THE GRAND SUPERHERO OPERA

THE DARK AVENGER (1990)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

I thought I knew all of the failed TV-pilots of the 20th century that involved superhero-like characters. Yet the Agents of Streaming managed to unearth this curiosity, which supposedly appeared the same year as Sam Raimi's theatrical DARKMAN.

In my DARKMAN review, I addressed an assortment of possible influences on that film. There's probably next to no information out there about the genesis of DARK AVENGER, though it wouldn't be surprising if the director and writer (both well-traveled TV talents, with the latter being the creator of the series HUNTER) just whipped AVENGER out in response to a general impression of DARKMAN, rather than with the intention of literal emulation. The titular Avenger (Leigh Lawson) is disfigured in a rather more mundane manner than Darkman, in that the Avenger has lost one arm and half of his face. In his vigilante identity he sports an artificial arm (complete with a taser-gimmick) and a half-mask over his scars, much like the Gerard Butler Phantom of the Opera. The Avenger unlike Darkman cherishes no hope of undoing his freakish appearance, and where Darkman leaves behind a bereaved girlfriend who believes him dead for a time, the Avenger leaves behind both a former wife and a little girl-child, both of whom continue to think him dead by movie's end.

Since AVENGER is a TV-film, it doesn't have the budget to indulge in the sort of hyperkinetic feats seen in the Raimi film. But since it's also less than 90 minutes long, writer Frank Lupo dispenses with any long recapitulation of the crusader's origin. Through the shadowy sentinel's dialogue with his tech-aide-- a smart-mouthed former lady crook named Rae (Maggie Han) -- we learn that the Avenger was once crusading judge Paul Cain, and that his gangland enemies ordered him knocked off. With Rae's help Cain survived, but since he no longer felt capable of living a normal life, he dedicated his existence to fighting crime. That said, on a couple of occasions he shows up at the house where his daughter lives, and leaves her a gift of flowers, just to feel some sense of connection. But that's about all the emotional tumult we get from this character.

The strongest scenes are at the beginning, when the Dark Avenger succors a woman being intimidated by a criminal gang holding her brother hostage. Director Guy Magar, who mostly did TV-episodes, does a nice job of building tension as the small clique of thugs are driven to distraction by the hero's Shadow-style spookiness. Then the rest of the flick becomes jumbled between an arc concerning the assassin who tried to kill Judge Cain, and an arc about a young man falsely accused of being a serial killer named the Grim Reaper. Even having just watched the movie, I couldn't even follow who the real Reaper was supposed to have been. The most impressive scene in the telefilm's latter half concerns the assassin, who suspects the Avenger's identity and so kidnaps Judge Cain's daughter. The hero saves his daughter, but she doesn't recognize him due to his mask and is grossed out by his forbidding appearance. Back at home and in bed that night, she fantasizes that the spirit of her dead father will protect her from "the monster."

I doubt AVENGER would have made a very good series, though Lawson and Han had decent chemistry. Robert Vaughn appears as a crime-boss in just one scene. Possibly the producers hoped that if the pilot engendered a series, they might have been able to sign him on as a regular in order to profit from his relative star-power. Lupo works in a number of superheroic references to The Lone Ranger, "atomic batteries to power," and (of all things) Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse.

KARZAN JUNGLE LORD (1972)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological, psychological*

KARZAN, as the name suggests, is just a routine Tarzan knockoff, though oddly for most of the running-time the hero remains somewhat on the defensive against a group of mercenary white hunters. The hunters' expedition-- made up of a bunch of barely distinguishable characters-- is waylaid by a tribe of Black Africans, who are ruled by a lithe-bodied queen. Karzan and his mate Shiran-- neither of whom can speak English, and who are implicitly both white castaways somehow raised in the jungle-- intervene to save the hunters.

Amusingly, Shiran is the first to attack the tribe, getting into a catfight with the African queen. (The director's best moment is including a shot of a tribesman grinning as he watches his queen rolling in the dust with the white girl.) Karzan then intervenes as well, using his jungle muscles to toss around other grown men. It's possible that Karzan's motives are not entirely altruistic, for he promptly takes possession of the group's only woman, taking both her and Shiran off into the wilds, leaving the other guys to free themselves. But the film isn't organized enough to get any dramatic mileage out of Karzan's apparent attempt at a menage-a-trois.

Despite Karzan's perhaps unworthy motives, the hunters are worse. They decide that they can make a fortune by taking the white savages prisoner for exhibition in the civilized world. From then on there ensues a seesaw battle: first the hunters have both Karzan and Shiran in captivity, then Karzan gets free and fights to free Shiran, then he's captured again, and so on. Finally, one of the white guys decides that they should let their captives go back to the jungle, and that's the end. The catfight is absolutely the only interesting scene in KARZAN, and that's largely because its purpose in titillating the audience is so transparent that it's funny.

HERCULES REBORN (2014)

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

I haven't seen most of the productions of the mockbuster studio known as The Asylum, but HERCULES REBORN-- which sought to profit from not one but two big-budget Hercules pictures that came out in 2014-- may be the best thing the company ever did. To be sure, REBORN is still no more than an adequate time-killer, but most Asylum titles, if they garner any fan-favor at all, do so only by becoming known as "so bad they're good."

It's never absolutely clear that the Hercules of this movie is the son of the heaven-ruling Zeus (though the hero says that he's the real thing). Certainly, this Hercules doesn't inhabit a world of magical (and expensive) monsters. In addition, this strongman (played by a wrestler billed under various names, John Hennigan being the one IMDB uses) doesn't perform any supernatural feats of strength. Yet REBORN earns some points at the start by adapting one of the most consequential stories in the joined canon of Greek Heracles and Roman Hercules: the story of how madness overtook the hero, causing him to slay his wife and children. REBORN opens with this scene, not too much less horrific even though the deaths are more suggested than shown. Some archaic stories blame the goddess Hera for this calamity, but director Nick Lyon foregrounds a human plotter, face unseen, who's evidently slipped Hercules a potion that made him go crazy.

The scene shifts in time and place, years later in a kingdom called "Enos" (possibly a misspelled reference to an archaic Greek city, "Aenus"). The young ruler of the city, Arius (Christian Oliver), anticipates about to wed his royal bride Theodora (Christina Wolfe). However, one of his allies, General Nikos (Dylan Vox), lusts after Theodora, and to gain the young beauty, Nikos betrays Arius and invades Enos with his forces. Theodora is captured but Arius and a small retinue escape.

Arius has no other allies to draw upon, but he happens to have heard tales that Hercules, Son of Zeus, has taken refuge in a neighboring town. Over the objections of his followers, Arius leads them to seek out the demigod. Though the process of hooking up with Hercules proves fairly tedious, inevitably Arius finds his quarry, who's been drinking himself into a stupor for the past few years, trying to forget what he did to his family. Just as inevitably, Hercules agrees to lend his uncanny might to Arius' cause, at least partly because the hero bears some grudge against the usurper Nikos.

The middle part of the film is fairly boring, since the two scriptwriters-- whose other projects I did not recognize-- don't use the trip back to Enos as any sort of bonding-time between the remorseful demigod and the young prince, desperate to rescue his lady love. The two heroes just more or less use one another for their separate ends, even though the astute viewer may well suspect that Hercules' grudge against Nikos will somehow tie into the mysterious malefactor who slipped the hero a madness-mickey. (The subtitling says that the evildoer got the madness-potion from "Hera," though the actor pronounces the name "Har-ra," and it's impossible to tell if this "Hera/Harra" is supposed to be the deity Hera or not.)

Though the script's characterizations are nothing special, REBORN also earns some points for its semblance of a gritty, primitive reality. The movie was filmed in Morocco, so that the settings look a little arid for Greece, yet they still carry a convincing Mediterranean vibe. More importantly, Lyon-- a director with several other Asylum-credits-- stages battle scenes that aren't shy about bloodletting, unlike a lot of comparable takes on Greek mythology. And though Lyon doesn't show Nikos having his way with his captive Theodora, the director makes it quite clear that the villain doesn't deny himself the pleasures of the young woman's body. Theodora also takes several knocks in the course of the film, though she does manage to escape prison by tricking and stabbing a guard.

Hennigan makes an okay Hercules, playing him as a fierce brute with glimmers of sentiment. Oliver as Arius gets to show more dimension, but in the end he's nothing but the sum of his parts. The only aspect of REBORN that justifies a fair mythicity rating is the way script and direction capture the sense of a rude, primitive society where life is often all too cheap. Because the movie doesn't depict any overt signs of magical phenomena, it doesn't qualify for the category I call "the reign of wizardry," which exclusively concerns magical-fantasy stories.

SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE (2012)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Before coming across the DTV movie, I'd never heard of the DC hero-team called "The Elite." The characters debuted in one of the Superman comics-titles, and some of them later migrated to a title called JUSTICE LEAGUE ELITE, into which I also never delved. When I saw a commentary that The Elite were meant to be DC's take on the popular Wildstorm group The Authority, I assumed that the characters by Joe Kelly-- who also scripted the DTV-- were meant to carry the same vibe of hip anomie.

Instead, to my happy surprise, SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE turned the usual "hipper than thou" narrative on its head. Said narrative has been brewing in the comics world since the so-called "British Invasion" of the eighties (which included both the writer and artist who created THE AUTHORITY), and its usual pattern was to make fun of the antiseptic ideals of Silver Age superheroes who never killed and refused to involve themselves in political conflicts. (I say "Silver Age" because the Golden Age originals weren't quite so above-it-all.) The Authority in particular was a group of raffish heroes out to remake the world as they wanted it to be.

I expected that SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE would follow that pattern, and in Kelly's DVD commentary he even talks about how much he enjoyed creating the disreputable personalities of the five Elite-members, though he admits that he toned their activities down in comparison to their comics-debut. To my surprise, ELITE turned the original pattern on its head.

Superman and his girl-reporter girlfriend-- who's in on his double ID in this iteration-- are tolerating the many disruptions characteristic of Metropolis, such as the rampage of a long-time malefactor, The Atomic Skull. On the international scene, violence is on the rise between neighboring nations Bialya and Pokolistan, and Superman intervenes when the latter country unleashes a number of huge bio-engineered monsters upon Bialyan soldiers. The Man of Steel receives aid from the four members of the Elite: Coldcast, Menagerie, The Hat, and Manchester Black, the leader. The first three characters are of minimal importance to the plot, inasmuch as the focus is upon the philosophical disagreement between Manchester Black and the spawn of Smallville.

Manchester is in many ways a typical anomie-hero: he was badly treated in his youth, and his vigilantism is motivated by a spirit of revenge. He often makes fun of Superman's supposed naivete, and when he and his fellows decide that they are going to become a supreme "authority" over the governments of Earth, it appears that Superman will simply have to slug it out with them to prove who's in the right.

Without spoiling the ending, the Man of Steel is for once allowed to use strategy in dealing with his opponents. And his strategy includes a hoax worthy of the best of Silver Age Superman's devious plots, but with much more impact. Though Manchester and his freaky friends are colorful and lively, the most memorable scenes in ELITE depict Superman apparently won over to the Elite's philosophy of "the end justifies the means."

Despite Manchester's defeat both in this DTV and in his comics-appearance, the character got a revival of sorts during the 2019-2020 season of SUPERGIRL. Given the Progressive focus of that series during the later years, it's not surprising that the writers had the stupidity to depict the vigilante as a righteous hero.

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK (2004)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

The Riddick franchise was birthed by the 2000 film PITCH BLACK, one year after THE MATRIX brought forth a somewhat similar about a science-fictional hero in a far future. The Wachowskis' hero was a basically sympathetic good guy, negotiating his way through alternate realities, though as the franchise developed, the hero's universe seemed more and more arbitrary. Director/co-scripter David Twohy also began his franchise with a strong opener, but he confined his trope-metaphors to a small selection (altruism vs. self-interest, animality vs. humanity). Yet CHRONICLES, the second live-action film to feature Vin Diesel essaying the murderer destined to save his universe, also fails to build on a strong first film.

PITCH BLACK had a simple but strong plotline: a seemingly ruthless criminal becomes the sole hope of a small band of crash-survivors, and by becoming their hero he's at least partly changed. An interstitial animated film, DARK FURY, merely accounts for what immediately happened to Riddick and the last two persons to escape the Pitch-Black Planet; it doesn't extend any of the three protagonists but merely sets up the events of CHRONICLES.

CHRONICLES makes a clumsy effort to build its story from Riddick's emotional ties to his fellow survivors. To keep from endangering them, he distances himself from the Muslim holy man Iman (Keith David) and the young woman who supposedly thinks of him as a "big brother," Jack-renamed-as-Kyra (Alexa Davalos, replacing the performer from PITCH BLACK). This possibly selfless act has one bad consequence: Kyra goes looking for Riddick and is confined to a "slam" (future-world jail).

Riddick does not know this until he finds himself pursued by a gang of bounty hunters, led by a malefactor named Tombs. Tombs reveals that the bounty was set by the Imam, so Riddick, feeling not a little betrayed, seeks out the alleged holy man. It's soon revealed that Imam's bounty was designed to bring Riddick close enough for the revelation that, as the "Last Furyan" (a particular planetary people), the hard-ass fugitive is the only "evil" that can defeat a greater evil.

When I wonder why I didn't like CHRONICLES better-- despite lots of good costumes, decent FX and splashy action-sequences-- the reason comes down to the uninteresting threat of the Necromongers. This race of humanoid aliens, whom I assume are unrelated to Earth-people, worship the concept of bringing widespread death to the universe. Their theory is that the extinguishing of all life will allow them to access a mystical dimension, the UnderVerse-- all of which sounds like a rejected concept for a JUDGE DREDD story. Because the Necromongers as a movement are boring and one-dimensional, there's nothing compelling about their leader, "The Lord Marshal," or any of his subordinates, such as Lord Varro and his scheming wife Lady Varro. Riddick faces some other raffish opponents as well, and they're also forgettable, though the hero does give one thug the humiliating demise of "death by teacup."

The subplot about Riddick having survived a "death of innocents" oriented on eliminating him as a future opponent is no more impressive. Riddick's confrontation with the alienated Kyra offers a few dramatic beats, but on the whole Twohy, who was solely credited for a Riddick script for the first time, muffs this potential too. The ending tries for tragedy and ends up with mere portentousness. Despite the fact that CHRONICLES underperformed, the franchise got another iteration in 2013's RIDDICK, which I will probably review in the near future.

2025 ARMAGEDDON (2022)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

Ding, ding, ding, we have a new winner for worst film-- or, maybe just "worst SF film," since the previous award-holder, KOMODO VS COBRA, belonged to that category-- and KOMODO at least offered nice Hawaiian location shots.

Most films from The Asylum are at least forthright about what ideas they're swiping. But for 2025, the writers ripped off 2015's PIXELS, which was about some really dumb aliens mistaking video-game broadcasts for an interstellar attack. This time, the dumb aliens somehow get tuned into only one category of streaming broadcasts, those from The Asylum backlist. The 2025 aliens react the same way as those of PIXELS, by making duplicates of the "weapons" and unleashing them on Earth. However, just to show that the 2025 writers couldn't even steal well, toward the movie's end they throw in some cockamamie claim about the ETs wanting to breed with humans once they overthrow the planet.

Other Asylum films also sometimes toss in three or four familiar-face performers for spice, but 2025 contents itself with Michael Pare as President of our beleaguered world. He's not the star, though: that position is shared by two adult sisters who end up figuring out what the aliens are doing based on their (ha ha) enduring love for Asylum movies.

Once again, it's hard to judge if the two young leads have any acting ability, because both the script and direction work against them constantly. Lindsey Wilson is a scientist and Jhey Castles is a Navy lieutenant, and we're constantly told that at some point the two women became estranged-- but the genius writers couldn't even be bothered to specify what their quarrel was.

So when the viewer isn't being bored with pedestrian dramatics, he has to look sharp to catch sight of the various doppelgangers of Asylum critters like Megashark, Crocosaurus and the Transmorphers, because most of them are barely on screen for two minutes. As with PIXELS, all of these mock-ups of mockbuster monsters don't count as crossovers, because they're not even close to being the real thing. The film just barely edges into the combative mode in that the Castles character commandeers a giant robot and fights some sort of amalgam-monster toward the end.

Since PIXELS wasn't any sort of brilliant notion, there's no reason the Asylum hacks couldn't have had some fun with the absurd concept. But the writers' idea of humor comes down to name-checking such Asylum obscurities as BACHELOR PARTY (not the one with Tom Hanks) and AQUARIUM OF THE DEAD.