Awsum Movies:
Why
Star
Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
is the most awsum movie ever made -
ever.
By JS Adams
As
much as J.J. Abrams has
tried to overwrite history with his re-imagined super fast paced CGI fantasia
franchise, there does remain however, a few of us old timers who still remember
those good old slow Star Trek movies
of the 1980’s, with their sssslow plodding
plots and simple easy-to-remember-one-liners.
We
remember how much of a big deal it was when the USS Enterprise got an
upgrade, featuring that awsumly ssssslow
personal space tour in Star Trek Motion
Picture. We also remember, (creaking in our rocking chairs), when it was a
big deal when she was finally blown to bits (rather slowly) and then just as
slowly (but surely) resurrected.
But most of all, we remember the catalyst
that sssslowly cemented the Star Trek franchise forever, teaching us
awsum life lessons, such as ‘how we face
death is at least as important as how we face life’.
Yes I’m talking about why revenge is a dish
best served cold and why Star Trek II:
The Wrath of Khan is the most awsum movie ever made.
Annoyed
with JJ Abrams slicker than slick
re-imaginings, I decided it was time to take a good long look back at why Star Trek was so great in the first
place and the only way to do that was to review The Wrath of Khan again, (preferably in a huge cinema rather than
my crummy lap-top). Unfortunately I had to choose the latter. But anyways, I saw it again and for me, it
still holds together as a spectacular well-written piece, which sssslowly triumphs, where JJ Abrams fast food logic fails to
deliver and here’s why.
AWSUM
SLOW DELIVERY
With
this in mind, Wrath of Khan has lots
of awsum slow moving shots: such as
an aging Kirk hobbling about his San Francisco apartment with a geriatric
Bones, or hobbling about doing deck inspections with Scotty or the Enterprise
itself hobbling across outer space, getting battered by Khans wrath and still
kicking his ass. Like the ultimate showdown with a geriatric Elvis and the
Mummy in Buba-Ho-Tep, we see the
penultimate showdown with Enterprise vs
Reliant, as the two star ships blindly hobble head to head and totally pass
each other, hunting deep inside the electrically charged clouds of a space
cloud nebular. This film is all about the slow. Awsum!
RICARDO
MALTALBAN
I
don’t care if you think he was too old, Mexican actor Ricardo Maltalban is Khan and forever will be. Less it is for me to say, he was regarded as the epitome of continental elegance, charm and
grace in film and on television, (at least that is what IMDb has to say). So
screw you Cumberbatch.
TRILOGIES
Produced
by Harve Bennett and directed by Nicholas
Meyer, the
success of The Wrath of Khan lead
nicely into two sequels: The Search for Spock and The Voyage home. These
three films are essentially a trilogy within the Star Trek franchise and set the template for future Star Trek movies: dealing with three
themes: aging, redemption and human ignorance.
Wrath
of Khan deals with the themes of Age and the losing of libido. With this
interplay, we also get some awesome character arcs within the story: such as
(Admiral) Kirk’s dismay as a desk bound figurehead, when he’d rather be out
there hopping galaxies. It is a tale about youth, as much as it is a tale about
nostalgia, about the yearning for youth in old age. About Khans last swing of
the bat for power and Kirks last chance to prove he still has what it takes, to
stop him.
This
latter theme is built upon in The Search
for Spock when Starfleet decides the old rickety Enterprise should be
junked but not before Kirk steals her on one last quest, to get Spock back,
while losing everything else in the process: mainly the Enterprise, his Son (David)
and his career in Starfleet- all to
redeem himself of past mistakes, such as abandoning Khan on Ceti-Alpha V all those years ago, in the
first place.
In
the third film, The Voyage Home, you
have a voyage and return plot, addressing mainly ecological issues: mans
ignorance, the hunting of whales to extinction and a big ass Swiss Roll space
probe (playing drum and bass rather loudly) causing worldly chaos, when all whale communicardo is severed.
But
like the phoenix, all this culminates in the resurrection of the Enterprise,
Kirks re-instatement as Captain and the happy ending, that’s basically taken
three films to get to.
SPACE
SEED
Need I remind you not but Khans very
first appearance was way back in the 1967 Star
Trek episode ‘Space Seed’ - laying
prequel to Wrath and introducing us
to a very young and virulent Khan in his
prime.
No Cumberatching here, Ricardo
Montalban played Khan as a believable sympathetic
character, that you wanted to route for: the product of 20th century
genetic engineering, put on ice for 300 years until Kirk thaws him out. This
however turns out to be a pretty bad idea, as the first thing Khan does is
charm Lt. Marla McGivers into
aiding him hi-jack the Enterprise.
Fortunately for the Star Trek franchise, she has a change of
heart and thwarts his plans, culminating in her exile with Khan and gang on
Ceti-Alpha V, leaving Spock and Kirk to wonder what sort of ‘Space
Seed’ they had planted that day.
TRAILER PARK TRASH IN SPACE
We soon find out in Wrath of Khan. Where an absent-minded Pavol
Chekov accidentally springs Khan (again played awsomly by Montalban)
from imprisonment on the now dead planet
of Ceti-Alpha V, where for 15 years,
Khan has been cooling his heels in trailer park hell.
It is interesting to note, that his trailer park digs reveal
some inner workings of Khans mind: Chekov observes his small library
collection: featuring Dante’s Inferno, Milton’s Paradise Lost and Moby Dick, books which sum up the plot and tie in nicely with Space
Seed, were an exiled Khan says to Kirk; ‘Have
you ever read Milton captain?’ to which Kirk acknowledges Khans preference to
rather ‘Reign in Hell’ than
serve in Heaven.
PLOT HOLES
But despite all the big build up with Chekov with Khan, fans
of the original series still pointed out that A: Chekov wasn’t in Space
Seed and B: How does Khan even recognise him?
and C: Khans son (Joachim) looks way too old to be 15 (more like 35). But hey it’s only
a movie.
TO REIGN IN HELL
Fear not however, for those of us in the know, there is
actually a book (yes an entire novel) that covers Khan’s exiled antics during
the whole 15 years between Space Seed and Wrath and answers these grievances quite adequately and
ingeniously (and doesn’t dwell on them either). All plot holes in The
Wrath of Khan suddenly become null and void, filled in
quicker than council road pot-holes. It was written by Greg Cox, and is called ‘To Reign in Hell’ .
MUTINEE IN SPACE
Never the less, Star
Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, still holds its own and ranks as one of the best Trek movies due to (ironically) the
ousting of the original series creator Gene Roddenberry:
His
former Star Trek outing: the Motion Picture was pretty good at
setting up general aesthetics for future Trek
movies but (overshadowed by Star Wars)
the film took too long to recoup its profit, (costing $46 Million and
grossing $139 Million dollars world wide).
Roddenberry’s
ideas for a sequel were met with executive disdain, stemming from the slower
than slow plot of The Motion Picture. He was replaced by Tv
producer Harve Bennett and with Roddenberry side-lined, it was up to Bennett to
realise the direction that the movies would take, feeling that if Star Trek had any future, then it better
have a dam good nemeses.
His
first task was to sit through all 79 episodes of the original series,
culminating in a sequel to Space Seed.
He then met with director Nicholas Meyer who (despite knowing zero
about the series) compared it to beloved Horn
Blower books of his childhood. Making a list of all the things they liked
about the troublesome script, they wrestled out on paper what would ultimately
become the sequel.
With
the success of Wrath of Khan, Harve Bennett went on to produce the
rest of this trilogy: The Search for
Spock and The Voyage Home. It
should have all ended there nicely but the sequels kept on coming.
SEQUELS
vs. REMAKES
When I
think of Final Frontiers, Undiscovered
Country Nemeses or any of Abrams re-imaginings, they all begin to blur into each
other with forgettable storylines, which ignore far simpler issues that govern
our heavens, such as life, death and rebirth.
Perhaps
everything valid about the franchise had already been said and done by the time
The Voyage home was released and anything beyond, was a lesser episode
of the original show. At any rate, what they should have opted for was a new Tv
series, featuring the original cast and that too would have been totally awsum
but I guess that’s a whole other universe: boldly going where no script writer,
has gone before...
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