Posted on 06/11/2022 7:35:03 PM PDT by Macho MAGA Man
Star Trek is no stranger to cinema, and the franchise’s quality of films tends to fluctuate with each new release. We’ve seen plenty of pretty good films from the series, and we’ve also seen films that weren’t as good as they could’ve been. Everyone’s got their own favorites, but if there’s one thing that can be agreed upon, it’s that Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan stands above the rest.
Released exactly today in 1982, Khan served as a sequel to both the original 1979 Star Trek film, and the 1967 episode, “Space Seed.” Directed by Nicholas Meyer, who also did uncredited work on its final script with Jack B. Sowards, the film has cast a long shadow over Star Trek. Whether it was due to the shocking death of Spock (Leonard Nimoy), its substantially improved acting, or having a great villain in the form of the late Ricardo Montalban as Khan Noonien Singh, Khan the film was nothing short of a success back in the day. At the time of its release, it came out to strong reviews and was a box office hit, earning $97 million worldwide. Even beyond financials, it spawned a brief sub-franchise for the film franchise, kicking off a trilogy that included 1984's Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and 1986's Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. And it’s why, at least prior to the 2009 reboot, the Trek fandom held to the belief that even-numbered entries would be the only good films in the series.
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That’s true.
If you think about the first feature film, it’s a lot like the first pilot that the network turned down as “too cerebral”. People like action movies, so of course TWOK was a much bigger success.
The Voyage Home is my favorite. The Cetacean Bioogist did what I would love to do, go to the future, sorta. I amed a couple of Turtles George and Gracie. They didn’t let me down, they had hatchlings.
I would say that The movie wanted to be cerebral, but it certainly lacked humor. The characters were mostly established, so it could have used the humor in known relationships that TWOK did, unlike the pilot.
Now that you make me remember, it was really just the episode, “The Changeling”, but with a much bigger budget.
I’ll never forget sitting in the front row of the theater as a kid as the curtain rolled up and a couple of blue hairs were saying “It’s so sad when Spock dies!!”
Star Trek (2009) was not bad. The only respectable flick by J.J. Abrams. All others by him were crap.
Holy cow:
That’s $294 million in 2022 dollars. It was bigger than I thought.
Never watched the TV series, but enjoyed the movies very much. II was the best of them. Agree all the stuff with whales was a bit too greenie/eco nut for me.
“It’s his way” though, was timeless, along with. “Too much LDS”
The humor in Voyage home was great.
Oh yeah. The TV show had humor at times. The Voyage Home humor had lots of humor and reminded me a bit of the “in your face” humor of the one-off episode “the Trouble with Tribbles”.
Ricardo said that when he was asked if he wanted to do the movie, and they sent him a script, he was disappointed that his character barely appeared in it. whatever his motives, he said that when he saw that at least other characters were always talking about the character, he was somewhat mollified.
he apparently flew in over a weekend and did the opening scene in the botany bay with winfield/koenig cold in one cut. meyer said that was almost exactly the take they kept.
the actor’s point that the character of Khan is barely in the movie had actually escaped me all these decades until he spelled it out.
in part this is blamed on robert wise - he had never worked on star trek wasn’t familiar with the story from the series, and even nixed some attempts to get humor in apparently.
Dang, 40 years ago? Feeling old.
Count me as one more vote for the Wrath of Khan as the best one in the series.
Meyer had some comments about directing shatner - you would need to let him do it his way a few takes, so he would tire down and not over-act as much to get a better performance. he gives examples from the second movie where bill was hamming it up and they just had to keep shooting till he lost interest in continuing it.
taking this into account when looking at shatner overacting in most of ST V explains a lot I didn’t understand at the time about why that movie was so poorly acted.
Me too.
Part of the film's issues were the lengthy (though amazing for the period) special effects, showing off the updated ship in painstaking detail. After all, Parmount decided to go the feature film route instead of the planned "Star Trek - Phase II" series, which would've featured some of the same updated sets and wardrobe. So they spent a lot of time showing it off.
The other factor was probably the director. Looking back at Robert Wise's body of work, you find "The Day The Earth Stood Still" and "The Andromeda Strain", both of which are examples of sci-fi done in a serious tone.
I liked that movie until about a quarter of the way through, and realized, hey, I’ve seen this thing before. It was nothing but a rip off of their own episode “The Changeling” They just replaced “Nomad” with “VGer”
Great special effects though, esp for the time
I guess I should have read some more posts before responding. I see my point has already been made.
“The Voyage Home” is my favorite, too.
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