Cheap Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan (Director's Edition) (DVD) (William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley) (Nicholas Meyer) Price

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Customer Reviews of Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan (Director's Edition)

"Wrath of Khan" succeeded where "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" had failed to capture the hearts of Trek fans, and ensured the dynasty of films to follow.

There's a few things I like about this film: 1. Ricardo Montalban as Khan. RM reprises his TV series episode role as Khan, an evil genius, the leader of superhuman, superstrength musclemen. He used to be smug, but since our last encounter, he has become embittered and extremely hell-bent on vengeance against Kirk personally. Of course, he's willing to destroy humanity if that stands in his way too.

2. The subplot about getting older. This theme got touched on again in "ST: Insurrection", but it is far better treated here. That's because there is no remedy for it, except ultimate resignation to the fact, as we see here. So, Kirk in "WofK" must come to terms with mortality in a very special way. By the way, the movie outdoes the show here, because there is no such thing as "dead but brought back to life" which always removed dramatic tension in the series. Here, reality is reality. "WofK" would not be out of place as a tool in bereavement groups, because we see that like in the epic of Gilgamesh, even heroes cannot control life and death. When I saw as a college student this the day it premiered in NYC , I actually cried at the end! Wouldn't do that for many movies, and none of the ST movies to follow.

"Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan" deserves all five stars.

Outstanding!
The Star Trek films are among my top favorites in the science fiction genre, and the Director's Edition release of The Wrath of Khan tops my list as my favorite Trek film of all time. Conceived as a sequel to the Original Series episode "Space Seed", The Wrath of Khan is a story about the adventures of Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Captain Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and the rest of the Enterprise crew as they attempt to stop genetically engineered 20th-Century madman Khan (played by the ever-delightful Ricardo Montalban) from using a stolen top-secret device called Project Genesis to ignite universal Armageddon in his quest for revenge against Kirk.

The thing I enjoyed most about the Director's Edition was the inclusion of several scenes that had been filmed for the movie, but which were cut in the theatrical release. One of these is a scene between Kirk and Peter Preston (Ike Eisenmann) that serves to define the relationship between Preston and Scotty (James Doohan). While it was ultimately deemed unnecessary to the plot, it helped clarify certain reactions from Scotty later in the film. There are also some extended scenes with Dr. Carol Marcus (played by the late Bibi Besch), her son David (the late Merritt Butrick), and the crew of Space Station Regula One which serve a similar purpose.

I also liked the fact that the Director's Edition had enough extras to warrant the inclusion of a second disc, which is a rarity from Paramount. The Feature disc has a spoken commentary by director Nicholas Meyer (while I'm not normally a fan of these types of commentaries because they distract me, I enjoyed hearing what Meyer had to say about the film) and a text commentary by Star Trek Encyclopedia author Michael Okuda. The Special Features disc includes some very insightful interviews with Meyer, Shatner, Nimoy, Montalban, and writer/Executive Producer Harve Bennett, as well as two featurettes (Designing Khan and The Visual Effects of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), original interviews with Shatner, Nimoy, Montalban, and the late DeForest Kelley, and plenty more. For those who have enjoyed Star Trek as long as I have, this DVD set is definitely a keeper.

One for the ages
Back when "The Wrath of Khan" first hit the theaters, I remember thinking that Khan now ranks with the best movie bad guys of all time. I think Ricardo Montalban may have turned out the best performance of his career by bringing complexity, passion, pathos, and humanity all at once to the role of Khan. I'll never be able to read Moby Dick the same way ever again - "He tasks me, and I shall have him... I'll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom, and 'round perdition's flames before I give him up!" Sure, I'm an avowed lifelong trek fan, but I don't think I'm exagggerating this by much.

On a more objective note, the movie works very well at multiple levels...

The soundtrack itself is exceptional and, at the time, somewhat ground-breaking for the movie industry. This is evidenced by the fact that subsequent soundtracks in the sci-fi genre seem to have borrowed from Horner's original score. I think it was a shame that "Khan" was not nominated for an Oscar in the original score category.

The visual effects, which were state of the art at the time, still hold up over twenty years later. It serves as a good example and reminder that movies used to have good special effects even in the pre-computer era.

The acting was also superior. I already mentioned that Montalban may have given the performance of his life as "Khan", but I don't think it ends there. William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley also recaptured the feel of the cameraderie from the original series. I am aware that Shatner is often criticized for being overly-dramatic, but my opinion is that this may also rank among the top two or three performance of Shatner's career as well (including the TV show). One of the more memorable moments came following Khan's failed attempt to have Chekov and Terrell kill Kirk: [Kirk to Khan] "You've managed to kill just about everyone else, but like a poor marksman you keep missing the mark.", which was, of course, followed by Kirk's timeless "KHAAAANNNN!!!" exclamatory. The acting was so good, IMHO, that the audience doesn't really notice that Kirk and Khan never really meet face-to-face, and the movie doesn't suffer because of it.

The Director's Edition DVD comes with a well-produced disc of supplementary material (interviews, commentaries, etc.) as well. I particularly liked the recent interviews with the actors on their recollections from when the movie was being produced. My favorite interview was Ricardo Montalban telling how horrified he was upon realizing how much he sounded like Mr. Roarke from Fantasy Island when he started reading his lines for the first time - "This is going to be a disaster! The audience is going to laugh at me!" He then tells of how he fixed the problem by requesting a copy of the original TV show "Space Seed" where the crew of the Enterprise first encountered Khan, and watching it over and over again until he began to recall his original work with the character. Shatner also delivers a pretty good interview as he describes how he'll one day make Nimoy and Harve Bennett pay for not letting him in on the secret that by the time the movie had been shot that they already had plans to bring Spock back. Whether or not Shatner really knew is irrelevant - the interview is delivered w/ a deadpan that leaves the viewer in stitches. There is also a good piece about how the visual effects were accomplished.

Overall, I rate "The Wrath of Khan" as the best movie in the entire series of Star Trek theatrical releases, and one of the better movies ever produced in the sci-fi genre as a whole.