BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD; SEASON THREE (2011)

 

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

As noted earlier, the final season of BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD only amounted to thirteen episodes, half the number allotted to Seasons One and Two. But since the showrunners made the perhaps tongue-in-cheek claim that their show was in danger of literally "jumping the shark," possibly there was a sincere sense that they'd said all they had to say.

Season Three doesn't dip its toes into the deeper, darker waters as did Season Two, meaning that the closest any characters come to death is when Batman becomes a Bat-vampire and almost turns the whole Justice League into the undead, until they're all miraculously returned to normal. But once again, Batman's so resolute in his desire to vanquish crime that in another episode he keeps on finding ways to battle villains while he's in a body cast.

It's notable that while the other two members of the DC "Trinity," Superman and Wonder Woman, were off limits in the first two seasons, both make a total of three appearances, though the Amazon only gets one "main story" and two teasers. In contrast, Superman is in one teaser and participates in two main stories, one of which is clearly designed to reference as many Silver Age Superman images as the writers could shoehorn in. A few new heroes debut in Season Three, the most notable being a crossover with non-DC hero Space Ghost.

The lead episode, "Joker: the Vile and the Villainous," is a novel switch on the basic concept, as both the teaser and main story depict the Joker "crusading" on behalf of Gotham's villains. He even succeeds in thwarting Batman's crime-predicting device, and comes off as slightly sympathetic, if only because such a machine would obviate the entire purpose of hero/villain struggles. Somewhat less successful is a spoof on sixties sitcoms with Aquaman and his undersea family dealing with their wacky neighbor Black Manta. One episode is given over to four shorts starring separate DC characters with only minimal Bat-involvement. The least successful episode is the predictable "Powerless," in which an arrogant Captain Atom scorns Batman for having no powers, only to learn his lesson in the end-- okay, he doesn't learn anything, leading me to think that maybe Atom was not particularly beloved by the writers. And they seem to like EVERYTHING.

The only outstanding episode is the final one, entitled "Mitefall"-- which, not by coincidence, sports the title of a very different comic book special, though the two have nothing in common but the participation of Bat-Mite. Given that this extra-dimensional enthusiast for all things Batty got one episode in each season, his re-use supports my theory that the showrunners had a particular jones for Silver Age Bat-comics of the Jack Schiff era. While the other two episodes depicted the Caped Crusader being bedeviled by the imp's maladroit magicks, this time Bat-Mite serves the purpose of the show's creators in that he's tired of the show and wants it cancelled. This remains in line with his Bat-fandom, since getting rid of tongue-in-cheek Bats will make it possible to get yet another "Dark Knight" iteration.

Bat-Mite then wreaks changes on the B&B universe, so that Batman will become so ludicrous that his fans stop watching. However, there's a bug in his ointment: Ambush Bug, who like Bat-Mite also knows that they're all fictional characters in a series of stories, and he tries to find a way to restore Batman to his original parameters. This opens up an unusual metaphysical proposition: can a fictional character become self-aware enough to refuse changes to his identity? In addition, the script includes a few jabs at the fans themselves, when Ambush Bug gets more viewers to watch by appealing to their love of slapstick violence.

The episode then concludes with a minute or two of Batman hosting a party of his most celebrated friends and a few foes, and saying farewell to his fans. And aside from a later team-up with Mystery Inc., this incarnation of the Bat-universe has remained out of circulation.

WHITE-HAIRED DEVIL LADY (2020)

 

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

Whatever the credits of this 2020 film might aver, WHITE HAIRED DEVIL LADY certainly seems to be dwelling under the long shadow of the celebrated 1990s BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR films. 

Whereas those films were broad and operatic, though, writer-director Tianyu Zhou turns out a somewhat fast-paced rendition of the earlier films' favorite tropes: a dastardly plot by royal conspirators, a doomed romance between a loyal Chinese soldier and a mysterious female fighter, and the female's alienation from romantic love, culminating in her transformation into a white-haired witch-woman.

There's not much question that the BRIDE films explored all of these tropes with greater dramatic power than LADY. Nevertheless, director Zhou-- who may be a young guy, since he's only directed one other movie-- displays a fine power to stage enchanting scenes in a fantasy-China that never was. The actors don't really have a chance to shine because the complicated plot races from point to point, but they and their costumes all look very good, particularly the titular "devil lady" Lian Nishang (Weina Zhang). While I can't say that the action-sequences are as evocative as the quieter, more lyrical moments, Nishang has a bravura sequence in which she takes out about ten men with nothing but a dagger.

I really love the look of this film and wish the plot was the equal of the visuals. Incidentally, though IMDB lists a separate film on Zhou's resume. "White-Haired Princess," I watched twenty minutes of a film with that title online, and I believe this is the same film as DEVIL LADY.

DREDD (2012)

 

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

Though like many viewers I didn't care for the sentimentality ladled into the 1995 JUDGE DREDD, the 2012 DREDD seemed to make the opposite errors: too much unstinting violence, without any of the comic book's penchant for over-the-top absurdity.

Because the 2012 movie had only a third of the operating budget of the 1995 film, the viewer only sees a handful of establishing scenes of the hero's stomping-grounds, the vastly overpopulated Mega-City One, while there's only passing reference to the irradiated wasteland surrounding the super-burg. The majority of the film's action takes place in one location, a titanic, deteriorated high-rise whose rooms and corridors all look pretty much the same.

The main thrust of Alex Garland's script follows the trope of "experienced cop trains rookie." The old hand is of course Dredd (Karl Urban), while the rookie is the character of Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby). In the British comics, Anderson got her start as a support-character in JUDGE DREDD stories and was spun off into her own solo comics-series. Anderson's first live-action outing thus constitutes a crossover between two icons with their own respective serials.

One of Dredd's superiors wants Dredd to test Anderson in the field because she's a mutant affected at birth by radiation exposure, with the consequence that she has the power to invade the minds of other individuals. Despite the possibility that such talents might benefit the Judges' operations in Mega-City, Dredd takes a hard line with his student, warning her that any infraction of Judge standards will ruin her chances at full admission.

For Anderson's baptism of fire, she joins Dredd in his investigation of a flagrant murder at a high-rise, Peach Trees, ruled by a major drug-lord, "Ma-Ma" (Lena Headey). When the two Judges enter the high-rise, Anderson's powers easily target the drug-lord as the culprit. Ma-Ma seeks to exterminate the two law-officers by closing the high-rise's nuclear blast doors, so that Ma-Ma's gang can overwhelm and slay the Judges. Even if this action had succeeded, though, it's not clear as to what Ma-Ma would have done about follow-up investigations by the Judge community.

Once the setup is complete, DREDD becomes just one attack after another, until the future-cops eventually face down Ma-Ma with the expected results. Urban's Dredd may be more of an uncompromising rock of a man than the Stallone version, but his lack of affect doesn't  encourage viewer identification. Thirlby's Anderson holds one's interest a lot more, since she has the dramatic arc of wanting a Judgeship to justify her status as a mutated human. Additionally, like the comics-character she almost never wears her Judge-helmet, ostensibly because it interferes with her psychic abilities, though the cinematic effect is that the performer is better able to convey emotional states. Thirlby does a good job of conveying both vulnerability and toughness when necessary, while Urban's characterization is compromised by the over-softness of his voice.

DREDD was a box office failure, and as yet no one has taken a shot at the third shot at the franchise. Ideally, a new iteration ought to find a way to take the best aspects of the two adaptations while leaving out all the proven flaws.  

KIM POSSIBLE (2019)

 

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

The KIM POSSIBLE series was one of the better Disney Channel offerings of the early 2000s. Like most teleserials, the show had its moments of repetitiveness or lame humor. But its simple mission-- to portray a female super-agent as an indicator of "possibilities" for young girls-- was handled with a light touch, in contradistinction to the "toxic femininity" movies of Marvel's Phase Four and onward.

The script for the 2019 movie, co-written by the cartoon's creators and one other writer, zeros in on the fantasy behind Kim Possible, that of "the overachieving high school student." With her goofy partner Ron Stoppable, non-animated Kim (Sadie Stanley) starts out the film by saving a captive scientist from the evil Professor Dementor, and still having plenty of energy to go out for cheerleading the next day. Kim and Ron even find time to take pity on a poor, friendless student named Athena (Ciara Riley Wilson). They show Athena how to come out of her shell and be more assertive, like Kim. The only trouble is, Athena learns her lessons too well. Soon she's eclipsed Kim as the Alpha Female at the high school, and even faithful Ron remarks that she's "out-Kimmed Kim."

It's a devious plot, of course. Possible's favorite fiends, the goofy Doctor Drakken and his acerbic henchwoman Shego (Todd Stashwick, Taylor Ortega) created Athena, a robot able to duplicate Kim's feats so as to undermine the super-agent's confidence. The diabolical duo lure Kim, Ron, and their helpers (Kim's mom and grandmom, both of whom are also ass-kickers) to their sanctuary, where they reveal Athena's nature. With customary nonsense-science, Drakken plans to use a machine to drain off Kim's confidence to make himself a superman, or something. Further, the process of transferring this emotional state from Athena, his go-between, will destroy the young girl robot-- unless Kim, Ron, and Kim's toughgirl relatives can stop the evildoers.

For a Disney TV movie, production values are very good, and the fight-scenes are well-handled both in terms of action and comic timing. I could have done without Ron Stoppable coming across his wacky pet from the cartoon show. Why does the comedy relief need another comedy relief? But the histrionics that result when Kim gets depressed at not being the Number One Worldsaver, and then critiques herself for her unseemly ego, are much better than I would have expected. Stashwick and Ortega get across the same constant backbiting relationship seen in the animated versions of Drakken and Shego, and I give the flick extra points for casting BUFFY's Alyson Hannigan as Kim Possible's live-action mother.    

Though Dementor doesn't share any scenes with Drakken and Shego, I rate the movie as a crossover just for having two independent "villainy-generators" in the narrative.

NINJA DEATH I, II, and III (1987)

 

 

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

There's surprisingly little written online about this movie series, which looks as if it was filmed as one long movie and then chopped into three parts. I don't know much about the popularity of Alexander Rei Lo as a kung-fu star in the West, but he's got a fair number of credits to his name, and NINJA DEATH was produced by Joseph Kuo, who has some reputation thanks to his "Shaolin Bronzemen" series. Yet I didn't see references to anything that resembled this three-parter on the Hong Kong Movie Database. 

It's my considered opinion that Chinese movie-audiences tend to display a liking for labyrinthine plots. Often, in kung-fu films of about ninety minutes, this leads to a lot of narrative crowding, and so one might think that three 90-minute films would allow for better plotting. Instead, the DEATH series remains just as confusing as a shorter movie.

The dominant trope is here is the "prince of high estate raised as a poor orphan," though for once the apparently Chinese protagonist Tiger (Rei Lo) is half-Japanese. From what I can piece together, before Tiger's birth a Chinese kung-fu master, Yi Chin Yi (I think) migrates to Japan and marries Mariko. It's implied that she's some sort of Japanese royalty and is served by a cadre of ninjas, dominated by plum-colored outfits. 

Yi-- usually seen strutting around in a gold lame outfit and occasionally wielding twin hammers-- decides to become the Grand Master of kung fu. For some reason he apparently decides to off his own son, possibly because he has some special destiny. (He does have a plum-shaped birthmark, for what that's worth, which may have something to do with the attire of his mother's ninjas.) Some of Mariko's retainers try to escape with Infant Tiger, but the Grand Master's ninjas overtake the defenders. One of the defenders must be Mariko's brother, since he later claims to be Tiger's uncle, but he gets his eyes gouged out, which doesn't keep him from being able to do kung-fu fighting. Someone-- I'm not bothering to check who-- does escape with the infant and get him to China, so the Grand Master's plan is temporarily foiled.

When next seen, Tiger is the owner of a Chinese brothel (which allows for a hefty amount of female nudity in Part I, but not in the other two sections). The broad implication is that Tiger didn't actually get raised by any kindly benefactor but lived some hardscrabble existence until adulthood, where he somehow acquired his whorehouse. But he also has a kung-fu teacher, usually called in the dub "Tai Master," and the teacher seems to know just who Tiger really is. So maybe he came around later? In the film proper, Mariko's forces infiltrate Tiger's city and start some sort of operation designed to suss out the half-Japanese princeling. At least I think that's what's going on when two of Mariko's agents, a brother-and-sister team named Fujiko and Sakura, actually start a Japanese-themed cathouse in Tiger's neighborhood-- to get his attention, I guess.

(Sidenote, to the best of my knowledge, Fujiko is usually a girl's name. This may have been some obscure joke, since there's some comic business where Fujiko fights Tiger and the latter thinks the former is making a sexual come-on.) One thing leads to another, and while Sakura tries to convince Tiger to sample her "Japanese style" of sex, he gets drunk and has his way with her. (In Part II, just to prove he's not biased in terms of nationality, he also has "accidental sex" with a poor Chinese girl, but she doesn't become a major character.)

The DEATH films all feel like the writers were making things up as they went along, which is odd given that they're theoretically depicting some big dynastic struggle, but with ninjas. Some scenes show Fujiko and Sakura reporting to The Grand Master, so are they double agents or what? Sakura at least seems to be genuinely in love with Tiger, so the double-agent explanation makes the most sense. In Part III Sakura sleeps with Tiger to "charge him up" for his impending battle with the villain. People come and go really quickly: the Tai Master dies after revealing Tiger's heritage to him. Blind Master says he'll take over, but there's an unusual absence of further training sequences. Mariko shows up in Parts II and III and challenges her son to a kung-fu battle without telling him who she is; later Tiger has a big dramatic scene about how he grew up without a mother. There's some guy in a devil-mask who runs around like a maniac. Once Tiger commits to fighting his evil father, he apparently lets the whorehouse run itself, since he never goes back to check on things there. The ending is really confusing, since the dub definitely says the Grand Master is Tiger's dad, but then as Devil Mask dies Mariko mourns him as if he's her husband.

Though as I've shown there's a fair amount of "crazy-fu" here, there's not as much as I would have expected for a film totaling roughly four and a half hours. There aren't even a lot of marvelous phenomena, though there are just enough bizarre ninja-powers and weapons to tilt the movie in that direction. Lo Rei and his paternal opponent get some decent fights but the actresses playing Sakura and Mariko contribute a fair share of femme-fighting.

If I had to evaluate the film based on how many wacky scenes it contains, I'd probably recommend most enthusiasts check out more of the standard hour-and-a-half movies to get those sort of jollies.

HUDSON HAWK (1991)

 

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




At the time of HUDSON HAWK's release, critics pilloried it as co-scripter Bruce Willis' super-expensive self-indulgence. I had a mild liking for it then, just because it was so hyper-active-- sort of a 1940s Bob Hope comedy on steroids.  After a more recent re-viewing, however, I found that HAWK never flew as high as I thought it did.


HAWK models itself on the type of spy film where an everyman gets drawn against his will into spy-games by competing organizations. In this case, Willis' title character, a professional burglar who was unjustly framed by one of those organizations, gets out of the joint just in time to be drafted into a manic hunt for a lost goldmaking process invented by Leonardo daVinci.  The existence of this fantastic method pushes the film into the realm of the marvelous: without that, HAWK would be "uncanny," based on its preponderance of heroes and villains using all sorts of strange devices (my favorite being a staid-looking butler-henchman who wears huge blades up his shirtsleeves).

One can hardly complain at how episodic the film is, as it's clearly designed to be a series of slapstick gags and stunts, ranging from the mildly amusing to the tiresome.  What kills it is that most of the actors mug atrociously, no matter how high they rate on the "respected actor" scale: Danny Aiello is just as bad as Sandra Bernhard.  There's some amusement value at seeing David Caruso tricked up to be one of the main villain's henchmen, sporting the name "Kit Kat," but it wears off quickly.  The only one who brings some degree of conviction to a role is Andie MacDowell in the lead female role as Sister Anna.  Playing a sort of commando-nun who reports directly to the Vatican, she's conflicted by her attraction to daredevil burglar Hudson Hawk, and he's at least slightly discomfited by the prospect of macking on a Bride of Christ.  Still, no one will be surprised if I reveal that God loses the girl in this movie.

In terms of Fryean mythos, the plot strongly resembles that of many tongue-in-cheek adventure-tales, but the general "Three Stooges" feel of HAWK edges the film into the domain of the combative comedy.


 

HONOR ROLL #252

 Heroic burglar Bruce Willis is the star here, but ANDIE MCDOWELL provides nice eye candy.

ALEXANDER REI LO had to get the nod here; he's the only star billed in English.

SADIE STANLEY dreams the Kim Possible dream.

OLIVE THIRLBY has a Dredd-ful experience.

The devil made WEINA ZHANG do it.

AMBUSH BUG got to close out a Batman series, even though he's neither Brave nor Bold.

THE DARK AVENGER (1990)

 

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

I thought I knew all of the failed TV-pilots of the 20th century that involved superhero-like characters. Yet the Agents of Streaming managed to unearth this curiosity, which supposedly appeared the same year as Sam Raimi's theatrical DARKMAN.

In my DARKMAN review, I addressed an assortment of possible influences on that film. There's probably next to no information out there about the genesis of DARK AVENGER, though it wouldn't be surprising if the director and writer (both well-traveled TV talents, with the latter being the creator of the series HUNTER) just whipped AVENGER out in response to a general impression of DARKMAN, rather than with the intention of literal emulation. The titular Avenger (Leigh Lawson) is disfigured in a rather more mundane manner than Darkman, in that the Avenger has lost one arm and half of his face. In his vigilante identity he sports an artificial arm (complete with a taser-gimmick) and a half-mask over his scars, much like the Gerard Butler Phantom of the Opera. The Avenger unlike Darkman cherishes no hope of undoing his freakish appearance, and where Darkman leaves behind a bereaved girlfriend who believes him dead for a time, the Avenger leaves behind both a former wife and a little girl-child, both of whom continue to think him dead by movie's end. 

Since AVENGER is a TV-film, it doesn't have the budget to indulge in the sort of hyperkinetic feats seen in the Raimi film. But since it's also less than 90 minutes long, writer Frank Lupo dispenses with any long recapitulation of the crusader's origin. Through the shadowy sentinel's dialogue with his tech-aide-- a smart-mouthed former lady crook named Rae (Maggie Han) -- we learn that the Avenger was once crusading judge Paul Cain, and that his gangland enemies ordered him knocked off. With Rae's help Cain survived, but since he no longer felt capable of living a normal life, he dedicated his existence to fighting crime. That said, on a couple of occasions he shows up at the house where his daughter lives, and leaves her a gift of flowers, just to feel some sense of connection. But that's about all the emotional tumult we get from this character. 

The strongest scenes are at the beginning, when the Dark Avenger succors a woman being intimidated by a criminal gang holding her brother hostage. Director Guy Magar, who mostly did TV-episodes, does a nice job of building tension as the small clique of thugs are driven to distraction by the hero's Shadow-style spookiness. Then the rest of the flick becomes jumbled between an arc concerning the assassin who tried to kill Judge Cain, and an arc about a young man falsely accused of being a serial killer named the Grim Reaper. Even having just watched the movie, I couldn't even follow who the real Reaper was supposed to have been. The most impressive scene in the telefilm's latter half concerns the assassin, who suspects the Avenger's identity and so kidnaps Judge Cain's daughter. The hero saves his daughter, but she doesn't recognize him due to his mask and is grossed out by his forbidding appearance. Back at home and in bed that night, she fantasizes that the spirit of her dead father will protect her from "the monster."

I doubt AVENGER would have made a very good series, though Lawson and Han had decent chemistry. Robert Vaughn appears as a crime-boss in just one scene. Possibly the producers hoped that if the pilot engendered a series, they might have been able to sign him on as a regular in order to profit from his relative star-power. Lupo works in a number of superheroic references to The Lone Ranger, "atomic batteries to power," and (of all things) Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse.

KARZAN JUNGLE LORD (1972)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological, psychological*

KARZAN, as the name suggests, is just a routine Tarzan knockoff, though oddly for most of the running-time the hero remains somewhat on the defensive against a group of mercenary white hunters. The hunters' expedition-- made up of a bunch of barely distinguishable characters-- is waylaid by a tribe of Black Africans, who are ruled by a lithe-bodied queen. Karzan and his mate Shiran-- neither of whom can speak English, and who are implicitly both white castaways somehow raised in the jungle-- intervene to save the hunters.

Amusingly, Shiran is the first to attack the tribe, getting into a catfight with the African queen. (The director's best moment is including a shot of a tribesman grinning as he watches his queen rolling in the dust with the white girl.) Karzan then intervenes as well, using his jungle muscles to toss around other grown men. It's possible that Karzan's motives are not entirely altruistic, for he promptly takes possession of the group's only woman, taking both her and Shiran off into the wilds, leaving the other guys to free themselves. But the film isn't organized enough to get any dramatic mileage out of Karzan's apparent attempt at a menage-a-trois.

Despite Karzan's perhaps unworthy motives, the hunters are worse. They decide that they can make a fortune by taking the white savages prisoner for exhibition in the civilized world. From then on there ensues a seesaw battle: first the hunters have both Karzan and Shiran in captivity, then Karzan gets free and fights to free Shiran, then he's captured again, and so on. Finally, one of the white guys decides that they should let their captives go back to the jungle, and that's the end. The catfight is absolutely the only interesting scene in KARZAN, and that's largely because its purpose in titillating the audience is so transparent that it's funny.

HERCULES REBORN (2014)

 

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

I haven't seen most of the productions of the mockbuster studio known as The Asylum, but HERCULES REBORN-- which sought to profit from not one but two big-budget Hercules pictures that came out in 2014-- may be the best thing the company ever did. To be sure, REBORN is still no more than an adequate time-killer, but most Asylum titles, if they garner any fan-favor at all, do so only by becoming known as "so bad they're good."

It's never absolutely clear that the Hercules of this movie is the son of the heaven-ruling Zeus (though the hero says that he's the real thing). Certainly, this Hercules doesn't inhabit a world of magical (and expensive) monsters. In addition, this strongman (played by a wrestler billed under various names, John Hennigan being the one IMDB uses) doesn't perform any supernatural feats of strength. Yet REBORN earns some points at the start by adapting one of the most consequential stories in the joined canon of Greek Heracles and Roman Hercules: the story of how madness overtook the hero, causing him to slay his wife and children. REBORN opens with this scene, not too much less horrific even though the deaths are more suggested than shown. Some archaic stories blame the goddess Hera for this calamity, but director Nick Lyon foregrounds a human plotter, face unseen, who's evidently slipped Hercules a potion that made him go crazy.

The scene shifts in time and place, years later in a kingdom called "Enos" (possibly a misspelled reference to an archaic Greek city, "Aenus"). The young ruler of the city, Arius (Christian Oliver), anticipates about to wed his royal bride Theodora (Christina Wolfe). However, one of his allies, General Nikos (Dylan Vox), lusts after Theodora, and to gain the young beauty, Nikos betrays Arius and invades Enos with his forces. Theodora is captured but Arius and a small retinue escape.

Arius has no other allies to draw upon, but he happens to have heard tales that Hercules, Son of Zeus, has taken refuge in a neighboring town. Over the objections of his followers, Arius leads them to seek out the demigod. Though the process of hooking up with Hercules proves fairly tedious, inevitably Arius finds his quarry, who's been drinking himself into a stupor for the past few years, trying to forget what he did to his family. Just as inevitably, Hercules agrees to lend his uncanny might to Arius' cause, at least partly because the hero bears some grudge against the usurper Nikos.

The middle part of the film is fairly boring, since the two scriptwriters-- whose other projects I did not recognize-- don't use the trip back to Enos as any sort of bonding-time between the remorseful demigod and the young prince, desperate to rescue his lady love. The two heroes just more or less use one another for their separate ends, even though the astute viewer may well suspect that Hercules' grudge against Nikos will somehow tie into the mysterious malefactor who slipped the hero a madness-mickey. (The subtitling says that the evildoer got the madness-potion from "Hera," though the actor pronounces the name "Har-ra," and it's impossible to tell if this "Hera/Harra" is supposed to be the deity Hera or not.)

Though the script's characterizations are nothing special, REBORN also earns some points for its semblance of a gritty, primitive reality. The movie was filmed in Morocco, so that the settings look a little arid for Greece, yet they still carry a convincing Mediterranean vibe. More importantly, Lyon-- a director with several other Asylum-credits-- stages battle scenes that aren't shy about bloodletting, unlike a lot of comparable takes on Greek mythology. And though Lyon doesn't show Nikos having his way with his captive Theodora, the director makes it quite clear that the villain doesn't deny himself the pleasures of the young woman's body. Theodora also takes several knocks in the course of the film, though she does manage to escape prison by tricking and stabbing a guard.

Hennigan makes an okay Hercules, playing him as a fierce brute with glimmers of sentiment. Oliver as Arius gets to show more dimension, but in the end he's nothing but the sum of his parts. The only aspect of REBORN that justifies a fair mythicity rating is the way script and direction capture the sense of a rude, primitive society where life is often all too cheap. Because the movie doesn't depict any overt signs of magical phenomena, it doesn't qualify for the category I call "the reign of wizardry," which exclusively concerns magical-fantasy stories.

SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE (2012)

 

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

Before coming across the DTV movie, I'd never heard of the DC hero-team called "The Elite." The characters debuted in one of the Superman comics-titles, and some of them later migrated to a title called JUSTICE LEAGUE ELITE, into which I also never delved. When I saw a commentary that The Elite were meant to be DC's take on the popular Wildstorm group The Authority, I assumed that the characters by Joe Kelly-- who also scripted the DTV-- were meant to carry the same vibe of hip anomie.

Instead, to my happy surprise, SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE turned the usual "hipper than thou" narrative on its head. Said narrative has been brewing in the comics world since the so-called "British Invasion" of the eighties (which included both the writer and artist who created THE AUTHORITY), and its usual pattern was to make fun of the antiseptic ideals of Silver Age superheroes who never killed and refused to involve themselves in political conflicts. (I say "Silver Age" because the Golden Age originals weren't quite so above-it-all.) The Authority in particular was a group of raffish heroes out to remake the world as they wanted it to be.

I expected that SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE would follow that pattern, and in Kelly's DVD commentary he even talks about how much he enjoyed creating the disreputable personalities of the five Elite-members, though he admits that he toned their activities down in comparison to their comics-debut. To my surprise, ELITE turned the original pattern on its head.

Superman and his girl-reporter girlfriend-- who's in on his double ID in this iteration-- are tolerating the many disruptions characteristic of Metropolis, such as the rampage of a long-time malefactor, The Atomic Skull. On the international scene, violence is on the rise between neighboring nations Bialya and Pokolistan, and Superman intervenes when the latter country unleashes a number of huge bio-engineered monsters upon Bialyan soldiers. The Man of Steel receives aid from the four members of the Elite: Coldcast, Menagerie, The Hat, and Manchester Black, the leader. The first three characters are of minimal importance to the plot, inasmuch as the focus is upon the philosophical disagreement between Manchester Black and the spawn of Smallville.

Manchester is in many ways a typical anomie-hero: he was badly treated in his youth, and his vigilantism is motivated by a spirit of revenge. He often makes fun of Superman's supposed naivete, and when he and his fellows decide that they are going to become a supreme "authority" over the governments of Earth, it appears that Superman will simply have to slug it out with them to prove who's in the right.

Without spoiling the ending, the Man of Steel is for once allowed to use strategy in dealing with his opponents. And his strategy includes a hoax worthy of the best of Silver Age Superman's devious plots, but with much more impact. Though Manchester and his freaky friends are colorful and lively, the most memorable scenes in ELITE depict Superman apparently won over to the Elite's philosophy of "the end justifies the means."

Despite Manchester's defeat both in this DTV and in his comics-appearance, the character got a revival of sorts during the 2019-2020 season of SUPERGIRL. Given the Progressive focus of that series during the later years, it's not surprising that the writers had the stupidity to depict the vigilante as a righteous hero.

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK (2004)

 

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

The Riddick franchise was birthed by the 2000 film PITCH BLACK, one year after THE MATRIX brought forth a somewhat similar about a science-fictional hero in a far future. The Wachowskis' hero was a basically sympathetic good guy, negotiating his way through alternate realities, though as the franchise developed, the hero's universe seemed more and more arbitrary. Director/co-scripter David Twohy also began his franchise with a strong opener, but he confined his trope-metaphors to a small selection (altruism vs. self-interest, animality vs. humanity). Yet CHRONICLES, the second live-action film to feature Vin Diesel essaying the murderer destined to save his universe, also fails to build on a strong first film. 

PITCH BLACK had a simple but strong plotline: a seemingly ruthless criminal becomes the sole hope of a small band of crash-survivors, and by becoming their hero he's at least partly changed. An interstitial animated film, DARK FURY, merely accounts for what immediately happened to Riddick and the last two persons to escape the Pitch-Black Planet; it doesn't extend any of the three protagonists but merely sets up the events of CHRONICLES. 

CHRONICLES makes a clumsy effort to build its story from Riddick's emotional ties to his fellow survivors. To keep from endangering them, he distances himself from the Muslim holy man Iman (Keith David) and the young woman who supposedly thinks of him as a "big brother," Jack-renamed-as-Kyra (Alexa Davalos, replacing the performer from PITCH BLACK). This possibly selfless act has one bad consequence: Kyra goes looking for Riddick and is confined to a "slam" (future-world jail). 

Riddick does not know this until he finds himself pursued by a gang of bounty hunters, led by a malefactor named Tombs. Tombs reveals that the bounty was set by the Imam, so Riddick, feeling not a little betrayed, seeks out the alleged holy man. It's soon revealed that Imam's bounty was designed to bring Riddick close enough for the revelation that, as the "Last Furyan" (a particular planetary people), the hard-ass fugitive is the only "evil" that can defeat a greater evil.

When I wonder why I didn't like CHRONICLES better-- despite lots of good costumes, decent FX and splashy action-sequences-- the reason comes down to the uninteresting threat of the Necromongers. This race of humanoid aliens, whom I assume are unrelated to Earth-people, worship the concept of bringing widespread death to the universe. Their theory is that the extinguishing of all life will allow them to access a mystical dimension, the UnderVerse-- all of which sounds like a rejected concept for a JUDGE DREDD story. Because the Necromongers as a movement are boring and one-dimensional, there's nothing compelling about their leader, "The Lord Marshal," or any of his subordinates, such as Lord Varro and his scheming wife Lady Varro. Riddick faces some other raffish opponents as well, and they're also forgettable, though the hero does give one thug the humiliating demise of "death by teacup."

The subplot about Riddick having survived a "death of innocents" oriented on eliminating him as a future opponent is no more impressive. Riddick's confrontation with the alienated Kyra offers a few dramatic beats, but on the whole Twohy, who was solely credited for a Riddick script for the first time, muffs this potential too. The ending tries for tragedy and ends up with mere portentousness. Despite the fact that CHRONICLES underperformed, the franchise got another iteration in 2013's RIDDICK, which I will probably review in the near future.

2025 ARMAGEDDON (2022)

 

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

Ding, ding, ding, we have a new winner for worst film-- or, maybe just "worst SF film," since the previous award-holder, KOMODO VS COBRA, belonged to that category-- and KOMODO at least offered nice Hawaiian location shots.

Most films from The Asylum are at least forthright about what ideas they're swiping. But for 2025, the writers ripped off 2015's PIXELS, which was about some really dumb aliens mistaking video-game broadcasts for an interstellar attack. This time, the dumb aliens somehow get tuned into only one category of streaming broadcasts, those from The Asylum backlist. The 2025 aliens react the same way as those of PIXELS, by making duplicates of the "weapons" and unleashing them on Earth. However, just to show that the 2025 writers couldn't even steal well, toward the movie's end they throw in some cockamamie claim about the ETs wanting to breed with humans once they overthrow the planet.

Other Asylum films also sometimes toss in three or four familiar-face performers for spice, but 2025 contents itself with Michael Pare as President of our beleaguered world. He's not the star, though: that position is shared by two adult sisters who end up figuring out what the aliens are doing based on their (ha ha) enduring love for Asylum movies.

Once again, it's hard to judge if the two young leads have any acting ability, because both the script and direction work against them constantly. Lindsey Wilson is a scientist and Jhey Castles is a Navy lieutenant, and we're constantly told that at some point the two women became estranged-- but the genius writers couldn't even be bothered to specify what their quarrel was.

So when the viewer isn't being bored with pedestrian dramatics, he has to look sharp to catch sight of the various doppelgangers of Asylum critters like Megashark, Crocosaurus and the Transmorphers, because most of them are barely on screen for two minutes. As with PIXELS, all of these mock-ups of mockbuster monsters don't count as crossovers, because they're not even close to being the real thing. The film just barely edges into the combative mode in that the Castles character commandeers a giant robot and fights some sort of amalgam-monster toward the end.

Since PIXELS wasn't any sort of brilliant notion, there's no reason the Asylum hacks couldn't have had some fun with the absurd concept. But the writers' idea of humor comes down to name-checking such Asylum obscurities as BACHELOR PARTY (not the one with Tom Hanks) and AQUARIUM OF THE DEAD. 

HONOR ROLL #251

JHARY CASTLES' version of "Bad Movie Night" just ended up making another Bad Movie.

Even turning into a female badass doesn't save ALEXA DAVALOS from meeting the fate of everyone who makes the acquaintance of Riddick.

THE ELITE just ended up being elitists in the eyes of that great pluralist, the Man of Steel.

JOHN HENNIGAN was the last of the roadshow Hercules performers.

Give him credit, no one's come up with a more derivative billing than JOHNNY KISSMULLER.

LEIGH LAWSON avenges through a glass darkly.