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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
File:WrathofKhanPoster.jpg
Theatrical release poster by Bob Peak
Directed byNicholas Meyer
Written byScreenplay:
Jack B. Sowards
Nicholas Meyer
(uncredited)
Story:
Harve Bennett
Jack B. Sowards
Characters:
Gene Roddenberry
Produced byRobert Sallin
StarringWilliam Shatner
Leonard Nimoy
DeForest Kelley
James Doohan
Walter Koenig
George Takei
Nichelle Nichols
Bibi Besch
Merritt Butrick
Paul Winfield
Kirstie Alley
Ricardo Montalbán
Music byJames Horner
Distributed byParamount Pictures
Release dates
June 4, 1982
Running time
116 min.
Country United States
LanguageEnglish

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is the second feature film based on the Star Trek science fiction television series, following 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The film's storyline is a continuation of the original TV series episode "Space Seed", and features Ricardo Montalbán reprising his role as the genetically-engineered tyrant Khan. When Khan returns from his exile to exact revenge on his nemesis, James T. Kirk, the crew of the starship U.S.S. Enterprise must stop Khan from acquiring a powerful superweapon called the Genesis device. The events of Wrath of Khan begin a story arc which stretches to the fourth feature film.

After the lackluster critical and commercial response to The Motion Picture, series creator Gene Roddenberry was forced out of the sequel's production. Nicholas Meyer was made director after he admitted to studio executives that The Motion Picture bored him and that he could make five movies for his offered budget; Meyer's style would evoke the swashbuckling atmosphere of the original series, reinforced by James Horner's musical score. Production used various cost-cutting techniques such as using old miniatures from past movies. Among the technical achievements of the film is the first film sequence credited entirely by computer.

Upon release, The Wrath of Khan was a box office success, earning over $70 million in the United States and setting a world record for first-day gross. Critical reaction to the film was positive, with reviewers highlighting Khan as strong elements of the film. Dissenting reviewers, such as the Washington Post, called the special effects outdated and the cast "geriatric". The film is now considered one of the best films of the franchise and is credited with bringing renewed interest in Star Trek.

Plot

The film opens with an unfamiliar female Vulcan in command of the USS Enterprise, attempting to rescue a stranded ship in the Neutral Zone. The Enterprise is attacked by Klingon cruisers, and is critically damaged. The "attack" is revealed to be an exercise known as the "Kobayashi Maru", a no-win situation designed to test the character of Starfleet officers. The Vulcan is Captain Spock’s protégée, Lieutenant Saavik. Admiral James T. Kirk oversees the training session externally.[1]

Meanwhile, the USS Reliant is on a mission to search for a lifeless planet for testing of "Project Genesis", a device which reorganizes molecular matter on a subatomic level in order to create hospitable worlds for colonization. Reliant officers Pavel Chekov and Clark Terrell beam to the surface of a possible candidate, Ceti Alpha VI, and are captured by Khan Noonien Singh. Khan and his fellow genetically-advanced supermen were once rulers on Earth in the later 20th century, but were exiled to space. After a foiled attempt to capture the Enterprise, Kirk exiled Khan and his followers to Ceti Alpha V to build a new civilization. Soon after being left by the Enterprise, Ceti Alpha VI exploded, destroying Ceti Alpha V's ecosystem and shifting its orbit. Khan blames Kirk for the deaths of his wife and followers and their harsh life, and plans to revenge his people. Using mind-controlling eels, Khan controls Chekhov and Terrell and hijacks the Reliant.[2]

The Enterprise embarks on a training voyage under the command of Captain Spock, with Kirk observing. The Enterprise receives a message from Space Station Regula I, a remote science laboratory where Kirk's former lover, Dr. Carol Marcus, and son, Dr. David Marcus, have been developing the Genesis Device. Informing Starfleet Command of the situation, the Enterprise is ordered to investigate; since the Enterprise is now on an active-duty mission, Kirk assumes command. En route, Khan attacks and cripples the Enterprise, wounding or killing many of the ship's trainees. During a transmission between the two ships Khan reveals he know of the Genesis device. Kirk stalls for time and offers to deliver himself and the data on Genesis to Khan; instead, Kirk disables the Reliant's defenses by use of a special prefix code and counterattacks. With his own ship badly damaged, Khan is forced to retreat.

The Enterprise makes its way to Regula I, where they find most of the Genesis team dead. The remaining scientists, including Carol and David, have hidden deep inside the planetoid of Regula itself. Using Chekov and Terrell as spies, Khan steals the Genesis Device. When Khan orders Terrell to kill Kirk, the eel's influence wanes; Terrell kills himself while Chekov overcomes the parasite's influence. Kirk and Spock arrange a rendezvous in code, and upon boarding the Enterprise pilots the ship into a nearby nebula, which will interfere with both ships' defenses and weapons. Despite the advice of his lieutenants, Khan pursues.

Blinded by the nebula, both starships attempt to outmaneuver the other; the Enterprise strikes the Reliant and critically disables Khan's ship. Khan, mortally wounded, activates the Genesis Device, which will reorganize all matter within the nebula—including the Enterprise. Though Kirk's crew detects the activation of the Genesis Device and begins to lumber away using the impulse engines, without the damaged warp drive they will not be able to escape the nebula in time. Spock goes to Engineering and, despite taking a high does of radiation, restores the warp drive, allowing the Enterprise to escape the explosion. Kirk arrives in Engineering just as Spock succumbs to radiation poisoning.

A burial in space is held, and Spock's coffin is sent into orbit of the new planet that the Genesis explosion created. Kirk and David make peace, and the crew leaves the Genesis planet reminiscing about Spock. In the final scene the coffin is seen to have soft-landed on the planet as Spock narrates the "Where no man has gone before" monologue.

Cast

File:Kirk spock.jpg
Spock bids Kirk a final farewell.
William Shatner as James T. Kirk
Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban) were never actually face-to-face at any point during the film. All of their interactions are over the viewscreen or through communicators. Shatner describes in his book Star Trek Movie Memories how their scenes were filmed four months apart.
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
During filming, rumors abounded among fans that Spock would die (it is speculated in Shatner's memoir that the primary lifegiver to these rumors was Gene Roddenberry). Meyer didn't want this expectation to overshadow the rest of the film, so he scripted Spock's "death" in the first scene - the character pretends to be dead in a training exercise, slumping against a wall - so as to mislead viewers into being surprised at the film's ending. After the first scene, as Kirk and Spock left the training facility, Kirk quipped, "Aren't you dead?" Originally, Spock's death was supposed to be permanent, as Nimoy no longer wished to appear in future sequels. But as Nimoy has said, he changed his mind after his good experiences during filming, hence the mind-meld with McCoy before he goes to certain death in the engine room, and Kirk's musing that he must return to Genesis. Nicholas Meyer did not contribute to the scenes in which Spock's tube is visible on Genesis as it was his intention that Spock's death be irrevocable.
DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy
Kelley looked over an early version of the Wrath of Khan script and was dissatisfied to the point that he considered not being in the film.[3]
James Doohan as Montgomery Scott
The Enterprise's chief engineer. During Spock's death scene in the film, Kelley felt that him speaking his catchphrase "He's dead, Jim" would crack up the audience and ruin the moment. Doohan says the line "He's dead already" to Kirk instead.[4]
George Takei as Hikaru Sulu
Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov
The Reliant's first officer and a former member of the Enterprise's crew. During filming, Kelley noted that Chekov never actually met Khan in "Space Seed" (Koenig had not joined the cast), and thus Khan recognizing Chekov on Ceti Alpha does not make sense in canon. In the novelization by Vonda N. McIntyre, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Chekov is "an ensign assigned to the night watch" during "Space Seed" and thus met Khan in an off-screen scene. [1][5] The non-canonical novel To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh by Greg Cox, meanwhile, explains the discrepancy by having Chekov escort Khan to the surface of Ceti Alpha. The real cause of the error was a simple oversight by the filmmakers. Meyer justifies it in the DVD audiocommentary by noting that Arthur Conan Doyle made similar oversights in his Sherlock Holmes stories.
Koenig himself notes that just because he wasn't yet a cast member during the filming of "Space Seed" doesn't mean that the character Chekov wasn't yet assigned to the Enterprise, and jokes that when Khan left the formal dinner in "Space Seed" ("I grow fatigued.") it was really due to gastric distress, with Khan finding only one "public" head on that deck, which was in use. After forcing the door with his superior strength, Koenig says that Khan dragged out the hapless Chekov by his shirt, looked at him, cried "You, I will remember!", then tossed him down the corridor (with Chekov's pants still around his ankles). Koenig finishes the story by saying that Khan then went in, pointedly re-locking the door behind himself as he did so.
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
The Enterprise's communications officer.
Bibi Besch as Carol Marcus
The mother of Kirk's son, Marcus is the lead scientist working on Project Genesis.
At a Creation convention in St. Louis, Missouri in 1984, Bibi Besch stated that if she had filmed The Wrath of Khan after filming The Day After rather than before, her portrayal of Carol Marcus and of Dr. Marcus' attitude toward the Genesis Device would have been very different, due to what she learned about the effects of nuclear weapons while filming The Day After.
Merritt Butrick as David Marcus
Paul Winfield as Clark Terrell
The captain of the Reliant.
Kirstie Alley as Saavik
Spock's protege and a Starfleet officer-in-training.
Ricardo Montalbán as Khan Noonien Singh
There were some speculation as to whether Montalban had prosthetics applied to his chest, to make him appear more muscular during his scenes as Khan. Montalban himself, as well as numerous people associated with the production of the movie, actively refuted it, saying that those muscles really were his, and citing the fact that, even going into his 60s, Montalban was physically very active, and worked out regularly. Nicholas Meyer, in the audio commentary of the Director's Cut makes it clear that Montalban is not wearing a prosthetic chest. [6]
Khan frequently quotes (or paraphrases) the character of Captain Ahab from Herman Melville's Moby Dick in the movie, the intention being to draw a parallel between Khan's obsession with Kirk and Ahab's obsession with the titular whale. In the early scene where Chekov's landing party discovers Khan's group, Moby Dick is one of the books on Khan's bookshelf, along with King Lear and The Holy Bible. "He tasks me" is a direct quotation from the novel. Ahab's "I'll chase him round [Cape of] Good Hope, and round the Horn [of Africa], and round the Norway maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up" is paraphrased as "I'll chase him round the Outer Nebula and round Antares Maelstrom and round Perdition's Flames before I give him up". Ultimately, Khan's final words, "To the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee" are directly taken from Ahab's final words. Moby Dick would be used later as an open allusion during Enterprise-E Captain Jean-Luc Picard as he faced his vengeful lust for the Borg in Star Trek: First Contact.
Judson Scott as Joachim
Khan's chief henchman, Scott had several speaking lines with Montalbán, but appears in an uncredited role.[7] According to TV Guide, this was due to Scott's agent trying to negotiate top billing; Scott wound up with more money but no credit. [7]

Production

Preproduction

After the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, executive producer Gene Roddenberry wrote his own sequel, involving a plot he had touted before in which the crew of the Enterprise travel back through time to assassinate John F. Kennedy and set a corrupted time line right.[8] This sequel was turned down by Paramount executives, who blamed the relative failure of the first movie on the constant rewrites demanded by Roddenberry, as well as the movie's plodding pace.[9] As a consequence, Roddenberry was ultimately removed from the production and according to Shatner, "kicked upstairs" to the ceremonial position of "executive consultant".[10]

Star Trek II's story instead incorporates elements of three separate scripts: "The Omega Syndrome" by Jack B. Sowards, involving the theft of the Federation's ultimate weapon; a script featuring a male "Dr Savik" by Samuel Peeples; and a script featuring Khan by Harve Bennett. Director Meyer wrote a new script in a matter of weeks using the elements of plot and characters from all three.[11][12]

Meyer notes that prior to starting the film, he read many or all of the Horatio Hornblower novels, and thus imprinted the nautical "atmosphere" of the Royal Navy into the film.[12]

Filming and effects

The film was directed by Nicholas Meyer, who later directed Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. According to Meyer, "The Undiscovered Country", a quotation of William Shakespeare, was also a working title for The Wrath of Khan. It was changed, without Meyer's consent, by studio executives. Meyer has said that the studio's initial new title was The Vengeance of Khan, and that he had to remind studio heads that George Lucas was at that time working on his 3rd Star Wars film with the working title of Revenge of the Jedi.[11]

The film was much more action-oriented than its predecessor, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but Star Trek II was much less costly to make, with a modest special effects budget and TV production schedule; the project was supervised not by Paramount's theatrical division, but by its television unit, and produced by Harve Bennett, a respected TV veteran. At a budget of US$11,000,000 in 1982 dollars (approximately US$23,000,000 in 2006 dollars), as of 2008, Star Trek II was the cheapest Star Trek motion picture to have been made to date, even when adjusting for inflation. This was largely due to requirements placed on the production given the cost overruns of its predecessor Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Most of the film was shot on the same set, as the bridge of the Reliant and the "bridge simulator" from the opening scene were simply redresses of the Enterprise’s bridge. Star Trek II re-used many models from the first Star Trek film, including the three Klingon battle cruisers in each movie's opening scene. It also used the same shots of the docked Enterprise that were used in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but these shots were greatly shortened.

Music

The James Horner score is markedly different from Jerry Goldsmith's score for the Star Trek: The Motion Picture, switching from Goldsmith's dark, heavy themes to a sound evocative of seafaring and swashbuckling. A portion of the score draws heavily on Sergei Prokofiev's "Battle on the Ice" from the score for the movie Alexander Nevsky. The opening and closing titles also feature the return of Alexander Courage's well-known Star Trek theme (which was only used briefly by Goldsmith), and the voiceover from the original series ("Space... the final frontier..."), this time read by Leonard Nimoy before the closing credits roll. This was Horner's first major film score, and musical cues from it appear in many of his later projects, including Cocoon and Aliens. Despite the differences, Horner did borrow one signature sound from Goldsmith's earlier soundtrack: a very deep string tone (produced by the "blaster beam"), used to accentuate moments of tension and danger.

Release and reception

Reaction and box office

Star Trek II grossed $78,912,963 in the U.S. and $97,000,000 worldwide. Although the total gross of Wrath of Khan was less than The Motion Picture, it was more profitable due to its lower cost of production.[13] The film earned $14,347,221 in its opening weekend at the US box office, at the time the largest opening weekend gross in history.[13]

Critical response to The Wrath of Khan was positive. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a "fresh" rating, with 92% of featured critics giving the film a positive review;[14] The Wrath of Khan is the highest rated Star Trek film on the site.[15] After the lukewarm response to the first feature film, Trek fan response to The Wrath of Khan was highly positive, crediting the film's success as bringing renewed interest to the franchise.[16] Entertainment Weekly went further, calling The Wrath of Khan "the film that, by most accounts, saved Star Trek as we know it."[17]

Home video

Paramount released The Wrath of Khan on Video Home System in 1983. Unlike contemporary releases, Paramount sold the VHS for $39.95, more than $40 below other movie cassette prices. The move was credited with an increase in competitive VHS pricing, and an increase in the adoption of increasingly cheaper VHS players.[18]

Paramount rereleased The Wrath of Khan on DVD with no special features in 2000.[19] The film was rereleased as a highly anticipated[20] two-disc "Director's Edition" format in 2002.[21] In addition to remastered picture quality and 5.1 Dolby surround sound, the second DVD contains extras including director commentary, cast interviews, storyboards and the theatrical trailer.[22] The four hours of bonus content and expanded director's cut of the movie were positively received.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).

Notes

  1. ^ a b Cartmell, 179-181.
  2. ^ "'Wrath of Khan' Plot summary". StarTrek.com. Viacom. Retrieved 2008-09-14.
  3. ^ Rioux, 243.
  4. ^ Rioux, 249.
  5. ^ Jenkins, 104.
  6. ^ Meyer.
  7. ^ a b McDonagh, Maitland (2002-09-12). "Ask FlickChick". TV Guide. Retrieved 2008-09-12.
  8. ^ Shatner, 161-162.
  9. ^ Rioux, 240-241.
  10. ^ Shatner, 99.
  11. ^ a b Movies - Star Trek II -The Wrath of Khan
  12. ^ a b OTTENS.Forgotten Trek | Behind the scenes on The Wrath of Khan
  13. ^ a b Harmetz, Aljean (1982-06-08). "'Star Trek II' Sets Mark for Sales at Opening". The New York Times. p. C11.
  14. ^ "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2008-09-15.
  15. ^ "Star Trek on RT". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2008-09-08.
  16. ^ Jenkins, 250.
  17. ^ Bernardin, Mark (2002-08-13). "Review; Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan -- The Director's Edition". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2008-08-05.
  18. ^ Sharkey, Betsy (1984-12-17). "Billion-Dollar VCR Boom Stuffs Agency Stockings". Adweek. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  19. ^ Kirkland, Bruce (2000-07-01). "Trekking to DVD". The Toronto Sun. {{cite news}}: Text "page36" ignored (help)
  20. ^ McKay, John (2001-12-07). "DVDs soaring in popularity". The Gazette. p. F4.
  21. ^ Conrad, Jeremy (2002-07-26). "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - The Director's Edition". IGN. Retrieved 2008-09-14.
  22. ^ Conrad, Jeremy (2002-07-26). "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan - The Director's Edition (page 2)". IGN. Retrieved 2008-09-14.

References

Wikiquote has quotations related to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

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