I.A.M. Musing About…

Given this is a follow-up on an episode of the series from well over a decade previous, it’s a bit of a surprise that there’s not any more content of the oh by the way, here’s why these people hate the other people and why the whole thing is happening in the first place variety of content. Given my complaint about that in the first film, perhaps there were more than I doing it, and thus they over–corrected in this one. Maybe they relied on the image on the poster and the reviewers to take care of that matter. Speaking of the poster, why does Khan appear to have the face and eye-makeup of Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra??

Star Trek II ~ The Wrath of Khan (1982)

For those of you wondering where this one fits in the series, this is the one with Kirstie Allie listed in the credits as “introducing” her (which means she’s never done any credited work on screen before), and she’s playing the first version of “Saavik”. We also meet Carol Marcus, she being the mother of Kirk’s son David who we also meet. We also get introduced repeatedly to the phrase “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”, the “Kobayashi Maru” test, and the fact that Kirk loves old bits of technology like “eye glasses” and “books”. We also get to hear Kirk utter that famous line “KHAAANNNN!”, as well as rather a lot of bits from the novel Moby Dick and Shakespeare.

The frame and images of this seem to be a bit empty around the edges, as if Nicholas Meyer was actively allowing for the trimming of the wide-screen to television broadcast later. Likewise, it almost seems as if fitting to a “two-hours with commercial breaks” format was being allowed for with the story framework. The end result is good, but hardly one which really keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout the experience, however.

The characters don’t move anywhere, the consequences of their actions seem to be of lesser import than the fact they have to do them “because that’s what it says in the script, innit?”

One of the things that really gets down-played which could have added a great deal of pathos is the fact that Khan’s ‘right hand manb’ is actually his son. Perhaps if one had seen the original episode 87 times this would be self-evident. Still, given both of the Captains Kirk and Khan have their offspring involved in the story seems something which would have be better employed more thematically. Oh well.

In many ways, this is best thought of as being the first half of a pair, or the start of a trilogy, all of which deal with Spock and his on-going cycle of life. When you do that, the tale seems less dissatisfying. So… let’s do that.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Paramount Pictures

Directed by
Nicholas Meyer

Writing credits
Gene Roddenberry (television series Star Trek)
story by Harve Bennett and Jack B. Sowards (and an uncredited Samuel A. Peeples)
screenplay by Jack B. Sowards (and an uncredited Nicholas Meyer)

This year, I’ve been watching DVDs from the library for a number of reasons, mostly to do with a combination of “filling in the gaps in my ‘pop culture’ knowledge”, as well as a concerted effort to better understand story editing by both watching a film and then re-watching listening to people who have studied that particular movie for years in order to better appreciate the themes, plot construction, symbolism, and so on.

The process would be nothing without the secondary audio tracks. Sometimes it’s like having actually been through the film-making process with the people involved.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 4th, 2011 at 3:50 pm and is filed under movies, Personal, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.