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YMMV / Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

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  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Terrell's shooting of Jedda; was he going to shoot David and simply hit the wrong target after Saavik tackled him out of the way, or did he deliberately execute Jedda as a warning to the others?note  And if he did execute Jedda, did Khan's orders influence him, or is it the kind of thing Terrell might have done of his own accord, bearing in mind that Starfleet is a lot less Mildly Military in the 23rd century? It's also noteworthy that Jedda had been pointing a phaser at the landing party earlier, and Terrell may have thought he was a threat.
  • Award Snub:
    • James Doohan said he thought Ricardo Montalbán should have received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, complaining that movies like Star Trek never receive nominations for major awards.
    • James Horner was not nominated for his score, which fans and critics alike considered one of the best in Trek history.
    • Despite being the most acclaimed Star Trek movie, it didn't receive any Oscar nominations, not even in technical categories.
  • Fandom-Specific Plot: This movie sparked a subgenre of Star Trek fan fiction on the lines of "How would you beat the Kobayashi Maru?" Even the official Star Trek Expanded Universe got in on it several times:
  • Franchise Original Sin:
    • This film started the trend of every Star Trek film being built around a confrontation with one particular villain, as it was the first in a very long line of Actionized Sequels.note  For better or for worse, this was a necessary change of pace for the series after the lukewarm response to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which went for a more cerebral storyline but was roundly criticized for its slow pace. Two decades later, when Star Trek: Nemesis became a Box Office Bomb after being criticized for its one-dimensional villain and its gratuitous action (most infamously, the nonsensical car chase that comes out of nowhere), the producers finally realized that they couldn't keep milking the old Wrath of Khan formula indefinitely. The Star Trek reboot films avoided that pitfall by placing less emphasis on the big villain and more on the ensemble cast trying to deal with the villain's plot.
    • The film was also the first installment to really introduce the Screen Shake and Explosive Instrumentation in battle as hallmarks of the franchise. The Original Series had fairly sedate cues that they were in battle, flashing lights and the bridge crew lurching to one side with the camera just doing a moving Dutch Angle. The Motion Picture featured a light rumble (with a video distortion effect) and just one console explodes on Chekhov as an apparently deliberate power surge from V'Ger. This film had actual explosions with collapsing walls and falling support structures, along with stunt work as people are flipping over banisters, giving the starship battles a sense of danger. However, these big explosions only happen as the result of serious damage, such as the bridge of the Reliant being struck by phaser fire from the Enterprise, or the Reliant having a warp nacelle blown off (and, more to the point, almost all combat is done shieldless for various reasons, to narratively make the combat far more dangerous and impactful; as a result, almost every attack both ships make is of major consequence and is believably portrayed as causing substantial damage, much like actual tall ship battles). As the revival television series took hold, these elements were retained, but were increasingly used in battles where it made no sense, particularly for vessels that were still at high shield strength.
    • The Enterprise's interiors are noticeably darker than they they were in the previous film to emphasize the more militaristic atmosphere that director Nicholas Meyer wanted to show, only getting very dark after Khan's initial attack deprives them of primary power. As time went along, Starfleet's interiors grew darker to the point that by the time of Star Trek: Discovery and particularly Star Trek: Picard, they were so dark that they drew much mockery among fans, to the point that when the final two episodes for Picard featured the rebuilt USS Enterprise-D, fans were thrilled to see a well-lit set again.
    • Just about every film after Star Trek: The Motion Picture's notorious budget overruns made use of Prop Recycling, reusing models of ships and Stock Footage like crazy. The need to recycle props also had major effects on storytelling—for instance, much of Wrath of Khan happened due to the fact that they only had money for one new spaceship, which became the Reliant. But it didn't get really bad until Star Trek: Generations, which happily reused both models and stock footage from the prior Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country in its battle with the Enterprise-D and the Duras Sisters. The reuse became much more noticeable because this was the fourth time a Star Trek film had featured an Enterprise battling an identical Bird of Prey (and the third one in a row), and what was more, this was the battle that brought down the Enterprise-D, a ship almost a century more advanced than its predecessors. Not only was the concept recycled, but the battle itself also felt very similar, and had a weaker justification for why a Galaxy-class starship could be stymied by a tiny little scout ship. And while prior stock footage was mostly stuff like ships sitting in drydock or floating in space, Generations went so far as to recycle the climactic shot of the villain's ship exploding.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • The Genesis Device carries connotations of being a nuclear weapon. The next film that Nicholas Meyer and Bibi Besch worked on together...was The Day After. Meyer said that work on that film made him physically sick and Besch said that had it been made first, she would have played Dr. Marcus very differently.
    • Kirk and Spock's friendship is one of the core elements of the film. In 2011, Shatner used footage of Nimoy without his permission for his documentary The Captains. The two never spoke again, with Nimoy dying four years later.
    • David warns his mother that Genesis "could be perverted into a dreadful weapon". He gets proven right in Star Trek: Lower Decks when disgraced former Starfleet cadet Nicholas Locarno acquires a black-market Ferengi copy and threatens to use it if anyone interferes with his plans.
      • To add greater insult to injury, in Star Trek: Picard, we see that Section 31 also has a new advanced Genesis torpedo in their premises.
    • The film ends on an optimistic note about the new planet created by the Genesis torpedo. The next film reveals that the process was imperfect, leading to the planet destroying itself before the hopeful note this film ended on could be realized.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight: Kirk dealing with his age is a theme explored in the movie. In the end he decides to not let it get to him and keep going as long as he can. William Shatner would eventually go on to be oldest person to go to space.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Ho Yay:
    • Kirk/Spock (surprise, surprise). Notably at the end of the movie: Kirk and Spock press hands against the glass as Spock dies. Spock's death has a huge impact on Kirk (which continues into the third movie.) Kirk says he's never truly faced death before, "not like this," even though his brother died during the series. Kirk would go on to say that he had lost "the noblest half of [him]self"—and look closely. Kirk and Spock are Vulcan kissing through the damn glass!
    • Academic Henry Jenkins tells of using this film to explain the concept of SlashFic.
      Jenkins: When I try to explain slash to non-fans, I often reference that moment in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan where Spock is dying and Kirk stands there, a wall of glass separating the two longtime buddies. Both of them are reaching out towards each other, their hands pressed hard against the glass, trying to establish physical contact. [...] And, I tell my nonfan listeners, slash is what happens when you take away the glass.
    • Khan's obsession with Kirk.
      Nicholas Meyer: Kirk did not lie awake thinking about Khan; Khan lay awake thinking about Kirk.
    • It takes three men to restrain Kirk from opening the door holding back lethal radiation just so he can be with Spock in his final moments. And what's more, Bones and Scotty knew full well they would have to do it and were already prepared when he arrived.
  • Hype Backlash: Gets its share of this from fans of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, who consider the militaristic themes of this film a betrayal of Gene Roddenberry's vision, and are aggrieved that the more deep and profound themes from that film are overlooked in favor of the somewhat more standard-issue revenge story that this film focuses around. To a lesser extent the film gets this from fans of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country; unlike fans of The Motion Picture they generally do like this film, but feel that The Undiscovered Country perfected what it was trying to accomplish.
  • It Was His Sled: The Kobayashi Maru opening sequence was included because Spock's death was one before the movie was finished.
    • Funny enough the Kobayashi Maru scene is also one. The movie begins in a fake out aboard what turns out to be a simulated bridge of the Enterprise. Only, anyone watching the movie for the first time these days doesn't even need to be savvy to know what's going on. The Kobayashi Maru scenario has entered the popular lexicon, and anyone giving Star Trek a shot for the first time has probably heard of it through osmosis.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Khan. He may be a mass-murdering warlord, but you can't help but feel bad for him as his happy life from the end of "Space Seed" had been ruined.
  • Memetic Mutation:
  • Moral Event Horizon: See here.
  • Narm: Kirk's "KHAAANNN!" shout already sounds silly as a Big Word Shout, and is made even sillier by Kirk's expression at that moment.
  • Newer Than They Think:
    • "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." It sounds like an old proverb, but more reliable sources point to this movie as the origin of the phrase.
    • On the other hand, it sums up the philosophy known as utiliarianism, which is about two hundred years older than the movie.
  • Older Than They Think: Much like Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, all the literary quotes used throughout are often attributed only to this film. It doesn't help that the characters occasionally mis-attribute the quoutes on purpose in-universe, in particular the "revenge best served cold" one (that's Eugène Sue via D.G. Osbourne, not Klingons).
  • Rewatch Bonus: After the Reliant's first ambush, it's obvious that every time they speak afterwards Kirk is attempting to push Khan's buttons and drive him to distraction into order to make him start making mistakes. Even the infamous "KHAAAAAAAN!" can be interpreted as Kirk making Khan believed he'd succeeded in finally defeating Kirk, instead of it being a brief setback.
  • Rooting for the Empire: Back in the day, many fans, especially new ones who loved Ricardo Montalban in Fantasy Island, hoped Khan would actually succeed, or at least live to see another day.
  • Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale (Distance): The Enterprise is 4000 kilometers from the Reliant when the Genesis Device detonates. With both ships being around 200-300 meters in length, the Enterprise and Reliant should (at best) look like dots against the nebula background. But the ships are still seen as being no more than a kilometer or two apart.
    • For reference, could you see a 12-inch ("foot long") hot dog at 3 miles away? note 
  • Sequel Displacement: No, not to Star Trek: The Motion Picture; plenty of people know about that (though this movie is the better received of the two), but rather the TOS episode "Space Seed." When most people think of Khan, they're probably thinking of this movie (or Star Trek Into Darkness). Far fewer people are aware that Khan's original role was as a Villain of the Week who appeared late in the first season and never appeared again until this movie.
  • Signature Scene: "KKKKHHHHHAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNN!"
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: One of the essentially canonical examples, and for a time on this very wiki, Wrath of Khan was even used as an attempted argument point as to why SIS shouldn't be a YMMV trope because it's just such a quantifiable improvement over the previous film that there's really no argument over the point. The film is such an example in the zeitgeist at this point that other film series which follow up on their first installment with a much better-received sequel are said to have "pulled a Wrath of Khan".
    • Arthur C. Clarke considered listing Khan as one of the best science fiction movies of all time. Considering Clarke's far greater enthusiasm for 'hard' science fiction, any recommendation at all suggests a pretty strong film.
    • One analysis puts Khan as the best sequel in all of film. See the graph halfway down the page, and the single dot in the 20s on the Y-axis? That's Khan. No other movie has improved the overall rating of a franchise more than this one.
  • Tough Act to Follow: Every subsequent Star Trek film has been measured up to this film, particularly Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, frequently falling short among fans. The only three that are really comparable are Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (which is so different in tone and plot as to be almost impossible to really compare), Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (which tied in with then-topical issues related to the end of the Cold War, and on top of that was made by the same hands as Khan), and Star Trek: First Contact (which is sort of rehashing this one, with its themes of obsession, though in that case, it's the hero, Picard, who is obsessed with his enemy, not the villain). The film helped to establish a pattern that even-numbered Trek films were better received and generally superior films to the odd-numbered ones; at least, until film 10, Star Trek: Nemesis broke the pattern, after which it shifted to the odd-numbered films.note 
  • Unintentional Period Piece: In the DVD Commentary, Nicholas Meyer paraphrases Orson Scott Card's claim that all works are a product of their time, when it's pointed out how Khan's followers look like the entourage of a hair metal group.
  • Values Dissonance: The elevator scene, where Kirk makes a pass at Saavik ("Lieutenant, are you wearing your hair differently?") and repeatedly leers at her. In the context of the scene, it shows Saavik's inability to pick up on human social cues, and is another reminder to Kirk that he's getting old. Today, however, it plays as an Admiral trying to flirt with a cadet in his direct line of command, and who is also one of his students.
    • While Saavik's age is not readily apparent as she's a Vulcan, and they age at half the rate of humans, the scene still comes across as more than a bit creepy. And though social mores will likely change in the next 300 years, it's written into today's academic and military codes of conduct that someone of Kirk's rank should never attempt to flirt with a person so vastly junior to him.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: Even with the lowered budget, Industrial Light & Magic prove that they can produce effects on par with Doug Trumbull and John Dykstra's work on the first film. Despite the paint modifications made to its model, the Enterprise still looks as majestic as it was in that film. While the effects of the Mutara Nebula are impressive in and onto itself, and miles above the similar effects attempted in The Final Frontier.
  • Win Back the Crowd: After the critical disappointment of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Khan proved to be this for Star Trek fans and is now considered the gold standard for all the films to follow in its wake.

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