Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

This is one of the high points of the Star Trek movie series. After the disappointing Star Trek: The Motion Picture, this was a massive improvement in both story telling and character development. The story revolves around a device called Genesis which creates habitable life from desolate planets. However an old nemesis, Khan, wants the device after his planet is nearly subject to the device's effect.Ricardo Montalban is excellent as Khan and is one of the strongest villains in the series. The cast of the original series has much more to work with this time round and their performances are just as great as they were in the show. Kirk is given lots of character development as we learn how he tries to escape death, which ties into the film's theme of sacrifice. It's also much more fast paced and action oriented, but it still maintains the intelligence that the series is known for. The battle sequences aren't stylised but rather they show the brutal effects of combat as we see crew members bloodied bodies after the ship has been hit by phasers and ion torpedos. This is an excellent entry into the series and remains a fan favourite for a reason.

Movie Review: "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan" (1982)After initial television visionary producer Gene Roddenberry (1921-1991) departing from producing the metaphysical, ultra-high-budgeted "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" directed by four-times-Academy-Award-winning director Robert Wise (1914-2005), Harve Bennett (1930-2015) takes over with less than a third of the original production budget in season 1981/1982 to grant Academy-Award-nominated screenwriter Nicholas Meyer the chance to create a high-stake poker game of a Hollywood entertainment powerhouse Movie by revisiting the title-given nemesis character "Khan" in reprising portrayal by actor Ricardo Mantalban (1920-2009) after the Kirk-challenging character's first appearance in Episode 22 of "Star Trek" Season 1 in 1966/1967.Captain James T. Kirk, performed by now in full-bloom action-beats-sharing actor William Shatner, put on an astoinishing tense confrontation between to spaceship commanding characters in thrilling scenes of a screenplay written by Jack B. Sowards (1929-2007), who together with the director Nicholas Meyer bring a fast-paced science-fiction-action opera into motion that any spectator, who has the chance to watch in a restorated color-graded as 5.1 dolby digital sound certified entertainment system to further witness a never-seen-before twisted thriller-movie set in infinite space of friendship, teamplay, faith, betrayal and ultimate sacrifice to drop to the knees to, because boldness of that kind in story-telling remains hardly missed in an over-populated comic book action operettes of contemporary 2010s event movie cinema. © 2018 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

I love Star Trek so it should come as no surprise to other fans that this is one of two in the series that I consider worthy of an 11. 'The Voyage Home' is the other. I don't know which I like best, they're both fantastic. This has an outstanding cast, great action, good FX, an excellent bad guy AND more funny than you might expect from a revenge plot. If you ask a Star Trek fan which movie is their favorite, it's probably this one or the 4th one. If you ask them which one has the best villain, it's this one. This show is superb and I can watch it yearly.

Despite the fact that the first Star Trek motion picture rekindled an interest in the show, there existed a disconnect between the style/feel of the Original Series TV show and the style/feel of the first movie. In The Wrath of Khan, however, the focus shifts back to what made the show a success in the first place: great acting and character development, subtle humor, action/adventure scenes, and some thought-provoking concepts.In this film, a few members of the U.S.S. Enterprise stumble across an old nemesis from the TV show...Khan, a ruthless dictator who will stop at nothing to get his revenge on Captain Kirk, the man who imprisoned him. At the same time, Kirk is struggling with his advancing age, coming to terms with the fact that he will not be a starship captain forever. The final showdown between Kirk and Kahn will have you on the edge of your seating, rooting for the swashbuckling Kirk more than ever before.The pacing of this movie is just incredible, the biggest departure from the often-stodgy "Motion Picture" original. Not a wasted scene here, yet one never feels cheated.This movie also does a great job of showcasing the "auxiliary" characters (Uhura, Chekhov, Sulu, Scotty, etc.), who more often than not got the short end of the spool in the TV show. For devoted fans of the show, the final scene is likely the most gut-wrenching of any movie or TV episode, as fan-favorite Spock must make a split-second decision that will alter his life forever.To conclude, this might just be my favorite Trek film of the bunch, as it remains true to the ideals/concepts that made Star Trek such a cultural phenomena in the first place along with providing some great human drama in the process. For those of you who watched the first Star Trek film and were disappointed, take heart, as this film will set things back on track.