Is Khan really Kirk's greatest adversary?

^It's not his first movie score, but it is considered his "big break" according to Wikipedia.

 

The Wraith of Khan is a great Star Trek movie. I think, this is the reason why Khan is liked so much.

 

He still called out Kirk’s initial bluff and proved he wasn’t interested in playing games when he ordered one of the hostages to be killed. All Khan had on Kirk was the guilt of the death of one of his crew members that betrayed the ship.

 

Harry Mudd is Kirk's arch-nemesis.

They met three times, canonically. I'd say that trumps Khan. The only thing Khan really had in his favor was his ship's seats were covered with fine, Corinthian leather.

 

Regarding Horner's scores, compare this (1980) with TWOK (1982):

 

“Battle” seems happier to me.

 

They are very different, but share some style elements. You can say the same about every Rembrandt painting, every Van Gogh. The artist is using his tools.

 

I do think Horner had certain musical tropes that he tended to repeat in films following TWOK at least, and I do think that's a little unfortunate, but I'm not exactly sure it's uncommon.

 

John Barry was as big as you can get in film music: 11 James Bonds, Dances with Wolves, Somewhere in Time, Raise the Titanic, The Black Hole, Out of Africa, Born Free, too many to mention. He sold 20 million albums. And you should hear some of the "tropes" he re-used. Around 1980, he started using a "beautiful strings" style to score certain types of scenes; you can play whole cues and not be sure which movie it came from. And yet, where it counted, each film score was unmistakable and unique.

Early Horner is like that, too, and so are most composers. When you write a lot of film music, your style and inclinations start to show.

 

Horner was for a period very married to a singular sort of orchestration which tends to make his scores sound even more alike than they might otherwise.

 

You pretty much hit the nail on the head right here.

Since WoK was such a success people decided that Khan was a key villain and much more important to the franchise than he ever was previously. It's interesting to go back and look at old "best episode" polls from the 70s, "Space Seed" wasn't usually on them, but now it's considered top ten in all modern polls.

 

It's a bit counterintuitive, but I imagine one of the reasons Khan might be considered Kirk's "greatest" adversary is because other than his augmentation Khan is essentially Kirk's equal, in the sense that he's not a Greek God or a non-corporeal lifeform or a technological terror or a mutated human gifted with psionic abilities that Kirk can't hope to match.

It probably doesn't hurt that unlike most if not all of the other antagonists Kirk faced, Khan killed one of his best friends. It might be arguable that not since the death of Edith Keeler had we seen Kirk suffer this kind of loss.

Who knows what Khan and his fellow augments might have accomplished if their ambition had been focused toward serving all humanity rather than, in the end, themselves.

 

I guess I should have said "major" movie or "hit" movie.

 

His life might have been as full as any man's. If only..."

 

I guess I should have said "major" movie or "hit" movie.

Horner's music does a good job of pulling the viewer in and helping them feel the character's emotions without being too noticeable when it should not be.

In a way, Jerry Goldsmith's Star Trek scores are even more engaging, and the effect is, as a thesis I once read put it, that TMP is a "musical where nobody sings."

Interestingly, I find Horner's Star Trek scores can easily slip into the background of the story, but he is able to use very similar music in his cartoon scores, some of which are actual musicals.

It might be controversial to say, but if I were producing the 2009 movie, I would have sought out Horner for the score, and have him co-write a pop song that uses the same musical elements, assuming he could do his usual job of getting the balance between orchestral/romantic music and pop. Imagine if Star Trek had its own answer to "Somewhere Out There."

 

I guess technically it's Soran but a lot of people like to pretend Generations didn't happen so that doesn't count.

Aside from that Kirk had to give up the most to defeat him and pretty much was beaten by him until Spock decided to take one for the team. Kruge took the Enterprise and David from him, but I think Spock meant more to him than his ship or the son he didn't know about until a few weeks before. Also destroying the Enterprise was Kirk's choice to draw Kruge into a fight on the planet, he wasn't beaten yet, Khan pretty much had him by the balls at the end of ST II.

 

I don't want to take this discussion off topic, but regarding derivative sounding Trek scores from the same composer I can't resist posting this from Leonard Rosenman:

 

Nimoy insisted on Rosenman for Star Trek IV because they were personal friends. He tried but didn't yet have the clout to get Rosenman on Star Trek III. If Nimoy had his way though, that's possibly what Star Trek III would have sounded like.

 

IMO the Star Trek IV score sounds too upbeat for III.

 

Khan may not have been Kirk's greatest adversary in terms of having the most destructive potential. But he would have been Kirk's most epic adversary. A struggle between two titans that both took the fight personally.