Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) begins with the return of a man marooned on an asteroid fifteen years earlier. Khan lost his wife and most of his people there and comes for Kirk. At the same time a device called Genesis is being developed; it can bring a dead planet to life, which makes it a weapon. How it came to exist is interesting. The first film, The Motion Picture, had cost over 45 million dollars and not returned it. This one was made for twelve million, with the studio deliberately holding costs down. Nicholas Meyer wrote the screenplay in twelve days. He took no payment and no writing credit; he simply made the deadline, to the surprise of the cast and producers. Spock's death leaked and the fan reaction was severe. The production moved the death later in the story and additionally had Spock killed once in the opening simulator scene, muddying the audience's expectation from the start. The Genesis demonstration became cinema's first entirely computer generated sequence. That sixty second passage introduced particle system animation. It opened on 4 June 1982 with 14.3 million dollars, the largest opening weekend in history at the time, and grossed 97 million worldwide. It runs 113 minutes. Good for: science fiction, space combat staged like naval warfare, and stories about growing old. Less good for: if you do not know the series, Khan's history goes unexplained; the character comes from an episode broadcast in 1967. Some effects are reused from the first film and it shows.