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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Movie Review

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Nicholas Meyer and starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and Ricardo Montalban. It’s such a good movie.

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“For hate’s sake,

I spit my last breath at thee!“

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When Khan escapes from a 15-year exile to exact revenge on Kirk, the crew of the Enterprise must stop him from acquiring a powerful terraforming device named Genesis. The plot is quite good and the movie fits perfectly into ‘The Original Series’ in terms of its adventurous and irreverent tone. Thus, it is clearly a vastly superior sequel to the first movie that tried to be too serious and failed miserably.

The main reason why this movie works so well lies in its villain. The titular Khan played by Ricardo Montalban is truly delightful. Yes, the character and especially the actor are quite over-the-top, but the character works because he is given a great backstory connecting him to Kirk and because he is quite powerful. Ricardo chewed his scenery like crazy and I was living for it.

The movie overall is superbly developed in its characters. Most of them make an impact, but not just in plot, but also in their shared dynamics. They are so fun in their bickering and making fun of each other. Shatner is a lot of fun as Kirk and of course Spock is excellent here and superbly utilized. His death at the end of the movie obviously wasn’t permanent, but still it was powerful as you could feel the pain coming from Kirk. McCoy, Scott and Chekov all got their moments to shine and it was wonderful that each and every one of them was used so well here.

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Clearly, The Wrath of Khan isn’t meaningful or deep. On the contrary, it is irreverent and fun. But it worked for me as that is what I expect from this particular source material, and surely this movie was much more entertaining than anything the original show ever did. It is also gorgeously shot and scored with superb VFX once again. The action is excessive, but well executed, and the emotion is definitely felt. It’s mostly too lightweight, but ultimately highly charming.