KHHHHAAAAAAAAN! How I Remember Ricardo Montalbán
To me, Montalbán will always be Khan, but this actor had a rich and varied career throughout his 60-plus years in Hollywood. Born in Mexico City, Montalbán worked hard to 
breakthrough being stereotyped, but in Hollywood, in that day and age, an ethnic actor found his parts somewhat limiting. He played Native American and Asia characters in productions like Across the Wide Missouri and Sayonara, respectively. He was a regular work-a-day actor trying to carve out his niche like so many others the plug away at the Hollywood machine. But it’s interesting to point out that Montalbán went big time, with his two most famous projects, at almost the exact same time.
As a dumb kid that just couldn’t get past anything that was old, I of course had more of an affinity for the Star Trek movies than the 1960s series that they were based upon. They were cool, with special effects from the same guys that worked on Star Wars, not old looking with effects shots I could duplicate on my own with a few toys and a black tarp. So it is here we begin with the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The sequel to Star Trek The Motion Picture for which the goal in production was two fold, make it better and make it cheap. Producer Harve Bennett revisited the 79 original series episodes and found what he was looking for in episode #22: a villain. And his name was Khan.
Now what’s interesting is that when you count it up minute-by-minute, Montalbán actually isn’t in STII all that much. In fact, if I would say, his total screen time probably comes out to about 15 minutes at best. But don’t think that Montalbán didn’t notice either. He revealed later in an interview that when he was approached to reprise the role of Khan, he was initially unsure about signing on to Wrath. After all, he was starring in a successful TV series at the time so he didn’t need the exposure. A colleague pointed out to him though, that whenever his character wasn’t on screen, the other characters were talking about him. Montalbán said that he learned an important lesson: an actor should never count pages.
But what few lines Khan gets are possibly some of the best lines a Star Trek character has ever spoke. Montalbán’s smooth, cool Latin voice, that once exalted the virtues of car seat leather, was turned venomous, spiteful and filled with hatred. His opportunity for revenge had arrived after 20 long years in exile with nothing to do but dream of it. He’s not excited or anxious about his revenge, but instead he’s confident. He relishes it like a hungry man looking forward to a good meal. When one of his followers tries to talk him out of revenge against Admiral Kirk, and simply taking their captured ship and departing for parts unknown, Khan will have none of it. He says, “I'll chase him round the moons of Nibia and round the Antares maelstrom and round perdition's flames before I give him up.” Dark, but poetic.
And speaking of poetic, Khan shortly there after quotes an old French proverb and paraphrases, “Do you know the Klingon proverb that tells us revenge is a dish that is best served cold? It is very cold in space.” Montalbán said that the key to a good villain is that they do villainous things while always considering themselves to be doing right. Khan genuinely feels wronged as if he were an innocent. He was a dictator on Earth driven by the belief that being genetically-enhanced made him better, superior, and that he had the right to rule. Never mind the fact of the war he fought, or that when he was awoken on the Starship Enterprise 200 years after abandoning Earth, he tried to take over there too.
Khan believes wholeheartedly that he’s the victim, and that he’s justified in getting his measure of vengeance on Kirk. “I've done far worse than kill you,” he explains to Kirk following the disastrous, initial battle, “I've hurt you. And I wish to go on... hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me, as you left her. Marooned for all eternity, in the center of a dead planet. Buried alive... buried alive.”
The her, of course, is Khan’s wife Marla McGivers (Madlyn Rhue), a historian that served on the Enterprise in Khan’s introductory episode “Space Seed.” She opted to be exiled with Khan, and was killed by one of the planet’s indigenous life-forms. Naturally, it’s not the exile or the offense that drives Khan’s revenge, but rather it’s a more personal type of payback he’s after. Like Melville’s Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, Khan is man driven in the pursuit of vengeance to the point where he accepts that his own death, and the death of all his people, might be the price to be paid in the achievement of his mission. Khan’s last lines are taken from Moby Dick: “No. No, you can't get away. From hell's heart, I stab at thee. For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.” That’s how you check out as a villain: bitter resentment.
This is why Khan resonates as a villain; his motives are simple, but he makes them seem complex. He disguises his personal desire for revenge in the fabric of gaining more power for his people by capturing the Genesis Device, even though that, in its way, is another F-You to Kirk since one of the scientists that built it was his son. It’s said that everybody gets 15 minutes of fame. So, in a way, 15 minutes could seem like a lifetime. In the total Star Trek cannon, which is made up of over 700 hours of television in 5 series and 20 hours across 10 films; Montalbán’s contributions amount to only three hours. But Khan is the villain every bad guy wants to be. He stood out; he was a contender. And that’s all thanks to the talent, the excitement, the charisma and the machismo brought by one actor.
And speaking of machismo, let it be laid to rest that Montalbán’s ample musculature in Wrath of Khan was his own. Yes, he was in his 60s, but many sources confirm that Montalbán was a fitness buff that liked to stay in great shape. Needless to say that the confusion was understandable since a Montalbán in his 60s was more fit than the average Trek nerd, but that’s the way it seemed to be, I’m afraid. But Montalbán’s lasting legacy wasn’t that he knew how to hit the gym, but that he knew how to hit you with the right role. Most actors just dream of the role of a lifetime, but Montalbán actually got it and he built it into an iconic role still cited as one of the best in sci-fi, cinema history.
Ricardo Montalbán: 1920-2009. He will be missed.
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