X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, VOLUME FIVE (1996-97)

 

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

Season Four was supposed to be the final one for the 90s X-MEN, but ten more episodes were ordered, albeit without giving the production company much money. So some of the episodes were done in-house to save money-- and oddly, I like some of these better than any from the previous seasons.

I said in my first review of the series that I could never celebrate the show because it wasn't "my" X-Men. But I also wasn't crazy about the series' concentration on action-- even well-mounted action-- at the expense of characterization. (Admittedly the cartoon arguably did the soap-opera thing better than did the live-action movie series.) In any case, the last 14 episodes on Volume 4-- which of course mingles stories from both Seasons 4 and 5-- sometimes show a greater emotional tonality than I've observed before. For instance:

Most of the episodes are so action-heavy that there's no time for romance. But the two-part "Storm Front" posits a (non-canonical) hookup between Storm and the extradimensional tyrant Arkon. Here I appreciated some scenes that lingered on the bodies of the two principals, playing up their mutual visceral attraction before any sweet nothings were uttered.

"Old Soldiers" explores Wolverine's early (pre-clawed) years in WWII, when he undertakes a special mission alongside Captain America. Nice interplay between the very different characters without resorting to a hero-fight.

Another tale feels like Claremont in his more playful phases, with Jubilee entertaining some kids with a fairytale-fantasy in which unreasonable facsimiles of the X's appear.

 "Bloodlines," a follow-up to Nightcrawler's previous guest appearance, stands as the best story of all five seasons, being a very accurate translation of his abandonment by his mutant-villain mother Mystique. This version of the hero is a moody religious fellow rather than the daredevil type from the comics, but the contrast between Nightcrawler's faith and Mystique's nihilism is well handled.

Finally, the real final episode, "Graduation Day," present the heroic mutants with the strong possibility that they may have to carry on without Professor X, A last minute contrivance saves the Prof, but he's still obliged to leave Earth, and so the sense of a dramatic transition remains.            

   

  

YPOTRON-- FINAL COUNTDOWN (1966)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

YPOTRON-- FINAL COUNTDOWN is only one of several titles for this multi-country production, but I might as well use the one appearing on my YouTube copy. The nonsense-word "ypotron" is tossed around several times in the film before the audience finds out what it connotes, and an English-language song even asks what the word means. I'll give it away here because it has consequences for the movie's phenomenality: Ypotron is an antiballistic weapon aimed at destroying America's Gemini space program, and it's the only marvelous item in the story, since the Bond-like hero only utilizes minor uncanny weapons like a lighter than dispenses tear gas.             

Argentinian star Luis Davila (billed here as "Luis Devil") had the misfortune to headline the dismal ESPIONAGE IN TANGIER, but his second and last time venture into the Eurospy genre was a charmer by comparison. We first see him in his character of tuxedo-clad Robbie Logan, getting shot several times by a rifle. But it's just a test of the bulletproof vest beneath his clothes, administered by his colleagues in the agency Kosmos, which is supposedly focused only on affairs related to space defense. Logan then departs for a vacation from spying in Acapulco, where he shows off his ability to charm assorted gorgeous women.                                                                   

  However, another agent brings Logan news that three of his colleagues were mysteriously slain while working security for the European missile-factory "Indra." In addition, Logan's informed that there's a possible threat to an old friend of his, Professor Morrow. Logan reminisces about how he was a captive in wartime, possibly by the Nazis since he mentions being tortured by an overseer named Leichman. Morrow somehow saved Logan's life but then disappeared from public sight for roughly twenty years. To repay his old debt, Logan drops his vacation and journeys to Morrow's home in Europe. There he has a meet-cute with Morrow's grown daughter Jeanne (Gaia "AVENGER X" Germani), whom Logan never met except for seeing a photo of her as a naked baby (which of course he tells her about to intrigue her). Jeanne calls her father to come meet Logan, but it just so happens Professor Morrow is kidnapped by hostile parties unknown.                                                                                   

 Thus far, everything in YPOTRON sounds like a regular old spy-flick. However, for once I won't go over the plot in detail, because director/co-writer works in a twist rare in the Eurospy world. Jeanne of course gets mixed up in Logan's attempts to find her father, and to sort out the villains behind the mysterious Ypotron project. A lot of Eurospy flicks barely establish the nature of the main villain, but in this movie, the Big Bad is, shall we say, "hiding in plain sight," and the twist actually has a little emotional resonance for both Logan and Jeanne. The script also works in a lady spy played by Janine "KISS ME MONSTER" Reynaud, but she turns out to be Logan's ally, so no bad girls here.                                                                                                     

There are a number of clever lines in the script and production values are pretty good, so director Giorgio Stegani did pretty well with what seems to be his only spy-film. In fact, whereas a lot of these cheap thrillers fall apart in the final act, Stegani provides audiences with a well-choreographed fight between Logan and a Big Brute henchman (Fernando Bilbao, who played a version of the Frankenstein Monster in a couple of Jess Franco flicks). But the aforementioned plot twist is the big distinction of YPOTRON.      

SPACE MONSTER WANGMAGWI (1967)

 

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

I term the dominant function of WANGMAGWI "sociological" simply because the main plot involves aliens sending a giant monster down to 1960s Earth to kill all the humans and leave Earth free for colonization. While such a plot was a perfectly serviceable excuse for a giant-monster rampage, the writers seem confused about how to properly go about defenestrating the populace of a planet.

At the outset of the film, the unnamed aliens seem utterly confident that the Earth-people can do nothing to save themselves from the solitary, skyscraper-high creature-- presumably named "Wangmagwi," though I never heard the name used. The creature proceeds to rampage through Seoul, though its model-streets have been largely been cleared of people. So it's not clear how the aliens expect Wangwagwi to extinguish humanity. Keep stomping through cities and crushing people until, decades later, all the humans are dead?

Jets assault Wangmagwi's scaly hide with no effect, so the monster does have a Godzilla-like level of invulnerability. Yet when we hear Korean military men discussing the situation, they're reluctant to employ a nuclear bomb against the monster due to collateral damage. But if the monster succeeded in killing all the people in Seoul, then the Koreans could bomb him, right? Not until the climax does the subtitling for the aliens *seem* to indicate that Wangmagwi actually CANNOT survive a nuclear attack. Indeed, when the giant finally wanders out into the Korean countryside, the military makes one last jet-attack while planning a nuclear strike. At that point, the aliens just throw in the towel and remotely cause Wangmagwi to self-destruct. What? Was this the aliens' first defenestration? If not, clearly they suck at it. 

There's just enough combative action to keep the film in that domain, though the Koreans weren't able to make Wangmagwi's rampage as effective as even the lesser Japanese efforts. The humans are pretty forgettable-- a couple of clowns who bounce routines off one another while fleeing the chaos, and a young couple whose wedding is interrupted by the big critter. In fact, Wangmagwi channels his inner Kong by kidnapping the bride-- though technically the aliens are controlling the monster remotely, so her kidnapping makes even less sense than if the giant did it of his own will. The only human who has a good arc is an urchin who somehow clambers onto the giant's body, manages to work his way into the creature's ear and wound he inner ear with a knife. He also detaches the device with which the ETs control the monster, though this doesn't have much effect on the outcome. A heroic pilot rescues the boy and the bride before Wangmagwi destructs.

This kaiju flick was lost for a long time. In terms of film history, I'm glad a copy was found, but it's pretty small beer.

        

GENERAL INVINCIBLE (1983)

 

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

I'd never seen GENERAL INVINCIBLE before, nor did I know that it was one of the last movies to feature the Chinese kung-fu diva Chang Ling. To my surprise, I only found one substantial review of INVINCIBLE: this detailed post by the late Todd Stadtman. I was very intrigued by Stadtman's assertion that this film was pretty much the "final star turn" for the Taiwanese actress.

For me the greater question, though, was whether it was either (a) a fun but somewhat ephemeral chopwacky, like WOLF DEVIL WOMAN,  (b) a dull formula outing like DARK LADY OF KUNG FU, or (c) that rarest of rarities, a mythopoeic Asian kung fu film, like MIRACULOUS FLOWER. 

Well, INVINCIBLE is not another MIRACULOUS FLOWER-- though there are a few times where it feels like that's what it's trying to be. It's definitely not just a chopwacky, because such martial movies always seem the results of harried writers pulling anything and everything out of their asses in order to keep the audience entertained. One vague reference suggested that the movie might have been an adaptation of some other work, so that *might* explain why INVINCIBLE seems to be shooting for some metaphysical truth that the film's scripter couldn't articulate.

That metaphysical truth, in this fictional context, feels like someone trying to adapt the complex confluence of Chinese faiths and folklore regarding "the search for enlightenment," which in this fictional universe can also lead one to become a peerless martial artist. There's also a slight suggestion of a familiar western homily that might be phrased as, "What shall it profit a woman to win the martial arts world, if she loses her only shot at romantic love."

It's ancient China again, and a new emperor has just succeeded his late father. The new ruler gets wind of an assassination conspiracy directed at him by an unscrupulous Chief Justice, one Lu Ruh-Ti (Tien Feng). The emperor sends for the four dukes of his empire to serve as his protectors, but Ruh-Ti just compensates by putting out hits on the dukes. Only one, "Duke Philip," concerns us, for he's the father of our heroine.  

 Oddly, though Chang's character Sparrow is the star of the show, first we see the love-interest she's doomed to lose, "Mean Red" (Adam Cheng). Red is seen washing out of a martial-arts test given an imperturbable teacher, "The Old Master," and after being kicked out of the Master's school, Red seems more than a little perturbed.

Then Duke Philip's killed, and Sparrow-- who passed her tests with the Old Master (but evidently never met Red) -- is called upon by her retainers to go after her father's killer. But even though the courtiers call Sparrow "general"-- a title that really means nothing to the plot-action-- she's a retiring type who doesn't like politics. She's also prone to epileptic fits, though this only comes up three times in the movie and never has much importance either. Still, one of the courtiers embarrasses Sparrow by taking his own life to force her to act. So she takes her mute slave (called only "slave") and seeks to find the one-armed killer of her father. (FUGITIVE jokes are taken as a given.)

She does eventually kill the killer, who puts her on the trail of the evil Chief Justice. But Sparrow's more significant encounter is with Mean Red. She pretends indifference to Red's flirtations, but she allows him to join her quest once she learns that Red used to be a student of the Old Master. He, however, despised the Old Master's high-flown devotion to transcendence of human emotions and his utter lack of compassion. (Maybe that's why Red is "mean?") However, if I followed the choppy script, Red is also a servant of Ruh-Ti, and ALSO may or may not also go by the name of Swift Thunder. 

So yeah, this is one of those chopsockies where new character-names are thrown out with wild abandon, and the English translators don't manage to follow it all. Early in the film Ruh-Ti references some mysterious ally named "Red Sow" and the dubbing says it's a "she." But when the character appears late in the film, it's a male-- and by any name, the character's not important to the movie. (Possibly this was some book-character shoehorned into the crowded story.) The Stadtman review asserts that a female martial artist named Ruh Yuh (played by Lin Dang) is one of the Chief Justice's allies. However, she spends most of the film trying to persuade Mean Red to join her in her own domain, so I felt she might've been intended as an independent player. Certainly she's tries her utmost to seduce Red away from Sparrow, and, to my surprise, she wins the romance contest.

The film's greatest appeal is that the credited author (who has just four IMDB credits) seems, in a very confused way, to filter a lot of real Chinese metaphysical concepts into this opus. The Old Master appears in a lot of flashbacks, uttering weird pithy observations like "nothingness leaves the door of transcending." And after the defeat of Ruh-Ti, the Master shows up to engage Sparrow in mystical combat, apparently just because he really wants to be sure Sparrow's fit to succeed him-- somehow, I never quite figured out what he wanted her to do. There's a flashy power-battle, the Master loses. Yet he doesn't die, but just walks away with a strange downbeat conclusion. Ruh-Ti, by the way, wasn't just content to knock off the emperor and his supporters. He's conspiring with Persian scientists (!) to create crystal knives which are somehow going to help him conquer the world. 

The upshot is that though INVINCIBLE seems like an issue of DOCTOR STRANGE that Stan Lee wrote for Chinese investors while dropping acid, at least the movie's never dull. It ends with Sparrow, sitting in lotus position with a rainbow in the sky, and that's not the worst image with which Chang Ling could (more or less) conclude her diva-career.

            

    
   

TRANSFORMERS (2007)

 

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

Though I've never quit watching TV cartoons no matter how old I got, certain shows just never got on my radar, and the many iterations of TRANSFORMERS, as well as their imitators, are among them. And yet, looking at a list of the top ten highest-grossing films for 2007, the Michael Bay TRANSFORMERS kicks the ass of all others on the list (mostly sequels of one sort or another), except 300-- and I don't usually feel any great desire to rewatch 300. 

I'm not a huge fan of Bay, though I think his critical drubbings are unjustified and overdone. As for the writing-team on the first two TRANSFORMERS movies, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, their track record ranges from mediocre to the tone-deaf awfulness of the TREK films of the same era. Yet somehow these talents took a very simple kids' cartoon of the 1970s and gave it tons of Spielbergian brio. In fact, the 2007 TRANSFORMERS is a better Spielberg movie than most Spielberg films of the period.

Further, the actors playing the young leads-- Shia LeBeouf as Sam Witwicky and Megan Fox as Mikaela Banes-- turned in lively performances far more appealing than their usual "flavor of the month" offerings. Together they comprise the venerable trope "Nerdy guy impresses hot girl," but their cutesy romance works because it's kept peripheral to the central mystery: who are these shape-changing robot ETs and why are they are hiding on Earth in the forms of trucks and planes?

TRANSFORMERS also benefits from a canny juggling of patriotism (the movie came out six years after 9-11) and skepticism. An early scene depicts American airplanes forcing a mysterious helicopter to land on their military base-- only to have the 'copter transform into a mammoth Decepticon robot who trashes the military's best weapons like a pocket Godzilla. At the same time, only one data analyst, one Maggie, is able to figure out that the attacker isn't the spawn of Russia or China, while everyone else runs around without a clue. A super-secret military organization is shown to be responsible for salting away the Whatsit that both the noble Autobots and base Deccepticons seek, and I admired that late in the movie the script introduced a minor dick-villain for Sam and Mikaela to humiliate.     

Conversely, the script is ingenious in finding ways to make the Autobots likeable without over-explaining their goodness, as I think the cartoon did. The writers accomplished this by channeling Disney's LOVE BUG, having the Autobot Bumblebee morph into a car for Sam. Bumblebee does this to learn information from Sam that will lead the hero-robots to their goal. But the teen and the alien robot bond, partly through Bumblebee's inability to speak articulately, making him seem more like a faltering child than a spying ET. Later, Autobot leader Optimus Prime will provide all the needed exposition in the honeyed tones of Peter Cullen, but Bumblebee's more basic appeal sets the pace.

There are comedic bits that don't work, but they're fewer than the ones that do. Moreover, even though I was never a TRANSFORMERS fan, I appreciate that Bay and his team treated the adventure-theme straight, and one line from Sam to Mikaela speaks to the youthful need to trespass boundaries:

"Fifty years from now, don't you wanna be able to say you had the guts to get in the car?"  

            

HONOR ROLL #311

 A big part of the success of the Transformers live-action was thanks to the voice of the late Peter Cullen giving life to OPTIMUS PRIME. 

TENG KUANG-YING is yet another guy in a movie.

"No wang at all. No wang at all. WANGMAGWI has no wang at all."

Not a good pic but that's YIN SU-LI at left, preparing to get her butt kicked by the heroine with the handsy outfit.

 FERNANDO BILBAO provides one of the better fight-scenes to appear in a Eurospy movie.

I ran out of X-women so I'll finish up the reviews of the 90s X-MEN with the group's most X-traordinary male member, CYCLOPS.  

THE MARK OF ZORRO (1974)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*, 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*                                                                                                                          Director Don McDougall, whose long list of TV episodes includes some very nice work for shows like RAWHIDE and Classic TREK, probably had to make the best of things when he drew this assignment. He had to take the script for the 1940 MARK OF ZORRO, one of the most sumptuous swashbucklers of the Classical Hollywood era and squish its plot and action down into about 75 minutes. Still, enough of the mythic aspects of the 20th-Century Fox version of Zorro come through that I can give this 1974 MARK a fair rating.                                                                                                       

 The telefilm's best asset is star Frank Langella in the dual role of Zorro and his foppish civilian ID Diego Vega. The actor had to follow closely in the shoes of Tyrone Power, but I thought he gave both characters as much mojo as anyone could under the circumstances. Ricardo Montalban is in a similar position, playing Esteban, the military power behind the corrupt alcalde's rule, but in some ways he's better off, since his normal acting-style was more florid than that of his predecessor, and thus his Esteban doesn't seem too derivative. The rest of the cast deliver decent perfs, from Gilbert Roland and Yvonne deCarlo as Diego's dad and mom, to Robert Middleton and Louise Sorel as the alcalde and his perhaps unfaithful wife. Anne Archer gets one good scene as the romantic interest Teresa-- the one taking place in the church, where Zorro's pretending to be a priest-- but her character doesn't get nearly as much attention as the Linda Darnell version did. She doesn't even get a final clinch with the hero at the conclusion. Her casting in terms of her age is a bit odd too. In the 1940 film, Gale Sondergaard, then a little over forty, played the aunt of Teresa, and that role was played by Linda Darnell, who was then seventeen. In contrast, Anne Archer was only seven years younger than Louise Sorel. There's an odd remark by Middleton's character about how some figure akin to Zorro may have been observed in "The Pyrenees" of Spain, which was perhaps meant to address where Diego got the idea of Zorro. Possibly this remark was in the 1940 film too, but I'm not inspired to find out.