Chapter Two - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
By Brett Beach
November 26, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Observation number one: In retrospect, the six weeks encompassing June and the first half of July 1982 proved to be particularly fertile ground for science fiction features, both smash hits and future cult classics. Out of the eleven wide releases that debuted in the top ten during that stretch, over half could be classified in that genre.
To be fair, they ran the gamut from audience-pleasing concoctions assembled with equal dollops of sentimentality and action (E.T. and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) to bleak considerations of man’s capacity for deception and betrayal (Blade Runner and John Carpenter’s The Thing) to a mix of the former and the latter (Poltergeist). And last but not least there was the distinctly uncategorizable Tron, a film so ahead of its time it took them nearly 30 years to finally pull a sequel together. Question to consider: Is it a Walt Disney Pictures-approved take on cyberpunk and future shock or simply the threadbare Kurt Russell slapstick college comedies of the early 1970s (i.e. The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes) made virtual, shiny, and foreign?
Observation number two: Ricardo Montalban’s latter-day career was marked by a preponderance of sequels as well as the luck of starring in successful projects. Montalban made only three feature films in the 1980s, two of which were Chapter Twos (Wrath of Khan and Cannonball Run II) and two which opened at number one at the box office (Khan and The Naked Gun). Both those films grossed nearly identical amounts: $78.9 million for the second Star Trek and $78.7 for the Police Squad! spinoff. He also played the grandfather in the second and third Spy Kids movies and starred in two television series between 1978 and 1987: Fantasy Island, spun off from a pair of made-for-TV movies, and The Colbys, the soapier and trashier spinoff of the soapy and trashy (and campy) Dynasty. This leads me to ponder the question: who would win in a suave-off - Montalban or John Forsythe?
Observation number three: Star Trek: The Motion Picture was a financial success, grossing over $80 million domestically. However, it was also quite costly, with an estimated budget of at least $35 million, apparently brought about by creator/producer Gene Roddenberry’s constant rewrites and a desire for the best special effects money could buy. To put this in perspective, the first Star Trek cost just $1 million less than the budgets of Jaws, Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back combined.
The studio balked at spending that much again and found a new producer who promised he could bring it in for less, much less. The budget for The Wrath of Khan was $11 million, nearly 2/3 less than its predecessor. This may be one of the only times in Hollywood history where a hit film was rewarded with a sequel on the condition that it be made for cheaper. By grossing only a few million under the first one, it proved to be a far greater success from a financial standpoint. For a brief time, The Wrath of Khan held the opening day and weekend box office titles. (Geek trivia: It wouldn’t be until First Contact in 1996 that the budget of a Star Trek installment would exceed that of the first film.)
This was my first time watching Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. (I’ll pause a moment here and allow you, dear reader, to do a spit and/or double take, shake your head in disbelief, or go all googly-eyed like the country fox in the classic Tex Avery cartoon.) I had seen the sequence where the Ceti eel crawls out of Chekhov’s ear, on cable, when I was six or seven, but only in passing. In 2009, I even had the chance to see it at the Laurelhurst Theater, but deferred my pleasure again as I seem wont to do with certain films that I never quite get around to watching. In a delicious bit of irony, this cost my pub trivia team first place two weeks later as the final question concerned Khan’s quoting of a certain literary classic. This was doubly vexing, as I have actually read Moby Dick. So, as familiar as I was with the plot and the catchphrases, I had not experienced William Shatner’s agonized wailing of “Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!” first hand.
I also decided to kill two (Klingon) Birds (of Prey) with one stone and rent Star Trek V: The Final Frontier - the only other Star Trek film I had never seen - and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, which I had seen in the theater when I was eight and about which I can only recall being majorly bummed when the film broke with about ten minutes of running time left, and it took close to a half hour to repair.
I recall the shared wisdom growing up that odd-numbered Treks were disappointments and the even-numbered ones were occasions for much rejoicing. I think it is perhaps more accurate to consider the ten Star Trek films made between 1979 and 2002 as either exceptional, average or subpar episodes of the television show and to point out that of the three most praised installments (The Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, and First Contact) two had distinct villains drawn from the respective original and Next Generation series. (Voyage Home was a lark that played to the same strengths as that fall season’s other fish out of water success from Paramount, “Crocodile” Dundee.)
I don’t mean the equation of these movies to episodes as a diss. It is the familiarity that comes with seeing these small-screen characters enact their tried-and-true rituals of behavior and act as we would expect them to that is so comforting. At its best, this familiarity brings warmth and poignancy and humor. At its worst, well, The Final Frontier is a solid example of such. To wit, if The Wrath of Khan is a bang-up two-part season-finale with a shocking cliffhanger, then the Final Frontier is a 48 minute mid-season stand alone inflated with an extra hour of footage. It stays goofy and inconsequential for far too long before shifting into earnest “man’s place in the scheme of things” ruminations. William Shatner’s story and direction are admirably well intentioned, but he wants to be all things to all fans.
The Wrath of Khan has the feeling of a valedictory, which isn’t surprising considering that it was originally intended as the last Trek. (Apparently, test audiences responded negatively to the implications that Spock’s death was final and the ending, as the old saw goes, was reshot. At least they didn’t have him pop up out of the bathtub screaming…) The first 20 minutes of the film, with the Kobayashi Maru scenario, Kirk’s restlessness with his promotion upstairs, the discovery of Khan and the general air of time marching on, set up the themes that the next 90 minutes enhance, replay and bring to a head. Seeing Kirk, Spock, and Bones in one of their three-way debates (as more than one analytic paper has noted, they are the Id, Ego and Superego made flesh) is like watching the progenitor of a Judd Apatow bromance or a Shane Black buddy buddy action flick. Their arguments and insults go round and round but there is real love and affection (or something) underneath the surface.
In many (positive) ways, I was reminded of The Empire Strikes Back. The unexpected melancholy nature of the ending suggests that not all victories come easy; the colors on the Enterprise crew’s uniforms make a visceral connection to me to those of Cloud City; in an inverse of Empire’s familial revelation, a father discovers he has a son; the stage is also set for a third installment to wrap up loose ends and end (presumably) on a happier note.
I didn’t take note while I was watching, but afterwards, it occurred to me the most unusual, and perhaps riskiest move that screenwriter Jack B. Sowards, with an uncredited polish by director Nicholas Meyer, takes is not allowing the protagonist and antagonist to interact face-to-face. (This unresolved tension was perhaps parlayed into the extensive and silly fisticuffs between Kirk and Kruge in The Search for Spock and the resulting foot to face with which Kirk dispatches his foe to a fiery reckoning.) Khan acknowledges that he is happier keeping Kirk alive to toy with him and allow him to feel the same sense of loss of that which he holds dear. The irony is that Khan dies without knowing of the sacrifice that Spock makes and that he has indeed made good on his promise to upend Kirk’s life.
What most surprised me, quite pleasantly, was how Shatner underplayed most of his scenes. Endless jokes have been made about his acting style and his ego (memorably skewered in Ben Stiller’s MTV Movie Awards parody of Seven, where in the style of Alanis Morissette’s then-current video for “Ironic”, Shatner played all roles in the car-bound skit - the detectives, John Doe, and the head in the box) but in The Wrath of Khan his eyes and voice convey the appropriate weariness Kirk feels at entering the twilight of his years with no prospect of adventure waiting on the horizon. Shatner can’t quite sell the grief and sadness during Kirk’s final scene with Spock but at least it isn’t due to overacting, teeth gnashing, garment rending, et. al.
The Wrath of Khan understands the small pleasures of the Star Trek universe, such as how Spock can arch his eyebrow to great heights, and intone “Fascinating” for the umpteenth time and one can almost catch Nimoy’s winking grin in the slope of that eyebrow. Or how the bridge will bear the brunt of a massive explosion that will send sparks shooting, equipment malfunctioning, crewmembers soaring through the air and the camera shaking. Like all proper goodbyes, The Wrath of Khan lasts a little too long at the end, extending its farewells as if to hold off the passing of time. And like the nascent planet to which Spock’s funeral casket is surreptitiously delivered, this sequel contains the seeds for a genesis at its climax: to ensure that a profitable franchise will continue to “live long and prosper.”
Final note: For those of you dying to know (and you know who you are) the other films that opened in the time frame mentioned at the column’s beginning, they are: Hanky Panky, the murder mystery/comedy with Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner; Author! Author! with Al Pacino in romantic comedy/single dad mode; Megaforce , the would-be franchise starter that did not make an action hero of Barry Bostwick; Firefox, Clint Eastwood’s off-kilter action epic that has not seen positive re-evaluation with the passing of time; and, yes, my beloved Grease 2 (as covered in the column “My Origin Story.”)
Next time: I consider irony once more, with a personal favorite from my adolescence from which I can quote endlessly, but that may have completely fucked up my ability to tell if someone is being sincere or not. Buckle up for some “Wild Wild Life” and get ready to celebrate the sesquicentennial of Virgil, TX.