Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

The second Star Trek movie is swift, droll and adventurous, not to mention appealingly gadget-happy. It's everything the first one should have been and wasn't. Read full review

The Wrath of Khan is a top-notch, fast-paced adventure that can be enjoyed equally by fans of the series and those who have never seen an episode. Read full review

A funnier, faster, altogether more energetic film than Star Trek I, The Wrath of Khan doesn't linger over its modest special effects. This is really down-home week with Captain - now Admiral - Kirk and the boys. [5 June 1982]

Not least among Khan's pleasures is the way it continually veers toward, but never quite crosses, the neutral zone between space opera and interstellar camp. By the end, it becomes simply operatic, with a death scene of surprising emotional power. Read full review

Star Trek II is a very satisfying space adventure, closer in spirit and format to the popular TV series than to its big-budget predecessor.

Wonderful dumb fun.

This is hands-down the best Trek flick made so far. Read full review

It's a tale told with considerable warmth and humour, some spiffing explosions and a multiple-hanky act of self-sacrifice to round things off. Read full review

It’s still entertaining and charming in its innocent idealism. Read full review

This is one of the most popular in the series, thanks to a high action quotient (including a tensely staged space battle), a suitably campy turn by Montalban, and the shock value of Spock's death. There is some novelty value, too, in the focus on Kirk's family life back on Earth. Read full review

I don't much care if the battles aren't that amazing, because the story doesn't depend on them. It's about a sacrifice made by Spock, and it draws on the sentiment and audience identification developed over the years by the TV series. Read full review

A brisk, handsomely designed film in which its hardware, sturdy as it is, never overwhelms its humanity. Read full review

One leaves the film neither hugely thrilled nor greatly awed, but with a pleasant sense of having caught up with old friends and found them to be just fine, pretty much the way one hoped they would turn out in later life. Read full review

While not significantly better or worse than the predecessor, a rather astounding object of devotion for a movie studio--an enormously expensive recreation of a moribund TV series--this sequel is perfectly presentable and harmless, a klunker as comfortable as your easy chair. [4 June 1982, p.D1]

If only director Nicholas Meyer had grasped the implications of his tale more fully and enthusiastically, this might have become a classic piece of cornball SF poetry, but as it stands the tepid acting and one-set claustrophobia take a heavy toll. Read full review

For a major sci-fi release in the Star Wars era, it's surprisingly slow and even maudlin. Read full review

Though the charter of the Enterprise charges its crew to "go boldly where no man has gone before," the marketing strategy of Paramount Pictures clearly mandates that the film go quietly in a predictable fashion to a place where the mass audience will feel comfortable. This Star Trek II does, with its familiar faces and lovable homilies. The film seems bound to be one of the summer's big hits. Kids will love it, and dozing adults will at least find it endurable. [5 June 1985, p.C4]

Foregoing the special effects bonanza of its predecessor, it settles for low camp humanoid melodrama. Read full review

The Wrath of Khan is a small soap opera about a man coming to terms with age and death and a son he had never acknowledged. It's really On Golden Galaxy, and it would have made a lot more sense as a modestly produced hour of television. [7 June 1982, p.53]