Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Introduction Introduction
Release Year: 1982
Genre: Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
Director: Nicholas Meyer
Writer: Jack B. Sowards
Stars: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Ricardo Montalban
Sometimes great things catch on immediately—Star Wars, Harry Potter, or (we presume) the peanut-butter-banana-and-bacon sandwich.
Sometimes, things spark on the second try: Jane Eyre was Charlotte Bronte's second novel. Seven was David Fincher's second movie. (Pop quiz: in which of these texts is a hostage held in isolation for an inhumanely long time? Trick question: the answer is in both.)
But there's a reason people say that "third time's the charm"…and we think that reason is the story of Star Trek.
It's hard to believe, but once upon a time, Star Trek was just a little sci-fi show that not a whole lot of people watched…and which got canceled after only three seasons. But that was before the fans got a hold of it and turned it into a Big Fat Hairy deal. From their enthusiasm came movies, and from the movies came more TV shows, which begat more movies which begat…well, which begat Star Trek as a bonafide phenomenon.
And yet, none of it would have happened were it not for Star Trek II, which opened in 1982 and recovered nicely after the first Star Trek movie boldly went…well, it didn't go straight to the top of the fan favorites list. Star Trek The Motion Picture left fans cold (wags dubbed it Star Trek: The Motionless Picture), and left the question of whether the franchise had another entry in it seriously up for debate.
Enter Nicholas Meyer, an unknown director without much familiarity with Star Trek, who reimagined the whole thing without losing the character and heart that made fans fall in love with the franchise in the first place. Basically, give this guy a gold star.
As a result, the low-budget film—which made do with a lot of recycled sets and reused effects shots—turned into a big hit, and is now widely regarded as the best thing that ever came out of the Star Trek franchise. Yes: ever.
It updated the adventures of Captain Kirk (William Shatner, who else?) and his crew to reflect their advancing age, pitting him against one of his nemeses from the original series and resulting in a finale that discerning fans think is the high point of the whole interstellar ball of wax.
In addition to its bona fides as a piece of space opera history, it also featured literary allusions galore and a final death scene that still gets us misty-eyed thirty years after we first saw it. (The only other cinematic moment that does that to us is when Bambi's mom bites the dust.)
Considering the length and breadth of the Trek phenomenon, that's nothing to sneeze at, and if you need to understand why people go so nuts over the crew of the Enterprise, this movie makes for the perfect place to start.
Just be warned: much like Khan's revenge cycle, a Star Trek habit is easy to start…but pretty near-impossible to break.
Why Should I Care?
Not everyone loves Star Trek. We know this and understand this…though sometimes we have a hard time accepting it. (We're currently reading a book called Everyone Is Okay: Even People Who Like Star Wars More Than Star Trek, and our pop culture counselor tells us we're doing really good work.)
But regardless of whether you spend your days dressed in full Spock-ears regalia or just shrug and see what else is on, you have to be aware of Star Trek as a phenomenon.
"Big deal," we can hear you say. "Every show has a fan base like that!" But back in the early 1970s when Star Trek was in its interstellar infancy…they didn't.
Neither did they have an internet to reach out to fellow fans, make connections, or form a virtual community the way everything from Game of Thrones to the Marvel Cinematic Universe can do now. Trek's fans (called Trekkies or Trekkers, depending on who you ask) did it all the old-fashioned way: hand printing newsletters, organizing get-togethers, and keeping their beloved show on the pop culture radar until Hollywood once again realized it could make money with it.
First and foremost, Star Trek II takes full advantage of all that hard work. The original Star Trek: The Motion Picture, released in 1979, was considered a bit of a mulligan: too obsessed with trying to imitate 2001: A Space Odyssey to give fans the personality, character and overall fun that they loved about Star Trek in the first place.
With help from director Nicholas Meyer, Star Trek II righted that ship, trading in on a lower budget to bring us an awesome adventure featuring Kirk, Spock and the gang as fans remembered them.
And its success allowed the Trek phenomena to continue, through four more movies with the original cast, the highly successful Next Generation TV show, three more TV shows, another round of movies with the Next Generation cast, a full movie reboot in 2009, and Spock knows how many novels, comic books, web series, fan fiction, fanciful doodlings on cocktail napkins and a near-constant source of parodies on late-night television.
None of that would have been possible had Star Trek II not successfully infused the whole thing with fresh energy and reminded everyone what was so awesome about Trek in the first place.
Need more? Well there's the fact that it's not only a terrific bit of space swashbucklery—with Khan's marauding pirates squaring off against Kirk's Enterprise in the ultimate battle of Ham vs. Ham—but that it's one of Trek's few real moments of grappling with age. Everyone made jokes about the original crew getting progressively older as the movies went on (Shatner had just turned 50 when he made this and was 63 when he finally bowed out of the role), but Khan really got in there and grappled with it.
It presented a James T. Kirk who was getting older and finally forced to confront the mistakes of his youth and the consequences he had merrily run away from, and who now finally showed up with a bill come due. It tinged the sci-fi action with some deeper meaning and helped remind everyone that this jumped-up space opera had its share of genuinely profound moments.
That's a whole lot to cram into a tight 113 minutes, but Wrath of Khan manages it. Without it, Star Trek wouldn't be the same…and neither would the lives of millions of Trekkies worldwide.