Star Trek II: Wrath Of Khan Director Knows Why It’s Still The Fan Favorite
What if you had to spend the rest of your life answering questions about why your best work is so beloved? That may sound surreal, but it’s the life that Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan director Nicholas Meyer has been living for decades. He was recently asked why the film’s popularity endures by TrekMovie, and he responded that “there are some timeless qualities involved in Khan…It landed on a frequency that no one seems to be able to resist.”
Great Art Never Goes Out Of Fashion
While that last bit may sound more like it came from a Borg than a legendary Hollywood director, Meyer was attempting to honestly answer the question while not sounding like he was overly full of himself. Earlier in the TrekMovie interview, he admitted that “artists are not the best judges of their own work,” which naturally makes it hard to answer questions about why certain works endure longer than others.
When it comes to the continued love for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, he is “pleasantly flabbergasted every day that that movie is still around and giving pleasure and moving people.”
Meyer tried to answer TrekMovie’s question more earnestly, he replied that “all great art has one thing in common, and that’s the ‘great’ part.” He pointed out that “things that are terrific always seem to come back,” which is why both Bach and Shakespeare have “never gone out of fashion.”
The Movie Just Hits Different
He admitted that he doesn’t want to compare himself to Bach or Shakespeare but speculated that Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan “has some timeless qualities involved” that similarly resonate with audiences. Speaking of resonance, the director described this effect by saying that his film “landed on a frequency no one seems to be able to resist.”
However, a potentially frustrating issue for Meyer that he admits to TrekMovie is he can never quite put his finger on what those “timeless qualities” really are. He admits that he wasn’t “aware of what they were or even of putting them there” but that those qualities gave the movie its timeless and universal appeal. Regarding Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Meyer noted, “I can only be happy that I was part of it.”
A Generational Film
From our perspective, the director is selling himself short about his own contributions to the success of this famous film. For example, he tells a story later in the interview about fighting Paramount executives who didn’t want to have a scene where Kirk reconciled with his son, and he stood his ground because he knew the appeal of this scene and its importance to the overall story of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. “I think a lot of fathers and sons connect to this movie because it is about fathers and sons,” he said.
Defying The Studio
Elsewhere in the interview, Meyer discussed how Paramount really wanted him to have Kirk and Khan physically fighting each other. However, the director resisted the idea because he felt their fight in The Original Series “looked phony and stupid” and that Kirk realistically would have had no shot against a genetically engineered “Superman.”
This resulted in the director modeling Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan after the classic World War II drama The Enemy Below, and the subsequent battleships in space vibe helped redefine science fiction as a whole even as it brought new life to Star Trek.
One Of The Best Sci-Fi Films Ever Made
While Nicholas Meyer seemingly doesn’t want to take that much credit, the bottom line is that Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is his baby, right down to the perfect script he cranked out in only 12 days. The film does have timeless qualities, and its director deserves to be compared to William Shakespeare. What better comparison for a director who named his last Trek film (The Undiscovered Country) after a line from Hamlet?
Source: TrekMovie
