THE GRAND SUPERHERO OPERA

BEHIND THE MASK OF ZORRO (1965)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

BEHIND THE MASK OF ZORRO is a pleasant Zorro-pastiche. Like many of the Italian adventure-flicks cranked out in the 1960s, this one, directed by Ricardo Blasco, has a stylistic sameness about it, but it does deliver a few strong swordfight-scenes. Tony Russel, an actor of American birth (though he had Italian roots), puts across the requisite charm, and the production manages to work in more lovely ladies than the plot technically needs.

Though the plot follows the broad outlines of the Hollywood Zorro-films, the producers rang in some changes: the hero no longer sports the name Diego Vega, and instead of being a fey caballero, he's an apparently subservient valet who waits on the very people who are plundering California. (Did the producers fear the wrath of Disney, even though the Zorro teleseries had ended six years previous?) In the dubbed version I saw, the film's climax includes one memorable humorous moment: Zorro's assistants dress up like Russians (I forget why) and their spokesman speaks in gibberish that largely consists of Russian proper names piled atop one another.

MERLIN AND THE WAR OF THE DRAGONS (2008)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

I only glanced at a couple of IMDB reviews while checking specs on ths film's personnel, but I saw enough to make me wonder if any of those reviewers have ever seen a really bad movie. This DTV flick with the long-winded title-- henceforth abbreviated to WAR-- is just a competent but unexceptional formula effort, with decent if not exceptional performances. WAR's main point of interest is that it chooses to mine the Arthurian mythos at a point most such movies don't focus upon: the period during which Merlin was schooled in magic by a perceptor, and first gained access to the sword Excalibur, later to be bestowed upon Arthur.

In a 12th-century poem, it's established that Merlin was born of a mortal woman by her intercourse with an incubus, and later tutored in magic by a wizard named Blaise. WAR opens with the same basic situation. Rather than allowing Baby Merlin to be slain as demon-spawn, a wizard known only as "The Mage" (Jurgen Prochnow) adopts the child, and the infant is next seen as Teen Merlin (Simon Lloyd-Roberts). However, The Mage also adopts a second orphan, Vendiger (Joseph Stacey), and so the two orphans grow up as virtual brothers. Not surprisingly, the introduction of Vendiger supplies the movie with its villain, the bad seed who doesn't honor his adoptive father's teachings. He also lures Merlin into reading from their adoptive dad's magical book, and this sets up most of the future magical occurrences, including the titular "war of the dragons."

The Romans have recently withdrawn from Britain, so dozens of petty chieftains are vying for power, though we only see two, noble Vortigern (whose army includes the future father of Arthur, Uther Pendragon) and ignoble Hengest. (We also barely see much in the way of armies; it looks like both warlords have about ten soldiers under their respective commands.) Vendiger allies himself to Hengest, and displays his stolen magical spells by conjuring up a dragon with which to fight Vortigern.

The Mage backs Vortigern, but he also needs an edge, and that's Excalibur. He sends Teen Merlin to the sacred lake, where dwell two magical sisters, Nimue and Viviane. Both names occur in Arthurian lore, often as variant names for either the Lady of the Lake or a sorceress who beguiles Merlin. The Mage cautions Merlin, who is half-god, not to fall into the clutches of the fairy-folk. The young magus receives some ambiguous attentions from both sisters (who are, to be sure, the weakest actors in the movie), but no real threat manifests, and Merlin fetches Excalibur back to the battle front. In the meantime, though, Evil Vendiger kills The Mage, though he lives long enough to charge Merlin with stopping his bad brother for good.

The dragons look OK, but they don't really have a big impact on the story, which is really just about a Good Father, His Good Son, and His Bad Son. There's a very short scene with a female warrior who talks with Teen Merlin a bit, but no romantic arc appears either. Prochnow endows The Mage with a good gravitas despite the simplistic character.

TARZAN LORD OF THE JUNGLE (1976-79)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

Filmation Studio's TARZAN LORD OF THE JUNGLE enjoyed 36 episodes spread out over four seasons on CBS-TV. As of this writing, only Season 1, consisting of 16 half hour episodes, has been released to DVD. Yet somehow I feel confident in making a summary statement about the entire series--

TARZAN was to Filmation what JONNY QUEST was to Hanna-Barbera.

I refer not to the overall level of craft or to audience reception, but to my perception that the Filmation raconteurs pushed themselves far more than they ever had before (with adaptations like SUPERMAN and AQUAMAN) and certainly more than they would in future.

Of course, with a show produced for Saturday morning television, there was no way Filmation could include any of the visceral violence of Burroughs, even putting aside the company's budgetary limitations. But in lieu of fight scenes the producers used rotoscoping to lend a sense of pleasing grace to animals and to the ape-man himself.

There were other compromises. Though 1976 wasn't as afflicted with political correctness as current cartoons are today, LORD's producers evidently shared the same intuition that guided Disney's 1999 TARZAN: if you don't have any Black Africans in the stories, no one can complain about how they are depicted. But unlike the Disney version, Filmation's LORD compensates by having the ape-man run across assorted "lost races," though not nearly as many as Burroughs himself created. Thus the stories usually concern Tarzan meeting some sort of exotic society-- a race of ten-foot-tall giants, or one made up of antique Vikings, or knights in armor, or worshipers of a long-lived woolly mammoth. There's even a passing reference to the land of Opar, the lost kingdom Burroughs himself utilized most often.

My favorite episodes, though, are the two involving the lion-worshipers of Zandar ("Cathne" in Burroughs' TARZAN AND THE CITY OF GOLD). This was one of the author's best Tarzan books, and though of course the cartoon couldn't deal with any of the more mature elements, I appreciated that the animators did a great job designing Nemone, one of the many pagan queens who threw themselves at Tarzan's bare feet.

It's here that Burroughs' protagonist gets his first incarnation as "Tarzan, Eco Warrior." To Filmation's credit, the ape-man's love for his jungle kingdom-- which extends to having a strange rapport with animals other than apes-- comes across as heartfelt in the scripts, so that the ecological themes aren't intrusive. There are of course some weaker stories, which in my opinion tend to be the ones with SF-elements, particularly Tarzan's two close encounters with extraterrestrials.

It also helps that Tarzan uses most of the animal-names in the ERB glossary without stopping to explain any of them, and in place of the overly wacky chimp from the movies, Tarzan's main companion also hails from the books, the semi-cowardly monkey N'Kima. There's no Jane in the first season, nor any other romantic dalliances for Tarzan, but there are a number of female support-characters who are generally portrayed as possessing strong agency, maybe more than a lot of Burroughs heroines.

CIRCUITRY MAN (1990)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*

CIRCUITRY MAN is one of three films written by the sibling-team of Robert and Steven Lovy and directed by the latter brother. The two apparently continued to work in low-budget cinema in other capacities, and this is a shame, because their first collaboration stands as one of the better "cyberpunk noirs" in American science fiction.

A narrative crawl informs the viewer that in post-apocalyptic 2020, most of the surface world has been devastated and the remnants of humanity live in underground cities, where the last frontier is the human mind. That means that the various underworld cliques trade in such dubious commodities as computer chips meant to stimulate the brains of customers who "plug" into them. In underground Los Angeles, Lori (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) formerly worked as a bodyguard and smuggler for one gang, headed by the corpulent Juice (Lu Leonard). Lori left Juice's employ to sell fashion designs to whatever passes for legitimate society (never seen, to keep the budget low). But Lori makes the mistake of looking for love in the wrong place, and her bed-partner betrays her to Juice's henchman Yoyo (mannishly clad Barbara Alyn Woods). Yoyo drags Lori to meet Juice, who pressures Lori to accept a special commission, to transport a cache of computer chips cross-country to New York for a big score.

During negotiations, the cynical Lori meets Romero (like "Romeo") Danner (Jim Metzler), a "synthetic" normally employed as a "pleasure droid." Juice, being the sort of villain who boasts about previous misdeeds, tells Lori that she once manipulated Danner into being her runner on a job in order to liberate his girlfriend. The big catch: there is no girlfriend, only a programmed memory of one, downloaded into Danner's mind to make him tractable.

Lori needs a wheel-man to help her survive the underground catacombs connecting the various cities, and to avoid moving onto the surface, where humans can only survive with oxygen gear. The aggrieved young woman plays upon Danner's programmed fantasies so that he helps her, though clearly she's also intrigued with the handsome synthetic's rep as a man who can pleasure women. Unfortunately, rival crook Plughead (Vernon Wells) tries to hijack the chips, kills Juice (though she gets better later), and teams with Yoyo to knock off the two couriers.

Though the budget is low, the Lovys use a variety of clever production tricks to create the illusion of a future world. While being chased by Plughead-- so called because he has computer-jacks sprouting from his skull-- Lori and Danner start to bond as beleagured outsiders, and Lori becomes conflicted about using Danner for her own ends, just like Juice. The travelers meet a tunnel-rat, Leech (Dennis Christopher. providing wonky comedy relief), and he joins their band, being the only one who can provide oxygen tanks, with which to escape pursuit on the deadly surface.

There's also not a lot of budget for action FX. Lori, strangely nicknamed "the muscle bitch" even though she's not overly ripped, does a few basic fighting-moves against lowlife opponents, and at the conclusion Danner has a gun-duel with Plughead. But the focus is the love story, and though Lori is absent in the sequel, CIRCUITRY MAN is dramatically more satisfying than any dozen futuristic DTV flicks of the decade.

XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS: SEASON THREE (1996-97)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

Season Three begins the series of generally serious stories that fans term "The Rift." Had the entire season followed this theme, I would probably judge it as possessing good mythicity. However, the various comedic interludes keep the overall level merely at "fair." There's an increased emphasis on "subtext" in this season.

THE FURIES (G)-- The writers' reworking of the Orestes myth is considerably more successful than the second season's meretricious takes on the narratives of Ulysses and of the Athena-Poseidon quarrel. Ares persuades the Furies-- the judges of Greeks who commit sins against their families-- that Xena has failed to avenge the slaying of her father. The Furies strike Xena with madness, and though some of her distracted actions are humorous in nature, on the whole the warrior princess is tormented by her irrational urges. The master stroke in Ares' plan is that the slayer of Xena's estranged father, whom she barely remembers, was her mother. Thus, like Orestes, if Xena kills the slayer, she will still be consumed by the Furies' vengeance. But whereas Orestes's sin is purged by the gods in mythology, Xena must use what remains of her wits to out-think Ares, by accusing him, her former mentor, of being her real father. A commentary states that the writers thought of presenting Xena's hoax as the truth, but changed their minds because the "shared universe" already had a demigod hero. Ares makes a speech about how the only true victory is of those strong enough to "twist" reality to serve them, and his use of the phrase "beyond good and evil" suggests the usual bad reading of Nietzsche.

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT (F)-- Lucy Lawless gets to exercise her comic chops big-time in this reprise of "Groundhog Day." I find the XENA episode funnier than the movie, thanks in part to lots and lots of Joxer. There's a rather singular use of the phrase "seize the day."

THE DIRTY HALF-DOZEN (F)-- Gabrielle, whose good effects upon Xena's character are constantly touted, gets to see how "Bad Xena" changed six formerly ordinary individuals into career criminals. Xena recruits these half-dozen former followers for a vital mission. The heroines and their unruly allies must foil Ares' current plan to hurl the world into war by gifting a petty warlord, Agathon, with near-impenetrable metal armor for Agathon's soldiers. Comedy and drama intermingle as Xena and Gabrielle must ride herd on their aides, some of whom are perfectly willing to turn on their former benefactor. There's a minor theme thrown in, wherein Gabrielle wonders if her identity is innate or was forged by the influence of Xena, like the Half-Dozen. Katrina Hobbs, also on HERCULES, has a nice role as a man-hating hot babe.

THE DELIVERER (G)-- Were the allusions to the monotheism of Israel in the previous two seasons turn out to have been a setup by the writers and producers for this turn of events? The episode takes place at the time Julius Caesar has invaded an area of Gaul termed "Brittania." After Xena and Gabrielle rescue a mild-mannered slave named Krafstar, he gives every impression that the "One God" he worships is related to the Judeo-Christian faith. Xena, motivated by her grudge against Caesar, drags Gabrielle to Brittania with the goal of rendering aid to Caesar's enemy Boudicea (who ruled a tribe in eastern Britain, not Gaul). Ares tries to persuade Xena not to help the acolytes of the One God, trying to evoke her loyalty to Greek culture, but his arguments fall on deaf ears. Sure enough, Krafstar's true allegiance is to a demon-god, Dahak, and Dahak has selected Gabrielle as the innocent pawn he will impregnate, in order to have a half-mortal scion on Earth. Gabrielle's violation is in some sense made possible when she knowingly kills an acolyte in self-defense, giving up her "blood innocence"-- somewhat homologous with virginity, even though Gabrielle is not a virgin in the sexual sense. Xena can't prevent her friend being subverted by Dahak but she does destroy a demon-bodied Krafstar. The episode ends with the two women not yet aware of Gabrielle's supernatural violation.

GABRIELLE'S HOPE (G) -- It doesn't take long for the heroines to figure out that Gabrielle is now "in the family way." While trying to arrange passage back to Greece, the companions are harried by "banshees," who apparently have some investment in the fortunes of Dahak (even though in the previous episode Krafstar states that Dahak would wipe out all the "old gods"). Brittanian villagers condemn Gabrielle as a witch, but a strange contingent of knights renders some aid. These warriors are portrayed as symbolic anticipations of King Arthur's knights-- they even have a Round Table and a stone with a sword in it, which is presumably going to remain in place until Arthur is born a few centuries later. The demon-child comes to term quickly and is born, with yet more crypto-Christian symbolism, in a manger. Gabrielle names the girl-child Hope, but Hope is pure evil and kills a knight while she's still in swaddling clothes. Xena becomes convinced that the child must be slain, but Gabrielle hoaxes her friend by faking Hope's death. This gambit allowed the writers to suspend the demon-child plotline and give viewers a breather from the heavy drama that would dominate the arc's conclusion.

THE DEBT, PTS 1-2 (G)-- Xena must discharge a blood debt in the distant realm of Chin, and the more Gabrielle learns about the reasons, the more she dislikes hearing about the foul deeds of "Old Xena." Those deeds occur some time after the heroine's betrayal by Caesar, when she and her warlord-lover Borias led raiders into Chin. When Borias sought to forge a pact with either of the local petty rulers, Ming Tzu or Lao, Old Xena, despising the idea of peace, is rude to both Ming Tzu and his ten-year-old son Ming Tien, and then to Lao's emissay, his wife Lao Ma. Old Xena kidnaps Ming Tien for ransom, but Borias betrays her.

Lao Ma, not unlike M'Lila in DESTINY, intuits some greatness in Old Xena and rescues her from Ming Tzu. DEBT PART 1 features a scene one might call "lesbian-adjacent," since Lao Ma saves Old Xena from drowning with a little "mouth-to-mouth" oxygen. Current Xena doesn't precisely tell Gabrielle who she wants to avenge-- though it's not surprising that it's Lao Ma, slain by the new ruler Ming Tien-- but Gabrielle actually warns Ming Tien before Current Xena can kill him. This is also potentially a major move in the "subtext canon," since it can be deduced that on some level Gabrielle is jealous of the intensity of Current Xena's loyalty to a dead woman (lover?) PART II fills in some of the narrative blanks, showing that Old Xena converted young Mien Tien to evil by twisting his nature, just as Ares purportedly did with Xena. Significantly, Lao Ma's death is given Christian iconography, as the Chinese woman is sacrificed on a cross-altar, garbed in white and refusing to use her power to escape. In the end, Xena escapes Ming Tien's power, but lets Gabrielle think she spares the corrupt ruler, when in fact she covertly takes Ming Tien's life-- an act that will have repercussions in THE BITTER SUITE.

THE KING OF ASSASSINS (P)-- And boom, just like that, after four very heavily dramatic episodes, we're back to wacky comedy. Xena puts in a quick appearance at the opening and then doesn't come back until the last quarter of the episode. Gabrielle, Joxer, and "king of thieves" Autolycus must endeavor to stop Jett, Joxer's evil brother, from assassinating Queen Cleopatra. I can't say two Joxers were better than one.

WARRIOR... PRIESTESS... TRAMP (P)-- Yeah, four Xenas IS too many, even if Princess Diana sits this one out. This time Lucy Lawless plays warrior Xena, tramp Meg, and Hestian priestess Leah, a prissy-pants who judges any woman who's not a virgin. This time an evil schemer wants to use Meg to masquerade as Leah to bring about the slaughter of the Hestian priestesshood for some reason. Lawless created a lot of distinct toss-off characters on the show but Leah's not one of them. Good action scenes but no baby-juggling.

THE QUILL IS MIGHTIER... (P)-- Again Xena is absent for over half of the episode. Ares is pissed off about Gabrielle for some reason, so he manipulates Aphrodite into enchanting Gabrielle's scroll, so that everything written there becomes literal truth. There's quite a bit of building on the idea, established in COMEDY OF EROS, that Joxer secretly loves Gabrielle while she's utterly unaware of his feelings. Otherwise, lots of silly-pants goings-on.

MATERNAL INSTINCTS (G)-- "I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me."-- EXODUS 20.5.

It's not a jealous god, but mortal passions which end up costing the lives of children for the sin of the parents. In a curious inversion, though, Gabrielle's child perishes because of Xena (who brought about Gabrielle's impregnation by taking her to Britain for vengeance on Caesar) and Xena's dies because of Gabrielle (who allowed her demon-child to live, and so was responsible when Hope slew Solan).

Hope also frees Callisto from her prison, largely to keep Xena busy, though Callisto is also a "child sinned against," loosely created by the evil of Old Xena. Hope and her demon-father are not as dramatically vivid as Callisto, who finally gains the vengeance she desired against Xena, only to realize that her triumph is hollow. In addition, the episode still delivers lots of kick-ass action. Though this could have been a good finish for Callisto's first arc, she appears again at the season's conclusion.

THE BITTER SUITE (S)-- The density of the imagery here, mostly derived from the Tarot, makes this the only episode of a serial TV show whose mythicity I rate as not just good, but "superior." Because SUITE is so complex, I won't attempt to shove all that complexity into a paragraph or two here, but will just recommend some of the online studies of SUITE, as on the Xena-site WHOOSH. Just summarizing the plot-action then: the rage Xena and Gabrielle harbor for one another propels them into a world of musical fantasy, wherein they must work through their issues before they can return to the living world. The episode isn't perfect, but its most problematic aspect is that once the show hit this level of dramatic and mythopoeic intensity, almost everything else seems like weak tea by comparison.

ONE AGAINST AN ARMY (F)-- Xena not only has to stop an army of invading Persians, she has to worry about finding a cure for her poisoned partner Gabrielle. Excellent fight-scenes, though even the best choreography can't make probable the Warrior Princess defeating a full detachment of soldiers.

THE FORGIVEN (P)-- When the heroines seek to recover a priceless religious urn, their biggest headache is dealing with Tara, an obnoxious girl who wants to replace Gabrielle as Xena's sidekick. It has lots of catfights and "no such thing as a bad kid" dialogue, not much else.

KING CON (P)-- Joxer is severely beaten by the thugs of a casino owner, Titus. Xena and Gabrielle enlist the aid of two swindlers, seeking to fleece Titus of his riches with a "long con." Ted Raimi does one jokey routine at the beginning but spends the rest of the episode recovering from his injuries.

WHEN IN ROME (F)-- Xena takes a stand against Caesar again. However, instead of seeking pure vengeance on the Roman, she seeks to liberate Caesar's captive, the rebel hero Vercinix of Gaul, scheduled to be executed in Rome at the Circus Maximus. Xena and Gabrielle kidnap Crassus, one of the three lords with whom Caesar shares the rule of Rome, hoping that Caesar will prize his need of an ally over that of a rebel execution. Yet Xena knows how crafty Caesar is, and lays contingency plans. These plans don't keep her from having to fight armed horsemen in the arena (a throwback to countless gladiator movies). As a side-dish, Gabrielle, not having learned anything from her adventure in Chin, believes Crassus when he claims to be innocent of fomenting slaughter. Naturally, her childlike innocence is betrayed-- though this time, Gabrielle takes an action to make sure Crassus is punished.

FORGET ME NOT (F)-- In a story that would've been more apt coming right after BITTER SUITE, Gabrielle feels so tormented by her bad experiences that she seeks out the temple of the Goddess of Memory, to exorcise all of her poisonous recollections. Yet for some reason the sidekick's spirit goes on a quest to explore the evil memories, while Joxer takes charge of Gabrielle's body, fully functional except for lacking any sense of past events. While Joxer fantasizes about "re-programming" his crush to love him back, Gabrielle's spirit is hassled by a mental construct that looks like Ares. The comedy-section with Joxer is adequate, while the Big Reveal of Gabby's torment is predictable. She realizes she really wanted to punish Xena during THE DEBT because the young sidekick was jealous of Xena's regard for Lao Ma. Xena herself only has a few new scenes at the end, not counting a handful of clips from Gabrielle's "memories."

FINS, FEMMES, AND GEMS (P)-- Even for a wacky comedy episode, this one's all over the place. Aphrodite sends some goons to steal a mystic diamond, so the heroines, plus Joxer, give pursuit. The love-goddess zaps all three do-gooders with an "obsession-perfume," causing them to become obsessed with whatever was in their minds at the time. Gabrielle turns incredibly vain, Xena becomes a nut about fishing (particularly with the New Zealand variation called "kite-fishing"), and Joxer fluctuates between acting like a monkey or like Tarzan. The goals at stake are confusing and most of the slapstick is un-amusing. O'Connor's egomaniac act is nice though.

TSUNAMI (F)-- Xena and Gabby relive THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, sort of. When the heroines see their bud Autolycus on a ship taking convicts to an island prison, they intervene and get stuck on the ship. A tsunami strikes, turning the ship over and obliging the survivors to figure out some logical way to escape the slowly sinking vessel and to reach land. The dramatic arcs of the guest stars, including that of Autolycus, are forgettable.

VANISHING ACT (F)-- Now this is what the Autolycus character was meant for: heist stories. There's a golden statue, Pax, whose existence is crucial to the peace of several neighboring villages, and one night the statue goes missing. Xena and Gabrielle want to find the statue to preserve the peace, but so does Autolycus, because he fears that his fame as "King of Thieves" will be endangered by such a stellar rip-off. But to add a sop of altruism, the rival thief is also a villain who killed Autolycus' brother. Xena and Gabrielle both masquerade as buyers for the missing artifact, with Lawless delivering a fun over-the-top perf.

THE SACRIFICE PTS. 1-2 (G)-- Though the trope of "ultimate innocence births ultimate evil" is still strong enough to endow this two-parter with high mythicity, the script is extremely rushed and inconsistent with respect to character continuity.

X and G stumble across a sacrificial cult, whose main sacrifice is an old friend of Gabrielle's, Seraphina. The heroines witness the rebirth of Callisto, and at first think she's become the object of the cult's worship. But a reborn Hope (how? who knows?) is the true cynosure, and when enough sacrifices are heaped up to her, she will be able to admit her demon-father Dahak into the Earth-plane. All of this activity MAY stem from Ares making common cause with Dahak. He's apparently overcome his repugnance for the demon-lord's plan to obliterate the old gods, as long as he Ares survives, and he increases his worth to Dahak by coupling with Hope, who has now assumed the adult form of her mother Gabrielle. Supposedly Hope will then bring forth a demon army able to conquer Earth. The big question, though, is whether this time Gabrielle will make the right choice regarding her demon-daughter's survival-- which she does, though it leads to a cliffhanger conclusion for the season. In order to reduce the odds somewhat, Callisto has now become so beset by divine ennui that she desires oblivion more than anything, and when Hope doesn't deliver on her promise quickly enough, she switches to Xena's side. But, appearances to the contrary, all three vile villains survive to menace the world again in future seasons.

THE PREDATOR (2018)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

THE PREDATOR re-united two alumni of 1987's THE MONSTER SQUAD, and in the same basic positions: Black as director and as co-writer of the script with Fred Dekker.

Surprisingly, this thrill-ride of a movie isn't a reboot, but allegedly takes place between two previous sequels in the PREDATOR franchise, as well as loosely setting events for one or more additional "in between" stories.

Contra Martin Scorsese, I deem it no insult to call a film a "thrill-ride. That's primarily what the original PREDATOR was, not a deep and abiding insight into either an alien culture or into what I termed in my review "male-bonding culture." Indeed, PREDATOR 2.0 works in a fair amount of that culture, as I'll address shortly.

I frankly don't recall what movie introduced the notion that the Predator aliens sometimes raid Earth for human DNA samples. I thought most of the time they just wanted exotic trophies. But it's a very big part of 2.0 that the first of two Predators visits our fair planet for that purpose, so I'm assuming this is not a new trope to the franchise.

I rather liked the opening, in that there's no attempt to dance around the physical look of the visitor. in marked contrast to the first film, which scored points for leaving the Alien's Big Reveal for last. This particular Predator fails to count coup on his human quarry, though. Army Ranger McKenna (Boyd Holbrook), in the midst of a hostage rescue, knocks out the unruly alien and then atypically mails some of the creature's armor to his home in the States. Maybe McKenna anticipates the treatment he's going to get from his superiors, for although the government sends the Predator to a research institute, the same officials treat McKenna like a madman and send him to a happy farm with five other maladjusted soldiers.

Fortunately, before McKenna and his new PSTD buddies are shipped off the grounds of the institute, the Predator breaks loose from the lab, sparing only one scientist, Bracket (Olivia Munn). McKenna manages to wrangle the crazies and Bracket into allies as he hijacks a bus and speeds back to the house of his estranged wife. McKenna has learned that the armor he sent to his own residence has been re-routed to his former location, and he correctly fears that the freed extraterrestrial may endanger McKenna's wife and son. On the way Bracket reveals that the captive critter apparently had human DNA in his genes, though she doesn't know why.

There's a subplot about McKenna's son being an autistic who possesses a savant-like ability to understand Predator-tech; Shane Black got some blowback from this concept and it could have been dumped. The film's real focus is indeed the "male bonding" that takes place even between soldiers who barely know one another, and how they end up battling not McKenna's original sparring partner, but a second Predator who kills the first and then tries to erase all traces of his people's presence.

The putative motives of the inscrutable ETs never make a lot of sense, but Black and Dekker (heh) provide lots of good action scenes, and in this case I'm glad they didn't feel constrained to work a female soldier into the mix. 2.0 made decent money so the possibility of a sequel to this sequel seems strong.