Remembering Ricardo Montalban in a silly way: Khan Night!

[elfs]

So, Omaha and I, as a fun way of remembering Ricardo Montalban, decided to have "Khan night." We took the kids out to Khan's Mongolian Grill, and then rented Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

I had forgotten just how good that film was. It has an 80's aesthetic, but it still holds together well as an action-adventure, as a space opera, and as a Star Trek film. Listening to the costume, set, and ship designers discuss how they negotiated with the director, who was basically doing Horatio Hornblower because he didn't know squat about SF or Star Trek. Ricardo Montalban is glorious as Khan. It was fun to watch the interview after the flick where Montalban talks about the "Khaaaaaan!" scene. He described how he did his scene alone, without Shatner, and Shatner's lines were read by a "sweet-voiced script girl who did not act, and should not act. And here I am trying to be so... It was very hard."

It was fun. The girls thought it was a good flick, although Kouryou-chan was full of questions. "Why this," and "Why that," and so on. But we had a great evening.

Comments

watch the original episode.

[joeypimping.livejournal.com]

you should rent the original star trek episode where khan was first introduced.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Buried alive... buried alive...

[(Anonymous)]

A good movie, but speaking of "why this" and "why that," I don't understand why Kirk wasn't immediately relieved of duty and put before a court martial for his behavior in the movie. He willfully ignored a general order (quoted to him by one of his subordinates, no less) to raise shields, resulting in the deaths of dozens of his crew and severe damage to his ship, and arguably delivering a doomsday weapon into the hands of a madman. Sure, he's a maverick and all, and if there had been some reason not to raise the shields I could buy it, but as depicted it comes across as just plain moronic.

That aside, I sure hope my physique looks as good as Montalban's when I'm 62 years old.

Anonymous Blog Reader #127

[dossy.livejournal.com]

You should have made it a double-feature and watched Fantasy Island, too.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know; some parts of it come out terribly cheesy, particularly the scene in the Mutara Nebula where Kirk orders "Z minus 10,000" and I have to restrain myself from calling out "Dive, dive, dive!" But with the way the bridge is laid out, he has to 'surface' to look for Khan, and the way Kirk maneuvers, it's clear that he's no more familiar with a 3-D engagement than Khan is -- he should have pitched out of Khan's plane and used a maneuver loosely similar to a rolling scissors to keep taking him through the plane that Khan was using in order to minimize his exposure.