Hacker Cinema
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
1982 · Film · 113 min
Part of Star Trek: The Original Series Collection
Directed by Nicholas Meyer
ActionAdventureScience Fiction
The starship Enterprise and its crew is pulled back into action when old nemesis, Khan, steals a top secret device called Project Genesis.
4 positive4 neutralfrom 8 commenters
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9 comments on Hacker News
After reading Allan Asherman’s The Making of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan a few years ago, I embarked on a Wrath of Khan–themed read of books that either influenced the filmmakers or were referenced in the movie: The Prisoner of Zenda, Paradise Lost, A Tale of Two Cities, and the entire Horatio Hornblower series. Very enjoyable! I still have one left: Moby Dick.
Pixar wasn't founded by Jobs, it was spun out of ILM. Alvy Ray Smith and Ed Catmull both worked at ILM and were responsible for some of the ground-breaking digital effects in movies in the early 80s, including the Genesis Device simulation in The Wrath of Khan. They also built the PIXAR computer for rendering.
Catmull brought in John Lasseter to make animated shorts. Lucas had no interest in producing "cartoons," so once he had usable hardware, he spun out the ILM digital graphics group and as Pixar with investment capital from Steve Jobs. Lucas then hired more digital graphics artists who were more interested in supporting special effects using the rendering tools that had already been developed.
Steve had an interesting relationship with Pixar. He was somewhat hands on as chairman of the board, but still had a lot of the aggro tendencies that everyone knew from his first stint at Apple. Sometimes he would go "street bully," including a heated argument over the use of a whiteboard with Alvy Ray Smith, an actual founder of Pixar, that resulted in Smith's departure.
That said, Steve provided the financing and executive deal-making that resulted in Toy Story and the subsequent string of the best animated feature films ever made.
> It also had the misfortune of trying to compete with two other huge sci-fi blockbusters in the summer of 1982: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.
I miss when "summer blockbuster" meant something other than the 40th Marvel comic movie and the 20th DC comic movie.
I watched "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" with my kid recently, and it was still awesome.
I'm struggling to recall the last time I watched a 'modern' movie. I have even downloaded some but I always seem to have something better to do with my time.
Oh. Come to think of it, it might have been "Star Trek II: The Type Casting of Benedict Cumberbatch".
Some years ago, I was at my cousin's house watching some movies on his HDTV. The first movie was "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," which I recall seeing in movie theaters when it was released in 1982 (as I date myself here). I think STII is the best of the Star Trek movies and still holds up to this day, but watching on that HDTV was painful! I could see the costumes. I could see the cheapness of the set. It just looked cheap, and not at all like the incredible spectacle I remember from the movie theater (or on repeated rewatchings on TV).
The next movie was "Ronin" (1998). Great movie, but on HDTV, it looked like a cheap TV soap opera. Again, it was painful to watch. On the movie screen? Or a normal TV? Incredible. HDTV presents a level of fidelity that older movies can't properly deal with, which you may be picking up on (as someone who not only saw "Empire Strikes Back" in theaters, but still think the puppet looks much better than the CGI version).
I'm glad they mentioned the Star Trek paperback where each of the crew members remembers their own experience with the Kobayashi Maru.
It didn't just start with "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan". It was really central to that movie's theme. (Captain Kirk's insistence that he doesn't believe in no-win scenarios.) It was such a good distillation of his character that I wasn't surprised they brought it back for the first movie in the rebooted franchise.
to give some context in '82 most theatrical releases cost $80-100. Wrath of Khan was a test where Paramount sold it at $40. It did very well, then they released Raiders in time for Christmas '83 and it did spectacularly. Those Videodiscs sold for $25 at the time. There was a gas station near me that rented pirate copies of movies from a rental place. Renting a new release back then from a legitimate place tended to be $7 for one night plus a membership and there wren't many copies available so you can see how they worked-out. https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/12/business/hollywood-gambles-on-video.html
In the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Captain Kirk accesses classified information in the ship's computer through a retina scan. This was well before the word 'biometrics' became a more familiar term. The filmmakers had the tricky task of how to represent a retina scan in a highly visual way. So what we see is a flythrough inside Kirk's eye until the retina is reached and verified.
Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTTG) is a pocket electronic book that contains all the accumulated knowledge about the universe. In the BBC TV series broadcast in 1981, the HHGTTG was represented by a 'computer graphics' aesthetic which was entirely hand animated. The animations still hold up brilliantly (and are better than the animations in the 2005 film).
Heck, I saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in HD several years ago and man, it looked awful. Gone was the Star Ship Enterprise, Kirk and Spock. Instead, I got a half-baked set and some old actors in obvious costumes. It was painful to watch.
Ronin (the next film being shown) didn't fare much better, looking like a TV soap opera.