CAPTAIN AMERICA BRAVE NEW WORLD (2025)

  

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

BRAVE NEW WORLD made me miss THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER. 

I found that MCU series deeply offensive with its reverse-racism (a new iteration of White Captain America must perforce be evil) and its championing of terrorism (if the rebels check the right boxes). However, at least FALCON made me angry. BRAVE was just boring.

Reputedly the script was reworked many times to make it less polarizing in a political sense. The touchups didn't help BRAVE's box office, which only made back about twice what the film cost. But it seems what the screenwriters sought to do, before the edits, was a more extreme version of the general scenario in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER. Instead of the hero confronting the excesses of the military-industrial complex, which got turned against the Americans who paid for it, this time Cap Falcon must go up against the excesses of a President steeped in duplicity and immoral conduct.

Yes, of course it's Trump, or the screenwriters' reframing of Trump into the established character of General Ross. The general was first established in live-action films in the HULK movies and initially portrayed by William Hurt, whose death forced a recasting in the form of Harrison Ford. The writers' fantasy-version of Trump is both emotionally unstable and a practiced criminal conspirator, and these contradictory traits are the characteristics they transplant onto the Ross character to serve a rather formless polemic. In previous appearances Ross was established as being a hardass military-man/politician, though hardly a master planner, but since becoming President of Marvel-Earth, he apparently ups his game. In the comics, Ross' life takes an ironic turn when he, like his perennial hulking nemesis, becomes the recipient of a gamma-curse, becoming "the Red Hulk" in 2008 (oddly, the same year as the second HULK feature film). I know little about the crimson goliath of the comics, but in BRAVE, I suppose Ross "Hulking out" is supposed to signify his temperamental inability to lead the country. 

To be sure, there's a loose explanation as to how Ross became an insidious master planner: he drew upon the talents of the one MCU villain whose evil career never got off the ground. The creation of "The Leader," a perennial Hulk antagonist in the comics, was only suggested at the end of INCREDIBLE HULK. However, at some point Ross got access to the man who would become the Leader, and had him incarcerated in a "black site," just so Ross could use Leader to guide his political career. However, Ross also developed heart failure-- as well as becoming estranged from his daughter, the woman who loved Bruce Banner-- and so The Leader started slipping his jailer medication that would bring out Ross' inner monster. This was really a good enough revenge by itself. But because the writers wanted to emulate WINTER SOLDIER, the Leader is also responsible for an absurd Rube Goldberg scheme that involves mental enslavement and the deaths of many people who never harmed the supervillain.        

Harrison Ford doesn't succeed in making Ross interesting, though I think he tried harder here than he did with his reprise of Han Solo in FORCE AWAKENS. Still, even though the intertwined destinies of Ross and The Leader don't offer much beyond cross-comparisons, that's more than any other character did. My biggest critique of Anthony Mackie's version of Captain America is not that it's bad because Original Cap Was White and Always Should Be. It's that he's not a Black character who has any clue about why he ought to represent America. As far as I can tell from this film and from the miniseries, America is just a big bundle of dirty laundry, and Sam Wilson's gonna be the guy who airs all the nasty odors, like the usual suspect of "systemic racism." Further, all the charm Mackie projected in the role of The Falcon is gone, replaced by a dour Black Captain who makes occasional lame jokes in between big serious speeches. Speechifying, by the way, is the way this Captain "defeats" Red Hulk. He pretty much has to, as the main hero has nothing capable of taking out such a monster. So why oppose the two in the first place? It's like the film's writers never read any of the comic books they're supposedly adapting.

I have no idea what the early script meant to do with the character who was somehow both a former Black Widow AND a Mossad agent, though the filmmakers did elide any Mossad references after certain groups didn't like them. Whatever they meant to do, she's dull, the "Falcon trainee" is dull, and "guy who was the super-soldier guinea-pig" is dull. Tim Blake Nelson, who also played the proto-Leader in INCREDIBLE HULK, does reasonably well projecting an implacable, icy hostility, but I for one didn't care about another story where the US is the bad guy and all the other countries (mostly Japan this time) are square shooters. The "brave new world" championed by these filmmakers seems to be one in which America and its worst representatives are prosecuted for all their crimes, but no one else is. But for such a world, "brave" is not the correct adjective. 

MONSTER ISLAND (2017)

 

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

I almost want to create a neologism for movies that look a lot like the once-celebrated Pixar brand of animated features-- "Pixar-rips," maybe. The Mexican-financed CGI flick MONSTER ISLAND has at least the general look of a Pixar film, as well as a comfortable sort of "be yourself" moral. Not surprisingly, ISLAND lacks the wit and distinctive design-sense in the better Pixars. Still, I've seen much worse in the realm of original kid-vid movies.

For once, the title's accurate in that most of the story takes place on the island. For the first half hour, middle-schooler Lucas lives with his widower-father Nicholas, coping with school bullies and flirty girls. Nicholas constantly badgers Lucas to regularly dose himself with a special inhaler, to stave off some "attacks" to which their family is vulnerable. However, when Lucas attends a party of his schoolmates without using his inhaler first, he's somewhat torqued to learn that without that chemical, he turns into a huge, winged orange monster. He manages to reach his dad, and Nicholas reveals that though he sacrificed his ability to change into a monster somehow, the rest of their family-- including Lucas' late mother-- dwell on a special island called Calvera. 

I suspect that director/co-writer Leopoldo Aguilar was not too concerned about his universe, for it's never clear to what extent the human world knows about Calvera, or if there's any connection to the multifarious types of creatures there with regular humans. Lucas manages to reach Calvera to learn more about the family he never knew, which includes his big orange grandmother and an uncle named Norcutt, who seems to be a "recessive" type of creature since he looks like an ordinary human. Every entity on Calvera, no matter his or her bizarre shape, wears clothes and lives in a peaceful city, and thus aren't really "monsters" except in the sense of not looking like human beings. Their only problem is that some mysterious malefactor has been kidnapping Calvera's citizens. Hmm-- who could it be? Could it be the one resident who feels as isolated from his people as Lucas did from his middle-school peers? 

          

 If ISLAND offered nothing beyond Lucas's struggle with his monstrous identity, or Nicholas' desire to protect him, the film would have earned only poor mythicity from me. However, I rather liked Norcutt, who's motivated by "monster envy" to the extent that he's been draining off something-or-other from captive Calverans. His purpose is to transform himself to a powerful, malicious entity-- in other words, what most people think of when they hear the word "monster." Monster-Norcutt is the movie's only reasonably well-designed critter, and though ISLAND is supposed to be a comedy, its best scene is a big battle in which Lucas and Nicholas, both of whom are in monster-form, contend with Norcutt and his two bulky henchmen. Otherwise, there's not much here, though as I said ISLAND at least looks better than a lot of cartoon kid-vid and would probably be reasonably satisfying to munchkins.  ISLAND apparently made enough dough that three years later that Aguilar made another cartoon feature, which despite the name of MONSTER ZONE, seems to have nothing to do with ISLAND.

X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, VOLUME TWO (1993-94)

 

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

Volume One of this series didn't confine itself to the show's Season One but added on three episodes from Season Two. Volume Two shows even greater impatience, adding a full seven Season Three episodes to the mix. This does allow the collection to conclude with an adaptation of a major comics storyline, The Phoenix Saga-- or at least the first half of it. 

Narratively speaking, Two features the same game, mixing old and new material to make the cartoons resemble the then-current comic books. But though there's no evident change in creative personnel, Season Two looks better. Perhaps succeeding in the ratings gave the second season a bigger budget, resulting in better animation for both drama and fight-scenes,

Notable moments include:

--The finish of a long plotline with Magneto and the Professor stuck in the Savage Land, beleaguered by a bunch of mutants Magneto created. Marvel heroes Ka-Zar and Shanna guest star.

--Wolverine gets a quickie origin and encounters the Canadian hero-team with whom he trained, Alpha Flight. So many heroes are jammed into one episode that what appeal the Alphans had in the comics is nullified here.

-- Though in my Season One review I doubted that the showrunners would delve into the intricacies of Rogue getting her powers from Ms. Marvel, they actually did a decent job with the conceit, though the plot is necessarily simplified and Ms. Marvel does not have an active role in the main story. Rogue's involved relationship with Mystique gets attention as well.

--Lady Deathstrike's origin is revised to make her an old Wolverine girlfriend, which adds nothing to this iteration of the character.

--And finally, the Phoenix Saga comes across well enough, though it skimps on Jean Grey's reaction to becoming a powerhouse and implies that her empowerment was part of some entity's scheme to protect a cosmic gateway. Cyclops' lost father Corsair appears but his paternity is not discussed.  

ELLA ENCHANTED (2004)

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

Wiki informs me that ELLA ENCHANTED is only a loose adaptation of its source novel, which I have not read. But though ELLA may be loose in one sense, in one sense this simple, tongue-in-cheek fantasy is tighter than two recent overbaked retreads of famous fantasies: 2024's WICKED PART ONE and 2025's SNOW WHITE. 

All three of these "magical-era fantasies" use fairytale-tropes to comment on perceived real-world injustices. The two later movies, though, construct sloppy scenarios, with WICKED imagining that Oz is "species-ist" towards its alleged talking-animal population, and SNOW supposing that its princess grows up in a non-hierarchical kingdom that would warm the heart of any Socialist. ELLA utilizes (but did not invent) an idea similar to that of WICKED, in that heroine Ella of Frell (Anne Hathaway) grows up in a world where human royalty has exiled most of the non-humans-- elves, ogres, and giants-- to the forests, if not turning them into abject slaves. There's no real depth to ELLA's politicized fairytale either, but since it only involves simple expropriation, the base scenario is not as stupid as those of WICKED and SNOW WHITE.

Ella also grows up more beleaguered than many fairytale heroines, for in a storyline derived from "Sleeping Beauty" and "Cinderella," Baby Ella receives a bad birth-gift from an extraordinarily stupid fairy godmother: that of obeying any verbal command. I don't know how the book justifies the godmother's whim, but the movie shrugs off any justification in order to get the story rolling. Ella manages to keep her vulnerability secret until she's a young woman, but when her mother dies, her father (barely a character in the film) remarries, saddling Ella with a cruel stepmother and two nasty stepsisters.

The script gets a lot of comical mileage out of Ella's predicament, but her wish to protest the marginalization of magical beings brings her into a meet-cute with the wryly named Prince Charmont (Hugh Dancy). She brings the injustices to the attention of the gullible, not-yet-crowned prince, and the script makes it eminently clear that all the bad stuff has been orchestrated by his evil uncle Edgar (an unrecognizable Cary Elwes). Ella is also occupied with a search for the addled godmother in the hope of getting the obedience-spell reversed. In the end, Ella is the one who figures out how to undo her compulsion, which was a fresh approach.

Ella also accrues various supporting characters, including a talking book and an elf who wants to be a lawyer (!), but the story's main romantic thread is always the focus, and the script manages a good balance of humor and drama. There are no established fairytale characters in the story, and characters frequently make anachronistic references, mostly to modern pop music. Ella is the sole eminence here, and a big concluding fight-scene demonstrates that for no clear reason Ella can both swordfight and do kung fu. ELLA isn't a deep film, but it executes its simple scenario with a decent sense of style and moderately amusing jokes.  

POOTIE TANG (2001)

 

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


The character of "Pootie Tang" first appeared in sketches on Chris Rock's HBO series of the late nineties, and later grew into a feature-film, written in part by Rock and directed by another comedian, Louis C.K., although the latter disavowed the final cut of the film.

I can't imagine what the final cut might've left out, for POOTIE TANG is, despite being utterly silly, fairly tight for a superhero spoof. Aside from a largely inconsequential frame-story, in which the protagonist is interviewed about his own movie, the story starts out with showing urban hero Pootie Tang (Lance Crouther) taking out a small gang of drug-dealers, led by the Pigpen-like gangsta "Dirry Dee." Pootie displays no well-defined super-powers, but he's able to dodge bullets purely by his smooth dance moves, or to deflect bullets with either his long braids or with the belt he wears, which he also uses to bludgeon hoods. It seems that the only thing Pootie can't do is to speak the English language, in that he constantly mixes English words with an undecipherable slang of his own creation-- though for the most part both white and black listeners seem to understand what he says.

Pootie is such an incredible media-phenomenon that kids everywhere love him, turning their backs on drugs and other temptations. This development enrages multi-conglomerate honcho Dick Lecter, because it affects the bottom line of his corrupt companies. Realizing that he can't take out the hero by force, he uses guile, in the form of a temptress named Ireenie (Jennifer Coolidge). Despite the fact that there's a good black woman who pines after the hero, Pootie lets himself be seduced by Ireenie, even though she does so in a singularly weird manner: accosting the noble fellow in a supermarket and both slapping and kicking him. Like Delilah before her, Ireenie learns the hero's secret weakness: take away the magic belt given Pootie by his father, and he loses all of his power. Lecter steals the belt, and Pootie loses his moral compass, signing a contract that allows Lecter to exploit his image without Pootie's consent. Finally, not having a Fortress of Solitude as a retreat, Pootie wanders out into some rural community, which leads to a handful of surprisingly mild redneck-jokes. Without giving away too much, suffice to say that Pootie Tang learns that his true powers stem not from the belt but from his inner "goodness," allowing him to regain his heroic stature and take down the villains.

I'm not sure if the protagonist's mangling of the English language was intended as a spoof of slang-language in general, but though this is the film's primary joke, happily it isn't the only one. Indeed, the best bit in the film appears when Pootie cuts a record which is entirely devoid of music or lyrics, but people still dance to it as if it were the hottest new track out there. As noted, most of the story derives from the Samson myth, though there's a curious, not-particularly-funny scene in which Pootie also plays Jesus, in that Pootie apparently brings a slain hoodlum back to life purely through the hero's agony over the man's death. It's an odd scene that doesn't have a function in the plot, but it's pleasing in its very peculiarity.

STARFORCE (2000)

  

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

Short review: STARFORCE, though weak in the plot department, is a much more serviceable example of a low-budget "space military" flick than nine-tenths of similar films in the same price range.

In yet another routine space-opera future, the ruling council of the united planets is protected by the Starforce, an elite cadre of test-tube bred soldiers. Space-pirates devastate the population of a colony world before being driven off by Starforce. One officer, Temetrian, crash-lands on the planet but the other Starforce soldiers don't find him right away. While stranded, Temetrian finds one survivor, a young boy named Zeb Lucene and protects the child until rescue comes. By that time, the soldier and the kid have bonded as surrogate father and son, and when Zed grows to maturity (and is played by Michael Bergin), Temetrian uses his clout to get Zed inducted into the Starforce, despite his not being genetically engineered. The first 15 minutes sets up a pretty good scenario re: Zed's need to prove himself despite opposition from his teammates.

However, then the plot proper begins, and that's where STARFORCE ceases to make sense. Zed is ordered to deliver medical supplies to a colony world, but his ship malfunctions so that he crashes. Back at Starforce, the absent Zed is accused of having stolen a ship, and his alleged orders are disavowed. So someone's got it in for Zed.

Zed survives the crash and is succored by Dahlia (Amy Weber), one of the denizens of the world-- which turns out to made up of criminals who had their sentences remitted for becoming colonists. However, apparently the authorities did a rotten job of surveying the planet, for the colonists have learned that their adopted world is rich in priceless tridium. The colonists have been debating the best way to profit from their discovery, but Zed has happened along just as some secret killer starts knocking off some of the residents.

There's no logic to why the murderous agent and his sponsors, a renegade unit of Starforce, needed Zed to be on the scene, except that there's no story if he's not there. However, if one can turn off one's awareness of the plot's failings and just focus on Zed and Dahlia fighting off nasty stormtroopers for the rest of the movie, STARFORCE provides tolerable diversion.

HONOR ROLL #305

 MICHAEL BERGIN: a Starforce of one.

For years LANCE CROUTHER had to explain that his movie wasn't about what it sounded like.

HUGH DANCY's a prince both charming and combative.

 Never pop the cherry of a JUBILEE.

No self-respecting monster would choose a name like LUCAS.

TIM BLAKE NELSON's the lead-ing light in a world both cowardly and hackneyed.