Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Our Review

The best Star Trek movie is really a great submarine movie that happens to be in space. Nicholas Meyer, a director who admitted he barely knew the series, cut the budget, the pomposity, and the velocity, and made a film about aging that runs at warp speed. Ricardo Montalban’s Khan is the finest villain the franchise ever produced, a genetically engineered tyrant chewing every line like it owes him money, and his pursuit of Kirk across a nebula that blinds both ships is masterfully staged cat and mouse.

The script is a masterclass in consequences. Khan is a leftover from a 1967 episode, and the film treats that history as a debt come due, Kirk’s past literally beaming aboard to bury his son. The themes are Shakespearean and the film knows it, quoting Melville as the Reliant burns. The Genesis device gives the plot a ticking clock with genuine moral weight, and the final countdown in the reactor chamber, Spock sacrificing himself behind irradiated glass while Kirk watches, remains the most emotionally destructive scene in Trek history. I have been the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few as a life philosophy ever since.

Every performance peaks here. Shatner’s Kirk is finally allowed to be old and wounded, a man reading a book with glasses and mourning a life of command. The naval discipline Meyer imposed, brass and procedure and pipes, defined the movies for a decade. It is the rare sequel that retroactively improves the series around it. Ten out of ten, no debate.