Category: SF&F Movie Reviews

Science Fiction and Fantasy Movie Reviews by otherworldly critics

The Tomorrow War (2021) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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This movie is an alien invasion/time travel movie.  Wow, that’s complicated.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

This movie is a highly confusing science fiction story.  Chris Pratt plays Dan Forester a retired special forces soldier from Iraq who now works as a high school science teacher.  He has a wife Emmy and a young daughter Muri.  So far so good.  One day while watching soccer’s world cup game on tv they witness the beginning of the future war.  In the middle of the field a “wormhole” opens up and a bunch of humans dressed in military attire carrying weapons appear.

They explain that they are from the year 2051 and their world is fighting a war against aliens called the “whitespikes.”  They are about 8-10 feet long, have four running legs two grasping legs and two tentacles that can grab but also shoot “spikes.”  And they are always ravenously hungry for human flesh.  The aliens appeared in arctic Russia and quickly spread across the world and now the human population has been decimated (total world population down to 500,000) and they are begging people from 2021 to come through a portal and help fight the aliens.

Earth agrees to send its armies into the future but barely twenty percent return alive.  After that a draft is employed and all adults (men and women) are eligible.  Eventually Dan is drafted and is sent.  Enlistment involves surviving one week of combat after which the soldier is automatically returned to the present wherever he is.

Dan goes to the future and is immediately swept up in the “run for your life” action of fighting the whitespikes.  Eventually he meets his commanding officer Colonel Muri Forester (played by Yvonne Strahovski), in other words, his daughter now grown up and become a biologist working on a toxin to kill the whitespikes before they finish off what is left of humanity.  And with Dan’s help she captures a female whitespike and they synthesize a toxin that will kill all whitepikes injected with it.

But it’s too late.  The last human outpost where Muri and Dan are located is overwhelmed by a horde of whitespikes and Dan time jumps with the toxin just as Muri falls to her death in the grips of a whitespike.  Dan reaches home and is overwhelmed with grief and anger.  Grown-up Muri had told him that back in the “present” when Dan had returned from his seven-day assignment he abandoned his wife and daughter and eventually was killed a few years later in an auto accident.

Determined to get the toxin mass produced and sent back to the future Dan reaches out to the government but finds out that the portal is gone.  The whitespikes have finished off humanity in the future.  There is no place to send the toxin.

But Emmy reasons that it makes more sense to find the whitespikes before they conquered the world and destroy them at the beginning.  With a clue from volcanic ash present on a whitespike artifact they figure out that the whitespikes must have been frozen under the ice cap in northern Russia and thawed because of “global warming” in 2051 or shortly before.  Because of global instability caused by the knowledge that the world would be coming to an end, the US refuses to help Dan go to Russia to find the whitespikes.  So, Dan goes to his Vietnam War vet estranged father (played by J. K. Simmons) who happens to have access to a large cargo plane and they mount a small expedition.

They find the alien ship by its magnetic field and use thermite to reach it through the ice.  Then they find out that the whitespikes are not the astronauts but rather a bioweapon cargo on a ship that crashed into earth long ago.  They use the toxin to kill about half the whitespikes on the ship but another five or six escape.  Two of the humans use a C4 explosive to kill the whitespikes in a suicide maneuver.  But one female escapes and after an extended chase and fight scene Dan and his father kill the monster.  The movie ends with Dan reuniting with Emmy and introducing young Muir to her grandfather.  Wow, what a mess!

Okay, what the hell do I say about this crazy mixed up movie?  From a science fiction plot perspective, this thing is a turkey.  There is no indication of how the 2051 humans in the middle of their existential alien crisis were able to create time travel.  And the workings of this time travel also seem goofy.  The 2051 people can only go back and forth thirty years.  So, they can’t go back five years and search for the whitespikes before they became overwhelmingly numerous and unstoppable.  Also, grown-up Muri tells Dan about what he was like after he came back from the future but then Dan followed a completely different course of action when he returned.  How?  Alright the plot is as full of holes as Swiss cheese.  But is the movie any good?  Well, yeah.  Chris Pratt portrays a likeable character and so does Yvonne Strahovski.  There is a good family chemistry there and the action sequences although quite a mess aren’t boring.  And it isn’t woke.  Chris Pratt is allowed to be a white man and the hero of the movie.  That’s something to be amazed at in a movie made in 2021.  It’s a silly sci-fi action movie.  But I kind of liked it.  You have to decide if it’s something you want to waste a couple of hours on.

A Firefly Animated Series

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The sci-fi television series “Firefly” and its subsequent big screen continuation “Serenity” came out in 2002 and 2005 respectively.  That’s a very long time ago.  So, for that whole 20 plus years there have been rumors that circulated on-line that a sequel tv show or a movie would be greenlit.  And the fanbase of Firefly has been dying for such a sequel all these years.

And now their dreams are coming true.  Well, almost.  There won’t be a live-action tv show or movie.  There will be an animated movie with the original cast providing the voices of their characters.  And other than Ron Glass (who died a number of years ago) the whole cast is coming back.  But will it be any good?

Firefly and Serenity were the creation of Joss Whedon.  He invented them and breathed life into them.  Joss Whedon will not be writing or producing or directing this new movie.  He has been canceled in Hollywood for bad behavior.  Apparently, he hurt the feelings of some actresses before or during the #metoo witch hunts and has been consigned to a lower level of hell where powerful Hollywood men are sent to burn forever.  And without Whedon what are the chances that a new Firefly would be anything like the original?

Well, we’re about to find out.  That’s a slight exaggeration.  It’ll probably take a year or longer to produce this movie.  And whether it’s a tv miniseries or a motion picture you probably have to add a few months to fit it into the schedules for these kinds of things.  So, let’s say eighteen months.

Several years ago, I came to the conclusion that the best thing that could have happened to Firefly was exactly what did happen.  It only lasted a part of a season on tv and then had a motion picture to provide a satisfying climax to the characters and the story.  And the reason I felt that way was because Firefly appealed to me exactly because it went against the kind of female-centric left-leaning stuff that Joss Whedon typically produces.  Things like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” and “Dollhouse” are what he makes.  And those shows are garbage from my perspective.  Firefly was from the opposite perspective.  It was the battle between the oligarchic Alliance which is a stand-in for today’s globalists and the Independents who are the freedom-loving commoners much like today’s Right.  But the danger as I see it is that eventually Whedon would have tweaked the characters and stories until they became “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

And I still think that.  The two showrunners they’ve put in charge of this animated series are as thoroughly left-leaning and devoted to woke culture as anyone else around.  If anything, they’re worse than Whedon because at least he was talented.  They’re not.  So, I fully expect this new show will be pretty awful.

That being said I will watch it when it comes out.  Firefly was enormously entertaining while it lasted.  And it will be nostalgic to see the animated characters and hear the voices of the old crew.  But I would be shocked if it turned out to be good.

Edge of Tomorrow (2014) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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This is a time loop movie.  It’s Groundhog Day crossed with Starship Troopers.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Tom Cruise is Major William Cage.  He’s the US Army’s public relations man during a war against aliens called the mimics who have conquered mainland Europe and are about to be counter-attacked by humanity’s attempt at D-Day from a London staging area.  But instead of staying behind in an office to edit commercials his superiors have loaned him out to the Brits as a warrior.  He tries to desert but is handcuffed and handed over to Master Sargeant Farell (played by Bill Paxton) and put into powered body armor and dropped into battle in France.  And of course, since he’s not a real soldier, he’s killed in the first few minutes of the horrific battle.  But right before he dies, he manages to kill a special mimic called an “alpha.”  And because some of the alpha’s blood gets on him, he ends up in a time loop that always brings him back to the same day of the battle.  And as long as he’s always killed he’ll come back again.

And from starting out as a hopelessly incompetent soldier, by virtue of getting to endlessly re-live and re-die on that day, he becomes adept at fighting mimics.  During one of these replays, he meets Sergeant Rita Vrataski (played by Emily Blunt) and just before she dies, she tells him to find her the next time he wakes up.  In other words, she has had the same time loop ability.  Through endless additional replays, Cage and Vrataski figure out that the mimics are aware of all the humans’ plans and fighting them is futile.  But if Cage is exposed to a device that was made to read the mind of alphas he will discover where the head mimic (the omega) is hiding.  But in the effort Cage loses his ability to reset time and come back to life.

And so, there is a kamikaze mission with Cage, Vrataski and some comrades to storm the Louvre where the monster hides.  As it works out everyone but Cage is killed and he is mortally wounded just as he blows up the omega.  But somehow killing the omega (I think) resets his looping ability and he wakes up with all of them alive but the omega destroyed and the mimics basically defeated.

Alright, so what about all this.  This is a pretty good sci-fi war movie.  The special effects are good.  The acting is good and the plot is pretty well worked out.  And even Emily Blunt’s Rita Vrataski character isn’t a complete girl-boss super hero.  She is annoying from time to time but not hopelessly.  Cruise carries the movie with a decent amount of character acting from his “comrades” and with even a little humor thrown in to lighten the mood.  The endless live/die repetition is handled very well for most of the movie with only a couple of spots where they seemed to over do it.  I will say that in the final assault the image on the screen is sort of too dark and hard to really understand.  It’s at night in an underground vault and under water so maybe that’s realistic but it feels confusing and unhelpful to the viewer.  All in all, I recommend this movie to fans of sci-fi action movies.  It’s pretty good.

Arrival (2016) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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What is it with YouTube lists of science fiction movies.  Every other choice is some incredibly unwatchable movie!

Already you can tell I didn’t like this movie.  And that is an understatement.  I despised it.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

The movie starts out with us meeting the protagonist Louise Banks (played by Amy Adams).  We see her with her daughter Hannah starting with her as a newborn and progressing with her as an adolescent dying of what appears to be cancer.

Switch scenes and Amy is teaching a class in Portuguese language at a university but just then the world finds out that twelve alien spacecraft have landed in different areas of the Earth and Amy is needed by the US government to figure out the aliens’ language and find out what they want.  Her contact is Colonel Weber (played by Forest Whitaker).  Louise is teamed with a scientist, Ian Donnelly (played by Jeremy Renner) to solve the mystery of why the aliens are on Earth.

There’s a lot of hand-waving (literally) but eventually Louise takes off her quarantine suit so they can see her pretty hair and slowly but surely, she translates the language of the aliens; heptapods which are represented as some kind of hyperintelligent cephalopods that spell out words with their ink (seriously!).

Through misunderstanding the difference between the words for tool and weapon, all of the major military powers come to believe that the aliens are attempting to start a war by providing some kind of advanced weapons to all of them separately.  Rogue American soldiers even try to blow up the heptapods and Louise is almost killed.

But just as the world is about to attack the heptapods and cause an interstellar incident Louise reenters the ship and has a magical epiphany and can understand everything the heptapods are saying.  She finds out the tool they are giving humanity is their language which if studied allows the user to see the future and experience time as “non-linear.”

Louise then is able to see into the future and know something that will convince the Chinese leader not to attack the heptapods and save the day.  Then we find out that Louise’s daughter Hannah didn’t die in the past but is going to be born to Louise and Ian in the future.  And apparently Louise is accepting of this future tragedy including the fact that Ian will leave her when he finds out she conceived Hannah regardless of knowing she will be doomed to an early death.  The End.

How do I hate this movie?  Let me count the ways.  This movie epitomizes the “girl boss” stereotype.  Louise is the omnicompetent protagonist who can do seemingly anything needed without any rational explanation for her abilities.  Everyone else is always stumped but she always finds a way.  And it’s always ridiculous.  The military are always arrogant, murderously enraged and completely incompetent.  And the action of the movie is non-existent.  The highlight of the film is Louise writing the word “LOUISE” on a white board and holding it up for the heptapods to see.  I’m not kidding.  And then in the last five minutes of the movie Louise figures out all of that stuff and we live happily ever after (except for her daughter dying of cancer).  This movie sucks.

Dune – Part 2 (2024) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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Just as with my review of the first installment of Dune, this will not be one of my usual reviews where I describe the plot.  Once again, I’ll give my impressions of the movie as someone hitting the story for the first time, since, as I mentioned before I’ve never read the books and only have a vague sense of the story and the author’s message, if there is one.

First off, the cinematography is top notch.  If the movie is blending actual desert landscapes with CGI it’s seamless and extremely realistic.  Or maybe the whole thing is CGI in which case it’s even more remarkable.  The acting is very good although casting Christopher Walken as the galactic emperor is jarring for me.  It’s almost impossible for me to see him in a film and not expect some kind of joke.  But he has very little screen time and the rest of the cast is very, very good.

The plot seems to be a combination of Lawrence of Arabia with a science fiction galactic political intrigue story.  And that may sound sort of flippant but actually I think the storyline is handled very skillfully by the director.  The pacing and the building to the climax is done with great skill and the final battle and its outcome are great.

What the filmmaker went for here was a combination of a personal story about Paul and his friends and family against the backdrop of a spectacle which is the revolt of the Fremen against the off-worlders who have dominated their world for centuries.  The reason I mentioned Lawrence of Arabia is because Paul is an outsider who is accepted by the Fremen just as Lawrence was accepted by the Arabs in their struggle to liberate themselves from the Turks.  And the Fremen are obviously modeled after the Arabs with “spice” as a stand-in for oil in the real world.

I don’t know if the movie is very faithful to every detail in the novels but in my opinion both this installment and the previous movie provide top-notch science fiction cinematic entertainment.  The protagonist and his friends are extremely likable and their adversaries are almost literally cartoon villains that in some cases seem hardly human.  And watching their defeat is almost as much fun as seeing Paul victorious.  One thing though, Paul’s mother belongs to some kind of female religious magical cabal that has a lot to do with control over the nobility of the empire.  I find myself repelled by all of them including Paul’s mother.  I’d like to see all of them burned at the stake as witches.

So, my take on all this is simple.  The plot is consistent enough to pass the suspension of disbelief hurdle and the action of the plot is lively enough and entertaining enough to keep you watching right through to the end.  I can’t see how I don’t rate it as highly recommended.  And the movie ends in the middle of a giant war so obviously we all have to save up our pennies to see the third and possibly further installments when they arrive.  So, three cheers for Dune: Part 2.

Donnie Darko (2001) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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Continuing my review of a list of “best Science fiction movies” from YouTube, the next installment is a movie from 2001 that I have heard spoken of as a “forgotten gem;” Donnie Darko.  I will attempt to disavow my audience of that idea.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

I would compare this movie to some mash-up of “The Breakfast Club” with a cheapo time travel/horror movie.  The movie is stewed in teenage angst in an upscale California town where Donnie Darko (played by a young Jake Gyllenhaal) is undergoing psychotherapy to find out why he is hallucinating about a man in a dog mask who seems to be telling him to do dangerous and harmful things like smashing a water main to flood out his high school and burn down the house of a motivational speaker who is appearing at the school’s Health classes.

While staying out all night at the urging of Frank (the dog guy) Donnie escapes death when an airliner engine falls out of the sky and destroys his bedroom.  It turns out that the FAA can’t locate a plane that lost an engine that day.  Meanwhile his science teacher answers questions about time travel by using Stephen Hawking’s theories about wormholes to justify Donnie’s belief that his psychosis is really messages being sent to him from time travelers.  And when he finds out that an old woman who lives up in the hills was a teacher at his school who wrote a book about time-travel he becomes convinced that he will be involved in a time travel event.

It all comes to a head around Halloween so the fact that some of the kids in the movie are wearing masks becomes less inexplicable but no less annoying.  By the end of the movie several people have been killed violently which appears to include his mother and younger sister who are aboard a jet airliner that coincidently has lost an engine over his town before landing.

At that point, Donnie goes up to the mountains to await the time-traveling storm that’s about to strike.  The end of the movie returns back a month before all the trouble started and this time Donnie is in the room when the engine strikes.  So apparently, he’s sacrificed himself to prevent the deaths of his mother and sister and his girlfriend and the guy who ran her over and was then shot to death by Donnie.  The end.

I hated this movie so much I can’t state it enough.  I despised everyone in it.  That includes Donnie, his English teacher (played by Drew Barrymore), his mother (played by the actress who was the president’s wife in Independence Day), the motivational speaker who turned out to be a kiddie porn purveyor (played by Patrick Swayze), and basically everyone else in the movie.  Everything about this movie was annoying or depressing.  And calling it science fiction is absurd.  There’s absolutely no justification given for any of the events or hallucinations that Donnie experienced.  But honestly, he was such an unlikeable character that all I felt at the end of the movie was annoyance that I had sat through this ridiculous movie.  I don’t recommend this movie to any fans of science fiction.

Dune (2021) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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This isn’t really a normal review.  I won’t walk through the plot.  Instead, I’ll give my impressions of the movie.  Now, full disclosure, I’ve never read the Dune books.  That alone is pretty remarkable considering they came out in the heyday of my science fiction reading career.  I never could actually tell why I didn’t.  Just something about the story didn’t click for some reason.

The first impression I have of this film is the high quality of the cinematography.  The landscapes both desert and temperate are beautifully filmed.  And the special effects of the colossal machines, space craft and the sand worms are wonderfully done.  Of course, on the theater screen they’re even more impressive.

Next let’s look at the actors.  There is a fairly large cast so there is a range of talent and not every character is given equal attention but the actors for the principal characters do a very fine job of making their parts memorable and entertaining.

The plot is something like the situation in feudal Japan where the emperor is in competition with his warlords and internecine struggle is a constant threat.  But we clearly have House Atreides and the Fremen to root for and everyone else to hiss at.  The battle scenes are impressive and the sword fights are well done and very entertaining.

Now I guess I’m supposed to like the Fremen as they’re the “good guys.”  But honestly, I found them pretty unlikeable.  I much preferred Atreides people (whatever they’re called).  And also, the sisterhood that Paul Atreides’ mother is a member; the Bene Gesserit, I disliked them also.  If I was running that universe, I’d have them rounded up and burned as witches.  They’re very annoying.

Now of course, this first movie isn’t the full story.  The second film is out there waiting for me to watch.  So, I’ll leave this encapsulation of my impressions here.

I highly recommend this movie.  This is good storytelling.  The plot and characters are memorable and engaging.  Two thumbs up.  Bring on part two!

Dark City (1998) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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This is one seriously strange movie.  It co-stars three actors you may know (William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland and Jennifer Connelly) but most of the rest of the cast including the protagonist aren’t familiar names.  It starts out as a film noir with a murder mystery and a man with amnesia.  But then it starts getting very weird and keeps getting weirder right up to the final scene.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

John Murdoch (played by Rufus Sewell) wakes up in a bathtub in a hotel room that also contains the body of a call girl who has been murdered and her body carved on by a maniac.  Murdoch has no memory of who he is.  He hears the phone ring and picks it up.  A man calling himself Dr. Schreber tells Murdoch that he can explain what is happening to him but that he must leave immediately because “they” are coming to get him.  So, he runs away and finds out that the police are looking for him for a string of women’s murders.  And then he meets them; the Strangers.  They’re tall, thin bald men who look slightly inhuman and have telekinetic powers.  And Murdoch finds out that he also has these powers.

Police Inspector Frank Bumstead (played by William Hurt) is hunting Murdoch and he interviews his wife Emma (played by Jennifer Connelly).  She claims Murdoch couldn’t be the killer.  Bumstead uses Emma to find Murdoch.  But he escapes.  By the end of the movie Murdoch is caught by the police but he eventually convinces Bumstead that the world they live in is a simulation because of anomalies like the lack of daylight and false memories of places like Shell Beach which do not actually exist.

Eventually the Strangers come to Dr. Schreber and demand that he inject Murdoch with new memories to solve his problem.  It’s obvious that Schreber works for the Strangers but he seems a reluctant partner.

Over the course of the movie what we learn is that the Strangers have built the city to study humans.  They are an alien race that has kidnapped humans and housed them in a city that is never in daylight but always night.  They have Schreber inject them with their false identities and every midnight they render the whole city asleep and then “tune” it by modifying the physical landscape (buildings appear and disappear) and people are given new identities or altered memories.

The Strangers are trying to understand the human “soul.”  Apparently, their race is dying out and becoming more human is their solution to survival.  At the end of the movie we find out the city is a construct floating in interstellar space completely separate from Earth.  There is a final showdown between the Strangers and Murdoch and he destroys them and takes control of the city.  In the final scene he meets up with his “wife” who now has new memories that don’t include him and he strikes up a conversation.  And they head for the mythical Shell Beach where his false memories told him he had led a happy boyhood life.  Only now he has created it and brought out the sun to end the endless night.

This is some strange movie.  The film noir atmosphere of the beginning of the movie is quite well done.  The transition to a science fiction theme is somewhat jarring but interesting.  I’m not sure I’d characterize the whole experimental scenario with the Strangers altering the city and its inhabitants every midnight as a reasonable plot.  I guess it’s almost like the delusion of someone with extreme paranoia except that the paranoia is based in fact.  All in all, I’d say it’s a bit overdone.  But I didn’t hate it.  As far as a recommendation, I’d have to say most people would be looking at a fifty/fifty shot at liking it.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 15FEB2026 – The Wrath of Khan-ecticut

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I do remember seeing Wrath of Khan in the theater on opening night. It was a strange day, Raining heavily when we tried to go to the matinee at a multiplex (4 theaters Wonder of Wonders!) in Orange CT. Ultimately that attempt failed as we didn’t quite make it to New Haven as my 1974 Duster was having alternator problems with the belt slipping due to the rain and splashing. We limped it back to my Buddies house grabbed a snack and hopped in his family’s ancient Suburban. Went to the 6 PM showing and watched the movie. We were enthralled (and nearly teary eyed at the “I am and always have been your friend” line as well as playing of Amazing Grace). We had noticed the rain was LOUD at times almost drowning the dialogue. Got out to Monsoon level rain and a parking lot with 3-5″ of water/ Getting home was a challenge, Rt 95 was closed in Branford due to several accidents and deep water. We were diverted eventually choosing a path along the coastal roads. Came to a bridge over a normally gentle stream running out to Long Island Sound. The bridge is normally about 4′ above the stream. The stream was now a 2′ deep torrent over the bridge. Being young stupid guys (college age) we decided to forge on. I got out and walked ahead of the Suburban to check the depth (I hope you realize this was a very bad choice and I am lucky to be writing this some 40+ years later: DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES DO THIS !!!). As we came off the bridge there was a low spot ahead and so I was still the depth gauge. Shortly I felt my knee bump something. It was the bumper of a Ford Taurus wagon submerged such that maybe 6″ of its roof was sticking out of the water ahead of me. Needless to say we turned around and spent a couple hours fishing about for a way back to my buddy’s home that would be passable with the 2′ or so of clearance the Suburban had. That said Wrath of Khan was well worth the journey.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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My goodness.  1982.  Has it been that long?  I think I saw this movie in the theater but I’m no longer sure.  Okay, so this movie shows all the signs of riding the crest of Star Wars making sci-fi exciting again.  The theme music is obviously aping John Williams’ theme from Star Wars.  Well, of course they did.  They’d have been nuts not to.  This was the second Star Trek movie and after how boring the first movie was, they must have decided they needed to get back to the original formula that made the tv show work, action/adventure with a little science fiction thrown in for window dressing.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

When the movie begins “Admiral” James Kirk is observing cadets responding to a simulation of a space emergency.  Captain Spock is testing his Vulcan student Ensign Saavik to see if she can reconcile reality with regulations.  During these simulations Kirk tells Dr. McCoy that he feels old now that he’s behind a desk instead of commanding a starship.

Meanwhile the USS Reliant’s Captain Clark Terrell and first officer Commander Pavel Chekov beam down to evaluate a planet to see if it is lifeless as required for the next test of the “genesis device.”  This is a system that can take a lifeless planet and both terraform it and create life on it.  But it turns out that the planet is actually the planet that Kirk marooned Khan Noonien Singh and his group of genetically modified supermen on, twenty years earlier.  The reason that the Reliant’s crew didn’t know this is because some cosmic instability blew up one planet and moved Khan’s world where it had been.  This also made Khan’s home a death sentence that he only avoided by his incredible intelligence.  But the death of his wife Khan blames on Kirk.

Putting “super earwigs” into the ears of Chekov and Terrell, Khan takes control of their minds and forces them to betray their ship into Khan’s hands.  Finding out where Kirk was and about the genesis device, he hatches a plan to destroy Kirk and the Enterprise and use the genesis device to destroy the life on an already flourishing world.  Apparently, this is the dark side of the device and why only lifeless worlds must be treated.

Khan captures the genesis device and lures Kirk into an attack by the Reliant.  After almost destroying the Enterprise Kirk uses some trickery to take over control of the Reliant’s bridge and damages that ship enough to get it to retreat.

Kirk manages to rescue the chief scientists of the genesis project.  They happen to be one of Kirk’s old girlfriends and her son who also happens to be Kirk’s son.  The young man despises Kirk for not being a pacifist geek like himself.  Finally, the showdown arrives.  The Enterprise is heavily damaged and can neither outrun nor outfight the Reliant.  So, Kirk lures Khan into a “nebula” where the Enterprise’s weakness will not be decisive.  Kirk manages to get enough potshots off to destroy the Reliant but Khan decides to activate the genesis device in order to destroy the Enterprise which without warp drive will not have enough time to escape its destructive force.

Seeing that time was of the essence Spock leaves the bridge and heads for engineering where to the horror of McCoy and Scott he intends to enter the warp drive containment room.  Spock uses his Vulcan neck pinch to disable McCoy and then uses the Vulcan mind meld to give McCoy some kind of subconscious suggestion and we hear him say to McCoy, “Remember.”  Spock then enters the radiation area and removes the safety housing from the warp drive and with his face and hands in the radiation field, “fixes” the warp drive manually.  As soon as it comes on line, the bridge crew uses the warp drive to escape the genesis blast by a split second.

Then McCoy calls Kirk over the intercom and tells him to come to engineering in time to say goodbye to a dying Spock.  The rest of the movie is Spock’s funeral in space where after the eulogy by Kirk, his coffin is shot out of the ship toward a planet that the genesis device somehow produced out of the nebula where the Reliant was located.  After that Kirk and his son have a reconciliation.  When asked again by McCoy how he feels Kirk says, “Young, I feel young again.”  In the last scene we see Spock’s coffin on the ground in an idyllic setting on the new planet.

Okay.  So just as a point of departure, Star Trek: The Motion Picture; the movie that preceded this one was awful because it was boring and nothing much happened.  So, this movie had lots of action and stuff happens left and right.  I read that they achieved this by kicking Gene Roddenberry upstairs and not letting him play with the script.  So good for them for figuring that out.  Ricardo Montalbán as Khan Noonien Singh is a wonderful hammy villain.  The crew of the Enterprise were very much their old selves from the tv show.  So, what’s not to love.  And the tragic farewell of Spock to Kirk is the climax of the movie.  Sure, it’s hammy tv acting at its worst.  But it’s wonderfully satisfying for any fan of the old show.  How the young respond to it I won’t speculate on.  I highly recommend it to all fans of Star Trek TOS.