Star Trek summer - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

     After the collective 'meh' that critics and audiences felt seeing Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it wasn't a given that there would be a sequel.  Seriously, after the first one, I don't know how many people were actually asking for one.  However, we have to remember that even though it wasn't the mega-blockbuster that Paramount expected, (on the order of a Star Wars, Superman, or Close Encounters) it was actually a big hit.  It was the fifth highest grossing film of 1979.  It did better than Moonraker, better than The Muppet Movie, even better than Alien  (I blame that on Alien's R rating, however.)  The movie made $82,258,456 in the USA in 1979 dollars, which is about $259,959,850 in today's money.  On a $49 million budget.  So it was a pretty good success financially.  Some in Paramount wanted to nix the idea of a sequel.  Some wanted to fix the wrongs of the first movie and try again.  Thankfully, the second group prevailed. 

    It's sad to say, but the main reason the first film was like it was, was due to Gene Roddenberry.  He had a lot of creative control on the first film and was ready with another script for Star Trek II which had the Enterprise crew going back in time to correct earth's timeline after Klingons go back and prevent the assassination of JFK.  That's right, the Enterprise crew goes back to make sure Kennedy gets shot.  Obviously it would have made a interesting episode (in season 3), but it wouldn't make a rousing Trek film.  So Paramount 'promoted' Gene Roddenberry to Executive Consultant.  This is a trap many authors, screenwriters, and original owners get into in Hollywood.  It basically means you get to give any opinions and changes you wish to see done...  But you have no power to get them done.  They can ignore all of your requests.  And that's what Paramount did.  They shut him up by giving Roddenberry a desk where he was powerless.  Normally this would sadden me, as I love the television show.  However, Roddenberry had lost his touch.  If you need proof of that, watch the 3 TV movies he wrote in the 1970s.

    So Paramount brought in TV producer Harve Bennett, because he promised he could do a better movie than the first, and way cheaper.  However, he had never seen an episode of the TV show.  So he watched through them all in a screening room at Paramount and found that the first season episode Space Seed embodied the show well and was just itching for a sequel.  Bennett wrote a screenplay that had Khan as the enemy, but was nothing near what was filmed.  He got Star Trek fan Jack B. Sowards to redo the script, and that's when we got the main storyline of the film.   Now they needed a competent director.  A Paramount executive named Karen Moore asked her friend Nicholas Meyer, writer of the Sherlock Holmes novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and director of the fun Time Machine/Jack the Ripper crossover film Time After Time.  He too had never seen any Star Trek, oddly enough.  And he thought the screenplay wasn't up to snuff.  (Neither did Leonard Nimoy, who was being begged to come back.  He would only do so if he could be given a great death scene and if he approved of the script.)  So Meyer redid the script in just a few days, and with his rewrites the film was a go, and Nimoy agreed to return.

   What Meyer did, to Roddenberry's chagrin I must add, was also what made the movie be considered the best in the series by many people.  A fan of Horatio Hornblower, he turned Wrath of Khan into what is essentially a naval battle film in space.  Khan became Captain Ahab.  The shocking thing is that this actually works!  It's overblown and theatrical, especially the acting, but would we have it any other way?  I love how Khan quotes Moby Dick.  I love how Kirk quotes A Tale of Two Cities.  Quite a few of the suits as Paramount thought that Meyer had gone overboard with the nautical stuff.  The call whistles, the ranks, the emergency red alert lights giving a submarine feel to the Enterprise.  But this was 1982 when studios sometimes let directors do things the way they want.  And god bless em for it.

     I'm constantly surprised at how convincing the movie is seeing as it was filmed by a TV production crew instead of a film one, on 1/4 the budget of the first film...  Only $11.5 million.  Sure, the effects aren't as mindblowing here as Star Wars or Close Encounters, but they get the job done.  There aren't any really bad effects (besides the slug coming out of the ear).  There are more matte paintings used on this one, as you can notice in the Genesis cave.  It's a beautiful matte painting, but it's very clearly a matte painting.  

The Mutara Nebula sequence, which is in my mind one of the most rousing, exciting things put on film, essentially a submarine battle in a blinding storm, looks odd due to the budget limits, but it's so colorful and suspenseful that you don't care.  I love looking at that scene.  The nebula with it's bright swirling colors was created with latex rubber mixed with ammonia.  And the tank had color gels placed in them.  This concoction was shot at very slow speed to give it fluid slow-moving motion.   For shots of the ship moving, the Dykstracam, used on Star Wars for the same thing was used here.  The ships are never moving.  The camera moves via pre-programed computer commands past the ships against a blue-screen.  Once the stable starfield is put in, it gives the illusion that it's actually the ship that moves.

     Now a lot of people think the movie is overacted and melodramatic.  And you know what?  They would be right.  But this is Star Trek, people.  This is William Shatner, this is Ricardo Montalban.  What do you expect?  It's something a lot of us love about the show.  I mean, sure... 

 That's become an internet meme and is known by everyone.  It's the shout heard 'round the world.  (And past Ceti Alpha 5, and Krypton, and probably Tatooine too.)   But even though it's overacted.  Even though it's considered Grade A cheese, it works!  What would the movie be without that?  Still a great ride of a movie, but a bit less memorable.  And what about Montalban's barely restrained (and sometimes not restrained) psychotic revenge?  I love his chewing of the scenery.  

      And last but not least, we must speak of James Horner's brilliant score.  Now, the first  Star Trek film had a great score too.  It even was nominated for an Academy Award.  Jerry Goldsmith did that score which gave us what was to become the Next Generation score.  It was lofty and mystical and beautiful.  James Horner's score is very very different from Jerry Goldsmith's... and none of the music written for the first film is used here.  Horner did a score based on simple themes representing Kirk, Khan, Regula 1, Genesis, battle, etc.  And he put those together sort of like how John Williams would do for Star Wars.  Khan's theme is percussive using a lot of clavs and french horn.  It's almost primal.  Kirk's theme is light and adventurous.  I love the way those themes intermingle during the battle sequences.  When the Enterprise is crippled by Khan's surprise first attack, Kirk's normally happy sounding theme becomes mournful and skittish.  If you listen to the soundtrack by itself, you can know exactly what's going on at each point of the music due to the use of leitmotifs.  It's a shame this soundtrack wasn't nominated for an Academy Award, however, a lot of the music was reused by Horner for the Aliens soundtrack, which he never got to fully score like he wanted to... and that did get nominated, surprisingly.

    Star Trek II is, I would hazard to say most peoples' favorite Trek film.  And with good reason.  It's moving due to the death of Spock (not a spoiler, people, it's a well known fact) even with his resurrection on the 3rd (day?) movie. (oh.)  It asks philosophical questions with the use of a terraforming probe as a weapon.  It's a great rousing adventure with lots of space dogfights and suspense.  I could never see anyone hating this movie.  I'm sure there are some, but they are most likely philistine idiots.  It's not too long like the first film.  It's trying to entertain you, not be an exercise in intellectual mumbo-jumbo like the first film.  However, it makes good sense unlike the reboots at times.  You know where to train your eyes on the screen instead of being blinded by reflected light.   It's a rare example of a film that does just about perfectly what it sets out to do.  And for that we are eternally grateful.

And then, of course, there's this little mashup that could be made.  

Is it wrong that that actually makes me more sad than the real version in the film?

And yes, this is actually Montalban's real chest.  Kept himself in great shape, he did.