The Symmetry of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

It’s been more than a year since my last Cinematic Chiasmus. But you know what? Christmas is coming early this year because I am offering another amazing example of Cinematic Chiasmus right now.

If you’re unfamiliar with this concept, a chiasmus is a storytelling technique that reveals parts of a story in one order in the first half and then reverses the order in the second half. So everything that happens in the first half gets repeated, just in the opposite order, in the second half. It’s quite beautiful to behold once you realize it’s happening, and it deepens the meaning of already-great films.

And this brings me to Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. It’s unique among Star Trek films because it shows the aftermath of the previous film and sets the stage for its sequel, so it has quite a few dangling plot threads at…