THE GRAND SUPERHERO OPERA

AQUAMAN (2006)

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

I don't know which of the many reboots of the AQUAMAN comics-franchise influenced this unsuccessful pilot for a WB teleseries, but it follows many of the same beats as the popular 2018 feature film. Again we see the hero first as a small child, living amidst surface-dwelling humans with his mother and father, only to have his mother stolen from him by mysterious sea-dwellers. Then, after growing to adulthood with his father as confidante, the hero learns that his mother was a native of sunken Atlantis, and that the Atlanteans are coming back to give him grief. The pilot's biggest change from that template is that this version of Arthur "Aquaman" Curry (Justin Hartley) isn't the product of a mer-woman and a surface-dweller; Arthur's paternal unit adopts Little Arthur and marries his mother after finding them drifting in the ocean.

It's not clear, within the limits of a forty-minute pilot, why Atlanteans start messing in Mature Arthur's life after leaving him alone for roughly fifteen years, but there are both good water-breathers (Ving Rhames) and bad ones called "sirens" who can morph into claw-handed demons (Adrianne Palicki). But the script, by SMALLVILLE's showrunners Michael Millar and Alfred Gough, certainly piles on lots of subplots for development in the ongoing series that didn't happen. Arthur and his dad live in the Florida Keys, just a stone's throw from the mysterious Bermuda Triangle, somehow tied into the underwater city of Atlantis (never seen). There's a government agent investigating the recrudescence of Atlanteans, and a female Navy pilot who ends up "racing" her plane against Arthur, swimming below her in the sea like a human torpedo. A Navy man is found sixty years after he disappeared, but he hasn't aged-- though he doesn't get any older, thanks to an Atlantean assassin. Arthur barely has time to suss out any of these impending plot-threads, but he does get to slay the evil siren who maybe kidnapped his mother.

In addition to some engaging plotlines, the pilot provided a few nice visual moments showing the wonders of the ocean, albeit on a TV budget. Probably this would have made a good show, certainly better than many of the abortions brought into imperfect life after the WB channel merged with the UPN and begot the horror that was the CW.

DAIGORO VS. GOLIATH (1972)

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

I consider this the first "kaiju comedy" feature film. I've heard some critics assign that distinction to KING KONG VS. GODZILLA, but though I've never seen the original Japanese cut, KKVG isn't structured like a comedy, which requires a lot more overt jokes than even an American distributor could have possibly removed.

DAIGORO was a reworking of a failed (and ostensibly serious) Godzilla project, which was to have been a collaboration between Godzilla's studio Toho and the special effects company Tsurabaya. Once the Big G was off the table, the producers shifted gears toward a comedy for small children, quite as if someone said, "Well, if we can't use Godzilla, let's do our own version of the Son of Godzilla, but make him even dorkier." Indeed, the hippo-like visage of Daigoro, a "kid kaiju" like Minilla, seems to be a joke in its own right.

Unlike Minilla, Daigoro is dependent upon human beings for parental guidance. His mother was a subterranean creature awakened by nuclear tests, and after she ravaged Japan, the military killed her. However, she left behind Baby Daigoro. One might expect the government to take charge of the infant kaiju, whether for study or weaponization-- but this would have deprived the kid-audience of the nuclear-family experience. So the government allows one private individual, an inventor named Goro, to adopt Daigoro and keep him on an island. Trouble is. Goro has to pay for the kid-monster's upkeep, and his only way of doing so is to enter Japanese contests for wacky new inventions. However, Daigoro eventually gets to prove his mettle when a more destructive giant monster, dubbed Goliath, descends to Earth and begins tearing things up.

Though most adults will get little out of the humor here, it's at least palatable if one thinks of kids seeing such jokes for the first time. It's at least lively, not repeating the same jokes the way some Gamera-flicks did, and the weird end-scene with the genial kaiju availing himself of a giant privy has to be seen to be believed. The combative action between the giant monsters wasn't much better than that of a SyFy critter-flick. There's an ecology lecture about how human misuse of the biosphere has weakened the atmosphere, thus making it easier for meteors-- and monsters named Goliath-- to descend and wreak destruction.

The one element that's not totally aimed at kids is Goro's niece Yoshiko. She's of marriageable age, but her uncle's reputation is so bad that every arranged marriage she explores falls through. This is an odd side-plot for a kids' movie, especially since it doesn't affect the main plot, though she manages some sort of hookup at the end. Maybe the writers just thought kids of both genders could identify with having to listen to the complaints of older sisters.

MANTIS FIST AND TIGER CLAWS OF SHAOLIN (1977)

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I think I've found my new favorite "crazy-fu" film in this one.

First things first: though there are several characters who utilize kung fu-- the hero, the villains, and all the villains' minions-- there's no mention of anything to do with the Shaolin Temple. There's also no great focus on animal-styles of fighting. "Tiger claw" techniques are verbally referenced once during a battle, and there's no mention of "mantis fist." The film does begin with an odd little lecture in which a narrator talks about the carnivorous nature of the real bugs while two cartoon mantises copulate, and then the female bites off the male's head. Even more oddly, this ends up being relevant to what initially looks like just another quarrel between a noble hero and some rapacious (emphasis on the "rape") villains.

Pai (John Cheung) stops in a tavern for a drink. He sees waitress Shuang (Sarina Sai) getting harassed by the son of a powerful local family, the Hungs, who has a small gang of minions. Pai's superior skills drive off the Hung faction, but as Pai leaves, he mentions to the grateful Shuang that his next destination is the local "orchid house." Later Shuang learns that Pai's motives there are noble as well. At some point in the past, Pai's sister Yu was abducted and sold to a whorehouse (possibly by the Hung family), and Pai has gathered enough money to buy her contract and liberate Yu.

However, things go from bad to worse for Shuang. Despite a local's warning that women often get abducted in these parts, she wanders into the forest, and the guys from the tavern assault her. They leave her behind afterward, but before they get home they're attacked by some unseen entity who hurls bamboo shoots at them, either impaling or killing them in other ways. In jig time, the Hung Patriarch (Dean Shek) learns of his son's death and decides that he must have been killed by this interloper Pai. Pai's efforts to free his sister are complicated when he's attacked by Hung and his other two sons at the whorehouse. One of the sons has a highly original weapon: a false hump on his back that can sprout metal spikes like a cartoon porcupine.

Pai suffers some damage from the massed attack and takes refuge at Shuang's tavern. Once Shuang learns of Pai's true purpose, she masquerades as a male customer and spirits Yu away from the house of ill repute. The three of them leave town, but another of the Hung boys, along with some henchmen, attack the good guys in the forest. Yu is killed, and though Pai escapes, Hung-son #2 has Shuang taken to his place of residence, where he does unto her just as his dead brother did. Then he apparently leaves Shuang confined to a room, ventures into the forest with the minions, and most of them get killed by nooses that whip out of the trees.

This misfortune does nothing to deter Hung-son #3-- the one with the spiky hunchback-- from raping Shuang too. (This includes a really weird scene where he rotates on his spike-hump while having intercourse with Shuang.) However, the last son meets his fate at home, killed by an assailant seen only as two huge mantis-arms.

None of these events keep the elder Hung from obsessively tracking down Pai. The two have a good long battle, which Hung loses. Pai recovers Shuang and marries her. However, a friend of Pai's belatedly learns of a skeleton in the Shuang family's closet. It seems that her mother was impregnated by a mantis (it's not even specified to be a mantis-god or anything), and as a result Shuang is half-mantis. When Pai attempts to celebrate his nuptials, Shuang turns into a mantis-monster, in this case a normal-sized woman with claws and an insect-head. Shuang is killed and spared from any further rampages, though Pai's not exactly a happy camper either.

Hong Kong kung fu films are not exactly anyone's first choice for examining sexual politics. Still, the writer-directors of MANTIS seem to be unusually preoccupied with the disposition of women due to the physical power differential. Women can be raped, abducted and sold to brothels, or even impregnated by mantises, and there's not a lot they can do about it. Pai brings about some retribution by fighting the Hungs. Still, his main concern is his sister, so he might not have ended up battling the Elder Hung had it not been for Shuang taking vengeance upon her rapists. She has to become a monster to accomplish this, though apparently her transformations are unconscious. There's no indication that she remembers her experiences as a mantis-creature, though the writers cheat a little, having her kill off some of her attackers with the use of unusual weapons.

Shuang and Yu perish, though Pai doesn't exactly end up in a good place either. But I can't claim that the two creators-- most of whose works I've not seen-- intended to make any statement beyond grabbing the public with an arresting story.

EL ROJO (1966)

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

The "fair mythicity" rating on EL ROJO isn't at all for the generally routine spaghetti-western plot, but for an assortment of odd little touches writer-director Leopoldo Savona throws into the mix.

We open on the scene of a wagon-train family arriving at the site of their newly acquired land, where they intend to work a gold mine. Then everyone in the family gets shot dead by arrows-- yet we don't see any marauding Indians about. Years later, four stalwart citizens of a nearby town are celebrating how rich they are before the admiring townfolk. Then a mysterious arrow is shot from an unknown Indian assailant, just missing the luminaries-- all on the very same day that a laconic stranger named Joe (Richard Harrison) arrives in town. Can there be a connection between all of these events?

No surprises here: the four rich guys-- Navarro, Wallace, Laskey and Ortega-- made their riches by killing off the family of goldminers and then by acquiring their mine. However, one member of the family wasn't there to be slaughtered, and it's the laconic stranger named Joe, who's looking for revenge. The Indian sniper, who has no lines in the picture, witnessed the slaughter of the family. Maybe the association of their bloody deaths is why Joe is called "Rojo" just once-- not counting a very oblique reference at the movie's end.

Though Joe has four obnoxious targets for his revenge-- one of whom, Laskey, married a local girl, Consuelo, who was apparently Joe's girl at some time-- director Savona doesn't play up the action/violence scenes as one might expect of a 1966 spaghetti western. Yet ROJO does maintain a curious offbeat charm in some little details Savona throws in. On a couple of occasions, Joe offers cubes of sugar to acquaintances and never explains where he picked up this habit. During one of Joe's revenge-plots, an accomplice-- also a patent-medicine peddler-- sets up a means of distracting the town by offering to burn the Devil in effigy, an odd ritual that the locals immediately embrace. Joe snipes at Consuelo for having sold her soul to one of the rich guys, and the script seems to agree with Joe, for unlike the majority of spaghetti-heroines Consuelo bites the dust.

However, the oddest thing in ROJO is also the only element that makes the film an uncanny western. At one point, a gunhawk comes to town, wearing a black mask over the lower part of his face-- except once, when he removes the scarf and displays an extensive scar that would do Jonah Hex proud. One assumes that one of the villains summoned the outlaw, not least because he's billed as "Nero Burt"-- in English, "Black Bart." Yet Bart (Angelo Boscariol) doesn't make any moves on Rojo. Then, near the movie's end, when Joe has wiped out the last enemy, Bart shows up and utters some cryptic line to Joe about how "the red and the black are together at last." Then the movie just ends, implying-- possibly-- some equivalence between the righteous vengeance-seeker and the Man in Black.

Savona directed four or five westerns I've not seen, some period historicals and one horror movie with the wild-sounding title, "Byleth the Demon of Incest." I may check out other sagebrush sagas in Savona's ouevre to see if any of them are as oddball as ROJO.

ONE PIECE: GOLD (2016)

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

A Marxist critic would probably view GOLD as a commentary on the corrosive power of the cash nexus upon human beings. I doubt that the writer had anything ideological in mind when he invented the villain Gild Tesoro (roughly, "golden treasure"), but one could certainly argue that he's one of many evildoers who seeks to hold a godlike control over his subjects, and even explicitly calls himself a god three or four times.

Gild Tesoro manages Gran Tesoro, a mammoth ship that hosts its own Vegas-like community, entirely organized around the activities of his casino. The Straw Hat Pirates initially view the city-at-sea as a beguiling place of fun and adventure, and they even show off their powers by kicking the asses of some sore-loser pirates who try to rob the casino. Tesoro's lovely henchwoman Baccarat then invites the Straw Hats to enjoy the gambling activities and extends to them a munificent line of credit. However, Baccarat also possesses "luck-luck" powers, and she messes with Luffy's luck to cause the Straw Hats to lose all their credits, putting them in debt to Gran Tesoro.

Tesoro himself is the epitome of the "gladhander" villain: the type who pretends to offer everyone a good time. In truth one of the evildoer's showy stunts is to shower newcomers with gold dust-- dust with which he can then control them, thanks to his "gold-gold power." Everyone, except perhaps Tesoro's henchmen and casino guards, become Tesoro's slaves as soon as they enter the city, and that includes the hero-pirates. To provide his customers with "bread and circuses," he contrives a game to challenge the Hats to absolve their debts before Tesoro executes Zoro.

The Straw Hats get some timely assistance from a more landbound type of pirate: professional thief Carina. She's also an old acquaintance of Nami, who has her own larcenous past, and the joined allies try to heist the vast treasures of Gran Tesoro in order to ransom Zoro. Happily, the script doesn't allow the heroes to waste time in a reprise of "Ocean's Eleven," but instead finds a clever way to counteract Tesoro's gold-controlling power. In the big splashy climax, Luffy squares off against Tesoro, Zoro against a big goon, and Baccarat is taken down by three of the generally weaker members of the crew: Usopp, Chopper and Brooke. There's a belated flashback to Tesoro's early life, showing how he became attached to the idea of gaining gold and owning people, but it doesn't make him any more sympathetic, in contrast to Zephyr from the Z movie.

Curiously, though, all of the online sources credit the script to one Tsutomu Kuroiwa, the credits for GOLD assert that the film was based on an original story by series-creator Eichiro Oda. In addition, the brief appearance of a character called Spandam, a villain from an unrelated manga-arc, makes GOLD an example of a villain-crossover.

X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, VOLUME FOUR (1995-96)

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

One odd note about Volume 4 is that although it doesn't contain all the episodes attributed to "Season 4," at least this time every episode on the discs came FROM Season 4. That said, a few had already appeared on the Volume Three collection, and there's at least one Season 4 tale that I assume will show up on Volume Five.

That said, the selections for Four are the same mixed bag seen in earlier volumes. "Proteus" is, despite cast-changes, one of the show's closest emulations of a Claremont-Byrne story, and it even succeeds in putting across some of that tale's horrific tonality. One, "Sanctuary," was based on a story I'd not read, but it was tolerable, while "Lotus and Steel" is a complete reworking of the history of Wolverine's occasional opponent Silver Samurai, with mediocre results.

An event of sorts takes place in that Cyclops and Marvel Girl are finally married, with less folderol than in the comics. That said, the wedding gets lost in yet another of the time-wasting time-travel stories to which the showrunners seemed addicted. Cable, Bishop, Apocalypse and Mister Sinister get four episodes devoted to a forgettable outing. The storyline was intended to conclude the series, but if nothing else, the fifth season deprived this mediocrity of that distinction.

Strangely, the showrunners devote just one episode to disclosing Magneto's paternity of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. While I don't fault the adaptors for not translating the many continuity-nuggets from "The Yesterday Quest," at this point the show had only briefly introduced Quicksilver in one episode, as a member of an off-brand version of X-Factor. Then suddenly everyone in the story knows both Quicksilver and his sister Scarlet Witch, and Wolverine provides the X-hero connection while the two siblings encounter both Daddy Magneto and a fanatical version of the High Evolutionary. Niggles aside, it's still a better story than most of those on Volume Four.