Why Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Has the Best Space Battle Ever!
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- čas přidán 23. 04. 2022
- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan features what many consider to be the best space battle ever put in a film. But why is this scene so awesome? This video explores the filmmaking techniques and creative choices which went into making the first clash between the Enterprise and Reliant so gripping to watch.
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why didt u put that info into the discription?
I loved how the shields they had rotated clockwise from the front going to starboard first so Khan knew to attack the port side as the shields wouldn't have enough time to reach there. The fact Kirk didn't think about this and approach so that the reliant was on the starboard side just in case shows he is getting old and making mistakes. Also good as well how Spock is there to talk into his ear, give him advice and help him remember stuff, even though he tells Saavik off for doing kind of the same thing, with her being a junior officer.
9:13-9:14 did you just make a small joke with "pitch perfect" and make it a blink an you'll miss it pace?
It worked.
Agree
khan's theme was the same theme from aliens. Come on
Still the best Star Trek movie ever made. In four decades nothing has surpassed it, and it towers above the recent flashy reboots and FX laden new shows.
Truth
If we can distract JJ Abrams with a box of colored sparkly trinkets and wrest the camera from him, I think Star Trek could be good again.
Agreed
AMEN
@@scottslotterbeck3796 Its not JJ whos in control now its Kurtzman
Another underrated thing about this scene is when Khan yells "Where's the override?" the camera shows us his POV of the helm console, and not only does he not know where it is, but the viewers themselves don't know. Instantly, and for moment, putting us "in Khan's shoes" to experience his panic.
It also shows that Kirk's reversal would not have worked against an experienced Star Fleet captain. Khan's inexperience with such a complicated machine is an important back door to his defeat.
@swalsh76 I always love hearing Khan’s panic: “Where’s the override?!! The override!!” It’s brilliant!
Oh wow, I never thought of it that way! I've seen this so many times and witnessed it, but it didn't sink in. That "Oh crap!" moment!
@@siler7
An experienced captain might would have changed the prefix code - Spock and Kirk were talking about that, and Spock acknowledged that Kahn is quite intelligent.
He plays this to his advantage against Khan in Mutara as well, when Spock says, he's intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking. And it's a believable flaw as well, because Khan is a man out of time, and he wasn't schooled on open space tactics like a standard Starfleet command officer.
I remember seeing this in the theater. Seeing the ships on the small screen does not do it justice. People literally stood and cheered when Kirk out maneuvered Khan. These same people wept in the dark when Spock died. It was quite a rollercoaster.
i would have loved to have experienced this in the theaters when this movie first came out. i watched it in the theater recently for the 40th anniversary. sadly it was just me and some other guy but he was definitely younger than 40!
what?! spock dies? way to ruin it buddy.
The small screen can not match the cinema. I remember when Alien was released, it really unnerved some of the audience. Even I was tempted to check under the seat! LOL
I remember seeing it in the theaters too. Mohawk Mall, Schenectady NY
@@vincentvega5686 41 years too soon?
Trust me folks. On the big screen, this scene was movie magic at its best. Wish they could re-release some of these classics in theaters. Like they did with "Alien".
They are. The newly remastered 4K of the director's edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture is in theaters this week. In September, Wrath of Khan is going into theaters for a week.
I watched this in a theater a few months ago and William Shatner was there to answer questions.
amen!
Indeed. I saw in original release. Immersive .
@@HermitKing731in the words of Napoleon dynamite, "lucky!"
Star Trek II relied so heavily on pure acting. Neither Berman nor Abrams Trek enabled such powerful character work.
Cool seeing your comment, Tay! I loved your old videos with Lamar Wilson (WilsonTech1). Those were some classic videos.
I think you’re right. The tension built in this film is yet to be rivalled in any other Trek film. I’m not sure it ever will be. We may be surprised in the future though.
I will not sacrifice the Enterprise. We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn *here!* This far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!
Glad to see you following some of the best Trek CZcamsrs!
Rowan and Steve are great! x
@@Edax_Royeaux that’s from First Contact, not Wrath of Khan.
Horner's music was simply incredible ... you could almost just hear that with no dialogue and still understand the flow of the conflict.
It's a sci-fi masterpiece.
ill never understand how some people have such musical talents as composers
True, I just wish Horner didn't reuse Kahn's "motif", as the Klingon theme in the next film... and in Aliens... and in Willow... and in Zorro... and in Enemy at the Gate...
Maybe the Genesis device distributed bits of his consciousness around the universe and in time?
Absolutely true. In ST:TWoK, it is all about the music! I especially love when the Enterprise rises up from behind the Reliant, and its music overplays Khan's music. I remember watching this in the theater when I was 10, and it gave me a love of orchestral and classical music forever. Thank you and RIP, James Horner!
practically everything Horner did that year was brilliant. Krull anyone?
@@jasonwhite7905 hehe look, that is a thing composers do.... often.
That look of horror on Khan's face when Kirk and Spock drop Reliant's shields is priceless. "OVERRIDE! OVERRIDE!"
its amazing how much responsibility the composer has for communicating the story
You are so right!! James Horner’s score perfectly captured the mood and essence of the original series. It’s my favorite soundtrack of his
Hearing James Horner's explanation to the scene showed just how he was the best composer for Star Trek's movies. I always can listen to Stealing the Enterprise and visualize what is going on without the sequence attached to it. His legacy lives on and I only wish he was alive today to give us even more stories through his music.
The event itself is one of those things that is practically impossible to replicate, and I have to give Meyer and the cast tremendous credit for the quality that Wrath of Khan has. It's for that and many other reasons is why it's heralded as the best of the Trek movies. It had the perfect balance.
I think the theme to First Contact is the best - both haunting and hopeful (great on headphones). I want it played at my funeral!
Battle in the Mutara Nebula music is just pure genius...
'Stealing The Enterprise' and 'Battle In The Mutara Nebula' are why James Horner is for me the greatest Star Trek composer!
Stealing the Enterprise was the best scene in Star Trek 3, and I wished the rest of the film stood up as well.
They did this technique of conflicting character themes in Doomsday Machine. It was the first episode with a custom composed score as a symphonic suite.
The Constellation had a theme
Deckker had a theme
The Planet Killer had a theme (later embellished by JW for Jaws)
Kirk and Enterprise used their 1st season established themes.
This was how the better Twilight Zones, like Walking Distance, were done by Herrmann.
WoK thematic scores are very evocative of "Victory at Sea" where the Imperial Japanese Navy, the US Navy surface ships, the Royal Navy surface ships, the subs, the air squadrons and the kamikaze each had a theme...so the audience knew what was coming.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is Trek's Passion Play. It has everything. It has a nuanced, layered, highly spirited and witty Oscar worthy screenplay (thank you, Jack B Sowards). It is a space opera that can easily match the Original Star Wars Trilogy. The fact that we're not just talking about it but making videos reflecting on its greatness FORTY YEARS LATER is a testament to it being a cinematic masterpiece.
Don't just credit Jack B Sowards for the screenplay, Nicholas Meyer did an uncredited rewrite just a week or so before filming began.
@@redhawkmillenium Uncredited _and_ UNPAID rewrite ~
Not to mention the technology foreshadowed! Remote control of the Reliant using its prefix code, Retina scan for log in, mind control, matter transmutation, terraforming, 3-D fractal lattice …
Ricardo monitiban was so REGAL.
How dare you remind me of how old I am. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Since I'm seeing a lot of comments praising this film in general I'll throw my 2 cents in. The standout about this film for me, without question, is the ending. That ending of Spock and Kirk, even after watching it I have no idea how many times, still destroys me. I can recite every word, yet here I am 40 years later and I still will cry. There is no chance there will ever be another Star Trek film that can beat Wrath of Khan. Impossible.
Same here. And I just realised I'm now the same age as Kirk is in the movie. Ouch.
I'm with you.
They rolled back this ending in III, just as they rolled back the destruction of the Enterprise in that movie by rolling it back at the end of IV. Then they mocked the former in the remake. They rolled back Kirk's first death, but his second lacked the emotion of ST II. Still, if we could go back in time and do the movie series over again, I would have them do more space exploration instead of two Heavies.
That speech by Kirk. "He was my friend."
Of every movie I've seen, I don't know any that did a death scene more powerfully.
This film also gave us the best representation of the Enterprise as a working, living star ship. The scenes of engineering, the control panel details, the crew musters... it's the only Trek film that really made you feel like this ship was much, much more than the main characters on the bridge. It was hugely impactful.
I wouldn't say its the only film that makes the enterprise feel alive, like it was a character.
When they sacrifice the enterpise in The Search For Spock, it really feels like watching a close friend die, like its character arc had ended prematurely and theres nothing the crew can do save it.
My sister cried a little when we saw that, and she was only a casual Trek watcher.
I cried when enterprise was lost in search for spock and remember the ending of voyage home in the cinema the whole cinema erupted with joy as the shuttlecraft overflew excelsior to reveal the new enterprise NCC1701 A ..and just like spock was reborn in the 3rd movie she was back she was reborn in all her magnificent glory
I've watched this movie more times than I could possibly count and every time it puts chill down my spine. My God... that soundtrack!
The music really elevates the action! A lot of movies today have better special effects, and they might have decent music, but the music never feels quite as well crafted as this does.
The musical score alone on this picture was absolutely worth an Oscar.
Same here! This movie is straight emotional!
I love Khans quote of Moby Dick. Best Star Trek movie ever.
Were you surprised by Spock's demise?
The Wrath of Khan is an astoundingly thematic film; reflecting on aging, and the acceptance of death. Masterfully paced.
Which is why bringing back Spock was a mistake.
@@gumdeo "Then you stand here alive because of a mistake made by your flawed, feeling, human friends. They have sacrificed their futures because they believed that the good of the one - you - was more important to them."
@@gumdeo The Executives wanted to cash in on the success and make more films.
@gumdeo If it’s any consolation, it took an entire movie to get him back.
*Sulu:* "Sir, you did it!"
*Kirk:* "I did *_nothing..._* except get caught with my britches down. _I must be going senile._ You go right on quoting regulations, Mr. Saavik!"
Just this powerful moment of humility from Kirk after this mess, admitting Saavik was correct and he had ignored his gut, screwed up, and got a lot of cadets killed.
Kirk getting tricked is my least favorite part of the movie. They should have shown him being distracted, depressed, maybe hung over, etc. A suspicious and alert Kirk, especially when Reliant's shields went up, would never have waited so long and gotten so close. They also didn't follow up on it...he makes one quick declaration, and then everybody just forgets that he nearly got them all killed with his carelessness.
That's without even bringing Spock into it.
And then Saavik goes right on quoting regulations, when she asks (in her own way) for permission to join the landing party onto the station.
@@siler7 He's just rusty; more than 10+ years out of the captain's chair
@@timewarpdrive77 That would have worked if they had shown it, as I said. But they didn't. In fact, with Saavik speaking up, they did the opposite. It was a rare situation, but it's not like it costs a trillion dollars to turn the shields on.
@@siler7 What do you mean they didn't show it; what you're complaining about is showing it.
The amazing thing is that this was only the second film Nicholas Meyer had ever directed. Yet these scenes were directed so masterfully. It is absolutely amazing what he accomplished. Sometimes, the elements just come together to produce something magical, and Wrath of Khan was one of those times. I really believe the combination of Nicholas Meyer and Harve Bennet was also the best producing/directing team ever in Trek.
I have watched this movie so many hundreds of times over the years, and it never fails to entertain. Everything about this scene in particular is STILL, to this day, utterly captivating. The score, the dialog, the acting, everything done so well.
And for the whole movie. The details, the themes. It shows enough and the pacing lets you enjoy the scenes. I don’t like how modern movies overwhelm us with the fast pace.
The two battle scenes in that movie were magnificent. The nebula battle has always been a favorite. He doesn't think in three dimensions! And the Enterprises comes up from below him and behind him, like a cat surprising a smug mouse.
I remember sitting next to my husband in the theater. Literally, squeezing his hand, I had to stop myself from screaming "YES YES!"
"Z -10,000 meters, stand by photon torpedoes"
It’s also an excellent example of how a Captain and First Officer interact. Spock knows exactly how to defeat Khan, but he would never tell his Captain what to do. Instead, he says of Khan “he is intelligent, but not experienced. His patterns indicate two-dimensional thinking.” He merely gives his Captain the information he needs to make the right decision.
@@riptydeco Spock knows Kirk is the best starship skipper, and he knows Kirk picked the best first mate and science officer. Everyone in Kirk's team knows their job and gets it done. Khan wasn't just fighting Kirk, he was fighting a crack crew of veterans.
He's more intelligent but not experienced that line from Spock has always stuck with me. You can be the smartest person in the room and still lose the battle. Any man can act tough but only those who have been through battles and are seasoned truly survive.
@@bartsullivan4866 I love that line too. "He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking." 😁
I love it for the feeling of large heaviness and slow moving momentum of the ships. All actions are very deliberate. We as an audience have the time and ability to absorb what is happening. I absolutely hate all the new Trek space battles where enormous ships with hundreds of crew fly around like fighter jets.
Yeah this was balletic. But really it all boils down to just a matter of style. Neither Star Trek space battle type is anything like realistically how anything moves in space :-)
@@sinsofmemphisto7809 No, that's right. The honor for that goes to the 'Expanse'..
@@bluelogimouse2123 Speak turth sir! But let's face it, the Expanse is the only hard SF ever made for TB, full stop.
@@sinsofmemphisto7809 💯
Well these films the enterprise moves in space like a submarine so it was mostly the limitations of models and movements they could do with them. Once cgi came in then you no longer needed these sort of submarine type slow moving battles
I remember seeing this in theaters at the time. When the Enterprise fired back, I was like 'YES!!!' pumping my fist and arm as the other audience members cheered. OMG it was such an emotional rush. I was totally spent when I walked outta there
I';m sorry I missed it. I was born a few years too late for that party. :)
TOS did also have the Balance of terror battle. It didn't have the effects on its side but acting and setting the mood were great.
Definitely a TOS episode that never, ever gets old or dated.
My favorite TOS episode.
Well, that was basically Enemy Below translated to another setting.
yes, I haven't been too active on watching TOS, but that one episode really stands out as perfect from the get go. There are not a lot of TOS episode's on my top 10 Star Trek, but that one is a strong contender for the Top 3 anyday.
@@piotrd.4850 i was going to say the same thing and use "Run Silent, Run Deep" as an example. Especially the final battle in the nebula in Wrath of Khan.
I have been a Trek fan all of my life, 54 years. The Wrath of Kahn is my favorite Trek movie and my favorite Sci Fi movie of all time. I still get emotional watching it.
🖖
By far one of the great movies of 1982 and 40 years later still one of the great movies. This was just brilliantly done, unfortunately can’t be said about a lot of movies today
Too bad THE THING and Blade Runner pushed it aside. Damn shame!
Another thing that makes it so great, is the fact that it's not a huge hundreds of ships war, or a David and Goliath fight; but a mostly evenly matched duel between two combatants where each landed hit feels like it makes a major impact.
Yes. I was trying to find this comment too. Kirk in this battle was not temporary beaten by a larger more technical battle cruiser with what ever tech that is overwhelming ( like what they would do now ) Kirk was beaten by this other guy’s mind. Khan’s trickery… which emphasizes how the final battle will have to also play out!
Wrath of Khan is my favorite movie. Not just Star Trek, but my favorite movie period. And I agree with all of this. The score alone still gives me goose bumps.
As a 2001: a Space Odyssey geek, I can tell you that Star Trek II was pretty high up on Arthur C. Clarke's published top ten list of science fiction movies of all time. (I can't remember the rankings, though he does put The Day the Earth Stood Still just above his own 2001.)
It's still one of the finest sc-fi films ever made. Absolutely everything gelled perfectly. Ricardo Montalban turned Khan into a villain for the ages.
I love how director Nicholas Meyer said that directing Montalban was like driving a Lamborghini.
@@hubbsllc I've heard others say that he was the easiest, most professional person to work with they'd ever encountered. The Freakazoid voice team said that not only did he absolutely nail every line on the first take, he was so damn funny doing it that everybody was just rolling. We truly lost a good one when he passed.
He was a great villain because he was not pure evil. There was something heroic and tragic about him, and yet also honourable that commanded respect. His cause was - if not just - at least understandable.
@@jdsiv3 True. He did have a lot of admirable qualities. He had a wife that he obviously loved. He was loyal to a fault to his own people. There wasn't a hint of cowardice in him. Vengeance can cloud even the most intelligent of minds, though, and his own hubris and sense of superiority ultimately did him in. Kirk didn't outsmart him so much as he failed to see his own shortcomings.
Ricardo Montalbán was brilliant in the original "Space Seed" episode from the original Star Trek series and his reprisal in the role of Khan was even more brilliant. My absolute favorite part of the film is when Khan yells "Fire!" The character had been waiting decades to utter that single word and Khan (and even Ricardo Montalbán) seemed to take such joy in uttering that word. It also acted as a damn effective release of all of the tension that had built up during the scene and, combined with (at the time, although I would argue they still hold up to this day) the impressive special effects of the phaser fire raking the Enterprise... seeing the carnage being wrought, the music.... what a scene and what a movie! And, as a kid, I got to go see the Black Hole just a couple of months later (which is an incredibly under-rated movie that I also love). The '80s had to be the greatest decade for films and movie making that ever existed and those of us who got to experience those movies when they were NEW really had it good... and I think some of us knew we had it good at the time.
Well said!!
Agreed!
It all works out so incredibly well, especially when you realize that protagonist and antagonist are never physically in the same room!
I recall from interviews with the director on the DVD extras, that he wasn’t a fan of science fiction. But he loved classic Napoleonic naval drama and drew on that inspiration for making Wrath of Khan. You can see a lot of those elements, from the more buttoned up uniforms to the pitch pipes signaling arrival of officers on the ship. In this battle, the ships pass by each other and Khan fires “broadsides” into the Enterprise, as a wooden ship would fire its side cannons into an enemy as the pass. These elements are almost silly in a realistic sense, but because they inspired the director to produce something he cared about it all works tremendously. Love this movie.
When I first saw the movie, it never made sense to me when Spock said “below C-deck” cuz I thought he said “below sea deck”. Why would a starship need a sea deck?
Thanks to close captions decades later for setting me straight!
Want some naval drama? The Pirates of the Caribbean ride at the end. We floated along between two ships firing broadsides at each other. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. It was Captain Horatio Hornblower come to life. I might have been pre-wound up from rereading Treasure Island.
The Wrath of Kahn is easily one of my all time favorite movies, up there with Empire Strikes Back, Stargate, Blade Runner and Master and Commander.
In my opinion this is a perfect movie. It pulls you in from the first scene and keeps you in the story with out even 1 min where you are pulled out of that world or bored. Its my favorite film of all time and even though ive seen it more times than i can remember it always pulls me right back in.
Same here! I remember seeing it as a kid and man….I still have never seen any movie like it!
@Black-Handed_Ice_ Gwiazda i would go with the directors cut. Its not radically different but its better in my opinion. You cant lose with either one.
@Black-Handed_Ice_ Gwiazda the first thing that comes to mind is the directors cut clarifies the relationship between Scotty and the recruit he introduces to Kirk. Makes the later scene in which Scotty is torn up with what happened to the recruit. Just small things like that that flesh out the story a bit more.
It wasn't just a great Star Trek movie. It was a great movie.
Of course, Hollywood didn't give it consideration for Oscar because if was science fiction. But it should have gotten consideration for best movie.
Alas...
The only demerits I would give it are the "Alien" style scenes on the space station. we don't need jump scares.
I recall finishing up my first year of college when this movie came out. After watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and being somewhat intrigued, but perplexed, I really was not sure what to expect. While waiting for my mom to send me money to get home, I went to the theaters to see it. I left being blown away. Boy, do I miss the days of just being surprised. We are bombarded with way too much information.
Modern fanbabies don’t want to be surprised. They need everything to fit a certain mold or else it’s whining time!
To this day, I still remember being in real stress and fear watching this fight scene as a kid... just. fantastic.
I agree that it was a super interesting battle in the ST universe. Not just "shields are down to 70%" no we see corridors burst into flames and actual stakes. What a master class in scifi action, all of the elements were lightning in a bottle together. Anybody reading this should watch Rowan's Wrath retrospective which demonstrates it for the entire rest of the movie (lol). Makes me want to watch the whole film again.
Yeah, this video really gave me an urge to watch TWOK again. I might get my wife to watch them all again when the 4K remasters come out. I want to see what they do with the TMP 4K Director's Cut.
@jdslyman hah, I didn't even think about that! I always think about the TOS ships more like old Naval ships, where they could withstand a ton of damage without totally comprising a critical system. certainly different with the later shows..
Let's not forget the miniatures and modeling that was used. TWOK is one of the last movies that actually used modeling before all the CGI work. There was so much effort and attention to detail. One of the last movies to actually do that.
I think the battle is impactful because every hit has an impact. The whole scene progressively matters. Actual tactics are applied. A strike occurs and changes the stakes of the battle. Unlike Nemesis, which is basically pot shot city where hardly anything matters until SURPRISE RAMMING SPEED, yet taking forever to get there, and even then it's too little too late.
@@meme9492 What? TWOK came out in the early 80s and they didn't start using CG ships until the mid to late 90s. In fact, they used physical models for the ships in Starship Troopers and the Star Wars prequel trilogy.
Videos like this are a master class in what is missing in movies today.
It's not about fanboys, ruined childhoods or anything like that. It's sadness and disappointment at what passes these days for quality musical scores, direction, cinematography and a general understanding of what good storytelling is.
Which is a pity, as all those are understood, can be studied, practised, and honed. The art and craft of good cinema has been purged by the far left cultural revolution.
@@audience2 No, you make this about right/left you are no better than the people you claim to be superior to.
This is about cold uncaring business interests inserting themselves into creative decisions and ruining entire franchises. This is about mentorship and training programs that have fallen to the wayside going instead to already wealthy children of wealthy parents being able to afford going through the unpaid internships. This is about the creative process being abandoned in favour of more content.
Keep politics out of this and let the creative groups actually be creative without having to jump into one or the other trench in order to survive online scrutiny.
Fanbabies deserve to have their childhoods ruined.
I was at the premier of this science fiction masterpiece in 1982 and the cheering from the audience when the Reliant’s shields start to fall and the Enterprise fires back is a moment in time I will never, ever forget.
I remember seeing this in the theater. I was shocked by this scene. Up until then the enterprise never suffered damage on TV. After seeing it, I was like " holy shit! The enterprise is getting its ass kicked! " I was stunned. I think that why this movie stands out
I agree. especially as the first movie had kirk viewing the Enterprise with almost religious reverence, a thing of untouchable magnificence. Then along comes Khan and scars it's immaculate structure. Ouch! It was a movie filled with emotion on many levels.
It was seeing a starship get murdered, as if Reliant was the Michael Myers of space.
I really like that the villian is on the underdog ship here, the Enterprise has Superior Defense and Firepower, but Khan outsmarts them. Usually the good guys are up against some super ship.
I see what you mean but the Miranda class was basically the construction class but without all the bells and whistles. They are even for firepower and maybe shields are a little bit less though I doubt it. Maybe shields and weapons are more powerful because they have less systems to power with the same warp core.
Because of the design of the two ships being so similar, they're basically being presented visually as equals, so it's the crews that present the contrast. Khan doesn't have many of them on the _Reliant_ but individually they're more than a match for anyone on _Enterprise_ except possibly Spock in terms of intelligence and physical ability. Kirk has a full crew, but the majority of them are trainees on what was expected to be a short, routine, uneventful mission, so their greater familiarity with their tech is negated by their inexperience. And, as Spock points out, while Khan may be smarter, Kirk is more experienced in space combat and can fight just as dirty.
That was one of the great points of the film: by making the two crews so different, with their own strengths and weaknesses, it takes out of the equation the idiot plot where one group of supposedly equal experience comes across as complete morons (*cough* Klingons *cough*) in order to explain them losing. Both Khan's crew and Kirk's crew, just like Khan and Kirk themselves, balance each other out in strengths and weaknesses which makes the outcome more uncertain. Indeed, without Spock's sacrifice, _everyone_ would have died.
@@keith6706 very much so. Don't know which reference you were pointing to with the Klingons (were talking original 6 films right?) but I do agree the bad guys are dumb plot is overplayed.
It adds to Khan's menace that he was clever enough to completely outplay Kirk in the first battle. As Kirk said, it was only the superior knowledge of the ships that let the enterprise escape intact.
You need to remember that Khan only demonstrates 2 dimensional intelligence, as Spock asserts. That is how he is defeated.
"This sequence from the Wrath of Khan is simply pitch perfect" at 9:13 - then shows the Pitch attitude indicator on the Enterprise instrument panel.
#ISeeWhatYouDidThere
Another incredibly suspenseful space battle was TOS: Balance of Terror, the first time we encounter the Romulans, and the Enterprise is locked in a cat and mouse game with a Romulan Bird of Prey.
The initial shots fired as the ships passed each other was very reminiscent of how the early, old school sailing ships passed each other as they fired their cannons at each other. This had an almost intentional homage to early sailing ship combat, as these two old enemies battled each other.
Stephen Cole is a tabletop wargame designer who was designing a game about the Battle of Jutland (largest battleship to battleship engagement ever in ww1) when he was watching the old Star Trek series. He quickly redesigned several aspects and generated an Enterprise ship and a Klingon ship and viola Star Fleet Battles was born. And still going some 45 years later. Lots of Star Fleet Battle short stories would make neat movies.
Harve Bennet said he was going for an age of sail Hornblower feel for the film., and it shows, even in the uniforms and bosun's whistle and other naval traditions. In that scene Reliant is doing the equivalent of sailing under a false flag, and when she raises her shields and locks phasers she is doing the equivalent of showing her true colors, hoisting Khan's jolly roger.
There was nothing “almost” about the homage. This was Horatio Hornblower in space.
@@orbitalair2103 great game, I wish more people played it.
Great analysis! I also want to point out the set design. They designed the Enterprise sets with a sense of realism, so you can pinpoint on the model of the ship where the sets are located. For example, Khan directly shoots the engineering section and we see the havoc of the Engineering section being destroyed. This adds stakes and immediacy to the battle. Not only do we know Khan has struck a decisive hit against the Enterprise, we see the cost of that hit in human lives.
What makes this so powerful is the story, and context. If this were translated into a period piece similar to master and commander, it would still work
Master and Commander was such a damn fine movie. Thanks for bringing it back to mind, I'll give it a rewatch tonight
I thought "It's about family" is what makes sci-fi so powerful?
As Rowan himself has said, it's essentially Star Trek on the high seas. I remember as I saw it in the theater, oddly just at the end when they'd realized that they'd been tricked, I suddenly thought, "Well this feels like Star Trek, now doesn't it?" A fantastic movie, that one.
The first battle was specifically set up by Meyer to be a tall ship battle, the battle in the Mutara Nebula was set up to be a submarine battle. Both awesome sources of influence and they work really well.
Thats a damned fine film. How I wish entertainment could return to back to those kind of movies instead of all being about *THE MESSAGE*
It has a fantastic naval feel to it. It's both a naval battle and game of chess in space. Always liked the part in the nebula where they are flying blind, Kirk asks Spock for suggestions, and he says Khan's thinking seems very two-dimensional, so they adjust position. This is a great reminder that this is *space*, not a level sea. It's not just port, starboard, fore and aft, there's up and down too. Relatively speaking anyway, as there isn't really an up and down in space, other than relative to nearby objects.
It’s more like Das Boot in space.
@@commandercaptain4664 Great comparison.
Now! If only you can shed some light as to WHERE is Reliant's Navigational Deflector???
Also I feel the directing gave the ship itself a character and you felt it’s pain when it was struck. Many of the newer films never seemed to manage this same effect.
You see that in a later shot, after Scotty brings his hephew to the bridge, where the _Enterprise_ is turning sluggishly following the attack. It's not so much the moment the ship gets shot, but how the model was puppeteered afterward. It's moving like a person who's just been savagely beaten and doesn't have much strength left.
Cutting through...actually cutting into and causing major death on the Enterprise was the same level of audience WOW as Star Wars opening scene.
Enterprise was a parlour drama from the bridge. They talked about damage, but never showed any. The Constellation was a shocker in 1967 because it had been cut up...but we never saw it.
Wrath is when Star Trek grew up. Kirk got older and complacent. Death loomed and was constantly foreshadowed. Spock died and was buried. Kirk had to reflect on his 20 years of abandoning his son for his career, continuing his horn dog ways, and not marrying the mother of his child. Being Odysseus and spitting in the eye of the gods.
There was a price to pay.
I never could accept “Dr. Marcus” as being related to Kirk in any way. He’s never mentioned before or after. It beggers belief
@@Tempusverum it depends on who you thought was, that young lab tech that cadet Gary Mitchell threw at upperclassmen cadet Kirk. You did that...I almost married her.
The medical researcher in The Deadly Years may have been that person, or Ruth, his memory love on Shore Leave...but the writer of WoK invented Carol Markus as that person mentioned in Kirk's first TV adventure.
This scene has what I think is the best sound effect in movie history - that "boop boop boop boop boop" of the little dots representing Reliant's shields going away.
I first saw this movie as a fairly Trek and genre savvy 13 year old, but this scene had me thinking this was it, Kirk has finally lost. So cathartic when he turns the tables!
That yes, Khan and his followers are super intelligent... But they had control of the Reliant for maybe 3 days.
Kirk and his crew had experience on their side. They knew what their ship could do.
I always loved the shields going down sound too haha, and yeah you really think Kirk was gonna lose it all in that moment. But he always pulls through. "The prefix codes" "it's all we've got" CHILLS
“… I THINK WE’RE THE GREEN THINGIE!!!”
There's another really important factor with these two scenes. The stakes are REAL. The bomb under the table can really kill and does (Scotty's nephew, Spock, etc). Real stakes are something that's missing from today's movies where people resurrect or don't even get injured from battle. Absolutely wonderful scenes and glad you gave so much credit to the amazing music.
I remember being 13, sitting in the theater and watching this for the first time. I jumped in shock watching that first phaser blast hitting the Enterprise, wondering how Kirk was going to save the day. 40 years and countless viewings later, its still my favorite movie of all time.
There are reasons this is the best Star Trek film. This is clearly one of them. Perfection, down to the score. When they tried to rip Khan off for the JJ Reboot, into darkness, it's like.... They took notes from this film.... But all the wrong notes. They copied the wrong things.
They needed to study what made this battle great. What made Khan such a good villain (and how Montalban just straight up slaughtered the role. He didn't kill it. He slaughtered it.... It's a Clinic on how to act a good villain). They needed to study the ingredients of greatness..... Instead they stole plot points and characters out of context and missed all the things like this battle that made Wrath of Khan great.
I kind of what Hollywood to go back to the well,not for endless reboots,but to analyze the great enduring classics and truly learn what made them great.... Then apply those lessons to new films. Wishful thinking I know.
I'd say you're being too generous to the filmmakers. If they'd just made their own original Star Trek story for the movie, it wouldn't have been nearly so bad.
I don't know what to think other than Into Darkness (I'm not calling it Star Trek) was made by people who don't actually like Star Trek in general or Wrath of Khan in particular. They just knew it was popular, so they should mine it for nostalgia points.
Being hacks and idiots, they couldn't grasp what made Wrath of Khan good in the first place. The result is that instead of a climax with a tense spaceship battle in a sensor blocking nebula we get a foot chase followed by a fist fight. But, hey, we got to see that blond lady in her underwear, so great job, JJ.
OMG, I would fly into such a rage whenever anyone brought up the Khan ripoff in the JJ reboot to the degree that I'm sure my fellow co-workers thought I needed to be heavily sedated (if not have Security called), lol
From the reference to the Kobayashi Maru, to Kirk and Spock's discussion about Kirk taking command of the Enterprise from Spock, to raising the stakes by having David (his son) on board, to Khan's not entirely unjustified anger at Kirk for not bothering to even check on the status of the "Botany Bay" colony, to very palpable space battle, to Spock's innocuous departure from the bridge during the battle, to the deeply affecting exchange between Kirk and Spock at the reactor core chamber to Khan's final words (Melville) to Spock's funeral. WoK was superb storytelling combined with really good acting.
@@truegatorguyodonnell5092 JJ Abrams has zero idea what makes for absorbing storytelling. I:ve read better screenplays in my high school drama class. Seriously.
Here's the only bit of advice you'll ever need in storytelling. "Make us care".
This is one? They went over a lot of different reasons.
This is not a great Trek movie, it is just a great movie!
I think that's why it works so well. They didn't try to make a "star trek movie", they tried to make a good movie that happens to be in the star trek universe.
Khan is a character that would work in any setting.
I'd never realized how significant the musical themes were. But that explains everything, doesn't it? Kirk and Khan each have their theme, and the *Enterprise* has her own theme. No wonder Khan lost -- he was outnumbered two to one!
Recently got to see this again on the big screen at a 40th Anniversary (!!!) special screening. This scene absolutely holds up, along with the rest of the film. Horner's score was definitely a huge part of that.
That first shot is a perfect broadside. Love the old school naval combat. And the sub combat in the nebula.
Or the crippled ship making a run for the fog bank.
It's the soundtrack. Whenever a villain has a track that implies he's coming or is around about to strike then he becomes a special villain. Think Jokers theme from TDK or Michael Myers themes, Freddy Kruegers piano notes, Terminatos heart beat, T100s theme, It follows character about to attack. Jason Voorhees. The empire in Star Wars . So many I can go on and on. All memorable villains have that. It brings up they are a menace and adds tension to what is about to happen on screen. Hollywood lost how to add themes to villains and why it's important in my opinion. When I think about this movie I think about Khans French Horns when he shows up to attack. Basically a cheat sheet for directors. Sad they don't care about villains having themes.
The soundtrack is brilliant and important, but it's not the only brilliant or important part.
I remember being in the theater on opening night, and the place exploding in cheers as Kirk counter attacked. The entire movie was groundbreaking, and even decades later one of the best movie experiences of my teens.
It's absolutely AMAZING in this scene when Kahn yells, "FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!" Wow! Look at the expression on his face when he does that.
Khan spent 15 years in misery, and all that emotion came out in that one word.
“FIRE!!!”
The music was beyond incredible. The story was simple, the acting was good, but the music rose that movie into brilliance. It was like how John Williams made b-movies look like epics as well. I remember having the lp when the movie first came out and listening to it over and over..
The music was such a huge element of this film's brilliance and the bar was already very high.
Best space battle in all of the Trek movies, best character acting, best soundtrack....you can't ask for more. Love all of the movies, but this one simply has it all!
I am a Second Wave TOS fan. I fell in with the show when it was in syndication in the early '70s and saw 'Wrath of Khan' in the theater in 1982. What made this battle so incredible for me was that it was the first time anyone had ever literally seen the Enterprise being damaged in a fight. On the series, they had to rely on stock footage of the ship, so it was never shown being hit by phaser fire. They just cut to the bridge, shook the camera, and someone said, "Hull breach on Deck 14!" I can't describe how horrifying it was to see Reliant cutting huge gaping holes in Enterprise. My heart fell through my feet.
You nailed it. Well done, from one who saw every Trek movie at the cinema.
I rewatch "Khan" every once in a while and it never fails to be riveting to me every time I watch it. TMP was brilliant, but I do feel this movie edges it out in a number of important ways, not the least of which is William Shatner's acting. He gets teased a lot for hamming it up, but that never really happened in the movies, and definitely not in this one. There will never be a Star Trek movie as good as "The Wrath of Khan", at least not until there is a huge reversal in Hollywood, and the franchise is given to an entirely different set of people.
Horner's music is so important that I can hear the the words in my head from the movie being said as I listen to the music. Also this movie has the best ship phaser sounds. Of course you can't hear in space but for a movie the sounds of the phasers firing and hitting the hulls adds to to the film.
I absolutely LOVE when Khan shouts FIRE! The entire cast jumps at the sound, I never noticed it until a commenter pointed it out. Now un-see it XD Hats off to Ricardo's acting. As for the scene it has a submarine feel to me, as the ships stalk each other waiting for their moment. It's very different to the guns blazing broadsides depicted in other IP.
The Wrath of Kahn was *EVERYTHING* for me as a Kid back in the day when I first watched it on VHS.
I was shocked and even cried at the end.. I knew I had just experienced something *ELSE*
Same, it was always my favourite of the films. I met the incredible Nichelle Nichols at a convention years later and she listed it as one of her top three, the others being IV and VI.
@@davidsolus9410 Wow I kinda envy you. Thanks for sharing 👍
This is an epic scene. "Ah Kirk...my old friend..."
I am not and have never been a Star Trek fan(when I first saw this I couldn’t have named 5 crew members of the Enterprise), but I consider Wrath of Khan to be in my top 5 movies of all time. With none of the others, old or new in my top 100. It’s simply brilliant as a stand alone film. I also love how it pays tribute to Moby Dick and A Tale of Two Cities in a subtle way. Of anything this film made me dislike the other movies because I then sought them out. ST the motion picture was like watching paint dry. And ST3 did the ultimate disservice to this masterpiece by trying to invalidate what may be the best heroic self sacrifice ever portrayed on film. Anyway sorry so long winded…
Nimoy as Spock had to be brought back. As Sarek said, however, it was Kirk who paid a very high price. He was the one who sacrificed so much. Spock's rebirth did not come cheap, unlike so many other "rebirths" in Star Trek or other fiction.
@@gogreen7794 "Kirk, you have done..."
"What I had to do."
"Yes. But at what cost? Your ship, your son."
"If I hadn't tried, the cost would have been my soul."
@@itsmezed Exactly!
Best scene in the entire franchise is the hospital scene in The Voyage Home. Bones completely flabbergasted at “modern medicine “ then gives the old lady pills to regrow her kidneys. I didn’t even know I would develop kidney issues for another 10 years, but I still cry at that scene.
The sound and appearance of the PHASERS are the best in this movie. They have power and substance. No other Star Trek show or movie ever did the phasers this way. We never even get to see phasers at all in any of the subsequent original cast movies. Torpedoes only. I was so disappointed when I saw Star Trek VI and they STILL didn't fire the phasers on their last chance with original ship.
@Newsbender II Well...(nerd alert)...they wouldn't have worked even if they'd tried...hehe.
The Bird of Prey fires ("phasers?") in Star Trek III. they look and sound like the Wrath of Khan phasers except they are green.
@@parkpunk2 Are those phasers or disruptors? I'm unclear of bird of prey armament.
@@steves_garage Disruptors. Spock fired the disruptors of the Bird of Prey in ST V, IIRC.
A bit of trivia I was always told. The pulses of the phasers are in time to the pulses of the warp engine plasma in the linear intermix chamber in the engine room. What I was told was that the VFX guys remembered Decker's line from TMP about the phasers being tied in to the warp engines and decided to include a visual easter egg.
Funny how you mentioned Sergio Leone's Good Bad and Ugly western movie to discuss tension as Shatner, Nimoy, Kelley and even Montalban all performed in cowboy films at one point or another during the '60s and '70s.
Excellent analysis. I might have added the realism of the battle itself - the damage, the smoke, the blood, the explosions on what are very large ships -- respect for verisimilitude that many other Trek directors don't have.
This is an outstanding video. Soo much more went into the creation of that battle scene than I realized. Along the same lines as the topic of the video, I think it was your work here that really locked my interest in.
I read a post once that stated the audience watching this in 1982 screamed in the theater when Reliant’s first blasts struck the Enterprise. I can only imagine what that must’ve been like.
We cheered In our cinema. It was the way the tension was built up, with the Enterprise crippled, what would happen? Would Kirk beam over to the Reliant? Then when the command console sequence started, you could feel a tension in the cinema prior to Kirk's command to fire. 😊
It was a shock to see the Enterprise damaged in such a way, how crew members were injured and killed. The bridge filled with smoke, consoles exploding and bursting into flames (no rocks!). Yeah, a real shock.
Especially since the audience had 15 years of buildup to care about the characters.
I love a slow, tension filled ship battle, compare to a fast, hectic one, where you don't have time to figure out what's going on.
That’s what was missing from DS9. So many ships blowing up so fast it seemed scaled down, as if they were tie fighters. ST2 impressed upon the audience that these are big ships.
TY so much for this. I have for 4 decades said you can watch Wrath of Khan in your head just listening to the soundtrack. I know every moment, every word, every shot based purely on the music!
This is a great vid explaining the brilliance of this scene. I can’t believe it took me 40 years to realize that this scene is more related to a western gunfight than a battle between two sailing ships.
So glad i saw a rescreen of this in theaters a few years back. It was so amazing on the big screen.
Yeah, I saw the Fathom Events screening a few years ago. It was great. Big crowd. Fantastic atmosphere. And crying. Lots of crying. There's something special about sitting in a room full of people who already love the movie. You know every moment, every beat, and yet, it's still amazing.
"I did nothing, except get caught with my britches down".
Can anyone imagine new kirk being so humble?
He got humbled pretty quickly in Into Darkness, imo. Outright admitting to Spock that he has no idea what he's doing, and even apologizes to the whole bridge crew when the Vengeance is about to obliterate them.
@@Mitchz95 humility in the face of incompetence doesn't really count.
@@ponderingponder9596 That's literally what Kirk did in this scene in WOK. He refused to raise shields in accordance with regulation, got his ship wrecked and several cadets killed, and rightly kicked himself for it afterward.
@@Mitchz95 what Kirk did was save the lives of many of his crew....
@@ponderingponder9596 Only *after* getting a bunch of them killed by being overconfident. That's my point -- both classic Kirk and modern Kirk made lethal mistakes, and were humbled as a result. I'm not dissing classic Kirk, I'm just saying that modern Kirk went through the exact same character arc.
So glad to see someone bring up the soundtrack in this. I have seen so many "what makes this ______ great" videos but hardly anyone mentions the soundtrack.
Another reason why these battle scenes are the BEST: The starships in combat fight and react like actual warships vs. fighter planes.
meaning: If you've ever watched ST:TNG or ST:DS9, you'll note that with the proliferation of CGI, combined with the Canon, (high speed impulse or warp maneuvers......mostly the former in the newer series), that even the most massive starships tend to act more like fighter planes than large vessels of immense bulk and mass. When hit by phasers or photon torpedoes they are portrayed as being literally pushed and knocked around as if they were small fighter craft. See it often enough and it starts to grate.
Rewatching ST2, its so refreshing to see the ships only display subtle movement shifts when seared by phaser shots or explosive torpedo detonations. It conveys the sense of the immensity of these majestic vessels. I hadn't really thought about it much until I binge watched the Battlestar Galactica remake from the 2000s. It was....."jarring" to see how the Galactica and the enemy Base ships just kind of were "There", acting as anchors in space and being so solid in the face of attack and detonation of weapons against their hulls. Much more realistic for ships of that size.
Looking back, it was the music that made you feel genuine emotion in these scenes, something most other movies with space battles rarely achieve...
Richardo Montalbon and William Shatner played this scene perfectly. Love this movie. STII: The Wrath of Kahn will always be the best Star Trek and perhaps the best sci-fi space battle movie ever. Just my IMO.......
And they were never in the same room ....
I agree. It is one of the absolute best starship fight scenes ever: everything contributes, everything builds , everything scores big.
Totally, totally agree!!! Saw this when it premieried in the UK and still to this day the effects and the direction of the space battle is immense.
The tension in these scenes are perfect as Khan and Kirk ambush one another. Though I have to admit my favorite bit is when Kirk takes down Reliant's shields and Joachim can't put them back up as he's locked out. The look of shocked horror on Khan's face as he realizes Kirk has outfoxed him followed by his frantic search for the override command just before the Enterprise opens fire is brilliant.
Computer hacking before there was such a thing in reality;) Another ST predictive.
An excellent short essay on an excellent scene. While not the same in context, I have the same sentiment you have for this scene as I do for the Stealing the Enterprise sequence in Star Trek III. That whole part of the film is about building and stretching that tension of will those space doors open in time, and will the Excelsior catch up to the Enterprise.
That's an excellent sequence, and probably the best part of that entire movie.
A bunch of my friends and I went and saw wrath of con last year in theaters during the 4K remaster releases. We also saw the motion picture in theaters a few months prior. These two movies are classic examples of why you go to the theater it’s just so much better.
Great video, thank you! I went to the first night of the Wrath of Khan. At the time science fiction special effects were mostly of small/tiny model ships firing on each other with simple hand-drawn animation of the bolts. Khan was the first time that I saw what looks like actual damage to the Enterprise. Reliant fires with animated phaser bolts. I and the rest of the audience weren't expecting the Enterprise model to actual take damage. Later I saw behind-the-scenes photos of the Enterprise model being several feet tall. It was an amazing experience then. It's great that it holds up today for the reasons your cite in the video. Well done! -Frank
Excellent video as always.
Your insight into the effectiveness of James Horner’s score is spot on.
@@drt1605 why do you assume nobody knows Horner's influences? The part in the video was entirely about how Horner applied the music to work in the context of the film.
The visuals are also a vitally important part of the battle's power. In a time when other films were trying to emulate Star Wars' fast WWII dogfight inspired battles, Star Trek gave us lumbering ships where you can feel the mass of the ships as they move. These are battleships that can't turn on a dime, and that draws out the emotional tension. That shot of Reliant's phaser ripping down the side of Enterprise makes you wince as it just... keeps... tearing into the hull. And there's nothing Kirk can do to stop it. This is heightened by the change in the phaser's appearance from the solid beam we were used to into the pulsing stream where each flash of energy causes its own blast on the hull. It's all so perfect.
There's shot just following the battle, right after Scotty brings his dying nephew to the bridge, where the _Enterprise_ makes a sluggish, slumping turn as it begins to head to Regula 1. ILM puppeteered the model to look like the _Enterprise_ was in pain from taking those hits. *Trek* fans have always seen the _Enterprise_ as a character in itself, and in this scene it isn't just some ship getting shot at. It's an old friend being violently beaten right before our eyes. Longtime *Trek* writer David Gerrold commented once that this scene was a very upsetting reminder of the ship's mortality, and how it tied into the film's themes of how we deal with death.
There's a similar moment in the Mutara Nebula where the _Enterprise_ is slumping in apparent pain after getting shot across its left torpedo port, but that scene's a lot less disturbing because the ship is shooting back at the Reliant and hitting it dead-on. Still, the film's making it clear that the _Enterprise_ is a character, not just a random ship to be blasted at.
@@reidmason2551 You totally nailed it about the Enterprise being a character. That's brilliant to hear that they used it as their guide for staging those scenes. So cool to hear.
"It's (the Enterprise) a beautiful lady and we love her."
-James Kirk in "I, Mudd".
As a kid, I was a huge fan at age 10 and would secretly stay up past my bedtime to watch Star Trek TOS on a 12" B&W TV. I built all the AMT plastic models and outfitted my Enterprise with interior lights using bulbs and optic fibers taken from a fiber lamp. I was 18 when TWOK hit theaters, Spock had been my hero half my life, and I cried my eyes out for hours when he made the ultimate sacrifice and saved the ship. This was the greatest space battle of all time and I really felt like I had skin in the game.
I was a kid when this movie was released. Viewing this in the theatre was just awesome. I was so engrossed that I forgot about the popcorn I bought.
Reading Meyer’s autobiography gave me an even greater appreciation for all this, reading his own words of his lack of confidence making him work all the harder to prove to _himself_ he was worthy of the material.
Although the action in TUC is also fantastic, it’s far more self-assured and feels more choreographed for it. While Meyer’s own tensions and anxieties seem reflected back in the pacing, the camerawork, and so forth in TWOK. He really clearly worked hard in the edit suite too.
I already had a lot of respect for him before I read that book, but that book took it up to 11 (in large part because it’s full of his insecurities, rather than tooting his own horn).
Wow, I'm going to have to track this book down. Thank you!
The assault on the Donnager.
*drops mic*
Brilliant analysis. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one that considers this an epic film battle scene. I didn't even realize all the moviemaking techniques that created the intense drama in the scene. And, as a big fan of film scores, I appreciated the analysis of how the music contributed to the entire emotional content of the scene. Thanks so much for taking the time to create this!
Excellent, and interesting analysis!!! Thank you for posting this!! I really enjoyed it, especially the interview clip with Horner!!! Very insightful!!!
Another great video! I was especially enchanted with the interview with James Horner, the thought process and nuance he put into the music is phenomenal - the score itself is a battle of themes and motifs, just as it is on screen between the villain/hero and two ships. A real loss to art.
Even after you've broken it down into _why_ , I still feel there is a certain extra bit of magic that cannot be explained that makes the scenes so incredibly epic, iconic and memory sticking! It has that unexplainable, intangible something *rubs fingers together* 👌 where everything has aligned and made something spectacular - I never get bored of watching it.
Great analysis. I will always remember the understated grief expressed by Kirk after Spock dies. One simple word expresses a world of loss. Such a simple yet powerful scene.
Excellent breakdown of techniques! Thanks for the peek behind the scenes Rowan.