than I do the Kirstie Alley version from this movie.
One of the things that bugs me about this movie is how much is actually left out of the final version of the movie. For example, Saavik is supposed to be a Vulcan-Romulan hybrid but that's never mentioned in either movie she appears in, though it's in the novelizations for both movies, AND is brought up in other novels as well as several comic books. Particularly the ones published by DC Comics. The subplot of Saavik tutoring Peter is something else that would've been nice to see in the movie as a way to explain Saavik's reaction to Peter's injured body when Scotty brings him up to the Bridge. Which by the way, no wonder Peter died, Scotty took him up to the Bridge instead of taking him DIRECTLY TO SICKBAY!!! If he'd just taken him directly to Sickbay, chances are pretty good that McCoy might've been able to save him.
Spock's death at the end of the movie is probably one of the hardest scenes that I have ever seen in a movie. Not only because of the death itself, but because of the effect it had on Kirk afterward. Spock is Kirk's best friend and has been for about 20 years at that point. And to lose someone that close to you is hard. I know, because I did it twice in the late 2000s. And to see Kirk humbled by the death of his best friend is startling, but almost welcomed because of how there'd been no real consequences for Kirk's actions during TOS and TAS. Even Gary Mitchell's death in the pilot episode, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and Edith Keeler's death in the season 1 episode, "The City on the Edge of Forever" didn't have as much impact on Kirk, within the confines of the show itself, not including novels and comics. But this did, and it was a good bit of character development.
What made this even more powerful is that Kirk had been melancholy about his age at the beginning of the movie. He'd been promoted to admiral, was no longer in command of the Enterprise, and was stuck behind a desk, or training the next generation of Starfleet officers at Starfleet Academy. Plus both McCoy and Spock tried to convince Kirk to get back his command before it really is too late. The Star Trek Chronology places this movie as being on Kirk's 52nd birthday though the movie doesn't say specifically how old Kirk turns at the beginning of this movie. Of course Kirk will be dealt some pretty bad blows in the next movie, but I'll talk about those when I review that movie.
A Director's Cut of the movie was released on DVD in 2002. Unlike with the Director's Cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and the Star Wars Trilogy Special Editions before it, the special effects weren't updated or altered in any way. Rather three scenes were added. The first two establish that Peter Preston is actually Scotty's nephew, filling in the gaps as to why Scotty was personally taking Peter's body to Sick...I mean the Bridge, and why he was so upset when McCoy couldn't save him. The third scene is simply just Kirk telling Spock that David is his (Kirk's) son as they're heading to the Bridge at the beginning of the final act of the movie. So it just adds a bit more detail but still leaves a ton of stuff out of the movie.
The Wrath of Khan first came out on home video in November 1982, less than six months after it had been released to theatres. Which is pretty interesting for a movie that was released in theatres in the early '80s. Back then movies usually took a year or two to come out on home video after it had been in theatres. Longer if a movie wasn't successful. Probably because Star Trek II was released theatrically in June, while most Star Trek movies came out in either November or December. The exceptions being The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and then the three reboot movies that came out in 2009, 2013, and 2016 respectively.
I saw the movie sometime between 1991 and 1993. The movie had been re-released on VHS in 1991, along with the other four Star Trek movies that were out at the time in honour of the franchise's 25th Anniversary. I watched it at the hospital as one of my nurses, knowing that I was a Star Trek fan, brought the 25th Anniversary home video box set for me to watch as I hadn't actually seen the movies yet. Later on, probably in 1993 or maybe 1994, my dad got the Star Trek: The Movie Collection VHS box set. It was basically the same as the 25th Anniversary box set, as it contained the first five movies. The difference was that it also had Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country on VHS in the same box art design as the 1991 re-releases of the previous five films. I eventually got the 2000 DVD in like 2005 or 2006 (I was late to the party on that one), eventually upgrading to the 2002 two-disc Director's Cut DVD release from 2002, sometime in 2009 or 2010. I actually ended up buying the two-disc DVD releases of all ten original Star Trek movies (Star Trek: The Motion Picture-Star Trek: Nemesis) within a year. Currently I have the Director's Cut DVD and the 1991 VHS re-release in my collection.
Overall Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is a great movie. It's still not my favourite, I much prefer it's sequel Star Trek III: The Search for Spock as I feel it's a funnier movie than this one is. This one is a fairly heavy film in comparison to it's predecessor as well as it's two sequels. But really, my only real problem with this movie is Khan himself. I've always felt that the TOS Star Trek movies work better when they don't have a singular villain. For example while Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a much slower film and more introspective, I like it because it doesn't have a villain. It has a threat, but it's something Kirk and the crew attempt to understand rather than destroy it. Same with Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. The Undiscovered Country is a political thriller, so yes, Christopher Plummer is on screen, playing the part of the typical movie villain and chewing the scenery at the same time, he isn't the central antagonist. He's just a singular part of a much larger conspiracy that includes the Federation, the Klingons, and the Romulans. Star Trek II is a really good movie though and I like it alot more than I did when I was younger.
And that my friends is going to be it for me for this week. I will be back next week though for lots more reviews. Monday I'll be reviewing the third serial from classic Doctor Who, which also happens to be the last one that I have access to, so the following week I'll be starting on the modern era of the franchise. Wednesday I'll have a review of the first season of Superman & Lois as the season finale airs on Tuesday night, and on either Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday, depending on when I end up watching the two part episode of The Orville, "Identity", with my sister, I'll be reviewing Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. I'll be returning to The Amazing Spider-Girl the following week, and I want to get the Star Trek movie trilogy out of the way before I immerse myself in Doctor Who. So until then have a wonderful rest of the weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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