Star Trek II -The Wrath of Khan |
|
|
Release: | U.S.A. 04/06/82 Paramount Pictures 113" |
| Costs: | 12 milions dollars | |
| Receipts: | 80 milions dollars | |
| Music by: | James Horner | |
| Executive consultant: | Gene Roddenberry | |
| Editing by: | William P. Dornisch | |
| Scenoraphy by: | Joseph R. Jennings | |
| Director of photography: | Gayne Rescher A.S.C. | |
| Executive producer: | Harve Bennett | |
| Based upon "Star Trek" created by: | Gene Roddenberry | |
| Screenplay by: | Jack B. Sowards | |
| Story by: | Harve Bennett, Jack B. Sowards | |
| Produced by: | Robert Sallin | |
| Directed by: | Nicholas Meyer | |
|
Cast: | |
| William Shatner | Admiral James Tiberius Kirk | |
| Leonard Nimoy | Captain Spock | |
| De Forest Kelley | Doctor Leonard "Bones" McCoy | |
| James Doohan | Captain Montgomery Scott | |
| George Takei | Hikaru Sulu | |
| Walter Koenig | Pavel Chekov | |
| Nichelle Nichols | Nyota Uhura | |
| Bibi Besch | Doctor Carol Marcus | |
| Merrit Butrick | Doctor David Marcus | |
| Paul Winfield | Captain Clark Terrell | |
| Kirstie Alley | Lt. J.G. Saavik | |
| Riccardo Montalban | Khan Noonian Singh | |
|
Ike Eisenmann | Peter Preston |
| John Vargas | Jedda | |
| John Winston | Kyle | |
| Paul Kent | Beach | |
| Nicholas Guest | Cadet | |
| Russell Takaki | Madison | |
| Kevin Sullivan (IV) | March | |
| Joel Marstan | Crew Chief | |
| Teresa E. Victor | Bridge Voice | |
| Dianne Harper | Radio Voice | |
| David Ruprecht | Radio Voice | |
| Marcy Vosburgh | Computer Voice | |
| Judson Scott | Joachim (uncredited) |
Stardate 8130.3: It is the 23rd century. The U.S.S. Enterprise is on a routine training mission when Admiral James Kirk receives an urgent communication from Space Laboratory Regula One.
A top-secret device named Project Genesis has been appropriated by Kirk's old nemesis, Khan, a brilliant renegade from the 20th century, who uses this universe-threatening device in a deadly game of revenge.
Aided by his band of genetic supermen, Khan gains control of a Federation Starship and sets out in pursuit of the Enterprise, determined to let nothing stand in the way of his mission: to kill Admiral Kirk... even if it means universal armageddon.
Click to read complete synopsis
Star Trek: The War Of The Generations
Star Trek: The Omega Syndrome
Star Trek: The Genesis Project
Star Trek: Worlds That Never Were
Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek: The Vengeance Of Khan
Due to the creative and critical disaster that was The
Motion Picture , Gene Roddenberry was given the new title of "executive
consultant" and removed as head of the Star Trek films. Put in his
place was Harve Bennett, best known at the time as the executive producer
of television’s "The Six Million Dollar Man" and "The Bionic Woman."
Bennett was made the executive producer of Star Trek II during his
second week of working at Paramount’s television department.
Harve Bennett: "I came to Paramount with no anticipation of doing feature
pictures at all. I was here to do television."
In his new role as executive consultant, Roddenberry was able to read and make comments on all written material pertaining to the Star Trek movies, including story outlines and script drafts. However, his comments did not have to be followed and most often were not. He would serve as executive consultant for the remaining Star Trek movies until his death in 1991, never regaining creative control of the original Star Trek characters.
Harve Bennett: "I had only seen a few episodes of ‘Star Trek’ . . . .So, a bit clueless as to how I might make this thing I work, I sat alone in the projection rooms for three months and watched every episode of ‘Star Trek’ at least once. When I’d finally finished, I felt that en masse, the episodes were about one-third brilliant, about one-third okay, and about one-third ‘ugh.’"
Harve Bennett: "I also realized that as a whole, I liked ‘Star Trek’ a lot, because it was optimistic and because it made an inordinate contribution to science fiction by daring to state that human beings would not change a great deal over time. Certainly we would be out there in space doing a lot of wonderful things, but there would still be heavies, we’d still fall victim to basic human nature, and mankind would ultimately remain as we are today, well intended, but fallible. That was great, and it made for great television."
Harve Bennett: "Another thing that made a lasting impression on me was the character relationships, especially the triangle of Kirk, Bones, and Spock. I saw it as a very classic struggle between decision, passion, and wisdom."
Harve Bennett: "The main thing that rang false about the first film was that the characters had gone 20 years and hadn’t aged which, to my way of thinking, was totally unbelievable. I felt a major element in future films would be to have the characters age and to focus on what they were going through as people as they did so. At one point, I even sat down with Shatner and told him point blank that there was a real danger in having a middle-aged Kirk running around like a 30-year-old."
Bennett’s first one-page outline for the new film was Star Trek: The War Of The Generations, which included the return of Khan Noonian Singh – the villain from the episode " Space Seed," who would eventually became a central focus of the film.
Leonard Nimoy: "I really was adamant that I would not work on Star Trek II because I had been so frustrated with ( The Motion Picture ) and I was feeling very negative about the whole thing." Writer Jack Sowards helped Bennett to convince Nimoy to do the film by having him state that the character of Spock would not only die, but die at the very beginning of the movie.
Jack Sowards: "Of course, when we wrote it, [Spock’s death] came in the very beginning. But every time we wrote a little bit more, we moved it back and we moved it back and we moved it back, until it came at the end."
Leonard Nimoy: "The more I thought about it, the more I thought, ‘Well, maybe that’s the honest thing to do. Finish it properly rather than turn your back on it.’"
Sowards collaborated with Bennett to expand the story line for The War
Of The Generations. The original screenplay which evolved into Star
Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan was called Star Trek: The Omega Syndrome,
the plot of which focused on Khan gaining control of a new and powerful weapon
of destruction.
Jack Sowards: "We sat down and watched
‘ Space Seed’ and the original
motion picture. Actually, we sat through the original picture and talked.
It was beautifully done, but the effects overwhelmed it. You can’t have
five minutes of dialogue and 15 minutes of effects, but that’s what
they did. We looked at it from the point of view that we wanted to take bits
and snatches of these effects – the ships, spacedock, etc – and
use them in the picture."
Jack Sowards: "The big upside is that we eventually got Nicholas Meyer to direct, who has a talent for bringing a scene to life. With him, the characters are living their lives. That’s what a director is supposed to do."
Bennett wanted a more uplifting discovery to be the central focus so Michael Minor, the film’s art director, suggested Terraforming – the process of creating life-sustaining properties on a dead planet. Bennett and Sowards were thus inspired to write a new screenplay, Star Trek: The Genesis Project, which involved the Genesis device as portrayed in the final film. The Genesis Project was closer to the final film in many other ways, including the introductions of Saavik and David, with one major exception: Kirk and Khan had a face-to-face confrontation.
Jack Sowards: "Kirk and Khan may not have met in the film, but they did in my script. You bet your ass. In my script, Khan was more of a mystic than Attila the Hun. I invested Khan with certain powers. He could make you see things which didn’t actually exist. It was a battle of wills, which Kirk ultimately wins when Khan realizes he cannot control his mind. Nobody wins the fight and it ends up as a fight in space with the ships. But they do have this confrontation. It was a 12-page fight that they simply took out and threw away. The fight would have required a lot of special effects, because it was really a mind attack by Khan on Kirk and Kirk’s being able to resist it. He would take it to different places. They would be on a shore somewhere, fighting with whips. They would be in a stone room of a castle. When you got into the whole thing, it was a very expensive process, so I can understand their dropping it. But not the face-to-face confrontation (itself.) I could never understand that."
William Shatner: "After the financial debacle of the first Star Trek film , there was just no way this film was going to be allowed to bust its eleven million dollar budget, and this wonderful but ultimately nonessential fight got yanked from the script at the eleventh hour. I’m still a bit disappointed about that."
Ricardo Montalban: "I don't think the lack of a face-to-face moment between Kirk and Khan was a drawback. Actually, that was an element that was interesting. It was difficult as an actor, but that separation of the two ships gave it a really poignant touch to the senses. The fact that, being so strong, there was such pressure knowing that he can't get his hands on Kirk. I don't mind that. I minded as an actor. I wish William Shatner and I had somehow been able to respond to each other at the time."
Bennett hired Samuel Peeples, writer of the "Star Trek" pilot " Where No Man Has Gone Before " which sold the series, to further develop The Genesis Project screenplay. Peeples’ felt that the existing screenplay was too much in the vein of 1960’s episodes of "Star Trek" and that the movie should indicate more growth. His new screenplay was entitled Star Trek: Worlds That Never Were. Although it used elements from The Genesis Project screenplay, the characters of Khan, Saavik, and David were no longer present.
Worlds That Never Were was essentially dropped and Bennett decided
to rewrite The Genesis Project himself. Judy Burns, writer of the
episode " The Tholian Web " which featured
the apparent death of Captain Kirk, advised Bennett on the project.
Judy Burns: "I said to Harve, ‘You mustn’t kill Spock in such a
fashion that he can’t be brought back.’ It was such a final idea
originally that it was impossible to bring him back. He also died in such
a way that there was no emotional impact on the viewer, and I said what they
were missing in that script was the relationship between Spock and Kirk,
which was so critical and which ultimately ended up in the scene between
the two of them as Spock is dying. Originally, that scene didn’t exist.
Those were specifically my notes, all five pages of which had to do with
character, because Harve had never done Star Trek before. Thank God
he found Nicholas Meyer, a very good character person."
William Shatner: "Harve asked me, ‘How do you see Spock dying?’ and I thought about it for a minute, looked over some of the preliminary set sketches, noticed the glass doors, and was suddenly struck with the notion that Spock and Kirk should say their final good-byes while separated by this invisible glass barrier. Unable to save Spock, unable even to embrace or comfort his old friend, the glass doors allowed Kirk’s overwhelming grief and frustration to grow even stronger, Spock’s suffering a bit more upsetting, a bit more poignant."
Harve Bennett: "I went right back to Jack’s script and did a quick rewrite of my own, just to get everything together. Enter Nick Meyer. . . . Nick read my rewrite of Sowards and Peeples and said ‘This has promise. What if . . .’ He signed on and said, ‘. . . You write it, and I’ll rewrite you.’"
Before being officially signed as director, Meyer met with Bennett and Sallin
and offered to write a new screenplay, incorporating the best elements of
the previous stories. Bennett and Sallin informed Meyer that ILM needed a
script within 12 days in order to ensure that the special effects were completed
on time.
Nicholas Meyer: "I, being very young and very stupid, then said, ‘Oh,
that’s okay. I can write this in twelve days.’ And Harve looked
at me like I was crazy and said, ‘We couldn’t even make your deal
in twelve days.’ Then I did something for which I’ve always felt
strange. I said, ‘Forget about my deal, forget about my writing credit,
because if nobody else does this, there’s not gonna be any movie. I’m
writing it for nothing. You decide whose name goes on the credits later.’"
Producer Robert Sallin: "It is, in all candor, Nick’s un-credited rewrite that is on the screen. Contrary to what the critics may say, Harve made contributions, Sowards made contributions, I made contributions, but I think it was Nick’s final version that we used. Nick never took credit for it and he told me his agent said he was crazy. But he said it was just something he wanted to do."
Nicholas Meyer: "I have always thought, to the extent that I’ve had any clear thoughts about Star Trek, that it was something that, for one reason or another, never quite fulfilled its promise. Either because in terms of a TV show, they couldn’t afford the sets or the effects, or because in the first movie they dropped the ball somewhere. This was an opportunity to make something right that had never quite been on the nose before. The more specific you get, the better. It was not necessary for me to see Admiral Kirk go to the bathroom, but I said why couldn’t he read a book?"
Nicholas Meyer: "Star Trek II is not very much about science fiction, the Genesis Planet aside. Its themes are entirely earthbound – death, aging, friendship."
Nicholas Meyer: "I said it should be like Captain Horatio Hornblower in outer space. I made everyone on the set watch the movie version of Hornblower. The young midshipman who gets killed, he’s stolen right out of that movie. And it was interesting because when I first spoke to Bill Shatner about my idea, he said, ‘That’s interesting, that was also Gene Roddenberry’s original take on it.’ So far, so good."
Nicholas Meyer: "I redesigned everything in the movie that I could get my hands on, beginning with the costumes, to make things more nautical. In my mind, the Enterprise was going to be some combination of the submarine from Run Silent, Run Deep and one of those eighteenth-century galleons with cannons blasting away. If you look at II, you can see a lot of the obvious comparisons. We had crewmen running out the guns, we had torpedoes, and all of that gave the film a style which I loved, but which frequently flew in the face of a lot of Roddenberry’s dicta."
Leonard Nimoy: "Instead of ( The Motion Picture ’s) neutral monochrome palette, (Star Trek II’s) costumes were brighter, more colorful – burgundy and white – and of heavier fabric, so that on hot days, we all sweated. And they had a curious idiosyncrasy: Whenever we sat down, the jackets hiked up, giving the feeling that the collar was riding up around our necks. So we actors all developed the habit of taking hold of the bottom and pulling down whenever we stood up."
Nicholas Meyer’s original title for Star Trek II was Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country, drawn from a line in Shakespeare’s Hamlet referencing death. A Paramount executive changed Meyer’s title to Star Trek: The Vengeance Of Khan, which angered him. Since George Lucas’ sequel to The Empire Strikes Back was, at the time, to be called Revenge Of The Jedi, the title was again changed and the film became Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan. Meyer would later use his preferred subtitle for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country .
Nicholas Meyer: "I wasn’t too happy with The Wrath Of Khan (as a title) either, but I didn’t make a big deal out of it, because my theory of film is that nobody cares what the name of the movie is, nobody cares what the movie’s about, and nobody cares who’s in the movie, they only care about one thing, ‘Is the movie good?’"
George Takei: "When I first got the script and saw the kind of participation Sulu had, I saw that he wasn’t much more than a talking prop. There was no character there, and I decided that I just couldn’t go back under those conditions. My heart just wouldn’t be in it . . . . So they made me certain promises and I was on the set the first day of filming without even a contract. The first shots included me on the simulation bridge, so I was locked in. Unfortunately, when the film came out, some of the little scenes which would have added to my character ended up on the cutting room floor." Among the Sulu scenes cut from The Wrath Of Khan was one in which he was promoted to the rank of Captain, an idea not restored until Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , also directed by Meyer.
DeForest Kelley also initially turned down appearing in Star Trek II,
based upon one of the early Genesis Project scripts before Meyer’s
rewrite.
DeForest Kelley: "I feel that Meyer brought it to life and really made it
a kind of Star Trek script. When he sent me that draft, I said,
‘That’s more like it,’ and I went with it."
Nicholas Meyer wanted actress Kim Cattrall to portray Saavik but when she proved unavailable, newcomer Kirstie Alley was chosen instead. Meyer would later have Cattrall play Valeris in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country . Kirstie Alley: "I liked the 'Star Trek' TV series. In fact, I've been rehearsing Spock for some years now. I would pretend that I was his daughter. Every week, every episode, I'd sit there thinking, 'I should play Spock's daughter.' I mean, I could arch my eyebrows as good as Leonard Nimoy. . . . Whenever I'd watch the show, I'd write dialogue for myself so I could actually take part in the story. When Leonard said a line, I'd respond. So when I was told about the part, I was very excited. I went in and acted like Spock, then Nick Meyer said, 'Boy do you have him down.'"
Ricardo Montalban reprised his role of Khan from
" Space Seed." Still involved in the
production of the hit television series "Fantasy Island", Montalban watched
a copy of " Space Seed" to help prepare
himself for the role.
Ricardo Montalban: "I started to remember what I did as an actor back then,
less mature than I am now, and over time, Khan began returning to me. I realized
that while he was still the same guy, he has now become consumed with an
overwhelming passion. His superior strength and intelligence are now overwrought
with a burning passion for revenge against the man he blames for the death
of his wife. Therefore, Khan is not insane, but obsessed, out of control.
Nick Meyer also gave me a copy of Moby Dick, because he felt that
Khan should be consumed by his quest for revenge in the way that Ahab had
been consumed by his quest for the whale." The comparison to Ahab and his
whale would later be used again, this time for Captain Picard and the Borg
in Star Trek: First Contact .
William Shatner: "Nick Meyer had written a script and we were in love with the script and impressed by his creative ability. So even though it was only the second picture he had directed, we felt that his imagination should be given full flower."
Harve Bennett: "It wasn’t until I came to Paramount to produce Star Trek II that I encountered (Roddenberry) on a professional level. The first phase, and I’m not so sure we ever graduated beyond that first phase, involved Gene’s attempts at establishing his territorial imperative."
Harve Bennett: "Our thoughts, our stories, and ultimately our scripts would go simultaneously to Gene and to Paramount management. And management would generally respond with notes of enthusiasm, ‘Keep going, it’s lookin’ great,’ stuff like that. However, Gene’s notes would be . . . it’s hard to characterize. Defensive, I think, would be a very good word. ‘This will ruin Star Trek’ kind of stuff. I saved a lot of them, but I don’t ever want to make them public because they’re very painful."
Harve Bennett: "(Paramount executives Barry) Diller and (Michael) Eisner had said, right from the start, ‘We’ll handle Gene, you just do the picture, and forget about his memos, they have no effect.’ So if my ethics were different than they are, for better or worse, I would have said, ‘I have no problem with that, I’ll just nod at the memo and do what I have to do.’ But it was tough for me. You know, here I was, the new guy, and I’m getting these negative memos from Roddenberry, a man I respect and whose child I am currently taking on a trip. And at the time, I was insecure enough to say, ‘Well, Gene must know something I’m not getting.’"
Harve Bennett: "What I couldn’t understand was Gene’s concept of Star Trek. I was fresh from seeing seventy-nine episodes, and I thought I knew what Star Trek was in its original form . . . .‘Star Trek,’ he said, ‘is not a paramilitary show.’ That’s not true. ‘Star Trek,’ in his words from the sixties, ‘is Horatio Hornblower.’ That’s a paramilitary show to me. The analogy between the United States Navy or any navy and Star Trek is so preeminent that you can’t possibly miss it. I mean, why then are we dealing with ‘admirals’ and ‘captains,’ ‘commanders’, ‘lieutenants’ and so forth? The Enterprise is simply a naval vessel at sea, in space. ‘There was never’, he said, ‘violence and conflict in the twenty-third century.’ Well how do you deal with that when you are fresh from seeing the episodes where there was a great deal of violence? There were traditional roustabout fights; there were barroom brawls; there was nerve pinching; there was exotic weaponry. There were always people doing bad things to people, very bad things to people."
Harve Bennett: "Suddenly I saw the seeds of what had bored me in Star Trek: The Motion Picture . It seemed as though Gene, in his statesmanlike personal growth, had now begun confusing his own idealism - which was wonderful, about a peaceful future and man’s ability to grow in the years ahead - with Star Trek."
Nicholas Meyer: "As far as I was concerned, except for Star Trek: The Motion Picture , Gene was never really involved in the movies. You’d just go in and meet with him and then get back to work."
Nicholas Meyer: "This Star Trek was a lot more militaristic than Gene’s. He was a utopian, he believed in the perfectibility of man. I don’t. That always put me at odds with Gene."
Nicholas Meyer: "On Star Trek II, I barely met (Roddenberry.) He was more involved on VI. I think the reason for that was that at the time we were shooting II, Gene’s clout was sort of at a low ebb. There was no " Star Trek: The Next Generation " or "Deep Space Nine" or "Voyager " and there seemed to be a feeling among the higher-ups that Star Trek: The Motion Picture was his creation and that he was responsible for taking it up a wrong path someplace."
Roddenberry apparently leaked the news of Spock’s death in the film
to Trek fanzines, causing a growing uproar. Since the secret was out, Meyer
came up with a unique solution to regain the element of surprise.
Nicholas Meyer: "I was just sort of mumbling and joking around, and the next
thing you know we’ve got a new improved opening for the movie. We’d
‘kill’ Spock in the first three minutes, expose his death as merely
part of a training exercise, then move on with the story. Later, when the
audience had gotten swept away by Khan and the Genesis project and so forth,
we could sneak Spock’s death back into the action as a general surprise.
We basically just reorganized our strongest material."
Although filming did not begin until mid-November 1981, Paramount had already
booked The Wrath Of Khan into theaters for June 1982.
Nicholas Meyer: "When I did Time After Time, I had about five months
to edit the film. On Star Wars,
George Lucas took about a year. I would have had a month (on The Wrath
Of Khan). At that point, they’d have had just about enough time to put
in the special effects, put in the music, make their hundreds of prints and
get them to the multiplexes on schedule." Meyer was forced to work around
the clock, shooting the film during the days and editing it at nights, in
order to give himself more time.
Nicholas Meyer: "I had no time to experiment, no time to play with the film, and ever since then, the first question I ask when I’m directing a picture is, ‘Have you booked this film into theaters yet?’"
The terrain of desert planet Ceti Alpha V was constructed on Paramount’s Stage 8. In the desert scenes, Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Captain Terrell (Paul Winfield) wore space suits, originally used in The Motion Picture . Walter Koenig: The suits were heavy as was the apparatus that went over our shoulders and back to support the helmets. But the most disquieting problem was the helmet itself. Nothing had been done about ventilating it, and once it was on, we had four or five minutes worth of air inside, and that was it. Periodically, between takes, someone would shove an air hose under the helmet and fill it up with fresh air."
As first officer of the Reliant, the character of Chekov had more
to do in The Wrath Of Khan than the first movie.
Walter Koenig: "I wasn’t on the Enterprise in this movie, and
simply by virtue of that fact I had more opportunity for my character to
show a bit more color. On the Enterprise, I was pretty well relegated
to pushing buttons and saying things like, ‘Torpedoes away!’ By
being first officer on the Reliant with Captain Terrell, I wasn’t
compelled to speak in monosyllabic three-word sentences."
The character of Saavik was half-Vulcan and half-Romulan, although the references
to her Romulan heritage were edited from the final film.
Kirstie Alley: "We really had to work on it so that she could be sensitive
and let the Romulan part of her come out a little bit. That's why the tears
near the end. I was very sad. I would have cried standing at the end of that,
even if I wasn't supposed to. It was very touching."
Leonard Nimoy: "As Khan, Montalban wore a costume that showed off his chest, which was so impressively developed that many viewers speculated it might be a false breastplate. I’m here to tell you: It most definitely wasn’t."
Leonard Nimoy: "Nick had decided that green Vulcan blood should be applied to Spock’s hand (during his death scene.) Nick, I should mention, is very big on blood; his movies always feature copious amounts of it, as evidenced by the floating pools of violet Klingon blood in Star Trek VI . It made medical sense, since a high dose of radiation damages cell structure, causing spontaneous bleeding. And it was certainly dramatic, since Spock was going to be pressing his hand to the glass – and leaving a bloody smear. . . .By the time I finally looked down at my hand, it was completely coated in green ‘blood.’ It was a simple misunderstanding, easily remedied – but I confess, the tension was just too much. I snapped, and lost my temper. . . .‘Nick!’, I yelled, waving my green palm at him. ‘Is this what you want? My whole hand dripping green blood? This is too much!’" Meyer agreed and the makeup was toned down.
Leonard Nimoy: "Never again the raised eyebrow; never again the delicious teasing of the irascible doctor, or the offering of logic to my impetuous friend and captain. Never again the mind meld, the neck pinch, or the Vulcan salute and blessing ‘Live long and prosper.’ The weight of it finally struck me as I was driving home. I asked myself, ‘What have I done?’"
Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) was commissioned to create the special effects for The Wrath Of Khan. George Lucas’ ILM was, of course, most known at this time for the effects in Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. ILM has been used on all subsequent Star Trek movies, with the exception of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier . ILM’s Ken Ralston and Jim Veilleux supervised the effects for The Wrath Of Khan.
William Shatner: "This time around, there was absolutely no way our story line would be overwhelmed by its technological wizardry. No one wanted that, and even if they had, they couldn’t afford it."
The model of the refit Enterprise constructed by Entertainment Effects
Group (EEG) for The Motion Picture was used
by ILM for The Wrath Of Khan.
Ken Ralston: "I hate that model. I think it’s made out of lead. I
don’t know what’s inside to make it so heavy. It took eight guys
to mount it for a shot and a forklift to move it around."
ILM constructed the USS Reliant for The Wrath Of Khan based
upon designs from the Paramount production team.
Ken Ralston: "The Reliant is a nice squat contraption that looks a
lot more believable to me. The ship takes the best of the Enterprise,
rearranges it and adds a few goodies of its own. It’s much easier to
have it sit there and look right. And the model is great. It’s made
out of vacuformed plastic and two guys can mount it on the pipes for a shot."
One of the many improvements in The Wrath Of Khan over the first film was the musical score. Composer James Horner: "There is a tendency to want to compare scores of big outer space movies, like John Williams’ music for Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back and Jerry Goldsmith’s for the first Star Trek film . There will be similarities, of course. For one thing, if you close your eyes and play Star Wars and my Star Trek score, the first notion that will come to your mind is that the same instruments are playing. Williams created a trend in music for space movies with Star Wars because that was the first big space movie to come along in quite awhile. But that style of scoring is very old-fashioned. It works well, whether you’re on a train or a pirate galleon or in deep space. That kind of approach is very tactile. It’s easy to use it to manipulate emotions."
James Horner: "(Meyer) knows what he’s talking about, musically. He wanted to give the film the feeling of an adventure on the high seas. It’s that sort of nautical, under-sail, wind-blowing spirit that I’m after, as opposed to Star Wars’ very imperial, material kind of theme."
Harve Bennett: "The reason (the death of Spock as it was originally presented) bothered me was partially my commercial sense, partially my simple dedication to the Star Trek franchise. I didn’t want to be the guy who dropped a lead weight on it all, and eliminated all hope for a Star Trek III . And also, curiously enough, our friend Leonard had a pretty joyful experience making that movie. I was killing someone who may have originally been very happy to be killed off, but who now might want to come back and do another one." After the film was complete the decision was made to shoot additional footage, including Spock’s coffin at rest on the Genesis Planet, which gave the film its "There are always possibilities" open ending. The new footage was shot without Nicholas Meyer because he did not wish to participate.
Nicholas Meyer: "I tried everything to stop it. It was done without me and put in without me. I thought it was wrong. They said, ‘Oh, we can’t just kill off a main character, audiences won’t go for that.’ So I said, ‘You’re absolutely wrong. Beginning with Romeo and Juliet, they do go for it, all that matters is whether or not you do it well. And with Spock, I think we’ve done it well.’ So the open ending was an upstairs decision and I don’t know why they made it."
Nicholas Meyer: "In retrospect, while I think their decision worked well in setting up the movies that followed, in terms of Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, I don’t think it made a difference."
Although the film made its debut in some cities as Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan, the title was quickly changed on most prints to Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan – essentially the only nod in the entire film that Star Trek: The Motion Picture even existed.
Gene Roddenberry: "I thought they were very lucky they had the actor they did in Ricardo Montalban to play Khan, since it was not a well-written part. ‘I will chase you through the moons of Jupiter’ and so on, in the hands of almost any other actor would have gotten snickers from the audience. Montalban saved their ass. Khan was not written as that exciting a character, he was rather flimsy. The Khan in the TV episode was a much deeper and better character than the movie Khan, except that Montalban pulled it off. I also objected to other little things. Remember when the eel came out of Chekov’s ear? What did Kirk do? He had a look of disgust on his face and grabbed his phaser and went ‘zap.’ Now, how dare he destroy a life form that had never been seen before! It needs studying. They had him act like an old woman trampling on a tarantula. Now that’s not the Kirk we built up for three years. So many of those fine little things in the episodes, hundreds of them, are what gave "Star Trek" its quality. Unfortunately, they began doing those things incorrectly in (Star Trek II.) There was also a great deal of violence. But yet, it was exciting, exciting photographically. I’m grateful that it did what it did."
Nichelle Nichols: "I think this is the definitive Star Trek. They’ve captured the essence of what made the show wonderful."
Walter Koenig: "I think if you can point to one single element that makes this film successful, it is the presence of a formidable, worthy antagonist. You can’t have conflict unless you have something to butt up against. V’ger was more like something you were in awe of."
James Doohan: "To me, this movie is Star Trek the way it should be."
DeForest Kelley: "This is the kind of film that in fact we had all hoped for the first time."
William Shatner: "Star Trek, really for the first time since the second season of our prime time run, was back on track. We’d finally found the creative footing that had previously proven so elusive, and additionally, the chemistry and camaraderie between our characters were back in abundance."
For comments, suggestions, ideas etc.etc. please Mail-me.
by Mario Guatteri