Like…they killed Spock…
I would have been on the floor of the theater sobbing my heart out during the scene at the reactor, and I might have just drowned from my tears during the funeral. How did people emotionally survive that experience? And Leonard Nimoy doing the voiceover at the end?
HOW DID PEOPLE SURVIVE THAT MOVIE?
Honey. I was there.
I was a Star Trek fan when that meant you were a fan of that one, old, cancelled TV show from the 60s in perpetual reruns on Channel 5. After eagerly waiting all year only to be bored and disappointed by ST:TMP, I knew Wrath of Khan was going to be good – the real ST mojo was back in all the rumors flying (pre-Internet). Nicholas Meyer, author of the brilliant Sherlock Holmes book and movie The Seven Percent Solution (which offered a theory as to what actually happened when Holmes “died” at Reichenbach Falls), was at the helm.
And I was in the theater first day. We laughed our asses off at “Aren’t you dead?” (because the rumor that Spock would die had been leaked – ha ha, whew! Just that Kobayashi simulation!).
And there wasn’t a sound, or a dry eye, in the theater, when Spock died.
Well, except for mine. I didn’t cry when Spock died. I didn’t cry at the funeral scene.
But when Kirk puts his glasses down in his room, and one lens is cracked – the one lens destroyed, making both lenses useless…I started bawling. I know symbolism when I see it.
(Nicholas Meyer also uses broken glasses to show profound change in his stories – HG Wells breaks his glasses travelling into the future in TIME AFTER TIME, and John Lithgow’s character has one cracked glasses lens after the nuclear bomb hits in THE DAY AFTER.)
So, yeah. That was an unforgettable experience.
And it’s also why I refused to see ST: Into Darkness. JJ Abrams took the most profoundly moving moment in ST Canon and crapped on it like it was the biggest joke ever.