Tear Jerker / Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

"I have been...and always shall be...your friend. Live long...and prosper."

• After Khan steals the Genesis torpedo and the others leave Kirk and Carol alone, she asks him how he's feeling. For one brief moment Kirk lets the mask of command slip away, and we see just how tired he is:
  Kirk: There's a man out there I haven't seen in fifteen years who's trying to kill me. You show me a son that'd be happy to help. My son... my life that could have been... and wasn't. How do I feel? Old... worn out.
• Spock's Heroic Sacrifice. Kirk's tone goes from triumphant to worried in a heartbeat.
  Kirk: Engine room. Well done, Scotty!
  McCoy: (voice cracking) Jim... I think you'd better get down here.
  Kirk: Bones?
  McCoy: Better... hurry.
  • The moment when Kirk notices Spock's chair is empty and runs down to Engineering, suspecting the worst.
  • The novelization states that while Kirk has felt shock, concern, worry, etc., since the first attack, this is the moment where he feels pure bone-chilling fear.
    • In a truly sublime acting performance, William Shatner breaks viewers' hearts as much with his face as with his lines. The look on his face when he first realizes what's happened and bolts from the bridge is amazing. It's easy to forget, because of his propensity to ham it up, that he is actually a very skilled actor.
    • The quick shift from cocky triumph to mood deflated is extremely shocking when you consider how most Star Trek adventures usually wrap up. For a few seconds it seems to Kirk that Scotty simply managed to fix the engines at the last possible moment, yet another last second miracle from his miracle worker engineer that he'd been pulling off for him for over a decade at that point before realizing that isn't gonna be the case this time.
  • Kirk tries to save Spock, far too late to do anything to help him. Bones and Scotty tell him he can't enter the room, and that there is no hope.
    • They don't just tell him; McCoy knew how Kirk would react and was ready with himself, Scotty and a spare crewman to physically restrain Kirk from opening a door holding back unholy levels of radiation in his attempt to get to Spock.
      McCoy: NO!, you'll flood the whole compartment!!
      Kirk: He'll die!
      Scotty: Sir, he's dead already!
      McCoy: It's too late...
    • Again, it takes three men to hold back one.
  • Kirk calling for Spock, sobbing, even though they're Separated by the Wall. Spock, blind and dying, pulls himself up, straightens his jacket and painfully stumbles over to Kirk. Even at the last, Spock will never ignore his captain and his friend.
    • Especially tragic when you consider that in spite of his physical pain and weakness, Spock straightens his uniform, determined to face his commanding officer with dignity—and in an instant that dignity is lost when he walks, blinded by the absorbed radiation, into the glass wall.
    • And it recalls a previous self-sacrificial action on his part, back in "Operation: Annihilate!", also with the getting blinded and pitifully bumping into an obstacle, but that time, he was back on the bridge bantering with Bones that same day...
  • The whole of their final exchange.
    Spock: Don't grieve, Admiral. It was logical. The needs of the many... outweigh...
    Kirk: ... the needs of the few.
    Spock: Or the one.
    • "I never took the Kobayashi Maru test... until now. What do you think... of my solution?"
    • "I have been, and always shall be, your friend. Live long... and prosper."
    • Made all the worse by the fact that, by the time Leonard Nimoy himself died in 2015, he and William Shatner — who really were friends in real life for many years — were no longer even on speaking terms. According to Shatner, he doesn't know why that happened, and Nimoy's daughter told him "[Nimoy] loved you".
    • Kirk's small, quiet "...no..." as he sits there in Engineering, separated from his best friend for (seemingly) all time. The man is broken.
  • Kirk giving the eulogy at Spock's funeral.
    • The eulogy deserves to be reproduced in full. Warning: will cause many Manly Tears.
      Kirk: We are gathered here today to pay final respects to our honored dead. And yet it should be noted, in the midst of our sorrow, this death takes place in the shadow of new life, the sunrise of a new world; a world that our beloved comrade gave his life to protect and nourish. He did not feel this sacrifice a vain or empty one, and we will not debate his profound wisdom at these proceedings. Of my friend, I can only say this: of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the... (chokes back tears) most... human.
    • Kirk's attempt at being The Stoic for the duration of the speech is punctuated by a heart-rending pause as he chokes up on his words, complete with quivering chin and near tears as he desperately maintains his best attempt to be somewhat composed...
    • Now that Leonard Nimoy actually has left us...
      Bones: He's not really dead, as long as we remember him.
    • It elicited the tears even before, considering that Deforest Kelley was the first of the original cast to pass away, as if the character was telling us this about his actor.
  • For those familiar with A Tale of Two Cities: 'It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done before...'
  • If you're trying to get through this scene with a dry eye, James Horner's soundtrack is not your friend. The end of the cue "Genesis Countdown" is Kirk's reaction to Spock's sacrifice. Unreleased on the soundtrack, but prominent in the movie, is Scotty on the bagpipes at Spock's funeral; his rendition of "Amazing Grace" swells into a full orchestra as the torpedo is fired toward the Genesis Planet, just as the sun rises over it. Cue Manly Tears, a lot of them.
  • The lingering shot of Spock's coffin as it comes to rest on the planet and pans out, showing the miracle the Genesis device has created... and then Leonard Nimoy's voiceover reciting the famous Opening Narration.
    Spock: Space: the final frontier. These are the continuing voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her ongoing mission: To explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life forms and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.
• "...And also that I'm proud... very proud... to be your son."
• The death of Khan himself. First, he and his people lost everything in their "comfortable" exile, and then Khan himself sees all the rest of his people die in the pursuit of his vengeance, and finally goes down quoting Captain Ahab from Moby-Dick: "From Hell's heart, I stab at thee..."
  • This is very much Khan's movie as much as anyone else's - Khan's story is one of tragedy, as he simply cannot look past what he lost, and MUST have his vengeance, despite every valid argument from Joachim about abandoning this grudge against Kirk, taking Genesis. Surely Khan's wife, who had been a member of Kirk's crew, would never approve of him chasing Kirk round perdition's flame... But he is so blinded by what he has lost, pinning that loss on Kirk, that he CAN'T give up his quest for vengeance. One gets the feeling that Khan's hope by even the first encounter with Kirk, Khan would have been content with dying - just so long as Kirk did so with him.
• The death of Peter Preston, Scotty's nephew, especially when he brings him to the bridge in his own arms. (Even Saavik sucks her breath in in shock and Spock closes his eyes in anguish.) Finally, Scotty tearfully states after Preston dies, "He stayed at his post... when the trainees ran."
  Peter: Is the word given, Admiral?
  Kirk: The word is given. Warp speed.
  Peter: Aye... (dies)
  • In a scene deleted from the theatrical version, but put back in the Director's Cut, Scotty introduces the enthusiastic cadet to Kirk as "My sister's youngest, Admiral. Crazy to get to space!".
  • Combines a little with Fridge Horror when you stop and think about the Inferred Holocaust that goes along with Khan's attack; it hits hard to think how many of the trainees, even among those who ran, didn't make it out alive. (The novelization confirms that many of the trainees were killed in the attack.)
  • In the novelization, Saavik had been tutoring Peter Preston. After Peter's death, Saavik goes into a conference room and completely trashes it in a blind rage. After Spock's death, the night before the funeral, she keeps a vigil over the coffins of both Preston and Spock, "the only two people she had ever cared about in the universe." This time, there's no anger: she breaks down and sobs quietly.
  • While it's partially a holdover from an earlier draft where Spock died halfway through the film instead of the climax, the fact that Scotty brings Peter's broken body to the bridge instead of Sickbay is heartbreaking as well - he was in so much shock at Peter's injuries, he went to the bridge. And the worst is that it probably made no difference, that getting to Sickbay sooner wouldn't have made a difference, given how badly burned Peter had been.
  • To make things worse the expanded universe material would suggest this incident drove a wedge between Scotty and his family especially his sister because they viewed him as having enticed Peter into joining Starfleet in the first place.
• Even Khan's devoted right-hand-man Joachim gets a bit of this:
  Joachim: (to Khan) Yours is... superior... [dies]
  Khan: (embracing Joachim's body) I shall avenge you.
  • It's implied that he wasn't just Khan's right-hand-man, but also his surrogate son.
• It's subtle, but the way Khan repeats "Admiral...Admiral..." when he learns of Kirk's new rank. It helps reinforce just how, while Khan has been rotting in this hellhole, Kirk has gone on with his life and recognized for his accomplishments.
  • One could argue that moment (learning that after all he and his people had suffered because of Kirk's neglect, that the man had been promoted) is when Khan Noonien Singh went completely insane.
• The fate of Captain Terrell. Even when he's forced to betray Kirk and the Genesis team, the man just sounds so helpless.
  • He essentially was helpless. It took all his will power just to end that mind control by turning the phaser on himself.
  • The despairing little "please" Terrell utters as he pulls the phaser on the landing party. He sounds utterly trapped.
  • And Chekov. "I'm... sorry, Admiral." Remember how much Chekov liked and looked up to Kirk throughout The Original Series... and now, under mental control by a genetically-engineered madman, he's forced to hold a phaser set to kill on his former commanding officer, mentor, and friend.
• Kirk mourning Spock to his son, self loathing about how he’s always managed to affect a swagger about death up until now. Given that his own death probably wouldn’t have mattered - called out for that in the series and three men had to hold him back from almost certainly killing himself and everyone else - Spock’s death is a Gut Punch to a man who’s coped with losses by ignoring them.
• Spock is sweet enough and learned about emotions enough to wish Kirk a happy birthday, but Kirk’s face just falls (as Bones says in the next scene, treating his birthday like it’s a funeral) and checks out when Spock is called away as captain before admitting he’s just going to mope at home.
• In the novelization, we spend a few chapters with the POV of the Genesis Project scientists, and they turn out to be various flavors of Endearingly Dorky True Companions. Khan's rampage through Regula 1 hits much harder when they're not just nameless Red Shirts.