Review: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Rating

Director

Nicholas Meyer

Screenplay

Jack B. Sowards, Harve Bennett

Length

1h 53m

Starring

William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Bibi Besch, Merritt Butrick, Paul Winfield, Kirstie Alley, Ricardo Montalban, Ike Eisenmann, John Vargas, John Winston, Paul Kent

MPAA Rating

Review

You don’t always have to reinvent the wheel to make a great film. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan proves that beyond any doubt.

Still frustrated about being in the admiralty, Adm. James T. Kirk (William Shatner) receives advice from Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) that he should get a new command. An opportunity arises for him to commander the Enterprise when the Federation starship Reliant is captured by enemy forces, sending him on a collision course with destiny. The culprit is a man who swore to kill Kirk if he ever saw him again: Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban). Yet his plans change after discovering a device capable of revitalizing an entire planet but his own hubris risks everything.

Taking inspiration from the original series episode “Space Seed,” The Wrath of Khan moves the action forward fifteen years after Kirk had stranded the genetically-enhanced Khan and his followers on a remote, technology-free planet. Six months later, the explosion of a nearby planet pushes their own out of alignment, turning it into a desert planet. With the lack of that knowledge, the crew of the Reliant beam down to the wrong one and are captured by Khan and his associates, setting up the game of chess between one of the franchise’s best villains and one of its best crews.

The ability to take inspiration from Star Trek‘s own past has led to some of the greatest episodes and movies ever created. This is the film that set the tone for such attempts and while it was the only one of the original films to draw on such history, it did so beautifully, providing a roadmap for how future such reverential call backs could be handled. Director Nicholas Meyer exhibited immense skill in presenting Jack B. Sowards and Harve Bennett’s screenplay, which balanced references to the past while carving a way to the future setting up one of the most expertly handled villains in Trek history.

As with all films with visual effects in this period, the reliance on practical effects and hand-painted film cells was prevalent yet it remained just as evocative and effective as it did for several years prior. While visual effects weren’t the selling point of this film, they were solid and played well into the background narrative. Everyone in the cast delivered terrific work with the exception of Shatner who continued to play up the over-expressive actions and vocal inflections that have helped make him the butt of jokes for decades. That’s what fans came to see and they got it in spades.

Standing above all of these was Montalban, giving Khan depth and personality keeping the character from feeling entirely one dimensional, a single-minded villain like so many others in the genre. Montalban’s textured and nuanced work is a litmus test against which all future Trek villains must be compared. Some might debate it, but he’s easily one of the screen’s very best.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was the film against which all sequels in the franchise have been compared, perhaps unfavorably, and while it remains my second favorite of all of them, it is no less deserving of the vaunted place it has not just among Trek films but also within the pantheon of history’s great science fiction pictures.