THE GRAND SUPERHERO OPERA

SUPERMANSION SEASON TWO (2017)

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

The season starts with the mansion and Robobot rebuilt, and the reference in the last episode to "new candidates" for the League of Freedom is blown off in one joke. Season Two does reach out to the former member (and Wonder Woman analogue) Zenith, a celestial goddess who shares the body of a mortal talk-show host Oprah W-- I mean, Portia Jones. The fugitive Injustice Club figures into more plots this season. but the only ones worth mentioning are Devizo, Groaner. and Lex Lightning, still full of passionate hate for Titanium Rex but no longer inclined to morph into a male version of herself. Curiously, though she was ostensibly raised by Devizo, there's nearly no sense that the two of them have ever had a father-daughter relationship.

VIRTUAL REALITY BLUES (G)-- Cooch misses Brad, so when Ranger tells her Brad's in heaven, she wants to become a Christian to join him, but she gets hinky about baptismal immersion. When Saturn learns Groaner's alive, he crushes hard on his nemesis, resulting in many embarrassing moments. More importantly for ongoing plotlines, Devizo steals a computer file containing Rex's greatest secret, and when Rex descends into a VR world to recover the file, Devizo and Lex are waiting for him. To Rex's good fortune, a rendezvous between Saturn and Groaner crosses his path in VR and a goofy time is had by all.

SCHOOL ME ONCE-- Rex plots to get Zenith back on the team, and that leads the League to "go back to school," i.e., the university of which Ranger and Saturn are alums. Saturn's old frat is ashamed of him, while Cooch is enlisted to be the school mascot. The upshot is that Portia does rejoin the League, but mainly to help the heroes upgrade their tarnished reputation.

THE LEAGUE OF CHEESEDOM-- Portia's first move is to use the League's images to merchandize a pizza place, "the League of Cheesedom," on the advice of her boytoy Courtney. Ranger becomes attracted to Portia when she scolds him and Saturn gets Groaner to perform on stage. Menace arises when Robobot, who's taken on the persona of a rebellious teenager, reprograms a band of animatronic robots, who promptly go berserk. Best line:

ROBOBOT: "I thought I'd found a family, but they ended up being bloodthirsty monsters."

REX: "That's pretty much every family."

I DON'T EVEN HAVE TO USE MY J.K.-- With Portia's encouragement, Oscar winning actor J.K. Simmons floats the idea of a Titanium Rex movie, but only if Rex is willing to reveal his deepest secrets. It's all a Devizo plot, which goes a lot better than Lex's short-lived takeover of the Injustice Club. Lex has her first meeting with Rex since he shot her in the face, and it's an ambivalent encounter.

BLACK TO THE FUTURE (G)-- This one's a knowing satire of time-travel stories like X-MEN's "Days of Future Past." A future-version of Black Saturn changes places with the current version and he warns that his era will be turned into a hellscape by Gamora. the spawn of Zenith and American Ranger. The League must prevent the two of them from procreating in the current era. There's a brief scene showing Zenith's paradisical all-female domain. Good payoffs on all plotlines this time.

BLAZARMAGGEDON (G)-- The villain Blazar was devolved to a monkey earlier, but it turns out that Blazar was an alien herald of a Galactus-sized humanoid, Asteros, who plans to destroy Earth. For once Ranger gets the best plotline, as he goes space-mad at the meaninglessness of the cosmos.

THE GURMAN FILES (G)-- Two sex-heavy plotlines diverge here. In one, Ranger wants his wife to sign their divorce papers, and to that end he and Portia seek out Gloria at a fetish-convention, leading to Dueling Dominatrixes. In the other, Black Saturn tries to go solo (albeit with Courtney as a sidekick) to solve the mystery of kidnapped 1970s models. Rex, who is to some extent a father-substitute for Saturn, falls under suspicion because he knew the models in his youth. With the League's help, Saturn finds the kidnapper and his victims, but also that one of the models is his own mother, and that Rex boned her numerous times.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT LIPLOR (G)-- Rex's big secret is revealed to the public and the League-- that he came to the surface looking for new worlds for his people, the Subtopians, to conquer. Rex let his people think him dead so that he could use his powers to protect humans (and to chase tail). But now Rex's older brother Dax reaches the surface with his rock-monster slave. Dax is disgusted that Rex didn't use his beacon to summon an invasion-force, so he takes the initiative. Rex and the freed slave defeat Dax, but now the government deems Rex an enemy agent. To protect his friends, Rex pretends complicity and flees.

LOGS DAY JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (G)-- Rex takes the identity of a lumberjack to conceal himself but still finds himself forced to battle injustice. The other heroes have been forbidden to crusade, but it turns out that Dax managed to send a message to his people. Robobot deduces that because Lex stole the anti-magno rod from the mansion, the League must make common cause with the Club. Unfortunately, Devizo has the rod now, and he seeks out Rex. In addition, the Subtopians reach the surface.

TITANIUM LEX (G)-- Within a short space of time, the Subtopians conquer Storm City while holding off all counterattacks from the government. Both the League and the Club are in hiding, and Devizo brings Rex back to the city for his own reasons. Devizo shows off the anti-magno rod and announces that they need more of the element to repel the invaders. Despite lots of bungling by the heroes and villains, Lex acquires the needed ordnance-- and though she plans to leave Rex to the mercies of his evil brother, she can't resist returning to save her dad, killing her Uncle Dax. Rex almost sacrifices himself in the stratagem that banishes the Subtopians, but Lex rescues him again, and agrees to join the League, but under her new name, Titanium Lex. But more trouble for Season 3 looms, as Doctor Devizo is put in charge of the heroes' future.

WAR ON CHRISTMAS-- Cooch, who believes in Santa Claus, releases from captivity an evil imp, Skibumpers (a clear analogue of Mxyzptlk). The elf grants Cooch's wish to make Santa real, forcing the League to cope with the chaos. This and one other special were filmed before Season Two, so Portia and Courtney don't appear, though on streaming the specials are lumped in with the second season.

DRAG ME TO HALLOWEEN-- In this Halloween offering, Ranger is almost seduced by a sexy ghost, Robobot is "possessed" by malware, and Cooch uncovers a malevolent dentist. The best plot involves Saturn and Groaner trying to score at a Halloween party, with more homoeroticism resulting.

ROBOCOP (2014)

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

I saw the 2014 ROBOCOP in the theater, but I remembered nothing about except for the "horrorshow moment" in a laboratory, when director Jose Padilha reveals how little of Alex Murphy's body is left after he's been incorporated into the figure of the iconic cyborg-cop.

Financially, I can understand any franchise-holder seeking to rework a popular concept to see if it can become more profitable. And some franchises are particularly elastic. Christopher Nolan's Batman had little in common with Tim Burton's, but both proved popular. However, the mediocre box office of this film, as well as the failure of the various TV iterations to catch fire, suggest that the original 1987 film is not overly malleable. Even that film's sequels failed to provide more than routine, unmemorable variations of the theme.

The original blended deft satire and straight adventure to tell the story of Detroit cop Alex Murphy, whose body is all but destroyed by predacious criminals and then transformed by a moneymaking company into a cyborg guardian. All of the action concerns domestic control of crime in the US, including corporate crime. Padilha's three writers, however, attempt to inject commentary on world politics by positing that the cyborg technology stems from the company OCP's attempt to monetize foreign military tech for domestic use. The film opens in Iran, showing a security drone and an American military detachment riding herd on local Iranians, only to have the drone kill an innocent when contending against suicide bombers. I don't know if the writers intentionally meant to make heroes of suicide bombers but that was the effect of their anti-military screed. The only thing I can say in favor of this take is that though the negative take on US politics does surface again, it doesn't pervade the entirety of the movie.

In the 1987 film, a junior executive of OCP spearheads the attempt to monetize the cyborg-tech in Detroit, whereas in 2014, it's the company's CEO, Sellars (Michael Keaton). Keaton's performance as the corporate greed-head is curiously downplayed, and he's something less than a compelling villain. Further, whereas in 1987 there's a major gang-lord who kills cop Murphy (Peter Weller), the criminals in the 2014 film also seem an afterthought, even the one responsible for killing 2014 Murphy (Joel Kinnman) with a car-bomb. The writers are more focused on their "satire" of conservatism, provided by a talk-show host (Samuel L Jackson) who seeks to validate Sellars' project with the public.

Curiously, once Murphy's decimated body is retooled into Robocop-- with the full knowledge and consent of Murphy's wife this time around-- OCP does its best to publicize how they revived an ordinary cop and made him a superhuman protector for Detroit. However, Murphy's partner this time plays nearly no role in Robocop's new life, and there's no subplot about the Detroit cops striking for better pay. By eliding the notion that Robocop's brain is wiped of his human memories, the writers sacrifice the potential appeal of his human selfhood, fighting back against impossible odds.

Though the script weakens the quality of Robocop's villains, the action overall is decently staged, and Kinnaman has some good moments acting out his character's trauma. The film's cautionary attitude toward the military-industrial complex is certainly not without foundation. Yet I tend not to like cautionary tales that only work in one direction. Still, a lot of viewers probably watched ROBOCOP 2014 without noticing the political commentary, which is certainly preferable to the many superhero films loaded with bombastic preachiness. So 2014 is far from the worst remake ever executed, even if its impact on the franchise's popularity seems negligible.

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, OF THE SON, AND OF THE COLT (1971)

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

My review of CREEPING DEATH mentioned that writer-director Mario Bianchi had a long cinematic career, but not that most of it was in sex-films. However, according to IMDB his first two directorial efforts were "weird westerns." Neither of the oaters is all that great, but the first one is a little better-- and since Bianchi didn't contribute to COLT's script as he did to that of DEATH, I might be tempted to fault his writing-- if I didn't know Bianchi had also contributed to the script of Riccardo Freda's flawed but interesting TRAGIC CEREMONY.

The script for COLT, in contrast to that of DEATH, might be unfocused. but it's better in terms of giving the viewer lots of cowpoke creepiness. The film starts as a stagecoach is held up by bandits dressed as saloon girls, who are under the command of outlaw Wace Cassidy (expatriate American actor Craig Hill). Two passengers Mister Pick and his daughter Toni (Francisco Sanz, Agata Lys) get special attention, with Pick forced to watch Cassidy rape Toni.

Four years later (though Bianchi takes his sweet time in establishing that fact) as the action moves to (and thereafter stays in) the cow-town where Sheriff Bill Nolan (also Hill) hangs his hat. He's been sheriff for some time, married to one Clarissa, but no one's noticed his uncanny resemblance to Cassidy, and when a wanted poster for Cassidy comes Nolan's way, he conceals it. Is the noble-seeming sheriff leading a double life?

Somehow I doubt Bianchi really expected viewers to buy an idea he barely bothered to sell, so he rather quickly reveals that Nolan and Cassidy are twins, and Nolan changed his name to distance himself from his evil brother. But Cassidy isn't the main menace here. It just so happens that it's Halloween (did anyone in the Old West celebrate the haunted holiday?) and that makes it easier for a mysterious, leather-masked plotter to move about. Some reviewers have seen "The Masked Thief" (as an alternate title for the film calls him) as an early slasher/giallo type. But though the Thief kills a couple of people, he has more in common with the masked masterminds of serials. He manipulates Nolan and Cassidy into almost killing each other-- I *think* in order to rip off a bank-- but when Nolan unmasks the Thief after a lively battle, I doubt anyone will care, any more than I did, when the mastermind's ID is revealed.

Bianchi blows a lot of potentially good subplots, as when Pick and Toni come to town to accuse the sheriff of Toni's rape and then largely disappear from the story. One might expect Clarissa to have a scene or two of emotional torment, but that expectation would be wrong. One reviewer liked Hill's Cassidy, but I thought he was too comically eee-vil, while Nolan was more suitably heroic. Still, COLT-- the title I've chosen to use here, just because it sounds cool despite meaning next to nothing-- is never dull, which is more than I could say about CREEPING DEATH.

KUNG FU PANDA 3 (2016)

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

Not surprisingly, the simple PANDA formula began to show some cracks in its facade by the third film. No #3 is still a reasonably entertaining variation on that simple theme, but it helps not to look too hard at some things.

This time the main villain is tied not to Po or to Shifu but the turtle Oogwai, who in the first film named Po as the Dragon Warrior and then ascended to another spiritual plane. In PANDA 3 we learn that all is not peaceful on that higher plane, for Oogwai encounters an old enemy, General Kai (a yak), whom Oogwai consigned to the spirit world for his crimes. (I guess for small tyke-viewers, "sent to the spirit world" sounds less grievous than "killed.") Kai was exiled because he'd learned the technique of stealing "chi" from other masters. But living in the spirit-world has done nothing to cool Kai's conquering temperament, and he's already stolen a lot of chi from other ascended masters when he crosses paths with Oogwai. Kai defeats Oogwai and steals enough chi to re-enter the mortal world-- though Oogwai predicts that the Dragon Warrior shall defeat Kai's evil.

By total coincidence, Shifu decides to retire from teaching martial arts, and he appoints Po as the new teacher to students who know more than Po does. Hijinks ensue, and for good measure Shifu also informs the panda that having achieved inner peace (in the second film) is not enough; that his next step must be mastering the power of chi-manipulation.

On top of that, Po finally meets Li, the birth-father he never knew, and Ping, who regards himself as Po's real father, seethes with jealousy of Po's new dad. Po also has an excuse to hang out with Li in that Li claims that he and his panda-tribe are masters of chi, so they can complete the next stage of Po's training. However, Li actually doesn't possess the skill, and his excuse for lying stands as one of the most cockamamie in cinematic history-- not least because he knows that General Kai will eventually cross chi-swords with Po, which could result in the death of Li's cherished son.

Perhaps worse than all this plotting-by-convenience is that none of the pandas Po meets are slightly memorable as characters, including Li. The pandas were all tiresome and made me wish for more scenes devoted to the Furious Five, who were simple comedy-types that still had some individuality. The evil Kai is the least interesting villain of the first three movies, and even his primary gimmick-- being able to change his enemies into obedient "jade zombies"-- adds no luster to the film. The climactic face-off between Kai and Po is decently staged, but getting there is not half the fun one might expect it to be.

HOUSE OF THE WOLF MAN (2009)

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

**SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS**

HOUSE, as many others have observed before me, must have been a labor of love for writer-director Eben McGarr. Clearly no one would seek to duplicate the look of the 1940s Universal monster-mashes without having an abiding affection for the material. At the same time, McGarr-- who to date only has a smattering of credits on IMDB-- wasn't doing a "straight" version of a Universal monster-mash, nor was he doing a spoof-horror, like ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN and at least three different films titled MONSTER MASH. I'd guess that he hoped to appeal to the enthusiasts of "so bad they're good" films, but with a calculated irony that would have been foreign to guys like Ed Wood and Jerry Warren.

The setup: five individuals are summoned to a mysterious castle for an inheritance. None of the five-- athletic Reed, his scientist-sister Mary, antiquarian Sully, "loose woman" Elamira, and big game hunter Whitlock-- think that they're all related to their summoner, Bela Reinhardt (Ron Chaney, grandson of Lon Chaney Jr). But they're all willing to check things out in case there's a big payoff.

All five are meant to be sendups of familiar Hollywood "types," and though the first four recall similar POV characters from "old dark house" mysteries, the big game hunter Archibald Whitlock seems to have been imported from an imitation MOST DANGEROUS GAME. McGarr's script doesn't expand the other four beyond the stereotypes they represent, but the writer lavishes more attention on Whitlock. He shares the Nietzschean worldview of GAME's Count Zaroff, and travels with three African bearers just in case he decides he wants to hunt something. In a mild shot at 20th-century racism, Whitlock knows the lead African's real name but calls him "Leopold" for his amusement, while he's never learned the names of the other two. That said, he's equally arrogant toward White people, since in the film's best line, he says to Reed, "I shall call you Azrael because the name Reed displeases me." I'm probably in the minority, but I think all five actors did well with their deliberately artificial dialogue, whether the dialogue hits or misses-- and there are possibly more misses than hits. All five performers make Ron Chaney look worse, because there can be little doubt that he was hired just for the value of his familial connections.

But if anything's weaker than Chaney's performance, is McGarr's conception of Reinhardt, who occupies the position of the "main menace," but who is more poorly conceived than the most threadbare Monogram mad scientist. Here are the big reveals: Reinhardt is the offspring of Peter Frankenstein, son of Wolf in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, and the never-mentioned sister of Bela the Gypsy from WOLF MAN. Therefore, even though his real surname is Frankenstein, his "house" has inherited the werewolf curse-- though maybe it doesn't pass through paternal genes, since none of his offspring have lycanthropic qualities. And who are his offspring? All of the supposed heirs (though one may be adopted, that part was hard to follow) are half-siblings because Reinhardt had sex with at least four mothers. This leads to a little recrimination when Mary realizes she's been vamping half-bro Whitlock, though like most Universal horror-flicks, no inappropriate genes were mixed in the scripting of this movie.

And what is Reinhardt's endgame, given that he's due to "wolf out" soon? Well, he has some hazy "survival of the fittest" notion, in that he wants to test his children in bloody battle. Somehow this will help him suss out whether his lycanthropy is some biological mutation, rather than a magical curse. It makes no sense, and most if not all the "heirs" get killed by Reinhardt's rampage. Whitlock and the bearers at least put up a fight, but they're slaughtered too. However, a certain "abandoned experiment" escapes confinement, and once again, the Frankenstein Monster Meets (a) Wolf Man. The fight's one of the better things about HOUSE, being livelier (though no longer) than the one from the 1943 movie.

One more visitor arrives during the fight, and yes, it's Dracula, decked out in full Lugosi regalia, and he either finishes off the last victim or makes her a vampire. Oddly, though Dracula and the Monster are the only characters who make this a crossover, both of them are irrelevant to the movie-- which would have been improved if there had been SOME reason for Reinhardt's family-killing madness.

SPY KIDS: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD (2011)

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

Robert Rodriguez's attempt to reboot the SPY KIDS franchise eight years later was not a box-office success, but it's the only one I mildly liked. It's not something I would have watched again except for purposes of review, but it does exemplify what I said in the previous SK review: that the writer-director finally did learn the difference between "stupid-wacky" and "clever-wacky."

The opening setup for SK4 alone is far more inventive than anything in the other films, suggesting to me that Rodriguez managed to improve his talent for the absurd in movies like ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO and the first SIN CITY movie. This time the mother of the eponymous kids-- specifically, "step-kids"-- gets equal time, as embodied by lady spy Marissa (Jessica Alba, reunited with the director after both SIN CITY and MACHETE). Marissa is the hitherto-unmentioned sister of Gregorio Cortez, and thus the aunt of Carmen and Juni (who both make minor crossover appearances to support the new franchise). And this time Marissa keeps her spy-dentity secret from both her husband (Joel McHale) and Rebecca and Cecil, his kids by his first (and deceased) wife. Marissa is first seen capturing a super-villain named "Tick Tock" even though she has to endure labor pains while driving a super-fast car and battling henchmen.

A year later, Marissa has stepped down from her duties in order to raise her toddler, as well as trying, not successfully, to bond with her stepchildren. Her hubby, just to add to the faux-irony, is a TV "spy-hunter," who of course has no idea he lives with a secret agent woman. Then time begins to run backward, albeit in slow increments. A new villain, The Timekeeper, has unleashed a secret doomsday weapon, though the genesis of the time-stopping device is muddled at best.

The Timekeeper's forces attack Marissa's house for some doodad, and this provides the justification for Cecil and Rebecca to learn that they are "step-spy-kids." After various twists and turns, it's up to Marissa, her three kids and the original (now twenty-something) heroes to foil the Timekeeper. Oh, and they have a robot dog voiced by Ricky Gervais, and yes, Rodriguez works in another cameo for Danny Trejo. The director's design sense is no better than it ever was, and the two new kids are no better or worse than the originals. But both the humor and the pacing is better overall. Alexa Vega gets to fight in one scene, but Alba has more presence in her two scenes. The Timekeeper has a better than average motive for his destructive actions. though calling him the best villain in the series is faint praise.