Viking Night - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
By Bruce Hall
February 8, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Star Trek and Star Wars are a lot like cousins who aren’t really a lot alike but suffer from similar problems because they share the same environment. Star Wars is the dumb one that everyone likes anyway because he’s fun, friendly and knows how to dress. Star Trek is the brainy one that thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, alienates friends as fast as he makes them, and by the cut of his pants is expecting high water. But being cousins, they do come from the same family and do share similar limitations. Both franchises lost sight of what originally made them popular and initially failed in their attempts to adapt to the changing entertainment landscape. Star Wars attempted to take itself seriously with a series of prequels that were just juvenile toy fantasies passed off as drama – at ten dollars a pop. I think we all know how that worked out. Star Trek always took itself more seriously than such a cheap looking television show should have, but that’s what was once good about it. It was a show about ideas, not about imagery. But by the early '90s, Trek’s brand of snooty intellectual self indulgence had grown tiring and the feature films had turned into nothing more than bad television on a big screen - at ten dollars a pop.
Star Wars should have ended with Luke’s swan dive from the top of Cloud City after discovering his father was the most evil person alive. After watching his own son die rather than convert, Vader would realize that the Dark Side wasn’t worth the sacrifice. He'd join the Rebellion and lead the fight against the Emperor with the newfound knowledge that trust, honor and friendship are more powerful than a hundred Jedi. Yeah, you’re trying to laugh but inside you know that’s a better idea than what really happened. With Star Trek, take away the 30 or so truly good original episodes and a couple of great middle years of The Next Generation, and you have about three generations of missed potential. Trek insists on considering itself drama but is never quite willing to commit, often resorting to cheesy camp and techno babble when things get heavy.
The most notable exception to this is the second of what I believe is now 51 films, The Wrath of Khan. Eager to rebound from the critical indifference leveled at the first film, Paramount brought some new creative blood into the fold. Director Nicholas Meyer was not a fan so he had no emotional hang-ups about breaking new ground with the material. He and producer Harve Bennett created a story that relied on the franchise’s strengths, and they committed themselves to making a real drama by raising the stakes, finally allowing the crew of the Enterprise to face the consequences of their dangerous profession, namely death.
It all started in an episode of the original show, when the Enterprise found a derelict freighter in space. On board was Khan Singh, a 20th Century military dictator who escaped judgment by sending himself and his henchmen into space, where they could hide out in deep freeze until the heat was off. Unfortunately, Kirk and company didn’t discover the truth until Khan’s minions took over the ship and declared their leader Supreme Ruler of Everything. Naturally Khan is defeated, and instead of remanding him to the proper authorities, Kirk maroons him on a deserted but otherwise pleasant planet where Khan can be master of his domain. Fast forward 15 years to 1982 – or is that 2282? Captain Kirk is now Admiral Kirk. A man who was once a virile young stud with the galaxy as his playground is now a middle aged man who spends his time doing ship inspections and polishing his stars. It just so happens that his next inspection is aboard his old ship, the Enterprise. Old pal Mr. Spock is in command and the ship is filled with recruits on their first training flight.
Kirk is forced to take command when they receive a distress call from a remote science station. It turns out that the research team assigned there ran into Khan on a routine mission. The depraved despot hijacked their ship, along with a powerful new prototype capable of destroying an entire planet. Rather than using these resources to make himself a king again, Khan decides to head straight after Kirk and dish out an ice cold heaping helping of revenge. You see, thanks to a fluke natural disaster, Khan’s new empire didn’t quite work out and now he and what’s left of his people want a piece of Kirk for their troubles. Khan and his followers are genetic supermen with enhanced brains and bodies. Kirk’s crew is all a bunch of snotty recruits still working the creases out of their new uniforms. I’m sure you can see where this is going.
The inevitable showdown between old adversaries dominates the second half of the film and no doubt delivers the film’s best moments, but it benefits from the story surrounding the characters up to that point. Kirk is older and wiser but struggles with his priorities now that he’s flying a desk. He has an illegitimate son he’d like to connect with and time has changed his relationships with friends. Khan’s dream of a new kingdom wasn’t the only thing that died on him; he lost his wife as well and irrationally blames Kirk for what happened. Proud men want something to lash out at when they’re wronged and you can’t put a bull’s-eye on bad luck. So Khan sets out after Kirk, seeking to destroy the next best target. It’s a tragic story with a potentially epic sweep when you think about it, and that’s precisely the point. If you think it was a jerk move by Kirk to abandon Khan on a deserted planet, you can only imagine what would have happened to Hitler, had he ever been captured. Basically Kirk had found one of history’s most insanely evil dictators floating around in space and taken it upon himself to decide what to do with the guy. It’s an uncommon thing for one to show respect to a hated enemy. No doubt Kirk meant it as an act of mercy.
Yet in the end it ends up making Kirk look like a very arrogant man. The disaster that unfolds on board the Enterprise during Khan’s attack is a direct result of Kirk’s hubris, and this is something the Admiral is painfully aware of. But one of the things that puts such similar personalities on opposite sides of the moral compass is that men like Khan are incapable of mercy and forgiveness. Had Khan had been able to separate the nobility of Kirk’s gesture from his own crappy luck he might have just taken his stolen ship and headed for greener pastures. Instead, he used his supposedly superior noodle to cook up a violent revenge fantasy involving hundreds of innocent people. It makes you wonder whether sometimes all that separates good and evil is the ability to tell the difference. Despite their mutual flaws, Khan’s is a fatal one. Kirk agonizes when his decisions cost the lives of those around him. But Khan’s smug sense of superiority leads him to the self serving conclusion that winning isn’t as satisfying as rubbing your enemy’s face in it – no matter who gets hurt.
To sell a story like this requires good performances, and more than usual in Star Trek we get that from nearly the whole cast. Willam Shatner’s Shatner-ness is totally restrained here. Rumor has it that a little reverse psychology convinced him to take the part of a conflicted middle age man seriously. True or not, this is the best work the man’s ever done. Leonard Nimoy wears the part of Spock as well as an old bomber jacket, but Spock’s constantly dour ruminations on life and death are the sort of ominous foreshadowing that you don’t normally see in Star Trek, and Spock is the ideal character for it. A highlight of the cast is an impossibly young Kirstie Alley as Spock’s new protégé and female Mini Me. She’s actually very good. But without question the standout is Ricardo Montalban, whose interpretation of Khan’s tragically insatiable rage pretty much puts the Master Thespian stamp of approval on this film. It’s very credible as straight drama to the point that you almost forget you’re watching science fiction. There’s not an ounce of camp in this movie, and what humor there is serves as a way to release tension, instead of just a phony way to sell tickets.
Star Trek II tends to stand apart from the rest of the franchise, and contrary to what everyone would like you to think it’s about more than just having a strong villain. Early in the film, Kirk reminds a recruit that in their line of work, “how we face death is at least as important as how we face life”. He was being glib at the time but his words prove to be prophetic, since that sentence pretty much sums up the entire story. There are a lot of ideas in play here, and all of them coexist in what is basically a tightly woven nautical thriller set in space. Just think Master and Commander with space ships, minus the slow second act but retaining the pudgy guy in his 40s as Captain. This is the way Star Trek was meant to be, and the stories are at their best when they play to this concept. You might not buy this, but Wrath of Khan isn’t just a great Star Trek movie, it is simply a great movie. It’s superior to the 2009 reboot, although I admit to looking forward to J.J. Abrams' second time at bat. But had they ended it with just one nearly flawless sequel, it’s hard to believe the world would have been any worse off for it today. As it is we’re left to wonder what might have not been…like the nightmare that was Star Trek V, or that thing with Scott Bakula.