THE SHADOW OF THE BAT (1968)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical. psychological*

One might think that rewriting "The Phantom of the Opera" for lucha-wrestlers could only succeed as a "so bad it's good" notion. But no, it's actually a fine little pulp thriller with a delirious sense of pulp-poetry about it. As with many similar films, the poetry would seem to have no real "auteur" behind it. Of the two writers, the appositely named Jesus "Murcielago" Velasquez also contributed to the above-average WORLD OF THE VAMPIRES, while Luis Vergara, also a producer on several Santo and Blue Demon films, is somewhat infamous for his participation in a quartet of cheapjack Boris Karloff films of the late 1960s. Director Federico Curiel directed various other luchadore films, and I've not seen all of them, though so far THE CHAMPIONS OF JUSTICE has been his best outing.

This was the third feature film devoted to the exploits of the masked wrestler Blue Demon, still today the second-best known luchador next to El Santo. If the hero had any ongoing mythology, one wouldn't know it from this film; he's practically a placeholder next to the much richer portrait of his opponent The Bat.

Like the Phantom of the Opera, The Bat (Fernando Oses) is hideously deformed beneath the mask he usually wears, though the Bat's facial scars resulted from a wrestling-accident. Despite the fact that lucha-wrestlers might theoretically practice their professions all their lives while masked, the Bat (which was also his wrestling-cognomen) is hugely traumatized, and the wrestling-world thinks that he went mad in some foreign country. Instead, he's deep beneath some Mexican catacombs near a major city, where he lives with a handful of servants who serve his will. From time to time the mad masked man sends his servants-- particularly the hulking Gerardo (Gerardo Zepeda of PANTHER WOMEN fame)-- out to find other men whom the Bat can wrestle with in his private underground ring. After the villain wins each match, as he always does, he instructs Gerardo to free the victims in the city, though for his own reasons Gerardo always kills the innocents. Oddly, the one time the Bat learns of one such homicide, he punishes Gerardo. "Wrestling is not murder," he opines, finding that the sport itself must be holy since it's mentioned in the Biblical narrative of Jacob and the angel.

So the Bat is not devoted to music as the Phantom is, though he does play a piano to anneal his lonely seclusion. Then he chances to hear the musical stylings of a singer named Marta (Marta Romero), and he sends his men to kidnap her, which immediately rings in a strong likeness to the Phantom. Late in the movie we find out that the Bat keeps a cell-full of female prisoners whom he kidnapped to be his love-objects, and who implicitly are in prison because they wouldn't be his bat-bride. Before that revelation, though, as soon as the villain has Marta in his clutches, he importunes her as if her consent is the only thing that can save his tortured soul. However, at no point does propinquity make the terrified girl more sympathetic to El Murcielago. 

For that matter, the Bat is not above trying to persuade his desired bride through occult means. Two separate scenes descant on a mysterious root called "Androma" in the subtitles, though from the folklore surrounding the herb, the plant referenced is the mandrake, which did have "love potion" associations. The Bat talks about using it to brainwash Marta, though he never does so, though he seems obsessed with the plant's root, which is shown to look like a woman's body. During Blue Demon's quest for the missing singer, he finds a fragment of mandrake, and seeks to discover where it came from. This detective thread leads to a very weird scene in which the hero seeks out a weird old witch-woman (Enriqueta Reza). However, though the witch shows Blue Demon some visions in her cauldron, she refuses to reveal where mandrake grows, and the luchador has to find the villain by other means.

SHADOW never stints on the action scenes, and the climactic battle of the Bat and the Demon earns high marks. But the film's highlight is the villain's bizarre fixation on both his physical appearance and on the sport of wrestling-- the one used for seducing women, the other for conquering male opponents. As with SANTO IN THE WAX MUSEUM, the weird psychology of the villain is the main thing that makes this a high-mythicity movie, though the strange allusions to mandrake-mythology provide a pleasing side-effect.

SHEENA, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE (1956-57)

 

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

TUBI is now showing sixteen of the original run of 26 TV episodes, shot cheaply in Mexico and featuring the statuesque Irish McCalla in the role of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. For all that I know, these episodes may be the only ones extant, given that the series was never circulated in many markets, so I may as well review what survives. It's not very likely any of the unavailable episodes deviate from the basic mediocrity of the available ones.

Nevertheless, SHEENA isn't without some significance. By 1956 Hollywood was no longer making either adaptations of comic-book heroes or B-films with continuing characters, except for some of the Tarzan movies. Television had caused those markets to dry up, but the small screen did release a handful of low-budget series that functioned as had the old B-films, only with a much shorter run-time. And a tiny number of these were based in properties from comic books or strips. Superman is the only such series that's well remembered today, but there were also adaptations of Dick Tracy, Jungle Jim, and Sheena. 

Sheena is the first major female continuing character in comic books, getting published for nearly twenty years before her company closed its doors. Both jungle men and jungle girls in comic books at best offered only junky pulp thrills. SHEENA the comic was also junk, but I've found a little more creativity in at least some of the stories, which is more than I can say of most other jungle-serials. And Sheena the heroine is one of the first tough heroines of the medium, knifing crocodiles and outwrestling grown men with the best of the jungle boys.

I can't claim that any of the sixteen episodes are anything but extremely simple adventure-fare, and they don't even offer many fight-thrills. Once in a while, Sheena swings from a tree and kicks some malefactor, and in one episode she knife-kills a croc, possibly her only defeat of a jungle-beast. (Most of them appear in the show courtesy of stock footage.) Even her male confidante, jungle guide Bob Rayburn (Christian Drake) barely does anything more than pot-shot the occasional wild beast. Apparently the budget was too limited to even make possible the limited fight-scenes of TV westerns like LONE RANGER and CISCO KID. The only time any of Sheena's enemies provide a halfway interesting threat is in "The Rival Queen," in which a hypnotist mind-controls a white woman into stirring up trouble with the natives.

In the comics, Sheena has little interest in the world outside the jungle, but she speaks full sentences and is often good at planning strategy against evildoers. In contrast, the show's producers chose to have her talk baby-talk as in the early Tarzan films. She doesn't really command any animals, but in place of a Tarzan-yell, she would occasionally blow a horn at the opening of each episode, as if to announce her sovereignty over all she surveys.

Irish McCalla, while no great actress, gives her limited lines a fit level of brio, and at least she's always treated as a formidable presence, The Black African tribes aren't given any deeper characterization than anyone else, but I didn't think they were overly offensive either. They're certainly not shown as being over-awed by Sheena's Miss Clairol blonde locks, and in general she and Bob always argue for tolerance of tribal customs. All that said, the show's main significance lies in being the first adaptation of a prominent female comics-hero, which is more than other ephemera of the period can claim. Also, it's the only way anyone can ever see a live-action Sheena in her classic leopard-skin attire, since that outfit has been effectively banned in later adaptations, probably to keep from triggering animal rights activists.

CYBORG SOLDIER (2008)

 

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

Though I've rate this DTV film's mythicity as low, it's a reasonably entertaining low-budget action-movie.

One day border patrol cop Lindsey (Tiffani Thiessen of SAVED BY THE BELL fame) is driving down a lonelyy road, and she sees a strange man running along the road. She pulls the individual, one Isaac (UFC competitor Rich Franklin) over to check out his story, and promptly gets pulled into his troubles. Isaac happens to be on the run from a cadre of well organized hunters, and he's forced to drag Lindsey along with him so that the hunters won't turn her into collateral damage.

Isaac is actually a former death-row inmate, mostly amnesiac and genetically altered so that he possesses supernormal strength and reflexes. He's part of a research project into the making of super-soldiers, and the head of the project is a rich guy with the obviously evil name of "Simon Hart" (Bruce Greenwood).

Naturally, while Lindsey is forced into regular company with the naive "human weapon," she comes to sympathize with his plight and tries to teach him about life outside a research institute. But none of this keeps the film from keeping up the pace with the action scenes. There's a minor dramatic turn when Hart tells Isaac he was sentenced for killing his family, but you know these villains, always telling lies.

All three principals put in strong performances and the action is pleasing without being all that memorable.

THE GIANTS OF THESSALY (1960)

 

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

I'm not sure who the "Gigantes" of the title are. Toward the middle of the movie Jason and his Argonauts fight a beast-man who's supposed to be somewhat bigger than they are, though the illusion isn't in the least convincing. Did the Italian filmmakers, including director/co-writer Riccardo Freda, mean to imply that the "giants" were the heroes in Jason's retinue, since they all depart from Thessaly on their quest? I could buy this if the crew included the many legendary names from the ARGONAUTICA of Apollonius. But the only "big name" in the crew is that of Orpheus, who doesn't perform any great musical feats. There's no Hercules, though there is a crewman with the name of Hercules' brother Eurystheus, but he like the other sailors of the ARGO is just a guy. So I suppose whoever decided on the film's main title was just choosing whatever sounded cool.

Freda's film starts out by radically simplifying the reasons for Jason (Swiss actor Roland Carey) to leave Thessaly to seek the Golden Fleece. (To be sure, the more famous 1963 adaptation by Ray Harryhausen tried to be truer to the epic, with the result that the film didn't manage to finish even an abbreviated version of the story.) In GIANTS, some random volcanic activity, supposedly sent by hostile gods, threatens Thessaly. Jason, the king of the realm, must desert his kingdom, wife and child to seek the Golden Fleece in far-off Colchis in order to end the gods' curse. (It is mentioned that the Fleece originally came from Thessaly, which is roughly true in the archaic myths, but the Fleece's extended absence seems a poor reason for the gods to devastate the whole country.) As Jason departs with his heroic men, he leaves his cousin Adrastus in charge. And in due time, Adrastus shows his true colors, making it clear that he covets both Jason's throne and his wife Creusa. (FWIW in archaic tales Creusa is best known as the name of the wife of Aeneas.)

After the Argo has been at sea for some time, the ship is becalmed and the sailors run out of water. The men campaign to turn back and go home, but Jason refuses to give the command, but also refuses to fight them. The moment he overmasters his retinue by sheer moxie, they get life-saving rain.

The next episode-- and it's a much more episodic film that the Harryhausen effort-- comes closest to the prose epic. The ship docks at an island that's never called Lemnos, but it might as well, since the isle is inhabited only by women. Queen Gaia (Nadine Duca) explains that all their men went off to war and were lost, while all of their sons died of disease. For a few minutes the sailors are beguiled by the available females, though I have to say that Freda handles the sequence so sloppily that there's barely any erotic charge. Then Jason encounters a sheep that talks like a man, one of his own transformed men. A little later he comes across the chained-up sister of Gaia, and she reveals that both sisters are the spawn of Apollo, though Gaia became an evil witch who used her powers to transform men into rocks and animals. But Jason doesn't have to fight Gaia to free his men, for conveniently Gaia simply perishes from having failed to conquer Jason's loyal heart. I guess all the women were under her control too, since they're not destroyed, and one of them stows away on the Argo to be with the sailor she loves. This sequence is obviously modeled after the "Circe" narrative in THE ODYSSEY, right down to Circe being the offspring of Helios the sun-god (a role later allotted to Apollo in Roman myth).

The Argo makes another port, and the heroes generously help the locals get rid of their ravening, Cyclops-like beast-man. Back at sea once more, one of the men discovers the stowaway Atalanta (an umbilled Moira Orfei). This revelation causes some tension against Eurystheus, the man she followed, and he nobly tries to take the blame for her actions. Then the script more or less drops the matter, and Atalanta only appears in one or two more scenes. (In some versions of the epic tale, the famed huntress Atalanta joins the crew of the Argo, so that's where the scriptwriters got the name, even if the island-woman has no relation to the famous figure.)

Finally, the ship lands in Colchis, but the heroes encounter none of the monsters familiar from the epic or from other cinematic renditions. Jason simply climbs a high wall to reach the fleece and manages to steal the prize without any of the Colchians being the wiser. Then back the ship goes to Thessaly.

Interspersed during these episodes, Freda gives the audience a few scenes of the regent Adrastus consolidating his power. He orders Creusa to marry him, threatening to sacrifice her young son if she disobeys. (This trope is another ODYSSEY-borrowing, with Adrastus as an importunate suitor trying to force Penelope, wife of the long-absent Odysseus, into marriage.) But I guess the evil regent only gets around to hatching his evil plot during the final phase of the Argo's return trip, for when Jason and his men arrive in Thessaly, the wedding is just about to commence. The heroes somehow hide themselves in big golden statues that are transported into the wedding-hall, and then the warriors burst out of them to attack Adrastus and his guards. This big finish, which may owe something both to the Trojan Horse and to the story of Ali Baba (with the thieves hidden in large oil-jars), is certainly the most energetic scene in the whole film. Oh, and bringing the Fleece back to its native land does indeed quell the nasty volcano, allowing Jason to resume his just rule alongside his wife and son.

Even if I was making a "best 100" list of magical-fantasy films made on the cheap, I wouldn't include GIANTS on the list, due to the many ways Freda and his fellow scripters blew so much of its dramatic and mythopoeic potential. But the film earns a "fair" mythicity rating just because of the Lemnos sequence. Unlike Circe in the ODYSSEY, Queen Gaia morphs into an ugly old woman when her identity as a witch is disclosed, and that motif certainly reflects the venerable trope of "woman as deceiver of man." As a side-curiosity, one of the myths of the Greek Earth-godddess Gaia is that, when she becomes perturbed at Zeus' imprisonment of her children the Titans, she tries to overthrow the King of the Gods by giving birth to a race of huge beings called "Gigantes"-- which as already mentioned is just another word for "giants."

Also, while the ARGONAUTICA is an early example of a "crossover story." the non-legendary nature of Jason's crew nullifies that aspect of the original story. If the only action taken by Orpheus, the one "big name" in Jason's crew, is that of moaning over his lost Eurydice, I see no reason to equate this character with the master minstrel who sang his way in and out of He

LUPIN III: VOYAGE TO DANGER (1993)

 

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

This movie-length TV special probably has too many irons in the fire to be anyone's favorite Lupin story, but at least there's always some subplot keeping things interesting. The comedic nature of the narrative is not as goony as in many other Lupins, but it is one of the few tales I've seen where Inspector Zenigata is obliged to team up with the Lupin Gang from start to finish-- and that alone provides a sizeable comic reversal.

Lupin and Jigen encounter a drunken Zenigata, who complains that after twenty years of his failures to catch the rascally robbers, Zenigata has been dismissed from the Lupin Task Force. The inspector's place has been taken by the presumably American "maverick cop" Keith Hayden, and Jigen opines that Hayden has a rep for not bringing his quarries back alive. Lupin sympathizes with his old foe, but sees criminal opportunity when Zenigata mentions his new assignment, to take down a major weapons-smuggling operation. Lupin decides to destroy the weapons-group both to burnish Zenigata's reputation and to rip off the organization's cache of money. Goemon and Fujiko join Lupin's new gambit, and the script-- allegedly based on a TV-show episode-- totally misses the comic opportunities inherent in having Zenigata interact with the four heist-artists he's so long pursued. In addition, Zenigata doesn't seem too worried as to what might befall his reputation if anyone saw him palling around with four major wanted criminals.

Lupin decides to hijack a warhead-equipped nuclear submarine, for which he needs some outside help. He kidnaps Russian nuclear physicist Karen Korinsky-- though, to be sure, he also liberates her from other kidnappers first. These rival criminals will turn out to be allies of the weapons-smugglers, whose boss had intended to use Karen for the same purpose as Lupin: to pilot the nuclear sub.

Karen is swept along in the Lupin Gang's daredevil heist, but she seems less concerned with her abduction and more with Jigen. Is it love in bloom? Ah. no, it's vengeance, for ten years ago, Karen saw Jigen kill her father, and though Jigen saw Karen she was still a kid back then, which is why he didn't recognize her as an adult. There is of course A Big Explanation, and I'm not giving away anything to say that naturally gentleman-thief Jigen isn't guilty of literal murder. But Karen's ambivalence toward the master gunman supplies the best conflict in the story.

One John Clause, boss of the weapons-smugglers, invites Lupin to bring his nuclear sub to a rendezvous-point, and the Gang begins its machinations to steal Clause's riches. Fujiko works her seduction-magic on Clause, but the ruthless arms-dealer is never really fooled by Lupin, but wants the whole gang to work for him. Lupin of course doesn't have any interest in profiting from the sale of arms, only from ripping off arms-dealers, and so there are assorted back-and-forth struggles. One of the weakest involves Keith Hayden overtaking the Lupin Gang, at which point he's revealed to be a corrupt cop working for Clause. (This indirectly implicates the official who assigns Hayden to chase Lupin with the interests of the arms-smuggler-- an occasional theme in various LUPIN stories, where such high officials are often more corrupt than honest crooks.)

The biggest dramatic wastes-of-space are two distinct incidents in which members of the Lupin Gang-- specifically Goemon and  Jigen-- appear to get killed. I doubt any viewer of DANGER believed that either popular character would die at all, much less in a TV special, so these are the least interesting incidents in the story. There's not much humor, the action-scenes are efficient but unmemorable, and both Clause and Hayden are picayune opponents. Probably the most eyebrow-raising sequence involves Goemon facing the oncoming car of Karen's other kidnappers and using his trusty sword to split the automobile into four equal sections. Fujiko then gets her only battle-moment, motorcycling up to nab Karen while using a machine-pistol to fend off the crooks. In addition to Goemon's sword-tricks, Lupin uses a few low-tech gadgets like exploding bubble gum and a sleep-spray, while the theft of the nuclear submarine certainly qualifies for an uncanny form of "bizarre crime."

GANG BUSTERS (1942)

 

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

This serial is only loosely derived from the realistic radio serial of the same name, and as one sees in many serials of the period, the gang-busting heroes of this story find themselves opposing a world-beating mad scientist. However, the scheme of the mysterious Professor Mortis (Ralph Morgan) is a good deal more grotesque than the plans of most serial fiends. Mortis commands a gang of criminals he dubs "the League of Murdered Men," whom he claims to be slain gangsters whom he's brought back to life via his science.

Since I've assigned the serial's phenomenality-category as "uncanny," this by itself should give the game away: no dead people were revived in the making of this serial. Nevertheless, until the fake-out is revealed, directors Ray Taylor and Noel Smith get as much visceral impact as possible from the suggestion that the big city is being invaded by undead crooks, forced to obey Mortis because he keeps them alive with his special potions. To be sure, Mortis's schemes are more focused on the city than on the whole world: he claims to have suffered injustice at the hands of the law, and he wants to create terror so that the citizens will kick all of the current administrators to the curb.

There's a fair amount of fast-car and fast-gun action in GANG BUSTERS, but none of the spectacle proved memorable to me. The script's greatest strength is in the handling of the stalwart police detective Bill Bannister (Kent Taylor). Just as Mortis has a grievance against the law, Bannister nurtures one against the world of crime, since one of the hoods working for Mortis took the life of Bannister's brother. Even though the  vengeance-theme is not overly emphasized, Bannister seems to be a little more three-dimensional than the average serial-hero, as he matches his savvy against the mad scientist's diabolical science-- who, as embodied by Morgan, is also slightly sympathetic. 

This is a good basic serial, but its only unique element is its use of horror-tropes, even if these are subjected to the so-called "rational explanation."

HONOR ROLL #205

Who you gonna call, to bust gangs? KENT TAYLOR!

For maybe the only time, INSPECTOR ZENIGATA ends up joining Lupin's band of merry marauders.

ROLAND CAREY didn't enjoy a giant career, in Thessaly or anywhere else.

RICHARD FRANKLIN soldiers on.

Happily, IRISH MCCALLA didn't change her spots.

MARTA ROMERO finds herself menaced by a Phantom of the Ring Opera.

GREEN LANTERN: FIRST FLIGHT (2009)

 

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

Green Lantern got his first feature-length cartoon about two years before graduating to the "big time" of a live-action movie. Though sometimes the cartoon movie is better than the one with human actors, FIRST FLIGHT and the 2011 film are about even in terms of mythicity, despite taking opposite approaches to the comic book character. As my review makes clear, the 2011 movie follows the heavy psychologizing of the comic book in the 2000s. FLIGHT, though, seems closer to the Silver Age incarnation of the character.

Indeed, even the comic book of the sixties takes more time to get Earthman Hal Jordan accustomed to his new role as a superhero whose ring can conjure up almost any force or weapon through the use of its malleable green energy. The movie spends about ten minutes establishing Jordan's profession as test pilot, and hinting at a romantic relationship with his boss Carol Danvers. Then Jordan's flung into a cosmic adventure by a dying alien who bestows his power ring upon Jordan, informing the Earthman that he's now a "Green Lantern," one of many such crusaders spread throughout the galaxies. Not once does Jordan even contemplate whether or not he wants to take on this new responsibility, and when other members of the Green Lantern show up, questioning the validity of their dead comrade's bequest, Jordan is not slow to claim this new destiny. He departs Earth so quickly that he doesn't even do anything to account for his absence to his employer.

Almost certainly the writers pursued this course because they wanted to introduce, as quickly as possible, the very involved mythology of the Green Lantern Corps and their perceptors The Guardians of the Universe. These immortal beings created the crusaders' power rings and the power-giving lanterns for which they're all named, and for centuries the Corps has kept order in the endless inhabited galaxies. In the original comics, the green power of the rings is vulnerable to the color yellow, but in the interest of creating a major menace, here the Guardians are said to have isolated a "yellow element" from the Great Battery on their planet Oa. Now some unknown plotter seeks to acquire that yellow element in order to eliminate the Corps from the universe.

Jordan, in addition to taking about two seconds to affirm his desire to be a superhero, takes even less time reacting to his first contact with the five alien crusaders who take him to Oa to meet the Guardians. All five fall into distinct physical categories-- Big Hulk-Lantern "Kilowog," Hot Babe-Lantern "Boodikka," Parrot-Beak-Lantern "Tomar Re," Chipmunk-Lantern "Ch'p," and Lobster-Skin-Lantern "Sinestro." None of these alien presences throw Jordan for any kind of loop, nor does journeying to Oa and meeting the immortal Guardians. All that said, the writers do a decent job of keeping the various heroes distinct from one another, and even Sinestro-- whose repute as a major antagonist to Jordan is well known to comics followers-- seems just to be a somewhat gripey functionary devoted to doing his duty. The script follows a reboot of the Silver Age concept by having Sinestro be one of the aliens who trains Hal Jordan to be a cosmic cop, though events move so quickly that Jordan never really gets trained, except on-the-job. 

For a space-opera traversing numerous planets, FLIGHT actually succeeds as a police procedural, and the script even kept me from guessing the identity of a mole in the Corps. Still, even a complete stranger to the Green Lantern mythology is likely to guess that Sinestro is somehow behind the plot to capture the yellow element, if only because he's the least likable Lantern. In contrast, Jordan is the representative of Earth, so even without formal training he excels all the alien Lanterns in foiling Sinestro's schemes and saving the universe. 

Though characterization is skimpy, at least the interactions are not as facile as the psychologizing of the 2011 GREEN LANTERN, and the animated medium is very favorable to finding novel ways for the Green Lanterns to use their unique powers. Action-scenes are above average, and the only voice-actor who doesn't work well with his character is Michael Madsen, playing a raspy-voiced Kilowog. I find it amusing that FLIGHT uses as a side-character Arisia Rrab, who in the comics becomes Hal Jordan's "underage-but-not-really" girlfriend. Arisia also appeared in an episode of JUSTICE LEAGUE and in GREEN LANTERN:EMERALD KNIGHTS, both of which, like this DTV, make Arisia into just another Corpsman, with no reference either to her age or any romantic attachment to Hal Jordan.

PUPPET PRINCESS (2000)

 

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

PUPPET PRINCESS is a one-shot OVA, about forty minutes long and based on a story from Japanese manga artist Kazuhiro Fujita. I'm not sure of the precise date that the original story of the same title appeared in a manga magazine, but it was no earlier than 1988 and no later than 1995.

PRINCESS is a beat-for-beat emulation of the manga original. Manajiri, a genin with no master, encounters a weird young woman with a big box on her back, who wants his help to invade the sanctuary of the evil Lord Karimata. The young woman, Rangiku, asserts that Karimata invaded the estate of her family and slaughtered everyone, though Rangiku escaped with the help of a nurse. Karimata's purpose was to steal the unique technology of Rangiku's father Fumiwatari-- a technology involving creating life-size puppets with special mechanical enhancements. Rangiku demonstrates the power of some of these puppets when she and Manajiri are attacked by evil ninjas. The orphan princess brings forth from her big box four huge puppets that defeat the ninja, barely restrained by the strings with which Rangiku manipulates them.

Manajiri is in no hurry to get involved in the puppet princess' troubles, and at one point he's frankly horny enough to claim that he wants payment out of her cute little body. But Rangiku is so innocent that the hapless genin can't take advantage of her, and of course he ends up helping Rangiku obtain vengeance. However, Rangiku's apparent loyalty to her deceased relations has a certain twist I won't reveal, but it gives her a bit more characterizational depth. The story ends in such a way as to set up a possible series with the two heroes, though no further adventures came to pass.

The idea of a heroine using souped-up puppets is fairly original, and draws upon the entertainment-subculture of Japanese karakuri, which involved all sorts of puppets, including some with limited ranges of mechanized movement. At base the main appeal is sociological, as the world-weary ninja Manajiri ends up binding himself to the service of Rangiku, even though she's a princess without a kingdom. The action-scenes are limited but the humorous scenes compensate, and so PUPPET PRINCESS provides a decent one-shot offering.

THE VINDICATOR (1986)

 

 

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

I'm amazed to see a criticism of this lively film-- sometimes billed as FRANKENSTEIN '88-- as being "unevenly paced." It may be nothing but a good formula-film, but something's happening onscreen every moment, with a very clear arc for each of the many characters (except for a teenaged character who gets knocked off late in the film, mistakenly cited on Wiki as the daughter of the main couple). 

Said main couple are Carl Lehman (David McIlwraith) and his pregnant wife Lauren (Teri Austin). Carl works for ARC, an aerospace research institute headed by a corrupt manipulator named Alex Whyte (Richard Cox). Carl and Whyte butt heads because Whyte's been siphoning off institute funds from Carl's projects in order to pay for a secret project. When Carl gives Whyte static about an investigation, Whyte, like your basic comic-book villain, decides that Carl would make a good subject for the project. Whyte has one of his many criminal flunkies set off a bomb in Carl's lab, killing Carl-- after which Whyte uses his technology to turn Carl's burned body into a cyborg-soldier. One prominent feature of the cyborg is that it's programmed with a "rage factor," designed to make the cyborg erupt into a killing frenzy-- a facet that certainly seems counter-intuitive if Whyte's real purpose is to turn out cybernetic astronauts

Cyborg-Carl-- never called "The Vindicator" in the film, although some characters do call him "Frankenstein"-- proves so powerful that he breaks free from the institute and goes looking for his wife, initially confused about what's happened to him. After a gratuitous encounter with street-punks demonstrates how mighty Cyborg-Carl has become, Whyte seeks out a commando-for-hire, the aptly-named "Hunter" (Pam Grier, initially seen involved in a kendo duel) to corral the robotic renegade. This becomes the film's main plotline, consisting of Whyte's various gambits with Hunter or with other henchmen to capture or destroy Carl Lehman. But the script makes the various gambits distinct enough that they don't become repetitious, even if Lauren is inevitably placed in the position of "damsel in distress." I particularly liked a stunt in which the cyborg is lured into a trap designed to offset his superhuman strength: a pool full of hardening resin. The likeness to comic books is emphasized by an end-battle between Carl and Whyte, outfitted in a cyborg-suit. 

Both the script and Jean-Claude Lord's direction balance the film's focus on incident with a certain number of pathos-moments. That said, basic pathos and action are all the film offers, in marked contrast to the greater ambitiousness on display the next year, in the mega-success ROBOCOP. The Frankenstein references seem out of place, since the Shelley monster was a tabula rasa who's never in touch with any aspect of a previous existence. Carl Lehman bears more resemblance to some of the humans-turned-robots in comic book features such as ROBOTMAN and DEATHLOK, or even (if one substituted vegetable matter for mechanical parts) SWAMP THING. If anything, Whyte is the only character who resembles anything from Shelley, being that he's a scientist so obsessed with his project that he totally divorces himself from all ethical matters.

TRON LEGACY (2010)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, metaphysical*

I watched TRON LEGACY on DVD years ago, and retained no real memory of the story. This suggests to me that, because I wasn't intending to review the flick, I simply watched it without much critical attention. Now that I've given LEGACY such attention, I find it to be much better than the original.

In my review of TRON, I pointed out that for all its advances in CGI cinematic design, its SPARTACUS-derived plot was pretty simplistic. Software designer Kevin Flynn gets translated into the cyberspace of the system he co-created along with two other designers, and there he finds a conflict between programs who are "believers" in the extraneous "users" who made them, and programs who simply bend the knee to the tyranny of the Master Control Program.

Director Joseph Kosinski and his four scriptwriters improved on the original template in two ways. First, knowing that they could hardly be as radical as the first film was in terms of pure design, Kosinski et al did not seek to outdo TRON in terms of pure design, but instead made the cyber-world more fluid, more cinematic-- which was also easier in 2010, when one didn't have to worry about having actors walk around in suits that were going to be "lit up" later by computer animation. Second, Kosinski et al made the conflict much more personal by shifting the focus to the son of Kevin Flynn. And whereas Kevin's problem was entirely external-- what does he do in order to defeat the Master Control Program and the evil human who created it-- Sam Flynn's conundrum was more about how to cope with the disappearance of his father.

Four years after the events of TRON, Kevin (Jeff Bridges, repeating his original role) is seen bonding with his young son Sam, telling him about his great adventures in cyberspace. Then Kevin disappears, and for twenty years, no one knows what happened to him, not even his closest friend Alan (Bruce Boxleitner, also reprising his TRON character). The grownup Sam (Garrett Hedlund) does his best to emulate his father's belief in "free data" for all users, but deep down he's still motivated by the pain of losing his father, and not knowing whether or not Kevin may have deserted Sam and his (barely seen) mother.

Alan finds a clue to Kevin's disappearance and passes it on to Sam. The clue, however, is a piece of deception from the entity who entrapped Kevin, and that entity uses a digitizing laser to transport Sam into the cyberspace of the Grid, even as his father was transported twenty years ago. Like Kevin, Sam is almost immediately drafted to enter a series of gladiatorial games capable of annihilating the integrity of any program. The entity responsible for the transportation, though, does not recognize Sam's identity until Sam is struck by one of the discs used by the warrior-programs. (The flying discs, by the way, are much neater weapons than the rather oddball "jai alai" devices from the first film.)

When Sam meets the entity responsible for his abduction, he intially thinks it's Kevin himself, albeit preserved at the age he was when he disappeared. But it's not Kevin. The entity who sent Sam the clue is, fittingly enough, Clu, a reborn version of a Kevin-created program that perished in TRON (as in the first film, also played by Bridges, albeit with digital "makeup"). Clu has become the new lord of the Grid, and he means to use Sam to escape into the "user world."

Sam is saved from Clu, "the bad father," and taken to meet "the good father," for Kevin was also abducted into the cyberworld by Clu. Whereas in TRON Kevin received succor from Tron and Yori, two programs created by Kevin's human colleagues, Sam receives aid from both a new version of Tron (still essayed by Boxleitner) and a female program, Quorra (Olivia Wilde), who was like Clu created by Kevin. Kevin welcomes his son but explains that it will be difficult for them to return to the real world without giving Clu the chance to escape as well. And once this setup is done, we again get a lot of wild graphic battles between good programs and bad programs. There's far less emphasis of the "believer" trope seen in TRON, though in a sense Clu and Quorra duplicate the functions respectively of the infidel and the faithful believer. Surprisingly though, the story does not end with "God" returning to his "heavenly" realm. Kevin merges with his rebellious son to keep him in his cyber-purgatory, and the faithful "daughter" Quorra is rewarded with the chance to enter the real world with Sam.

I've seen an analysis comparing Quorra to Persephone, but that myth-trope, while possibly valid, didn't engage me as much as the alleged modeling of the female program on the historical Joan of Arc. It's at least of some sociological interest that the female lead of LEGACY is much more of an "action girl" than the female lead of TRON. At the same time, while there are no explicit romantic scenes between Sam and Quorra, it's hard not to see their mutual escape to Sam's world as a sort of hieros gamos between reality and cyberspace. Then again, in a symbolic sense Sam and Quorra are brother and sister, so maybe it's just as well that the writers didn't invoke that particular mythic LEGACY.

TARZAN THE APE MAN (1981)

 

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

When I finished watching John Derek's TARZAN THE APE MAN in the theater back in 1981, I would have fully agreed with the reigning current opinion that it was one of the worst films ever made. Not only did it fail to deliver on the larger-than-life adventure I expected of a Tarzan film, it was ponderous and pretentious, and seemingly more interested in Jane (Bo Derek) than in the titular Ape Man (Miles O'Keeffe in his breakout role). Back in 1981 I doubt that I knew that the director was the fifty-something husband of his twenty-something star, whom he'd married when she was 19. I'm sure I had heard that TARZAN was the first major role undertaken by Bo since her breakout success in the 1979 comedy "10," and that the filmmakers were clearly trying to capitalize on Bo's newfound prominence as a sex symbol.

I also might not have seen in 1981 the movie on which this film was based: the granddaddy of the Tarzan sound films, the 1932 TARZAN THE APE MAN, which cemented Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O'Sullivan as Tarzan and Jane as far as most moviegoers were concerned. In this 2013 review, though, I downgraded the John Derek film thusly:

Since the 1981 TARZAN film made so much of Oedipal currents in the relationship between Jane and her father, it should be noted that yes, [in the 1932 film] Jane does pull off her dress in her father's presence, and joke about how he shouldn't mind since he used to bathe her.  But I don't believe the writers intended this as part of some sexual complex.  The real context would seem to be that Jane, resenting her separation, is teasing him a little with her maturation in order to fluster him and thus have a little power over him.  Old Parker never seems other than paternal toward Jane, though it must be admitted that his death at the film's end does sever Jane's ties with civilization and make it easier for Tarzan to possess his new mate.

What was a minor aspect of the 1932 movie-- a modern young woman's involved relationship to her absentee father, which parallels nothing in the Burroughs book-- becomes ratcheted up to become the main theme of Derek's TARZAN. To be sure, in both films, the father of Jane perishes at the climax, which could imply the story's need to dispose of him to clear the wild man's access to his beloved. But it seems likely that Derek, who wrote other films with Bo, instructed the scriptwriters to build up the Oedipal currents in the triangle between Tarzan, Jane Parker, and James Parker.

Neither film is all that clear as to why Englishman James Parker has remained in Africa for close to twenty years, allowing his daughter to grow from childhood to womanhood in his absence. However, the 1981 film offers a rough reason in that its version of James, as essayed by Richard Harris, is a narcissist obsessed with finding glory through big game hunting, not looking for ivory and "the elephant's graveyard" as seen in the 1932 movie. Harris' James is also a good deal less monastic, for when Jane makes her unannounced trek to her dad's outpost, James has some Kurtz-like affair with a very young Black native woman, seemingly no older than Jane is. 

Jane has come to Africa because her mother is dead, leaving Jane a substantial fortune, and she wants to become acquainted with the father who neglected her for so long. Her attitude toward James is more contentious. Not only does Jane not approve of James shacking up with a very young woman (who isn't Jane?), she doesn't doff her clothes in James' presence, but claims that she's so rich she could buy and sell him. This of course makes the big game hunter rail in florid Shakespearean fashion, but it also makes him desire to prove his worth to his daughter-- who, as one might expect, favors her mother.

Seemingly out of nowhere, James announces his intention to hunt down a mysterious "White Ape" dwelling on a remote escarpment. He doesn't intend for Jane to go along, but she's as bullheaded as he is, and so she joins the expedition. There's a small irony here, for in a sense James creates his own rival by taking his daughter into the ape man's territory.

The script is silent as to how the inarticulate "white ape" happens to live in the jungle, communing with real apes and elephants. However, when the expedition trespasses on his terrain, he kidnaps Jane, which loosely parallels an event in the 1932 movie. The 1981 James Parker, though, fumes and rages like a jilted lover, swearing to mount and stuff the white ape's body.

Though Jane is initially terrified of the vine-swinging man-ape, she eventually becomes fascinated with his male beauty (probably helped by the fact that he doesn't talk). Jane gets wet several times, making it possible for the viewer to enjoy the wet-shirt effect, and she has a few scenes showing off her bared cleavage as well. It's not entirely certain that Tarzan understands that she's the opposite sex or what he might want to do about it, though, and this gives Jane some time to warm to him. She persuades Tarzan to take her back to her father, but James shoots at the ape man, wounding him. Jane makes her choice and helps Tarzan back to a refuge where she can clean his wound and care for him, bonding them even more.

However, the escarpment is also home to a tribe of weird Africans who like to paint themselves diverse colors, like white and green. The natives capture both James and Jane-- I frankly forget what happens to the other members of the party-- and the natives prepare Jane for her wedding to their chief, a big brute called "The Ivory King." The natives' ritual for the impending bride is to coat her with white paint, a foretaste of her coming degradation. This ritual strongly reinforces the idea that Derek had input in the script, for the scene resembles one in 1978's MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD. The victim of the painting-ritual in that film? Derek's ex-wife Ursula Andress, to whom he was married from 1957 to 1966.

While Jane is being prepared for her nuptials, James keeps shouting assurances about how she can distance herself from her impending rape by imagining herself to be the goddess Aphrodite. Neither this, nor James's self-flattering casting of himself as Zeus, make any difference to the savages, and the Ivory King spears James to shut him up.

Tarzan arrives with a troop of elephants and engages the chief in single combat while the other natives look on, presumably cowed by the elephants. The fight between Tarzan and the chief isn't all that great, but after so many long soft-core romance sequences, at least it was Tarzan doing a Tarzan type of thing. The film ends with Jane choosing to remain with her jungle lover, and, as in the 1932 flick, there's no mention of marriage.

The film's best asset is its gorgeous location photography, executed partly in Sri Lanka. Derek, who was also cinematographer, showed far more skill in shooting nature than he did in pacing the romance of Tarzan and Jane. O'Keeffe looks imposing but he's not given anything interesting to do compared to the business given Weismuller in 1932. Harris is allowed to flamboyantly overact at fever pitch, and that may have some appeal in an ironic sense. Bo Derek would later become a decent though not stellar actress, particularly in television roles, but at this point in her career her talents were pretty raw. Nevertheless, her performance includes some good moments, apart from her photogenic qualities.

Both versions of TARZAN THE APE MAN position the hero in terms of his erotic and protective appeal to the female lead. The 1981 film-- initially given the risible working title "Me, Jane"-- comes close to suggesting that the young woman has conjured up Tarzan as a solution to her Oedipal conflicts. This might be the reason the white ape's life in the jungle is barely elaborated. Thus Derek's film doesn't focus purely on Tarzan, as do all the other books and movies I've encountered. The 1981 movie is structured more like a standard romance-film, in that both lead male and lead female are equally important to the narrative.

THE LION OF THEBES (1963)

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

LION OF THEBES, produced in the waning days of the peplum craze, was a loose sequel (though with none of the same actors) to 1961' s THE TROJAN HORSE, also directed and co-written by Giorgio Ferroni. This indebtedness to a slightly more reputable historical film, concerning the Fall of Troy, may be why LION didn't follow the usual "paint-by-the-numbers" formula as did so many other strongman-films.

In one variation on the story of Helen of Troy, after the city's fall she somehow ends up in Egypt, where her great beauty once more causes political complications. THE WORLD'S DESIRE, an 1890 fantasy-novel by Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang, is, aside from LION, the only other fictional story I've seen based on the archaic legend. In this version of the story, Helen (Yvonne Furneaux) escapes Troy in the company of her Greek bodyguard Arion (Mark Forest), who, despite having been in the service of her husband Menelaus, apparently followed Helen to Troy when she was maybe-abducted by Paris. Understandably, to play down the image of Helen as a faithless woman, the script doesn't dwell on that part of the story.

The two fugitives end up in Egyptian Thebes, taken in by the court of Ramses II (Pierre Cressoy). Though the Pharaoh already has a favorite named Nais (Rosalba Neri), he makes intimations that he wants to marry Helen. Arion is clearly in love with Helen and is willing to protect her against all comes, though Helen's feelings are not immediately clear. Ramses susses out his possible competition by inviting the strongman to compete in a wrestling-tournament. When Arion wins, the Egyptians dub him "the Lion of Thebes."

Ramses faces a political threat from rival pharaoh Menophis, whose soldiers have gathered near the city. However, evil usurper Tutmes steals a dagger from Arion and uses it to slay Ramses, intending to frame the Greek for the crime. Nais, knowing nothing of this plot, seeks to peacefully rid herself of the competition for "Pharaoh's favorite" by showing Arion and Helen to a tunnel  by which they can escape the city and Ramses' unwanted attentions. Tutmes foils the escape, trapping Arion between two cell-doors that descend from the ceiling (handy, in a deserted tunnel) and taking Helen prisoner.

Arion frees himself from his prison by bending the bars with his uncanny strength, after which a nice-guy Egyptian priest, not wanting Tutmes in control, guides the Greek warrior out of the city. (He also takes charge of Nais after she finds the dead body of Ramses, saying something about keeping her safe, but the would-be Pharaoh's favorite never appears again.) As Arion departs the priest tells him that among the troops marshaled by Menophis is a Greek ally, none other than Menelaus, fresh from the sack of Troy.

Arion makes his way to the camp and reports to his former commander and the husband of his beloved. To the hero's chagrin, Menelaus has zero interest in rescuing his wayward wife; he just wants to loot Thebes. Nevertheless, the forces of Menophis and Menelaus assault Thebes, and thanks to the frontal assault, Arion is able to sneak into the city and rescue Helen from a descending stone slab designed to crush her slowly. Menelaus kills Tutmes and is killed in turn. Menophis assumes control of Thebes and generously allows the two Greeks to depart in peace, with Helen pledging her love to Arion at last.

Though there are a couple of well-choreographed fight-scenes in LION, the movie is more noteworthy for Ferrone's fluid direction and well-lighted sets, and for solid melodramatic performances from the cast. Forest probably turns in the most nuanced acting seen from any boulder-shouldered hero in one of these films. The only discordant note is purely a matter of personal opinion-- why would a Pharaoh want the merely pretty Furneaux if he could already had Rosalba Neri, who had a body capable of launching a thousand, uh, ships?

HONOR ROLL #204

 No picture of PIERRE CRESSOY in Egyptian regalia, so here's his name on the lobby card.

"You Tarzan, me BO-dacious DEREK."

GARRETT HEDLUND delivered a better legacy than his daddy done did.

DAVID MCILWRAITH vindicates tragic monsters everywhere.

"I'm not your puppet," singeth PRINCESS RANGIKU.

In his first flight against Hal Jordan SINESTRO wishes he had the Legion of Doom as backup.

THOR: RAGNAROK (2017)

 

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


Don't call this film a "Twilight of the Gods;" it's more like a "twilight of the THOR franchise."

Thor's brother Loki may be adopted, but it's the God of Thunder who has always been the "red-headed step-child" in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as I pointed out in my reviews of THOR and THOR: THE DARK WORLD. I explicitly stated that I didn't hold the movie-makers to the high standards of Lee and Kirby (not the hierarchy one usually encounters in film / comics comparisons, but one I find valid). But RAGNAROK makes clear that. whereas the film-makers made some effort to formulate movie-mythologies for Iron Man and Captain America, the only effort they could make for the thunder-god was the effort it took to milk a cash-cow.

I went into RAGNAROK with cautious optimism. Though I'd read no full reviews, I'd heard good comments on the film's humor, and whatever the failings of the MCU, humor has usually been one of its strong points. But in this film, the comic elements become so overbearing as to usurp those of adventure. Moreover, whereas most MCU films have had some sense that "less is more," RAGNAROK merely proves that "more is too much."

The tone is quickly set by an opening "teaser-sequence." As part of an espionage mission, Thor lets himself get caught in the realm of the fire-demon Surtur, In comics Surtur has sometimes assumed the role of a "Big Bad," but here he's very close to being a "throwaway villain," like Batroc in WINTER SOLDIER, and only Surtur's role at the climax of RAGNAROK makes him slightly more of a significant presence. The teaser owes its basic concept to a similar sequence in 2012's AVENGERS, wherein the Black Widow lets herself be captured as a means of interrogating her captors, But the RAGNAROK script ruins any potential suspense with its over-reliance on goofiness, which quality scarcely ever lets up for the remainder of the movie. The teaser is capped by an "almost failed rescue" caused by an inattentive contact man, which goes back to RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and which has certainly gotten long in the tooth these days.

Chris Hemsworth's "surfer dude" version of Thor is the only virtue of this dull sequence, but it's telling that as soon as he gets back to Asgard, the script wastes no time bringing him back into contact with his shifty brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston). It's hard to blame the scripters much on this score, since the Hemsworth-Hiddleston chemistry remains solid. An earlier plot-thread, in which Loki bundled Odin off to Earth in order to take over Asgard, is disposed of by having the brothers seek out their lost parent on Earth, though this simple plot-action is needlessly extended with a time-wasting guest-appearance of Doctor Strange. No sooner do Thor and Loki find Odin than, tempus fugit, Odin reveals that he's about to die. The writers and director rush through this revelation as quickly as possible in order to announce that Odin's death will unleash a new menace on the cosmos.

In Norse mythology and in Marvel's THOR comics, Hela is called a "goddess of death" because she reigns over a domain of deceased souls. RAGNAROK's Hela ( a slumming Cate Blanchett) is sometimes called a "death-goddess," but this seems to be a synonym for "Badass Who Kills a Lot of People." Hela is Odin's first offspring, and it's loosely established that long before Thor or Loki existed, she helped Odin conquer the Nine Worlds. At some point Odin became sick of all the bloody killing-- a development that serves only to bring him into line with the original depiction of the ruler in the first film-- but Hela wanted to keep on killing, just because she liked it so much. So he exiled her, and somehow kept everyone else in Immortal Asgard from remembering her existence. However, once Odin dies, Hela pops up and tries to kill both of her brothers, since they're rivals for the rulership of Asgard. Hela's attack results indirectly in the two gods getting flung elsewhere. The evil goddess goes on to easily bend Asgard to her will, and to create an army of zombie warriors.

Thor and Loki both end up on the planet Skaar, whose other name in Marvel continuity is "Planet Hulk." Skaar is an entirely stereotypical "gladiator world," which exists for no reason but to pit alien fighters against one another. Loki gets separated from the thunder god, which is to Loki's benefit, since for the next twenty minutes Thor gets captured and subdued by the high-tech of a cynical warrior-woman, who in turn sells Thor to Skaar's nutty ruler, the grandstanding Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum, reprising his usual quirky character-type). Before Thor goes into battle against his first opponent, the hero learns that the woman who sold him is a Valkyrie of Asgsard-- indeed, she's a take on Marvel's "Valkyrie" character, though I don't think the script ever gives her a formal name. It also comes out that she, unlike the rest of Asgard, remembers Hela because she was the only surviving member of a force that sought to master Hela. (Why did the Valkyries need to fight Hela at all, if Odin had the power to exile her? Who knows?) In any case, she's a shallow, badly conceived and poorly acted character.

Inevitably, Thor comes to grips with the Grandmaster's champion, the Incredible Hulk, whose appearance on Skaar was set up at the end of the second AVENGERS movie. The battle of the two titans is one of the film's best aspects, and their subsequent dialogue might have proved a lot funnier had it nor been preceded by tons of juvenile pratfalls. The film spins its wheels for another thirty minutes trying to figure out how Thor can get back to Asgard in the company of Hulk, Loki and Valkyrie when none of them want to leave Skaar. An earlier film might have had the hero inspire the others with his tenacity and courage. Perhaps the political climate presumably wouldn't allow Thor to "mansplain" things to the recalcitrant warrior-woman.  Finally, the hero-team makes it back to Asgard, where they find that they can't oppose Hela-- who is belatedly said to draw her energy from Asgard somehow-- so the only way to triumph is to bring about "Ragnarok." The script makes a minimal effort to give this development "deep meaning," by emphasizing the necessity of Thor saving his people rather than his realm. However, given the MCU's rash tendency to annihilate prominent mainstays of Marvel continuity-- most chimerically, the destruction of SHIELD in WINTER SOLDIER-- I suspect the film-makers merely wanted a big scene to cap what looks like the last of the THOR films.

I saw the film with an audience that laughed at all the jokes, so I'm in a distinct minority regarding my "less is more" conviction. I imagine that actor Hemsworth liked the emphasis on comedy, since he'd probably like to get other roles than that of thunder-god, and I wish him well on that. But for me the main virtue of THOR RAGNAROK is that it exposed viewers to the superlative designs of Jack Kirby for both Hela and the minor character of The Executioner-- even if neither character was anything special.

TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT (1960)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT, directed and partly written by long-time journeyman Robert Day, seems to pattern the look of MAGNIFICENT on Guillerman's ADVENTURE. For the last time Gordon Scott plays a Tarzan who sweats and gets wounded, as well as speaking complete sentences. As seen before in TARZAN AND THE LOST SAFARI, once again Tarzan becomes saddled with leading a group of mostly-helpless civilized types from one African spot to another, though the ape-man is primarly concerned with getting fugitive raider Coy Banton to justice. Tarzan's "Stagecoach"-style retinue is made up of pretty stock figures: a comely young woman, a disgraced doctor, a engineer (albeit an educated black man, whom Tarzan says is the only one he *wants* coming along), and a couple with a troubled marriage. The husband, Mr. Ames (Lionel Jeffries) in said couple is the prime source of causing trouble for Tarzan's expedition, as he's a conceited Englishman constantly seeking to prove his virility and usually screwing things up for others. But Tarzan has to take him along for specifically altruistic reasons: because many Africans will lose needed work if Ames' business deal doesn't go through. There's a development the Weismuller films would never have countenanced: Tarzan the Capitalist Stooge!

However, just as STAGECOACH had its motley crew pursued by hostile Indians, Tarzan's group is relentlessly pursued by the raider-family to which Coy belongs: the patriarch Abel Banton (John Carradine) and his three other criminals sons, all heavily-armed expert trackers. To my recollection this is the first time film-Tarzan ever faced a whole family of villains, as opposed to his meeting separate-but-related opponents (as in TARZAN AND THE TRAPPERS) or whole tribes, which are admittedly "extended families." Abel Banton's monomaniacal desire to rescue his favorite son Coy from justice gives him a touch of tragic grandeur, even if he is still a thief and a murderer.

One interesting aspect of the script's construction is how each group manages to lose some members, not just to death (Tate the engineer, two of Banton's sons), but also through disaffection. Mrs. Ames, tormented by her husband's ridiculous braggadocio, falls in love with Coy Banton's charms and releases him so that he'll take her away. Predictably, her action doesn't pan out very well for her. Meanwhile, after two of Abel's four sons have died, the last one in the party walks away from the mission and out of the story. Abel Banton comes very close to dealing out Old-Testament justice upon his offspring, but ultimately refrains. Abel ends up dying shortly after being reunited with his favorite, however. The film climaxes with Tarzan having a brutal battle against Coy Banton atop a rocky crag, a fight which is clearly modeled upon the end-fight in ADVENTURE, and almost as well-executed.

RED SONJA: QUEEN OF PLAGUES (2016)

 

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

I'll get the main objection to RED SONJA: QUEEN OF PLAGUES out of the way: while hypothetically a barely animated motion comic might work for some genres, the genre of sword-and-sorcery needs lots of visceral bloodletting to have its optimal effects.

QUEEN is based on a "Red Sonja" comic issued by the company Dynamite, and written by big-name author Gail Simone. I haven't read the original comic, but given that Simone adapted her own script for this DTV project, I don't imagine that there are any major differences between the two. QUEEN is never more than an average formulaic S&S adventure, but at least it has a coherent plot and characterization, which is more than one can say of many big-screen efforts.

The backstory for this version of Red Sonja is that years ago she was enslaved and turned into a pit-fighter by King Rylack, the Butcher of Zamora. She and one other female fighter, Dark Annisia, survive the pit's rigors. Rylack is driven from his lands by Good King Dimath, who releases both women from imprisonment. Years later, Dimath's kingdom is under siege by a foreign army. His people have lost the will to fight, so he sends for Sonja to train them in the arts of war. Still grateful for Dimath's actions, Sonja also enters the fray when the enemy forces attack. But guess what former ally, whose name sounds like that of Robert E. Howard's "Dark Agnes" heroine, ends up fighting Sonja in the field, and apparently passing on a plague to the heroine? And guess what absent evildoer is actually pulling Annisia's strings without her knowledge?

None of the big reveals are very engrossing, any more than one revealing that there is no plague, just an insidious poison devised by a proto-scientist. Indeed, there's really no "sorcery" here, though in one short section Simone introduces some fish-humanoids that have nothing to do with the main story. But I give the movie a "fair" rating because even though the animation can't portray blood-and-guts, the script does get across the general sense of a brutal world where right and wrong are entirely decided by who can swing the meanest sword.

Simone's script also gives Sonja a new origin only tangentially related to the first version from 1975. The backstory still stresses that Sonja became a mercenary wanderer after her family was slaughtered by ruthless soldiers, but she isn't raped and she doesn't get any special gifts or counsel from any sort of deity. The revised Sonja-history thus eliminates many aspects of the early origin that feminists found problematic. Still, whether Simone or someone else at Dynamite concocted the new story, there's nothing about it to distinguish it from thousands of other vengeance-seeking warriors in popular fiction.

ANT MAN AND THE WASP: QUANTUMANIA (2023)

 

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

"My whole life happened because I messed up. The only thing I didn't mess up is you."

I quote this forgettable quote from the middle of QUANTUMANIA because it's a good distillation of the MCU's still-reigning "girl boss" dynamic. In the scene, Ant-Man's teenaged daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) admits that she's got herself and her whole family in trouble because of conducting quantum-universe experiments on the sly. But this rare admission of wrongdoing by a female MCU character must immediately be minimized. And so Scott "Ant Man" Lang (Paul Rudd) tries to make his grown daughter feel better by beating up on himself for past misdeeds.

As with the previous two films, the scripts always call for Lang to be something of the "lovable loser." He starts out the first film about to be released from prison, though first he has to get beat up by a big black inmate who has nothing to do with the story. Then he gets whaled on by Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), adult daughter of Henry and Janet Pym, the former Ant Man and Wasp (Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer), because she wanted her to follow in her daddy's size-changing footsteps. In the sequel, Ant Man is constantly ragged on by both his female partner and his prospective father-in-law, while the majority of the story centers upon the character of a "sympathetic girl boss villain." So, now Scott's daughter Cassie, grown to young womanhood, creates a conduit that sucks her, Scott, Hope and Hope's parents into the same quantum universe in which Janet Van Dyne spent a thirty-year exile. But hey, it's SCOTT who needs to apologize.

Incidentally, the movie starts out with Scott having to bail Cassie out of jail because she shrunk a cop's police car. Her reason for doing so? Oh, the cops were both forcing homeless people out of some area, and tear-gassing "peaceful protesters." The movie gives Cassie an out for all of her actions-- which are admittedly not as bad as those of the Valkyrie character from THOR RAGNAROK-- so it's mildly amazing that she even gets to proffer an apology.

But in truth Cassie herself is mostly a conduit to throw the emphasis upon the elder Ms. Van Dyne, who in her thirty year exile made contact with the inhabitants of the quantum realm, trying to help them overthrow the tyrannical Conqueror and, in her off hours, apparently sleeping with one of the rebels (played by a poofy Bill Murray). "I had needs," Janet explains to her husband, who responds by stating that he tried to date someone else after Janet's apparent death, but he just couldn't do it because Janet too was so awesome. 

Some time before her rescue, Janet managed to seal off the tyrant from access to the higher realms, and once she's back in the quantum realm, Kang the Conqueror wants out. Most of the plot feels like a reprise of an old LOST IN SPACE episode (alien entity attempting to escape his confinement), crossbred with an even moldier "overthrow the local tyrant" plotline. Both plotlines are rendered nugatory in that the Conqueror Also Known as Kang (Jonathan Majors) is the dullest MCU villain of all time. But just so the MCU can have another impotent male to kick around, Kang at some point came across the near dead body of Darren Cross, the villain from the first film, and turns him into an unreasonable facsimile of the comics-villain Modok. He contributes cheap laughs rather than menace, though I supposed viewers with a giantess-fetish may like the scene where Cassie Lang (with no prior training, BTW) turns herself into a giant in order to thrash the pathetic super-stooge.

This third ANT-MAN outing is directed by the same fellow who helmed the first two, Peyton Reed. But where the first one was a mildly entertaining confection, and the second a boring action-flick, QUANTUMANIA may be the ugliest  MCU film of all time, though I suppose Reed's not responsible for the ghastly design of the micro-world and its denizens. Reed shows no talent for all these high-octane adventures in the sub-atomic world, and the script by Jeff Loveness is just one long cliche with bad jokes. Rudd and Douglas soldier on through all the nonsense, Lilly has almost nothing to do, and Pfeiffer gives a dull and uncommitted performance. Strangely, though I despised the Cassie character, Kathryn Newton gives a lively performance, and may have a bright future ahead of her, once people forget this awful flick.

There's the usual hype for more MCU crap in the credits sequence.