DC Film Society: Adam's Rib October 2022

Modern Classics – Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, 1982 –Directed by Nicholas Meyer. Written by Jack B. Sowards and Harve Bennett. Produced by Harve Bennett, Robert Sallin and William F. Phillips. Key Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Ricardo Montalban, Paul Winfield, Bibi Besch, Kirstie Alley, Judson Scott and Merritt Butrick.

When I first saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan I was nine years old. If I were writing about the film then I likely would have praised the action and chemistry feeling more like the TV show, raved about Ricardo Montalban’s brilliant performance as Khan, and cried over Spock’s heroic death scene. Forty years later all those highlights still ring true, but on revisiting the film, its depths and larger themes resonate with me in a way that I would have never grasped in 1982. Not only does Star Trek II hold up, but even after the next eleven films that followed, it remains the gold standard of the Trek movie franchise.

Coming two years after Star Wars, the first Star Trek movie featured spectacular visual effects, but it was often slow and dull. My late friend and film critic Bill Henry was one of many who called the first entry Star Trek: The Motionless Picture. The film examined existential philosophical questions, but not in a way that made it interesting for the audience. Producer Harve Bennett strove to bring the second film closer to the TV show. This meant more action, more humor, and also more emphasis on the characters, particularly the relationship of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Bennett streamlined the story, turning it into what director Nicholas Meyer described as the space equivalent of a submarine movie, with two vessels stalking each other. The film hums along, coming in at a lean 113 minutes, 30 shorter than the first film. Janet Maslin, then the film critic for the New York Times, said it best when she began her review with “Well, that’s more like it.”

The first film also lacked a real villain. Science fiction and action films do not need to have a great villain to succeed, but when they do it makes the story richer, deeper and just more fun. Even at over 60, Montalban looked scary. Director Nicholas Meyer joked that he made Khan look like a biker. Meyer added that fans always asked him if Montalban’s buff chest was real and that it was. Fifteen years earlier Montalban played Khan Noonien Singh as a larger-than-life egocentric, would-be dictator of the world, someone convinced that his genetically engineered strength entitled him to power over others. Montalban imbued Khan with such charisma and purpose, that we could see why people followed him. Montalban’s rich deep voice gave Khan’s words added menace. All these qualities remain in the movie, but with them comes anger and a burning desire for vengeance. Khan seethes with hatred of James Kirk, whom he holds responsible for his wife’s death and his many other misfortunes. For all of his style and panache, Montalban makes Khan a wounded, desperate animal. Montalban’s ferocity makes Khan spellbinding. We just can’t take our eyes off him. Even today genre performances rarely get Oscar nominations, but Montalban should have been an exception. You can find the year’s Best Supporting Actor nominees here. Fine performances all, but how many of them have Montalban’s staying power?

I wrote about Spock’s death fourteen years ago, and again after Leonard Nimoy’s death. All these years later, I still believe it’s the finest, most affecting death scene in film, or at least in films I have seen. Nimoy begins it in such an understated fashion, with just a quick moment of Spock realizing what must be done to save the ship, logical to the end. Meyer sets the visual metaphor, with the clear wall between Spock and Kirk. Then he stages the scene simply, letting Nimoy and Shatner’s graceful, soulful performances do the work. It’s not just that scene playing out or even just that movie. It’s Spock and Kirk’s whole history and their friendship coming to bear in those final moments. Meyer, in the DVD commentary described how when he yelled “Cut,” he looked at the other actors who all had tears in their eyes. He turned to the crew and realized they were crying too. So was I in June of 1982, but of course I was nine years old then. My wife and I saw the film a few weeks ago, and there I was, a man pushing fifty, with tears trickling down my face once again. Spock would not approve of such an emotional display, but too bad.

Spock’s death does not happen in a vacuum. I was too young to see in 1982 how Star Trek II in so many ways, is a film about getting older and facing mortality. The film begins with the Kobayashi Maru training exercise, specifically designed to teach Starfleet officers about failure. Kirk prophetically tells the young Lt. Saavik that how someone faces death is just as important as how they face life. This is a different Kirk, far from the arrogant, cocksure captain in the TV show. He just turned 50 and isn’t handling it well. Kirk still wants to be the man he was, but life keeps reminding him that he’s not young anymore. As Kirk later says, “I haven’t faced death. I’ve cheated death. I’ve tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity.” We can take it one step further and say that he never faced consequences before. Through his smarts, strength, ship and crew he could get out of any situation. Not anymore. Remember when Khan first appeared and tried to take over the ship Kirk could have sent him and his followers to prison. Instead, Kirk lets them go free to build a new society on a burgeoning planet. This by any objective measure, was a horrible idea. Let’s give a tyrant free reign and see what he can do. How has that plan worked throughout history? Then, as Khan correctly points out, Kirk never bothers to check on his experiment.

Kirk’s refusal to acknowledge that he’s getting older leads to more bad decisions. Once he takes command of the Enterprise, he assumes he can pick up where he left off, but he’s rusty and tentative. He leads the ship defenseless into their encounter with Khan’s ship despite a warning from Saavik to raise the shields. Kirk by his own admission got “caught with my britches down.” Meyer called him a hero with feet of clay. The crew suffers losses, and the ship is put in danger due to Kirk’s carelessness. Yes, he succeeds in the end but at the cost of his best friend’s life. Of course, Kirk also meets an adult son he never knew. While as a young man he did what the mother wanted by staying away, here again Kirk faces the consequences.

Famed acting teacher Sanford Meisner said that “Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” Even though Star Trek II happens in the most imaginary circumstances possible, seeing it now as a man almost as old as Kirk illustrates some truth for me. Getting older does involve facing the consequences of your decisions, both good and bad. Getting older can mean being less sure about things that may have seemed certain 10 or 20 years ago. When Kirk says “I know nothing” I get where he’s coming from. And yes, getting older does mean facing death. I lost a close friend a few years ago. Like Kirk my initial reaction was shock, a numbness gripping my body.

In the last scene, McCoy, referring to Spock, says “He’s really not dead as long as we remember him.” Meyer explained that he was reading an article about Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jewish lives during the Holocaust before he was captured by the Soviets. At that time rumors (later proven to be false) persisted that Wallenberg was still alive. Famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, asked about the rumors, said that Wallenberg was still alive as long as people remembered him. Meyer saw the quote and rushed to add it to the script. Some may find that corny, but to me this was a thread of humanity tying a real-life hero to a fictional one. Memories may be a poor substitute for the deceased, but often it’s all that we have to keep alive, in some shape or form, the people who meant the most to us.

The Star Trek TV show often explored larger societal themes such as racism, war, spirituality, and authoritarianism, but it was even more compelling when it looked inward, when we got to know the Enterprise crew as three-dimensional human beings. Bennett, Meyer and the others who created Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, clearly understood this truth. They could have just made a fun and exciting movie, and that would have been more than enough, especially after the first film. To their everlasting credit Bennett and Meyer did much more. Film critic Eddie Cockrell said “The movies don’t change, but you do.” It took me forty years after the film’s release for me to fully understand what it was telling me about how I have changed, and it was worth the wait.

Adam Spector
October 1, 2022