R.I.P. Khan

In the pitch arguments of Star Wars fans and Trekkies, I was always on the side of Star Wars. During my youth, I always loved the Star Wars trilogy. By far more entertaining, the toys rocked, and who didn't make believe about their own light saber battles (that's why this commercial is so frustratingly off target, they start off so close to my childhood, it isn't a magic screen, their graphics are a lot closer to my childhood dreams, a handheld device in which a blade of light extends about 1 meter).

I was just never into the Star Trek franchise. Growing up with the special effects of Star Wars, the TV series from the late 60s just couldn't do it for me. I tried to watch the movies (although never really the Next Generation), but the action lacked the thrill I got from the Star Wars scenes. The first movie was kind of cheesy in it's premise of the Voyager spacecraft returning. Don't even get me started on installments 3-5.

The one exception was Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The villain was cooler, not a race belligerent aliens, but a genetically engineered human. The stakes were high (Spock's "needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few, or the one"), and who doesn't love Shatner's furious "KHAN!!!" (heard at the end of the trailer here)? I remember being paranoid about bugs crawling into my ears for years after this movie.

I bring this up for two reasons. Today, Ricardo Montalban, the actor that played Kahn, passed away at age 88. I also remember him fondly as the villain from the first Naked Gun movie. And secondly, I am now looking forward to the release of the new Star Trek movie and think that everything coming out of the Skywalker Ranch nowadays is complete crap. Go figure.