SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE (2018)

 

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

Indeed, the best thing about SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE is that there were no mentions of Iron Man, or if there were, I happily missed them. However, SPIDER-VERSE makes the same mistake as a lot of previous live-action Spider-films: that of oversaturation. Not only does it present the viewer with five Spider-heroes from various dimensions, it also works in four major villains: Green Goblin, Kingpin, Prowler, and Doctor Octopus-- most of whom are also anomalous versions of the original comics-characters.

Miles Morales, famed in comics as the "black-and-Latino" version of Spider-Man, is a character I never followed, so I can't say whether or not the animated movie captures him adequately. I would certainly hope that there's more to Miles in the comics, for I find this particular denizen of diversity to be fearsomely dull. The film's first hour deals with the perennial Spider-Man question, "whether 'tis nobler to take arms against a sea of super-villains or to try to skulk away from trouble and live a normal life." Miles goes through loads of adolescent angst trying to answer that question for the first hour of SPIDER-VERSE, and he gets only questionable help from an older extradimensional spider-hero. Most of this first hour is played for slapstick comedy.

The second hour picks up interest when the other Spider-variations are introduced, and the animated coordination of the various heroes works reasonably well. In most "dimensional doppelganger" stories, I tend to regard the "copies" as guest-heroes, but here, since Miles Morales is himself something of a one-off, I would consider the whole team of Spider-Friends to be an ensemble of centric heroes.

THE CRIMSON GHOST (1946)

 

 

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

The most interesting sociological aspects of CRIMSON GHOST occurs in the first chapter. The Ghost-- whose macabre choice of attire is never given any connotation-- explains to his henchmen that he plans to hijack the Cyclotrode, a device able to disrupt any electrical mechanisms. Its inventor Professor Chambers wanted to strengthen America's defenses to ward off a possible atomic bomb attack (which presumably would be dropped by plane like the ones over Japan). One of the Ghost's henchmen comments that the most profitable avenue would be to steal the Cyclotrode and sell it to a foreign power. But the Ghost makes clear that he has no interest in selling ordnance to other countries. He's a super-criminal through and through: he wants to use the Cyclotrode to blackmail multiple cities into making him rich. I interpret this as the scriptwriters' assurance to viewers that GHOST wasn't going to be a political serial like many that came out during the war years, but a pure "good guy vs. supercriminal" yarn.

The Crimson Ghost, in addition to being a snappy dresser, shows his own scientific genius in devising "control collars" that can execute any henchman who disobeys the villain's will. The henchmen (the main one played by Clayton "Lone Ranger" Moore) kidnap Chambers from his private home, which gets the serial's two good guys on the trail. 

One hero is Chambers' secretary Diana (Linda Stirling). She falls into the role of crimefighter pretty easily, even though Chambers dies early in the story, and is seen wielding a pistol with an aplomb not typical of the typing pool. (Maybe there was some idea of her being a government agent in disguise?) The other protagonist is Duncan Richards (Charles Quigley), who is both a criminologist and a physician-colleague to Chambers. I assume that the scriptwriters wanted Richards to be able to discuss the physics of their opponents' diabolical devices before he went around bashing in heads and driving real fast along country roads in pursuit of other cars. 

Quigley, BTW, doesn't always look nearly as formidable during the fight-scenes as the typical Republic he-man, which may or may not say something about how heavily he was doubled. Yet the fights are still staged well enough that the Richards character still seems badass, but a little more human than the average serial hero. Quigley and Stirling have nice chemistry despite the usual lack of romantic interaction, but Stirling is once again relegated to the role of the girl hero who keeps getting hit on the head to get her out of the way of the slugfests. 

The more we see of the Crimson Ghost's fairly picayune efforts to perpetrate his super-crimes, the more repetitive they become, with the only variable being the scripters' trying to find new ways to stall out this or that machine. The villain is one of the more active types, often seen getting attacked along with his henchmen and being drawn into brawls with Richards-- and that may be one reason that his costume has become a lot more iconic than many of the robed fiends who never bother to leave their sanctums.

SLEEPING BEAUTY (1959)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, metaphysical*

It could be argued that SLEEPING BEAUTY is the first “Disney prince” film, since so much of the action revolves around the male lead.  Certainly my best childhood memories of the film—possibly in an early re-release, as I would’ve been age four for the first release—are of the bravura closing act of the film, with particular emphasis on Prince Philip’s escape from the castle of Maleficent.  As a child I was particularly fascinated by the magical transformations in the escape-scene, wherein the Three Good Fairies change arrows into flowers, or protect Philip from boiling oil with a rainbow.  This was perhaps my first exposure to an “otherworldly fantasy” in the form of a full-length film, though I imagine I’d seen short cartoons on similar subject matter.

Two earlier “princess films,” SNOW WHITE and CINDERELLA, followed a pattern common to many European folktales, in which a girl of high standing is reduced to domestic drudgery, only to recover her former status by marrying up. What this trope meant in the folktales has received a good deal of speculation, but in this essay I can only deal with what it may’ve meant in the Disney films.  For SNOW WHITE and CINDERELLA, it’s essential that the central female characters should accept their domestic duties with grace and good cheer.  This in turn earns them the regard of woodland creatures and of supernatural benefactors, both of which are oriented on helping the “princess-brought-low” to escaping the life of drudgery through marriage.

SLEEPING BEAUTY is not the same sort of animal.  Though the Disney film works in a sequence about Princess Aurora being raised in lowly circumstances—though to be sure, she never knows any other state of affairs—the main trope of the original folktale is that of “the princess enchanted.”  In the standard “Sleeping Beauty” narrative, the princess’ enchantment causes her and her kingdom to sleep for hundreds of years, until she’s awakened from her sleep by the kiss of a prince. 

 

 Though waking the princess with the kiss of a total stranger passed muster in 1938’s SNOW WHITE, for whatever reason the script of 1959’s SLEEPING BEAUTY chose a diametrically opposed approach.  Precisely because Aurora is raised in humble circumstances—a “fortunate fall” if there ever was one—she has the chance to “meet cute” with Philip, so that they can fall in love prior to discovering that they have already been engaged to one another by their parents.  This comic plot means that both Aurora and her kingdom don’t descend into sleep for more than a day or so, so that Aurora can be rescued, not by the mere stereotype of a marriageable prince, but by a true love aroused with no thought of one’s improvement in social standing.

Still, though many viewers might not mind the excision of domestic drudgery from Aurora’s program, it must be admitted that without these or something similar, Princess Aurora seems to have it a little too easy.  Without the necessity to show “grace under pressure,” she seems to exist for two purposes, to be beautiful and to be married.

All this said, it might not be correct to consider BEAUTY as either a “princess” or a “prince” film.  The true conflict is, for the first time in a Disney film, between two feminine forces—quite in contrast to the original folktales, where both good and bad fairies exist solely to establish the circumstances under which the princess is first cursed, and then allowed to survive the curse under certain conditions.  At times the whole thing is brought about by some functionary simply forgetting to invite the “bad fairy,” which brings about the whole conflict.

BEAUTY, in contrast, polarizes the forces of good and evil more decisively.  It’s no accident that malicious Maleficient isn’t invited; good fairy Meriwether makes this explicit.  Indeed, Maleficent is so deliciously in love with being evil that one imagines she might’ve cursed Aurora even if she had been invited.  The king-fathers of both Aurora and Philip are utterly impotent in this conflict, and neither child has a mother with any function in the story—doubtless because Maleficent and the Three Good Fairies subsume the roles of “bad mother” and “good mothers” respectively.  From the first, the battle-lines are drawn between the three fairy-sisters—who are chubby and somewhat competitive with another, but eminently forces of life—and cadaverous Maleficient, who rules a gloomy death-realm and has but one totem-animal, an unnamed raven, who provides her with affection.  Further, it could be said that the script takes the essence of the folktale’s concern—that of an enchantment that stands outside time—and reverses it.  Maleficent mocks Philip with the threat of keeping Philip imprisoned until he’s a bent old man, so that he cannot possibly be united with his ever-youthful beloved.  The fairies intervene to foil the time-binding enchantment and thereby to restore the proper alliance of young lovers.

Given this relatively cosmic scope— suggested in part by Maleficent’s claim to harness “the powers of hell”-- one might argue that even though Prince Philip slays the matriarchal dragon in the end, he’s just as much a pawn as Aurora in the fairies’ chess-game.  At the very least it seems evident that the fairies can’t conquer the Dragon of Death without Philip, and he needs their help just as much to counter Maleficent’s forces.  It’s an unusual take on the heroic tale, where mothers, even magical ones, usually do not participate much.  One can find a smattering of hero-tales in which male hero and female heroine team up to defeat evil—say, Buck Rogers and Wilma Deering, whose alliance dates back to 1929.  But how often can one see Buck Rogers defeat evil thanks to an alliance with Wilma’s mother?

In a DVD commentary on BEAUTY, it’s said that SLEEPING BEAUTY was the end of an era for Disney, due to the rising costs of making such sumptious, highly stylized fantasies.  Certainly none of Disney’s 1960s animated features are quite as ambitious as BEAUTY, and I’d say that even the best works of the Michael Eisner years—LITTLE MERMAID being among the main contenders—there’s not quite the same focus on otherworldly enchantment.

I've labeled the mythos of SLEEPING BEAUTY as being akin more to "drama" than "adventure" given that the heavy emphasis on romance, while I label it "combative" due to the invocation of a "good vs. evil" battle at the climax.

 

THE TERRORNAUTS (1967)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological*


I guess the best thing I can say about this 1967 Amicus SF-outing is that this is what THE LAST STARFIGHTER might look like if filmed for a $1.98 budget.

I'm certainly no snob with regard to low-budget metaphenomenal films, not after all the BOMBA and JUNGLE JIM films that I've reviewed, giving them their due when they succeed despite their budgetary limitations.  TERRORNAUTS, though, doesn't have a decent idea in its empty head.

One review argued that this was one of the first films in which a team of scientists-- whose organization is given the risible name "Star Talk"-- are trying to contact intelligent life through radio communication.  Be that as it may, these Brit characters are paper-thin stereotypes, making it almost impossible to identify with their noble aspirations.  Lead male Joe Burke gets a jot more development than either his two fellow scientists or the two comedy-relief characters who go along for the ride.  As a child Burke had a strange vision of an alien world: a vision brought on a brief exposure to an alien artifact.  Because the artifact is destroyed beyond recovery, Burke can only search the heavens for proof of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Just as Star Talk's funding is about to be yanked away, Burke and his colleagues (one of whom is his girlfriend Sandy) manage to make contact with an interstellar intelligence.  The unknown alien reacts quickly: sending a spaceship that yanks Star Talk's entire building off the Earth and away to a technology-filled asteroid.  (The film derives from a Murray Leinster novel, THE WAILING ASTEROID, which I may have read but remember nothing about.)  While the Earthpeople wander the asteroid, they are subjected to bizarre tests, one of which includes their dealing with a monster (seen above) that is easily one of the most cockamamie cinematic creatures of all time, perhaps even eclipsing the "diving-helmet gorilla" of ROBOT MONSTER.

Suffice to say that the humans pass all the tests, despite getting no help from the comedy-reliefs.  This accomplishment proves that they've capable of rational thought, and they receive presents, such as a ray-gun weapon, as rewards from the automated test-givers.  They soon learn that there had been a living caretaker of the asteroid facility, but he has died, which may explain why they never get a proper briefing on their reason for being here.  Fortunately, they stumble across the answers through various accidents, one of which teleports Sandy to the very planet of which Joe Burke dreamed.  After a violent encounter with some savage natives, the scientists learn that an interstellar space-fleet, which previously caused the destruction of the asteroid's makers (I think), is now headed for Earth.  Burke and his fellows then activate long-dead weapons and manage to blast the interstellar fleet into dust (hence my LAST STARFIGHTER comparison).  Then the Earthpeople manage to teleport back to Earth, where they themselves achieve the status of "aliens" when they land in France rather than England.
I imagine that some viewers may enjoy the catchpenny effects of TERRORNAUTS purely because they are so transparently phony, but I was largely bored because the characters were such tedious ciphers.  I felt sorry for Charles Hawtrey, an excellent comedian from Britain's CARRY ON films.  The other actors merely parroted their lines and went through the motions, but Hawtrey seems to be mildly regretful, as he was thinking, "Give me something funny to do, already!"

TIGER CLAWS II (1996), TIGER CLAWS III (2000)

 

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

On some occasions, the ascent of a screenwriter to the position of director heralds the dawning of a strong new talent. Of course, within the sphere of American chopsockies, no one expects the advent of a Billy Wilder, or whatever Wilder would have been in some alternate universe where he wrote chopsockies.

All that said, J. Stephen Maunder, the writer of the passable time-killer TIGER CLAWS, displayed the Peter Principle at work when he assumed both writing and directing duties on the second and third entries in this series-- though it's hard to call it that, given that Number Two appeared five years after the first one, while Number Three waited a good three-four years following Number Two.

Both films are thinly plotted excuses for a lot of kung-fu combat scenes with some vague supernatural goal in mind. Jalah Merhi and Cynthia Rothrock again play two karate cops, Tarek and Linda, who get mixed up in fighting martial arts menaces, but in neither film does Rothrock get a chance to shine, despite being top-billed over Merhi. The latter is a mediocre performer whose main attraction was being in control of the production company.

They're both tedious, but I suppose Number Two is worse than Three, simply because the plot makes less sense. There's a Big Bad who wants to open a time-gateway to the days of Imperial China, which gateway has supposedly been a thing that ancient kung-fu masters could access at certain times, in order to send promising young students back for-- their elders' approbation? It's never clear what the villain gets out of opening the time-portal, but he springs from jail the villain of the first film, the Death Dealer (Bolo  Yeung, still barely able to speak English) to help him with this project. The villain stages a lot of tournament matches-- I think to amass supernatural power in order to open the gateway-- and the two cops get involved and kick a lot of butt.

Number Three at least wears its influences clearly on its sleeve: it's essentially SUPERMAN II in kung-fu garb, right down to the way three ancient Chinese evildoers-- two male, one female-- are garbed in filmy black costumes. A villain (Loren Avedon, who's at least a little bit funny now and then) releases the three villains from imprisonment and tries to use them to form a new crime syndicate. Linda appears very little after she's killed early on, which unfortunately means lots more Merhi. However, the "all a dream" conclusion, in which Linda is alive and the whole invasion never happened, is mildly diverting-- on top of which, Maunder even throws in another touch suggesting that the invasion is still going to happen even though Tarek only dreamed it. 

Still, pretty dire all around.

SOMEBODY'S STOLEN OUR RUSSIAN SPY (1968)

 

 

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

In my review of the first film in this series, THE SECOND BEST SECRET AGENT IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, I went into great detail as to why I felt the arch humor in the movie qualified it for the literary category of the irony. At the time I had not seen either of the two sequels, both of which starred Tom Adams as secret agent Charles Vine, and I still have not seen the second in the series. I can't be sure if that movie maintained the ironic tone of the first one, but to my surprise, SPY does. The only personnel who seems to have been associated with all three flicks, aside from star Adams, is producer James Ward, so maybe the continued tone owes a lot to his co-writing credits on the third film-- all of which was shot in Spain and Portugal by a Spanish director, whereas the first two originated in the UK.

For once, the plot does not revolve around finding some vital super-weapon, but rather, the "Russian spy" of the title (actually, an ambassador). Vine learns that the Russian ambassador was kidnapped as part of a complicated plot designed by the Chinese and the Albanians to pit Russian and British forces against one another. This gambit gives Vine the chance to travel to various exotic locales and become inveigled with various exotic women, with only one or two fights to interrupt things. Eventually Vine is taken prisoner and shipped to a Communist refuge in Albania, where he's held not by Chinese but by their Russian allies. (A breakaway group? Who knows?) The Russians become overly preoccupied with forcing Vine to defect to their side, rather than just killing him, and they use on him both foul means (a torture device that spins him around in place) and fair (a sultry female spy who ends up liberating Vine from imprisonment). Once Vine and the lady spy (Diana Lorys) escape from the installation, they spend an inordinate time dodging the military on their way back to the free world. The pursuit-section doesn't have much to do with the main plot, but for a cheap B-flick the military tanks and trucks look impressive.

There aren't as many odd weapons here as one sees in SECOND BEST, but it's quite evident that the script regards such things through the lens of irony. At the beginning, Vine is summoned by his bosses by the "experiment" of having a female agent shoot him with a curare dart. Later, when Vine is being taken prisoner by the Chinese, the leader-- who claims that "all's well that ends well" is taken from Confucius-- shoots Vine with a similar dart, albeit from a blowgun concealed in a smoking-pipe. The action is just OK but the emphasis on Eurobabes is exemplary, particularly regarding Diana Lorys, who projects both hostility and allure in equal measures-- though she only gets to perform one measly karate chop during the escape section of the flick.

HONOR ROLL #139, JULY 28

 DIANA LORYS says, "Tanks for everything."

JALAL MERHI gets co-billing, but come on, in all these films it's all about the Rothrock.

The only potential for terror in this SIMON OATES opus would be of laughing yourself to death at the FX.

Dragon-slaying, the PRINCE PHILIP way.

Since nobody remembers the actor who played The Crimson Ghost, the roll honors his doughty enemy CHARLES QUIGLEY.

"SPIDER-MEN! And SPIDER-GWEN! Do whatever a contrived script says they can!"

BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHTS (2008)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

This Bat-anthology, with scripts from American authors and Japanese animation, proves once again that quantity is generally not superior to quality. In the space of ninety minutes, the producers sought to squeeze six stories—some of which are close to being vignettes. Possibly due to the constrictions of time, five of the six stories lack strong resolutions.

“Have I Got a Story to Tell You” consists of three street-kids who all claim to have witnessed Batman in action. Given that an episode of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES already plowed this shallow ground, this one is the most disposable.

“Crossfire” starts out well, from the POV of two experienced Gotham cops assigned to convey a prisoner to another location. One cop abhors Batman as a vigilante, while his partner is more ambivalent, unsure of the crusader’s motives but believing that the city has markedly improved from his influence. During the prisoner transport the cops get compromised by a pair of gangs. Batman rescues the officers, and—I guess that solves the problem?

“Field Test” involves Batman testing a Lucius Fox invention that deflects bullets, but the device doesn’t work to best effect during the hero’s next crime-busting operation.

“In Darkness Dwells” attempts to stuff two famous Bat-villains into one tale, even to the extent of rewriting Killer Croc’s origin to involve the Scarecrow. Batman, on the trail of an abducted Cardinal, descends to Gotham’s sewers to rescue the holy man from the Diabolical Duo. The re-designs of the two villains are poor and the action is incoherent.

“Deadshot” features Batman seeking to prevent the titular master assassin from claiming another victim. The only bright moment is a snatch of dialogue in which Batman, despite his distaste for guns, admits that he can understand the attraction of such weapons.

Only “Working Through Pain” has both a strong premise and resolution. Batman, suffering from a gunshot-wound while waiting for Alfred to rescue him, flashes back to an early period in his preparations for a crime-fighting career. As Bruce Wayne the hero journeys to India to learn the fakirs’ secrets of pain control. The fakirs refuse to teach him, but Wayne meets a young woman with the non-Indian name of Cassandra who persuaded the fakirs to teach her their secrets, and who accepts Wayne as a student. Cassandra, who has her own tale of tragedy, has an almost psychic awareness of the emotional pain Wayne seeks to master in addition to making preparations for the violent life of a crime-fighter. When some rowdy youths attack Cassandra, Wayne whips their butts in the video’s best fight-scene. This altercation, for vague reasons, spells the end of Wayne’s tutelage by Cassandra, who opines that his emotional pain is too deep for either her or him to banish. The story’s only flaw is a rather pat ending.

Though Kevin Conroy again voices the crusader as he did in BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, the anthology’s vision of Batman does not follow the earlier teleseries in showing the hero as capable of humor and compassion. These are hardboiled crime stories with an obsessed vigilante-hero, which is certainly a viable element in the Batman universe—but not one that receives good treatment here. Only “Working Through Pain” adds an interesting concept to the overall mythos, but that one tale is not enough to give the whole anthology more than a “fair” mythicity rating.

ZAMBO LORD OF THE JUNGLE (1972)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

As the U.S. began producing fewer and fewer jungle-adventure flicks in the seventies, various European countries attempted to take up the slack. A few of these are good mindless (if politically incorrect) fun, but ZAMBO LORD OF THE JUNGLE is not one of those.

Though as entertainment ZAMBO is dire indeed, there are a few little sociological curiosities in the film. The first is that main character George Ryon (Brad Harris) is not raised in the jungle; he escapes prison in some civilized country and flees to darkest Africa to hide out from the law. There he's given one of the briefest origins ever seen in the genre: one minute, George has been captured by a tribe of Black Africans who put him in a cage. Then one black child reaches out to him, as if sensing his essential goodness. And then there's a jump in time, and George has taken up living in the jungle while wearing a zebra-skin jacket and trousers. The natives have dubbed him Zambo for some reason, and while many people today would assume it was a reference to the fictional figure Little Black Sambo, I think I heard the natives call themselves something similar to the real-life Zambezi tribe. So that probably informed the name choice. Zambo doesn't have any special skills; he's just a good basic fighter. One little black kid-- presumably not the same one from the cage-scene-- hangs around Zambo all the time talking about how wonderful he is, but the hero doesn't do a helluva lot to justify the hype. 

He does get a great reputation for being one with the natives and the jungle beasts, and there's a minor attempt to keep from being condescending, when Zambo tells a European that he prefers the wise, placid life of the tribe over the warlike ways of civilization. Speaking of Europeans, one expedition hears about the fabulous Zambo and seeks him out to he their jungle-guide. The expedition is made up of the usual outsiders: good whites, represented by an elderly scholar and his sexy daughter, and bad whites who are with the expedition to rip off treasure. 

The scholar's plan to find a lost city might offer some potential thrills, but the city is long dead and it only provides a treasure for the bad guys to attempt stealing. There's one really curious moment in which the scholar uses a gemstone to focus the sun-rays and to open a long-sealed door, which is an interesting ancestor to a famous scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark." The guy then enters some forbidden chamber, and when Zambo finds him, the scholar's temporarily lost his mind for some unknown reason. Later the scholar gets his senses back, but if the lost city has some recondite secret, the filmmakers possibly dropped it for being too expensive.

ZAMBO is a pretty cheap production, and Harris's athletics are pretty much the only attraction. Cute blonde Gisela Hahn plays the hot daughter who romances the jungle-man but can't persuade him to return to Europe when the hero is conveniently cleared of all crimes. So there are no real surprises here, except for the fact that the film opens with a Schopenhauer quote in a foreign language I didn't know, probably Italian. That probably makes ZAMBO the only jungle-action film that has ANY kind of philosopher's quote in it.

PAYCHECK (2003)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical, sociological*

Continuing my attempts to suss out the multifarous ways in which the works of Philip K. Dick have been adapted to film, I arrive next at PAYCHECK, scripted by Dean Georgaris and directed by John Woo.  Woo and Georgaris choose to channel Dick through Alfred Hitchcock, albeit a Hitchcock beefed with a lot more car-chases and physical fights.  The results are not totally unpleasing, since both Dick and Hitchcock were masters of anxiety, but the script unfortunately fails to deliver on its potential.

Without dwelling too long on the 1953 Dick short story of the same name, it's actually one of Philip Dick's least anxiety-filled short stories.  Central character "Jennings" is an engineer who takes an assignment to work on a secret project: in return for a fabulous paycheck, he agrees to have his memory wiped clean of everything that happened during his employment by the project.  To his surprise, Jennings' paycheck is an envelope full of various value-less items.  However, over time Jennings finds that these items all place a vital role in his survival.  He eventually deduces that he has had recourse to a time-piercing device, allowing him to send his to his past self the very items he would need to survive.  The conclusion is more upbeat than a majority of Dick stories, in that Jennings's reward for his investigations takes him from being a simple employee, a cog in a corporate machine, to partnership in the secret project and marriage to the boss's daughter.

Whereas the Dick story deals in part with a time-device that can literally "scoop" objects from one period to another, in the movie the device only allows individuals to see their futures.  But it isn't just one company that pays the protagonist-- given the full name "Michael Jennings" here-- to have his memory erased after his work for them. Rather, in Jennings's era it's standard practice for many companies when dealing with outside talents.  The viewer sees Jennings go through the mind-wiping procedure once on a minor job before he even signs up for the assignment vital to the main plot. 

While the character of the short story is largely a cipher, Georgaris makes a partial attempt to give this Jennings (Ben Affleck) a consistent character.  This Jennings is something of a "player."  He wants a big paycheck to pay for his expensive tastes, and is willing to sacrifice his memories because he believes that only life's "highlights" are important.  When he meets female lead Rachel Porter (Uma Thurman) at a party, and feels a genuine erotic spark between them, he invites her, in all sincerity, simply to have quickie sex with him, since he considers the game of courtship a waste of time.  Rachel demurs, and shortly later, Jennings agrees to an engineering assignment lasting three years.  However, thanks to the mind-wipe he loses those years, and on top of that, is rewarded not with the sizeable paycheck he expected, but an envelope full of seemingly useless items.

As in the short story, Jennings is then pursued by the law, who want more information about the secret project, and who are none too gentle in trying to probe his wiped memory.  Since this  film portrays the future cops shows them as having no restraints on their inquiries, one may wonder if the writer had the 2001 Patriot Act in mind when he wrote this scene-- though, in contrast to the Dick story, the cops are shown as redeemable at the end of the Woo film.  After Jennings escapes from the cops through the use of some of his "value-less" items, he begins to seek answers.  And one of the people who ends up helping him is Rachel, who just happens to be a biologist working for the same company.

The strongest gimmick in the film is its borrowing from Dick: though Georgaris changes the particular items in the protagonist's "paycheck" in order with a very different route to the truth, the film is most challenging in providing the context for all of these foreordained items. However, the addition of the action-heavy "set-pieces" detracts from the mystery this time.  I won't say, like the more elitist critics, that the addition of heavy action is automatically a minus.  Frankly, I like the 1990 TOTAL RECALL better than the rather dull Dick story on which it's based.  But this time, the set-pieces seem de rigeur, as if John Woo felt that he had to serve up a certain number of them to please "the John Woo audience."

Georgaris' early script is set up to show early Jennings the error of his ways: to reveal to him the importance of love.  He experiences with Rachel during his employment at the project, but though he loses that memory, he recovers the emotion through his re-alliance with her.  He also comes to realize that the time-device which he reverse-engineered into working status is morally wrong; that it leeches away humankind's ability to regard the future with fresh eyes.  These are interesting themes not present in the Dick short story.  Unfortunately, Georgaris doesn't manage to sell Jennings's transformation.  In contrast to the example of Hitchcock's films, whose writers could suggest a multifaceted background through a few well-chosen sentences, Jennings is too flat in the beginning to create any conviction in a personality capable of such transformation, and Rachel is no better.

The action-elements also create another disharmony.  It's just barely believable that this version of Jennings, despite his engineer background, can prove competent running around doing action-stunts, since an early scene depicts him practicing martial arts with a bo-staff.  But the film also shows biologist Rachel doing stunts almost as outrageous, and makes no attempt to provide an explanation, unless one should think it's "the power of love" at work.

Since the film does have a strong protagonist and a strong villain, I considered that it might be deemed an adventure.  But on consideration, I found that the conflict between these two characters was of less significance than the dramatic love-affair between Jennings and Rachel; ergo, I rate PAYCHECK as a combative drama. 

THE DEMOLITIONIST (1995)

 

 

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

THE DEMOLITIONIST was the debut of Robert Kurtzman as both writer and director on a film after his many years of providing special effects and makeup to other movies. Kurtzman didn't go on to great fame either as writer or director, though he did launch the WISHMASTER franchise. DEMOLITIONIST, though, deserves its obscurity as a one-shot crapfest.

DEMOLITONIST is said to have appeared as a straight-to-video item about three months before the theatrical debut of Joel Schumacher's BATMAN FOREVER. Robert Kurtzman had no duties on any of the Batman movies, but I can't help imagining that maybe he peeked in on the filming of Schumacher's first Bat-flick, since Kurtzman, like Schumacher, thinks that "camp" consists of having every character in the story overact wildly. The plot of DEMOLITIONIST is clearly derivative of 1987's ROBOCOP. But that film's script was clever in its creation of a dystopian future-world. So Kurtzman, whether he ever saw BATMAN FOREVER or not, compensated for being unable to compete in that department by having his characters yell and gesticulate a lot.

The futuristic Metro City is overrun by organized crime thanks to its  incompetent mayor (Susan Tyrrell), who outlawed guns (sort of a futuristic Beto O'Rourke). Master criminal Mad Dog (Richard Grieco) dominates the gangs with his ability to shout louder than anyone else. The mayor decides that it's easier to create a new super-cop rather than to empower the police, but the project requires a dead cop to make into an undead crusader. As it happens, policewoman Alyssa Lloyd (Nicole Eggert) loses her life defending the mayor from Mad Dog's thugs-- and Alyssa just happens to have signed an "organ donor" contract, but for her whole body. 

Alyssa awakens to a new reality courtesy of her personal Doctor Frankenstein, Jack Crowley (Bruce Abbott). She has to receive regular treatments to keep her body from decaying, but unlike Robocop she doesn't seem to have any particular resistance to armed weapon fire, and must wear a kevlar outfit and a curious gas-mask. In her eventual action scenes Demolitionist doesn't seem to possess super-strength either, so-- why is she better than a regular cop with the same weapons and armor? Oh, yeah, she does have a moment where a bunch of thugs hit her with tasers, and she somehow reverses the electrical flow to zap her enemies. But in any case Kurtzman's script does not really work out what the Demolitionist can do, or even why her creators want her to have a name that sounds like a person who razes buildings.

The personal interactions are no better articulated. Crowley makes ruthless demands on Alyssa, treating her like she's city property. Is a nice guy who's become ruthless in his desire to prove his scientific theories, or is he a dick all the way through? One never knows. Alyssa weeps and wails about her lost humanity a lot, but apparently in writing the script Kurtzman only saw that Robocop got away with giving Alex Murphy a minimal backstory. Thus Alyssa has a minimal backstory too. But the writers for ROBOCOP knew how to focus on just a few details to make Murphy seem interesting, and Kurtzman did not possess that acumen.

Anyway, there's a lot of gunfire and a little bit of hand-to-hand fighting, but whatever her other abilities, Eggert never conveys the sense of her being a formidable super-female. After she conquers the bad guys, she's given a vague happy ending. This is at least better than the trope in which the script promises viewers a return of the character, which becomes lame when said return never happens. So in the annals of science fiction heroines, The Demolitionist isn't the worst, but she's far from the best.

KNIGHTFALL, SEASON ONE (2017-18)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* (???)
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*


I'm almost always able to make a phenomenological judgment of anything I review, be it a stand-alone work, an episode of a series or the entire season of a series. But for the first time I'm putting question-marks after my phenomenality determination above, because Season One of KNIGHTFALL just doesn't give me enough information. More on that later.

Set in France during the 1300s, KNIGHTFALL rewrites many of the cultural myths about the historical Knights Templar. Instead of portraying them as elitist villains, as they are in Walter Scott's IVANHOE (which I touch on here), the Templars are faithful defenders of France, even though their primary loyalties are to their own order, and to Pope Boniface. Though the series' first season portrays a wealth of characters, the star of the show is Landry de Lauzon, who succeeds his deceased mentor as the titular head of the Templar monastery in Paris. In the course of the series, Landry comes into conflict with the King of France, with his scheming, Richelieu-like lawyer De Nogaret, with other members of his order, and with a mysterious Saracen order, the Brotherhood of Light. The Brotherhood is one of the more fantastic aspects of this not-very-historical period-piece, for their purpose is to block Landry from one of his main missions: to re-acquire the Holy Grail, of which the Christians lost custody during one of the unsuccessful battles of the Crusades.

The "weird society" of the Brotherhood, by itself, would qualify only as an uncanny trope, as would some of the more exotic weapons that appear in 12th-century France, such as the concoction called "Greek fire," and a costumed female assassin, referred to as a "Mongol" but geared up to look more like a 12th-century version of a ninja. Plainly the makers of the series chose to base their reading of history on extravaganzas like Frank Miller's 300, or at least the film version thereof.  Once a viewer understands that this is not primarily a naturalistic series, its departures from consensual reality can be tolerated.

To be sure, though KNIGHTFALL boasts quality acting and bracing battle-scenes, there are so many divergent subplots in the show's ten episodes that the season comes off somewhat disjointed. Another plus is that the series does not, like many current movies about the era of the Crusades, attempt to downgrade the Christian outlook of the principals, even though Landry comes to realize that conquering the Holy Land is a fruitless endeavor. Some scholars have asserted that the stories of the search for the Holy Grail became for medieval Europeans a compensatory goal for the failure to regain the formerly Christianized lands of North Africa. Certainly Landry's search for the Cup of Christ, and its possible use to redeem mankind, becomes his primary goal as a Templar, even though he has a number of other human concerns as well (not least a major romance with the Queen of France, a big no-no for a Templar monk).

However, the series keeps the nature of the Grail mysterious. One character claims that drinking from the Grail cured him from a fatal wound, and he even shows Landry the catastrophic nature of the wound as proof. But only in one later incident does Landry try to use the Grail to heal someone, and the result is ambiguous. Further, a character aligned with the Brotherhood of Light suggests that the cup may be far older than the era of Jesus Christ, so at the very least, the show's creators wanted to leave open the possibility that the Grail could have some special properties.

Possibly the recently issued second season will bring forth more evidence one way or the other. Online sites seem skeptical as to whether KNIGHTFALL will enjoy a "third crusade."

GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE (1989)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, sociological*


GODZILLA VS. BIOLLANTE directly followed GODZILLA 1985, the first of the so-called "Heisei series" of the franchise. Despite some promising ideas, BIOLLANTE reminds me a lot of the still-image above. The film, like Biollante, tries to bite off more than it can chew.

I watched an English-language DVD that purported to be more complete than the theatrical release, but I still found myself getting lost on some of the movie's plot-points. According to the DVD's promotional materials, neither director Kazuki Omori nor most of his crew had worked on a Godzilla film before, and reputedly their attempt to prove themselves led to clashes with upper management. On occasion such conflicts can lead to a superior product, but I found Omori's characters flat and his exposition chimerical.

BIOLLANTE sports one strong idea that continued to resonate throughout later entries in the Heisei series. After Godzilla has been temporarily exiled within the depths of a slumbering volcano, various scientific firms-- both Japanese and foreign-- attempt to harvest skin-cells left behind by the radioactive behemoth, for use in bio-technology. This was an overt attempt to supplement the "nuclear fears" represented by the 1950s colossus with an additional concern: the fear of mankind's Frankensteinian attempts to experiment with living biological forms.

The result of one such experiment is another colossus, a giant plant-creature combining aspects of a giant plant and of Godzilla himself. To further complicate the plant-monster's history, the scientist has also managed to somehow infuse the soul of his dead daughter into the mix, although this doesn't have much direct impact upon the plotline. In large part, the presence of the human element is only inferred by the presence of a human psychic, Miki Saegusa, who appeared in all of the Heisei series from that point onward. While most of the characters lack the simple appeal of the better Showa films, Miki is imbued with a spiritual quality that makes her appealing even when the script wanders about.

Godzilla is drawn to the flowering form of Biollante because of their shared cellular structure, but for no clear reason, the plant-creature attacks Godzilla with its vine-arms and is destroyed by the Big G's atomic fire-breath. However, as in a great many of the Mothra films-- to which Biollante probably owes some concept-debt-- Biollante is reborn in another form. The plant-monster does not seem as overtly beneficial as Mothra, but by hook or crook Biollante does manage to repel Godzilla's attack on Japan for a time, before Biollante's next form transmigrates to outer space. Godzilla, rather than renewing his attack on Japan, retreats back to the depths of the sea.

While the discourse on the morals of biotechnology had potential, Omori's cardboard characters are incapable of infusing the dialogue with any passion or sense of consequence. The giant-monster battles are just fair, but this may be natural enough given the inexperience of the crew. Certainly later entries in the Heisei series showed some degree of improvement.

The film proved a box office disappointment, with the result that this remains Biollante's only outing. 

HONOR ROLL #134, JULY 20

Godzilla has trouble with tentacles, but not the sexy kind, when he jousts with BIOLLANTE.

Happily, TOM CULLEN only had to put up with one "knight/night" pun.

NICOLE EGGERT's imitation of Robocop ends up making even Robochic look good.

PAUL GIAMATTI lived for his paycheck in PAYCHECK.

BRAD HARRIS was glad that his "Zambo" didn't have to get chased by tigers, even if they might have turned to butter.

And here we have another "knight" pun, to which KILLER CROC pays no attention whatever.

ATOM ANT: THE COMPLETE SERIES (1965-66)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological*


I had no expectations of revisiting a beloved icon of my youth when I decided to screen the 26 episodes of Hanna-Barbera's ATOM ANT show, because I remember thinking it was pretty crappy even when I watched it as a kid.

The football-helmeted spawn of the formicidae family premiered as one sixth of an hour-long cartoon-block. THE ATOM ANT'SECRET SQUIRREL SHOW, although as its producers probably expected, the hour was eventually split into half-hour formats, with the two leads being features of their own half-hour shows, each with two unbilled co-features.All six cartoons were extremely repetitious kid-humor, and were closer in mold to the majority of Hanna-Barbera's TV-cartoon work-- RUFF 'N' REDDY, HUCKLEBERRY HOUND-- than they resembled the groundbreaking JONNY QUEST of the previous year.

The DVD collection includes all 26 shows of ATOM ANT in his half-hour format, wherein his co-features were the tedious PRECIOUS PUPP, which focused on the slapstick antics of a mischievous dog, and the marginally better HILLBILLY BEARS, about a family of four bears getting into slapsticky situations in the backwoods territory. Both of these features-- which I only skimmed for the purpose of this review-- used very uninspired jokes, and the only attraction of the BEARS was that the doofus hillbilly-father constantly mumbled his dialogue. This gave bored young viewers the challenge of trying to understand what Pa Bear was saying while they waited for the next routine hit-on-the-head schtick.

ATOM ANT seems to be Hanna-Barbera's first featured superhero character, but his stories also focused on nothing more than crude slapstick setups and assorted bad puns. It isn't impossible to do superheroes who are dominantly humorous, and in fact Hanna-Barbera did considerably better one year later with a spoofy group of superheroes called The Impossibles. Again, lots of dopey puns and slapstick-- but the scripters for THE IMPOSSIBLES had actually paid a little attention to the structural elements of the superhero genre in order to spoof it. Thus the scripts pitted the three Impossibles against silly but still imaginative villains with names like "the Diabolical Dauber" and "Smogula." Additionally, the visuals were more impressive than anything in ATOM ANT, even though both shows featured the same type of extremely limited animation.

With ATOM ANT, there's no sense that the cartoon-makers are doing anything beyond putting in a day's work. It doesn't really matter that the super-strong ant has no origin-- the Impossibles didn't have one, either-- but it matters that there's nothing intesresting about the world he's in. Most of his villains are stock mad scientists, except for the one insect who could give Atom a decent fight: his "opposite number" Ferocious Flea. Here's an indicator of how little the scripters bothered with thinking through this concept: one of the mad scientists breeds a super-termite, able to chew through anything. And the name the evildoer gives to his creation is-- "Godzilla." Yes, in those days you could get away with using the name "Godzilla" without getting a nasty call from the lawyers at Toho Studios, but it's still a pretty brain-dead name for a super-termite.

For that matter, Atom Ant is a bore as a character. In "Super Blooper," the ant is seen enjoying a fake superhero TV show, even though he himself is a real superhero. In "Dragon Master," the hero is transported back to Arthurian times, and he's only mildly concerned that he's just been separated from everything in his old life. (He doesn't even do anything to get back: that feat is accomplished through a blunder by one of the villains.) I don't imagine that even as a kid I expected much in the way of consistent characterization in a cartoon, but I know I liked characters who had personality. Even Mighty Mouse, from whom Atom Ant is probably loosely derived, had some sort of consistent outlook. The most interesting thing about the show is probably that H-B took two elements seen here-- the wheeze-laugh of Precious Pupp, and the name of a group of motocycle-villains, "the Anthill Mob"-- and re-used these elements to much better effect in 1968's WACKY RACES.

In closing I'll note that just as H-B recycled most of its standard tropes in this show-- hell, they even have Atom Ant help a mouse against a cat!-- they also use ethnic jokes that are objectionable today, and not just because they're badly done (though they are). Atom Ant rings in with one typically depicted "ah so" Japanese character and assorted dopey "redskins," while Precious Pupp manages to take on one little Indian and Pa Bear has an improbable encounter with yet another offspring of Mister Moto.

ADDENDA: On further thought I decided that there really wasn't all that much difference between the actual characters of Atom Ant and the Impossibles trio, in that all three were stereotypical depictions of the "painfully earnest good guy." The Impossibles' only advantage was really that they were occasionally seen in jeopardy, like Multiman constantly worrying about getting killed when the menace du jour plowed through his presumably lifeless carbon copies of himself.

POPEYE (1980)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*


In my review of LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER, I said:

... though Hollywood expressed interest in a lot of franchises-- including, incredibly enough, PLASTIC MAN-- the possibility of more big-time movies of this type was killed for a time by three major flops: FLASH GORDON and POPEYE in 1980, and LONE RANGER in 1981.

I had always heard that all three of these films flopped at the box office. Upon belatedly checking Wikipedia, though, I found it asserted that both FLASH GORDON and POPEYE made decent if not exceptional profits, in contrast to the RANGER's unquestionable failure. I might still assert that the less-than-blockbuster box office of the first two films may have some effect on the way most adaptations of the next eight years-- that is, all those prior to 1989's BATMAN-- remained generally mediocre, as seen by such winners as 1982's SWAMP THING, 1984's SUPERGIRL and SHEENA, 1986's HOWARD THE DUCK and 1987's MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.

Anyway, POPEYE was not a flop in 1980. I remember mildly enjoying it, though I noticed a lot of problems in pacing and a lot of mediocre music. Like most reviewers, I found that Shelley Duval and Olive Oyl proved a perfect match, while Robin Williams and Popeye were only fair by comparison.
Director Robert Altman and scripter Jules Feiffer certainly understood the quirky humor of the original Elzie Segar comic strip, and they translated several regular strip-characters-- Rough House,
Geezil-- who had never been adapted to film before.  Altman, no small talent with quirky characters himself, chose to set the entire shebang in "Sweethaven," a ramshackle East Coast fishing-village, convincing his backers to let him build an entire town on the island of Malta.  This enabled Altman to put said backers at a distance, creating his own little Popeye-world.

The film's greatest down side was that of action. The filmmakers were obviously aware that they had to provide some adventurous stunts, since the audience's strongest associations with the one-eyed sailor was their familiarity with the hyper-violent Fleischer Brothers cartoon.  In those pre-CGI days, it was clearly impossible to create the illusions POPEYE sought to create-- the sailor-man twisting his own arm around and around to deliver a "twister punch," or his body being turned into a rolling wheel by the force of Bluto's blow. Yet I forgave the obvious limitations of the period then, and I still found the phony effects somewhat charming today.

However, there's one thing that the Segar strip and the Fleischer Brothers had in common that Altman and Feiffer did not see fit to emulate: the free-wheeling sense of adventure. The animated cartoon frequently had Popeye venturing to strange climes to fight Sinbad the Sailor or Aladdin's Lamp, and while Segar's strip focused somewhat more on domestic comedy, the artist also pitted the sailor-man against exotic menaces like the Sea Hag and his mindless Goons.

The Altman-Feiffer Popeye, however, is largely rooted in a naturalistic universe. Sweethaven is patterned on dozens of Old West towns dominated by moneyed tyrants: the opening song-- one of Harry Nilson's few strong contributions-- mentions that the denizens of Sweethaven are "safe from democracy." Here the tyrants are Captain Bluto-- who is engaged to marry Olive Oyl, much against her will-- and the mysterious, never-seen Commodore. To this enslaved community comes Popeye, the marine version of the lone cowboy-hero, right down to the fear he invokes in the sheep-like inhabitants of the town.  However, there's one big difference between Popeye and the classic cowboy: the sailor-man has daddy issues. He's come to Sweethaven in response to a "visikayshkon" that tells him to look for his lost father there. On his first day he even finds a corncob pipe, though he doesn't connect it to his quest.

It's no great reveal to state that the mystery of Popeye's father and that of the Commodore are one and the same. I won't dwell on this because I find it one of scripter Feiffer's weakest plot-threads, and even though POPEYE is full of lots of mugging actors, Ray Walston as "Poopdeck Pappy" is one of the muggiest.  Considerably better is the introduction of the "infink" Swee'pea, who brings Popeye and Olive closer together, though I didn't care for Feiffer's introduction of a subplot which gives Swee'pea psychic powers. This proves to be nothing but a plot-device that serves two purposes: to provoke a quarrel between Olive and Popeye, and to give Bluto the idea of using the baby to find the Commodore's hidden treasure.

The latter development is a half-baked attempt to provide the film with a bang-up finish; instead, it's one of Altman's worst-paced sequences. Altman is obviously comfortable with the domestic comedy of Segar's strip, and his main strategy for livening things up is to throw in bits of slapstick wackiness. I suspect Altman, given his stated antipathy for the "storytelling" aspects of mainstream films, would not have been comfortable with a more "adventurous" Popeye, even one leavened by a lot of humor. But in focusing on dozens upon dozens of "bits of business" throughout the film, Altman and Feiffer don't deliver much payoff to Popeye's quest for his lost daddy.

I note in passing that though many of Williams' muttered Popeye-asides don't work very well, he does this aspect of Popeye quite well-- though one of the best was reworded. I seem to remember hearing the first release of POPEYE utilize the salty expression "I wonder who stuck a feather you know where," as referenced in this Amazon review-- but the dialogue on the current DVD definitely does not use that phrasing.

The only marvelous element of the film, aside from Swee'pea's psychic power, is the super-strengthening effect of spinach on Popeye. As in the cartoons, Popeye is sometimes seen performing feats of phenomenal strength even without spinach, but there's no explanation for these, aside from the Roger Rabbit explanation: "he can do it because it's funny." Feiffer's best conceit is that Popeye has hated spinach since he was a tyke being raised by Poopdeck Pappy, but the history of the sailor and his pappy is so muddled that it doesn't have any psychological resonance.  Still, the irony of the end-fight, in which Bluto force-feeds Popeye spinach precisely because the sailor doesn't like it, is a fair twist on the now predictable image of Popeye reaching for his spinach-can.

In conclusion, POPEYE is very much a mixed bag. I didn't find that not having viewed in for many years made any difference in my opinion of it. What I had liked or disliked in 1980, I still liked or disliked. Given the period in which the film was produced, it's lucky that it's as good as it is.

ADDENDA: I've been reliably informed that the character Geezil did make some brief appearances in three POPEYE cartoons of the Classic Hollywood years, most notably A CLEAN SHAVEN MAN.  I'm going to guess, though, that the Altman movie does seem to be the first time Geezil gets to do his main Segar schtick , in which he heaps epithets on Wimpy for either swindling him, mooching off him, or some combinations thereof.

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN (2012)

 

 

PHENOMENALITY: marvelous
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological, psychological, metaphysical*



It's tempting to class SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN as a "villain-centric" version of the famed fairy tale.  The title makes it sound as if the main focus will be on re-imagining the nature of the relationship between the Snow White of the tale and the minor character of the Huntsman who spares her, thus making possible the heroine's escape from the evil Queen and her sanctuary with the Seven Dwarfs. 

Instead, the strongest characterization in HUNTSMAN is neither the lead male (Chris Hemsworth) or the lead female (Kristen Stewart), but the villain, Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron).  Yet HUNTSMAN is not a deliberate attempt to reconfigure the story to rehabilitate a famous villain, as in Gregory Maguire's 1995 book WICKED, or to re-tell the famous tale from the POV of the villain, as in the 1997 film SNOW WHITE: A TALE OF TERROR.  Although Ravenna is indubitably the most interesting character in HUNTSMAN, she's not the focus of the story as in a truly "villain-centric" narrative.  She's simply built up to operatic heights to give her heroic opponents a foe against whom they have almost no chance.

The essential conflicts which HUNTSMAN takes from the fairy tale are those of youth vs. age, and to a lesser extent female vs. male.  These two concerns blend to form the film's theme, which might best be stated as the unfairness of the male gender for being perpetually attracted to youth/beauty.  HUNTSMAN does not really deal with the theme in any depth, using it solely to provide Ravenna's motivation.

Eric the Huntsman, the most thinly-drawn character of the three, is the one clear exception to Ravenna's imprecations on the male gender. Throughout the film we learn little about the Huntsman's background or personality beyond what is needed for the plot-action.  Rather than being simply the Queen's servant as in the classic folktale, this huntsman is an independent warrior who doesn't wish to serve Her Majesty.  The key aspect of his background that comes to the fore is that he is a widower, as well as the only example of a male character who remains loyal to a woman, his dead wife.  Ravenna manipulates him into serving her by promising (falsely) to reunite him with his lost spouse.  But once Eric learns that Ravenna has lied, he allies himself to Snow White-- originally, for mercenary reasons, a la Han Solo rescuing Leia.  No romance as such develops between Snow and Eric, though the film leaves things ambiguous.  Is Eric attracted to Snow as a woman, thus allowing him to forget his lost wife, or does he simply become the ideal retainer, converted to her service by the power of her regal "innocence?"  Whatever his feelings, at film's end when Snow is crowned queen, the Huntsman simply looks on from the crowd, implicitly separated from her by the social hierarchy-- an atypical outcome compared to most modern-day revisions of fairy tales, where doughty young wights often do gain both princess and throne.


Snow White's character has more flexibility.  As noted she incarnates the virtue of "innocence" as against the sordid "experience" of Ravenna, though it might be asserted that only the good luck of the script keeps Snow from undergoing a fate much like Ravenna's.  In contrast to many modern versions of the character, Kristen Stewart's Snow is not innocent in the sense of being vacuous, lacking any energy to fight for her own life.  She's never an exceptional fighter, despite getting tricked out in armor and trying to kill Ravenna at the climax, but she does try. The thing that allows her to triumph over the sorceress is the power of innocence, which the script compares the power of life itself. Only this can defeat the death-force represented by the Queen.  Such "life-force" gives Snow the ability to discourage at least one forest-denizen, a giant troll, from attacking her and her retainer, and this trope might be regarded as a loose rewriting of the Disney Snow White's ability to charm wildlife.  One can't precisely call Snow's "purity" to be a power as such: she never charms hordes of animals like the Snow White-manqué of 2007's ENCHANTED.  The script, though it never directly references specific religious icons or concepts, seems to be invoking something comparable to the Christian rewrites of pagan myths that we moderns know best from Arthurian stories.  The figure of "the white hart" is one of these that makes an appearance in HUNTSMAN:

...the white hart became a symbol of purity, redemption and good fortune in Scotland, and eventually became an important symbol in English heraldry too, alongside the mythical unicorn whose horn was said to be endowed with magical properties.-- Tales from a Cottage Garden blog.

And since the hart only appears long enough for Snow to charm it, the scene's only purpose seems to be one of comparing the persecuted heroine with this implicit spirit-of-nature.  However, HUNTSMAN doesn't pursue this line of symbolism very far,  Overall Snow has no more development in her character-arc than does the Huntsman; she simply goes from being the persecuted maiden to a queenly figure marshalling her forces to ride against the evil Queen.

It might be argued that the Queen, too, does not appreciably change, but in general it's not in the nature of villains to change; only to suffer a critical reverse.  Still, Ravenna holds the audience's attention because she's the mouthpiece of the theme.  Her early background is also hazy: in one scene in the film's extended version, Ravenna is seen as a pretty little girl, who is about to be abducted by unidentified raiders.  While Ravenna's brother looks on, the children's mother places a spell on the girl insuring that she will always be capable of renewing her youth and beauty through sorcery.

Sorcery also makes possible Ravenna's easy usurpation of the throne of Snow White's father Magnus.  In most versions of the classic story, the king's wife simply dies, and he willingly re-marries.  This re-marriage places Snow White in a difficult position once the king too passes on, which usually takes place in a naturalistic fashion in the tales.

HUNTSMAN's Ravenna takes a shorter route to success.  Apparently Magnus' wife does die naturally, but following that event, Ravenna uses her sorcery to stage a fake attack on herself, so that Magnus can come to her rescue and be ensorcelled by Ravenna's charms.  This duplicity leads to the film's strongest scene, when Magnus attempts to celebrate his wedding-night with his new wife.  Ravenna, after immobilizing Magnus with her power, rants about her previous abuse: "I was ruined by a king like you once... I replaced his queen-- an old woman..."  "Ruin" here implies rape, albeit one presumably sanctioned by a forced marriage.  We don't know what happened to Ravenna's original abuser, but she's clearly chosen to vent her rage on a surrogate, slaying Magnus with a (phallic?) knife, after which she takes over the kingdom with her own forces, commanded by her now-grown brother Finn.  She also locks little Snow White in a tower,  fortuitously keeping her alive until Snow is old enough to challenge Ravenna.  That said, this film largely dispenses with the famed trope of the"beauty contest," focusing rather on the opposition of life and innocence vs. death and experience. Perhaps that's why the "magic mirror" only makes one appearance in HUNTSMAN, unless one counts Ravenna's ability to call up "glass-fragment demons" which she uses first to deceive Magnus, and later to oppose Snow's army.

Ravenna gains considerable audience-sympathy from the revelation of her oppressed past, even though the script emphasizes that she doesn't confine her depredations to the male of the species.  Though she kills a young male rebel not long after securing her rule, it's implied that she oppresses other women to a greater extent with her practice of sucking youth and beauty from them.  During the flight of Snow and Eric, the heroes encounter a community of women who deliberately scar themselves so that Ravenna won't prey upon them.  Though no character explicitly refutes Ravenna's argument about the tyranny of "the male gaze," one may infer that because Ravenna continues renewing herself even after usurping the throne, she has in effect become the thing that she hates. 

Still, that may be giving the film-script a little too much credit.  I rate the film's mythicity as "good" because it does assemble a considerable number of myth-tropes, but in many cases the impact of the tropes is muddled.  A comedy-relief version of the Seven Dwarfs, though it provides one or two laughs, takes up too much time and distracts from the central conflict.  Similarly, the introduction of William, Snow's juvenile-boyfriend of sorts, doesn't have much effect on the plot-action except that Ravenna masquerades as William in order to slip Snow the fatal apple.  Like the magic mirror, Snow's temporary death-by-apple seems forced into the framework, as if the writers included it simply because it was expected.

Overall both costume-design and FX provide a visual feast to shore up the slower plot-moments.  In this respect HUNTSMAN far excels the limp, predictable visuals of this year's OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL.