TEEN TITANS SEASON FIVE (2005-06)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*  

                                                                                                              The final season of TEEN TITANS provides an overarching plotline concerning Beast Boy's first superhero team The Doom Patrol, though said group wasn't mentioned in any previous TV-episodes. In comic books, DC debuted both TEEN TITANS and DOOM PATROL within a few years of one another, and though they were largely independent, Beast Boy of PATROL guest-starred in one issue of TITANS-- which later resulted in the shapeshifter becoming a New Teen Titan in the 1980s.  The 1980s comic also concluded a hanging plot-thread left over since PATROL's cancellation in the 1960s, and this storyline resulted in the Patrol's old foes, the Brotherhood of Evil, becoming members of the New Titans' regular rogues' gallery.                                                                                            

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 POOR

Only one episode this time is a waste of time. The Titans pursue their recurring villain Doctor Light into a subterranean domain where prehistoric life has persisted. It's too complicated to go into the comics-histories of the two quasi-heroic locals, Gnarrk and Kole, but as far as I've concerned, both were boring in the comics and the TITANS writers aren't able to make them any less so. I suppose the eating contest between Gnarrk and Cyborg is moderately amusing.                                                                            

 FAIR 

                                                                                                    

GO! -- This episode, whose title is a patent reference to the catchphrase "Teen Titans Go," is the only fair-mythicity episode which isn't tied into the overarching "Brotherhood of Evil" plotline. The episode is a very condensed version of the origin of the 1980s Titans, in which Starfire escapes her captors, the extraterrestrial marauders called Gordanians. Various contrivances cause Robin, Raven, Cyborg and Beast Boy to oppose the Gordanians' attempts to recapture Starfire. The story naturally emphasizes action more than character explication. But some strong moments include Beast Boy's first meeting with Robin, acting the fanboy to the Teen Wonder. Starfire appears as the product of a ruthless warlord culture, so the episode's not able to explain how she transitioned to the "puppies and kittens" Starfire of the later episodes.                                                                                                                            

HOMECOMING PTS 1-2, TRUST, FOR REAL, SNOWBLIND, HIDE AND SEEK, LIGHTSPEED, CALLING ALL TITANS, and TITANS TOGETHER-- All of these episodes are organized around the resurgence of the Brotherhood of Evil. This villain-team's core members are The Brain, the intelligent gorilla Monsieur Mallah, General Immortus, and the rubber-limbed Madame Rouge, though by the last episodes they've managed to enlist nearly all of the Titans' recurring enemies in their project to "destroy all Titans."              HOMECOMING chronicles Beast Boy's first encounter with the Patrol since he resigned from their ranks, which include Robotman, Negative Man, Elasti-Girl and Mento, the latter serving as the team's leader. All four are under-characterized, probably because the writers knew that they weren't to make more than token appearances. Beast Boy's reasons for leaving that group aren't articulated, but it's likely that he rebelled against Mento's severe and unforgiving attitude. In fact, all four Patrollers are bereft of any humor or fellow-feeling, and the HOMECOMING script treats them as if they were ultra-military types, focused only upon beating the enemy. This is more than a little ironic, since in the original comics from the 1960s, PATROL was distinguished by its display of rollicking humor, while the TITANS comic was usually only funny by virtue of its writer seeking to emulate the speech patterns of 1960s teenagers.                                                                                         

TRUST follows Robin as he seeks to prevent Madame Rouge from abducting Hotspot. This episode feels much like filler, given that Hotspot had only a minor appearance in WINNER TAKE ALL and certainly didn't do anything to earn himself a big fandom.          

FOR REAL-- Control Freak breaks out of jail and invades Titans Tower to challenge his old foes. Instead of his usual foes, the villain finds that the Titans East have taken up residence in the Tower while the other heroes are on missions. There are a few funny moments where Control Freak debates with other cyber-chatters as to whether he should even bother battling such rank unknowns. Of course, he does, and he even goes the "average villain" route by setting up physical challenges for the Easterners-- who naturally kick his butt just as hard as the Western branch did.         

SNOWBLIND-- This story, only tangentially related to the Brotherhood arc, involves the Titans going to Russia to fight a marauding monster. While searching for the creature, Starfire is separated from her group but finds shelter in a quarantined facility occupied by Red Star, a soldier given unstable powers in a government experiment.  There's an involved comics in-joke here, in that although Red Star did appear in the 1980s TITANS series, he was derived from a sixties character, who was the first DC character to be named-- Starfire.                                                

HIDE AND SEEK-- Raven gets her only solo comedy episode, as she's charged with protecting three grade-schoolers from being captured by the Brotherhood. The humor's very predictable, made palatable only by the characterization of Raven.      

LIGHTSPEED-- In this odd segue, loner-hero Kid Flash-- a frequent Titan in the comics but seen here for the first time-- makes life miserable for the "Hive Five." But even without the Kid's interference, the Five's leader Jinx finds herself constantly undercut by her lazy-ass comrades (now upped to six with the inclusion of Billy Numerous and two newbies, See-mour and Kid Wycked). Moreover, when Jinx tries to curry favor with the Brotherhood, she finds that they're something less than accomodating.                                                                               

CALLING ALL TITANS just sets up the action for TITANS TOGETHER, when the principal Titans invade the Brotherhood's sanctuary and free all the prisoners the villains have captured. There are various character bits that enhance TOGETHER's mythicity, but the main appeal is kinetic, as the animators unleash what may be the largest multi-character fight-scene in the history of world cartoons. This episode seems to have been conceived as a possible conclusion for the series, though one more episode was produced to give the series a more wistful send-off.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

GOOD 

                                                                                                               REVVED UP-- In the 1960s TITANS comic, the writer introduced a villain with the improbable name of "Ding Dong Daddy," who executed crimes with the help of specially rigged vehicles. This was a rare (for the time) shout-out to a cartoon character outside the boundaries of four-color comic books: the artistic persona of Earl "Big Daddy" Roth, a caricaturist renowned for weird monsters driving fast cars. REVVED UP introduces the animated Ding Dong as a guy who somehow gets hold of a secret treasure owned by the Teen Wonder himself. When Robin and the other Titans try to reacquire the mysterious item, Ding Dong compels them to participate in a car-race-- and Cyborg, who dearly loves his T-car, is more than happy to oblige. A bunch of other villains show up to try winning Robin's mysterious prize, including Red X, the mystery thief who took over Robin's phony criminal identity-- though in some ways Red X shows some of Robin's own sense of personal honor. Ding Dong is aided by a mobile pit crew, whose monstrous servicemen look like the comical ghouls drawn by "Big Daddy," and that alone gives extra heft to the episode's mythicity.  

THINGS CHANGE-- Every other TEEN TITANS episode, no matter how good or bad in terms of symbolic discourse, is structured as formula entertainment. This observation isn't meant to have any negative connotations. It simply means that the raconteurs structured their narratives to respond to the expectations of the audience, rather than obliging the audience to follow where the storyteller wants to go. But in THINGS CHANGE, the production team concluded their series with the superhero equivalent of FALL OUT, the final episode of the 1960s teleseries THE PRISONER. Like FALL OUT, CHANGE is full of uncertainties, of questions without answers. The five Titans stride into town looking for their favorite haunts-- a pizza place, a video store-- but those touchstones have been closed down. From a construction site a metamorphic monster pops out and attacks them. While four of the heroes pursue the creature and eventually defeat it-- though they never know what it was or why it attacked-- Beast Boy is astounded to see, amid a crowd of onlookers, a dead-ringer for the deceased Terra. No other Titan sees her, nor do they join Beast Boy when he investigates the place where they enshrined Terra's body, converted into pure stone during her battle with Slade. Not only does the changeling find the statue missing, he's attacked by a being that resembles Slade, who keeps telling him to leave the young girl alone. When Beast Boy defeats Slade, Slade turns out to be a robot, but there are no clues as to who programmed the mechanical man for this exigency. As for the girl, she denies any identity with Terra but rather significantly never gives her "real" name. While she's fairly kind toward the confused young superhero, she flatly disavows any connection with the world he lives in, and the story ends with Beast Boy, committed to the life of a hero, rushing off to join his friends in their next mission and reconciling himself to his loss. Many fans didn't like this mysterioso conclusion, but I was glad to see the producers bow out on this atypical note of loss and heartache.   

ASSASSIN (1986)

 

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

I saw a lot of the journeyman-TV work of Sandor Stern, but not much of his writing and/or directing proved memorable, and his one big break into feature films, writing the screenplay for THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, is far from one of my fave horror flicks. That said, I did at least remember this mostly routine TV-movie better than a lot of others.

It's a mark of Stern's gimcrack scripting that when retired CIA agent Henry Stanton (Robert Conrad) is persuaded to help terminate a killer who's preying on other agents, nobody thinks it necessary to impart to Henry the information that the killer is a high-functioning robot. Even the woman Henry is partnered with, a female scientist named Mary (Karen Austin), doesn't bother to explain this little detail until after Henry has had his first run-in with the super-strong automaton. Since it's a TV-film, the ballyhoo surrounding the story would have ensured that anyone watching knew the subject matter, so who was Stern trying to surprise?

That said, once that clumsy set-up is done, ASSASSIN moves briskly enough from point A to B and so on. Mary explains that the robot (Richard Young), given the ironic name of Robert Golem, was designed to function as an assassin for the CIA, but for some reason it malfunctioned and started killing off its handlers-- one of whom is Mary. In contrast to the cinematic Terminators on whom this killer robot is partly modeled, Golem is supposed to function in society like a regular human, and to that end he's been given a good-looking face and build and even instructed in how to seduce a woman if it serves his mission.           

Yet for every element Stern provided that might hold some promise, he largely botches that potential. Golem does indeed seduce a young woman to give himself some cover, but nothing much comes of this. Late in the movie, because Golem can access all CIA files, he tries to persuade Henry to desert the agency boss because the guy betrayed Henry on a previous mission. Henry is clearly irritated by the revelation but he nevertheless doubles down his efforts and does end up terminating the terminator. It might have been more interesting had Henry had some real internal debate about which villain was the greater menace.

Since Young isn't on screen enough to build up his persona, Robert Conrad is pretty much the whole show here. As Mary, Karen Austin doesn't have much to do but to provide exposition. There's one odd moment where, despite being a non-combatant, she gutpunches some enemy agent. I like to think the actress complained about having too little to do, so Stern just cobbled together a scene where she hit someone.    

TO KILL WITH INTRIGUE (1977)

  

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

Otherwise known as JACKIE CHAN'S HAMLET! Okay, I'm the only one who calls TO KILL WITH INTRIGUE by that name but given that this obscure Taiwanese flick predates Jackie's jolly image, I could justify the name just on the basis that this has to be Chan's grimmest, most morose role up to this point in his career.

However, one of INTRIGUE's scenes made me think of the key HAMLET scene in which the hero renounces Ophelia, possibly (as some critics speculate) after he's made her pregnant. In INTRIGUE, young nobleman Shao (Chan) meets with Qian (Yu Ling-long), a maid in his father's court, and tells her to take a hike, despite knowing that she has a bun in the oven. Not too much later, he bursts into the court, telling all of the guests celebrating his father's birthday to get lost too. The guests leave, and Father Lei yells at Shao. Shao says he did it all to keep innocents out of harm's way, and he removes an item from his tunic: a dismembered hand with the image of a human-headed bee drawn upon it. Shao doesn't say how he came by this curious oracle, but he claims it's the calling-card of a gang of kung-fu bandits, the Killer Bees, whom Lord Lei attempted to wipe out. While the lord is conferring with his son, wife, and retainers about the incipient attack, four guests return to the court-- only to drop dead. A strange one-handed man shows up (maybe a cutesy reference to Jimmy Wang Yu's One-Armed Swordsman?) and demands the return of his hand. Shao flings the dead hand to the probably dead man and the latter bounds away.

Then the attack by the Killer Bees begins in earnest. Armed men appear on the estate-walls, and into the courtyard five coffins appear. The coffin lids shoot off, and up spring the assault's leader and four cohorts, all attired in flower-masks, as if seeking to conflate death and fertility. The leader is Ting Tan-yen (Hsu Feng), a beautiful woman wearing a half-mask over her lower face, and after swearing vengeance, she engages Lord Lei in sword-combat. A melee breaks out, but the Lei family is overmatched. Ting kills the hero's mother and father and easily beats down Shao's weak nobleman-fu. However, he manages to get a sword to Ting's throat. She invites Shao to kill her but only after she shows him the facial scar beneath her mask, a wound she got from Shao's father when she was still a child. Doubt, the curse of the Melancholy Dane, causes Shao to hesitate, and Ting knocks him out.

When he awakes, he sees Ting from behind and thinks it's his lost love Qian. Ting tells Shao that she spared his life so that he'd suffer as she suffered the loss of her family. Shao can do nothing but go looking for the woman he spurned, even for reasons he thought beneficent.

To be sure, Shao wasn't completely stupid about the risks of chasing off his pregnant mistress; he mentioned to his father that he sent a friend named Jin to look after Qian. Jin does show up just as bandits attack Qian, and he kicks their asses before taking Qian to his house. However, Jin doesn't seem to know why Shao disavowed his mistress. Qian wants to flee the general area and Jin obliges her, so that when Shao comes looking, no one's to home.

A disconsolate Shao stays at Jin's house. Ting shows up, twisting the knife by telling Shao his friend's gone off with his lover. Then she calls Shao a "beast," which just so happens to be what Qian called Shao when he gave her the kiss-off. Shao hallucinates that Ting is Qian, embraces her, and summarily beds her. It's not clear if Ting is aware he's mistaken her for someone else, though there's no question she could've stopped Shao if she'd wanted to. After they've had sex and Shao's passed out, he mumbles Qian's name and Ting runs off, jealous as hell. (I admit Hamlet didn't do quite this much bed-hopping, though a fellow named Freud claimed that he had a certain ambivalence about his mama.) 

Then Shao pays the price for a grudge against Jin, as three paid assassins break in on him. He fights them and he kills one, but the other two knock him out. Fourth Dragon, an older noble, shows up and tells his assassin-employees that they assaulted the wrong man. He pays them off but when they want to murder the unconscious Shao, Fourth Dragon drives them off. He has Shao brought to his home, apologizes, and tells Shao that Jin ripped off the cargo that Fourth Dragon's guard-escorts were protecting. Slightly later, Ting shows up again-- "I am your shadow," she mocks the anguished hero-- and though she won't tell Shao where Jin and Qian are, she tasks him with not even having the filial piety to bury his slain parents. Further, she says, they were buried by none other than his recent benefactor, Fourth Dragon. Shao, unable to find his lost love, sublimates his desires by pledging loyalty to a "second father," joining the Dragon's guards. Does Fourth Dragon take the place of Lord Lei, the father whose virtue became suspect? The clan of the assassins attacks the guardians, and Shao leads the fight against them, calling himself "Fifth Dragon." But the assassins really start losing when Ting Tan-yen joins the battle, without explaining why she interceded. She leaves Shao in the care of Fourth Dragon for the time being but later persuades him to let her take Shao to her own domicile. 

On top of all these sturm-and-drang incidents-- Shao finding a new father to replace the dead one, or having his life preserved by the woman who killed both parents-- Fourth Dragon meets the governor, to whom his life is forfeit for losing a precious cargo-- and it's none other than the robber Jin, who is ALSO the head of the assassin-clan. Basically, everything Jin has done has been to advance his clan's power in the region, and he even takes credit for eliminating the Lei family. This may have been an overreach on the author's part, since Jin doesn't seem affiliated with the Killer Bees, who aren't mentioned or seen again after the opening fight. Jin fights and kills both Fourth Dragon and his aide, and then proceeds to his estate, where he uses honeyed words to persuade Qian to marry him. She agrees, wanting to protect her child and grieving because she's been told Shao is dead. 

Now, thus far INTRIGUE hasn't had anything like Hamlet's ghostly father, or even the Devil whom Hamlet half-suspects of having sent the paternal apparition. However, there is a slight sense of passing into another world when Shao is taken to Ting's estate. Ting heals Shao but won't let him leave if he can't beat her in kung fu. He practices continually, but he's unable to up his game. He challenges her anyway, and she punishes him in various ways, which reminded me of the ordeals heroes would undergo from goddesses. (Admittedly the Classical deities didn't make their acolytes swallow hot coals or suffer having their faces burned). Finally, in contrast to the majority of chopsockies, Ting realizes Shao can't equal her. She feeds him a drink mixed with her own blood, and this empowers him so that he can now destroy Jin and save Qian, even though Ting's implicitly condemned to a loveless existence.

I admit that Shao's quest for vengeance isn't responsible for the deaths of almost all of the principal characters, as Hamlet's quest causes the fall of the Danish court. However, a few times the English translation criticizes Shao's inability to tell good from bad, which is closer to Hamlet than most martial-arts heroes ever come. Shao's overly trusting friendship with Jin makes it possible for the evil plotter to end the lives of the Fourth Dragon family, and (maybe indirectly) those of the Lei Family too. It is a major error when Ting's Killer Bee allies just disappear. In a plot-sense Jin's assassin cult more or less takes the place of the recrudescent bandits, even though Ting clearly does not connect the two in any way when she cuts a bloody swathe through the assassins to protect Shao. While INTRIGUE was no more than a bump in the road of Jackie Chan's ascension to international success, it does deserve to be better known as one of the few kung-fu films to possess some psychological depth. I haven't seen all the films in Hsu Feng's repertoire, but I doubt any other role she played came close to that of the tormented Ting Tan-Yen.   

BLACK MAGIC (1949)

 

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


"Orson Welles, superhero."

Okay, I just had to write that line, even though it's not literally true. To be sure, at least one intellectual, Antonio Gramsci claimed that the character Welles plays in BLACK MAGIC-- the character of Cagliostro, as fictionalized in Alexandre Dumas's 1846 JOSEPH BALSAMO-- to be an example of a 19th-century "superman." But Cagliostro, a.k.a. the gypsy hypnotist Joseph Balsamo, uses his unique gifts for evil, and thus BLACK MAGIC can be accurately described as--

"Orson Welles, supervillain."

BLACK MAGIC begins with half of a frame-story, not unlike that of 1935's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, in that the frame starts out with author Alexandre Dumas as talking about how his great creation Cagliostro seemed to escape him. However, the film ends without returning to Dumas.

Welles, then forty-four years old and not yet as heavyset as he would become in future decades, plays Joseph Balsamo as a crafty gypsy whose people have been perpetually mistreated by the non-gypsy populace of France. As a child Joseph saw both his mother and father executed by the will of a petty nobleman, Montagne, because Joseph's mother predicted a child's death and was therefore accused of being a witch. Child Joseph is spared when his fellow gypsies rescue him from the French soldiers, but vows vengeance on Montagne. Years later, when Joseph has become an adult, he develops a rude version of hypnotic skill, and the real-life French physician Doctor Mesmer (founder of "mesmerism") sees Joseph demonstrate his powers. Mesmer wants Joseph to hone his talents so that the two of them can use hypnotism in medical treatments. Joseph, who's never given his ability much thought, realizes that if he can impress this wealthy gadjo, he can impress others, and so he rejects Mesmer's offer.

Years later, Joseph has assumed the name of Cagliostro, and has garnered fame and wealth through alleviating people's ills with the power of suggestion. This fame brings Joseph back to his long deferred desire for vengeance, for the nobleman Montagne summons Cagliostro to treat a comatose young woman, Lorenza. Joseph represses his desire for immediate revenge, studies Lorenza and realizes that she's a dead ringer for Marie Antoinette, who will ascend to the rank of France's queen when her husband's father Louis XV passes on. Since Lorenza is useless to Montagne unless Joseph can release the woman from her coma, the ambitious gypsy deals himself in on the plot of Montagne and his co-conspirator Madame DuBarry, which involves a complicated scheme to defame the queen.

As part of the deal, Montagne has to get the famed "Cagliostro" an invitation to attend the court of Louis XV. Local Parisian doctors arrange a hoax to expose the supposed healer's fakery, by presenting Joseph with nobles dressed up like suffering wretches. But Joseph has the last laugh, for after the court's had a good guffaw at his expense, the hypnotist places one of the impostors under his mental control, forcing the unwilling nobleman to act like a dog. This impresses Louis XV and awes the court, though this doesn't help Joseph much when, some days later, the current king dies and Louis XVI ascends to the throne. Marie Antoinette doesn't like the alleged healer, so Joseph and Montagne initiate their plan to embarrass the queen, which in a roundabout way is supposed to bring them great temporal power.

On a side note, though Joseph does bring Lorenza out of her coma, he also falls in love with her, and keeps her under his psychic thrall. However, Lorenza has an age-appropriate love, Gilbert of the royal guards, and Joseph eventually hypnotizes the young woman into marrying him, the better to discourage the young swain.

Though the plot proceeds to some extent, Joseph and Montagne are both accused of conspiracy. Joseph easily escapes jail and for good measure forces his old enemy to commit suicide. However, eventually Joseph/Cagliostro is brought to trial, though the authors of the villain's downfall are both Gilbert and Joseph's short-lived mentor Mesmer.

I skimmed the ending of Dumas's BALSAMO-- which probably is no better a rendering of historical fact than BLACK MAGIC-- and I'm reasonably sure the book doesn't end in as combative a manner as the film, which boasts both a hypnotist-battle between the villain and Mesmer and a swordfight between Joseph and Gilbert. Wikipedia mentions that both Welles and director Gregory Ratoff rewrote the script credited to two other writers, and I would guess that someone behind the scenes wanted BLACK MAGIC to conform to the model of Dumas's best known work, THE THREE MUSKETEERS. Rumor has it that Welles directed parts of the film, but though MAGIC is a better-than-average swashbuckler, its direction isn't all that distinguished. The film's greatest significance may be as a possible inspiration to the Marvel supervillain Doctor Doom. Doom's origin, analyzed here, starts with Doom as a gypsy boy whose dead mother actually was a witch, after which the future supervillain grows to manhood, confounds the local nobles with his scientific wizardry, and eventually rules the country-- only to fall victim to a fate closer to that of Dumas's MAN IN THE IRON MASK.

GRENADIER (2004-05)

 

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

"The ultimate fighting strategy is to erase the enemy's will to fight."

I read a few of the seven volumes of the 2002 manga GRENADIER, but since I didn't finish the series, I can't say if this 12-episode TV anime captures every nuance of the source material. But since the twelve episodes possess a well-defined conclusion, there's a good chance that the anime represents the main plot-threads of the manga, especially since it only lasted about three years.

GRENADIER-- and no, the title doesn't have anything to do with the modern military term-- takes place in what is presumably a far-future world, but one that has no ties to any aspect of human history. There's no attempt to establish a distinct backstory for the world, either. The first episode implies some clash of cultures between the older, honor-bound samurai-like ethos centered around the sword, and the newer practice of a limited technology, mostly focused on hand-held guns, cannons, and a few specialized technologies, all of which create a "steampunk" vibe. In that first episode, samurai-type Yajiro seeks to use his blade-- with which he can perform a few marvels-- to liberate one of his group's leaders from a heavily armed fortress. But then he finds out he's a support-character in the story of Rushuna Taro, who's more or less the "grenadier" of the title.

Rushuna, a big-breasted female with a cowboy hat, is a practitioner of a discipline one might well call "gun-fu" a la John Woo, but with a much greater range of fantasy involved. As Yajiro mostly watches, Rushuna invades the fortress using nothing but her inimitable skill with a single pistol. I frankly lost track of whether or not the heroine used sci-fi ammunition. However, the emphasis of the overall story is that Rushuna can perform miracles with simple ballistics-skill. For instance, she can penetrate the "steampunk-mecha" armor of one opponent by firing a brace of bullets that hit the armor in the same place and thus rupture it. Yajiro is captivated by the busty blonde, at least partly because she has her own unique ethos. Rhusuna follows the teachings of a female perceptor named Tenshi, located in a distant city, and Tenshi's credo is that of erasing the will to fight amongst the various cities and countries. Apparently, Rushuna means to lead by example, for thought she shoots a lot of enemies, she's so infallible about hitting them non-fatally that the Lone Ranger would be jealous. Rushuna also projects the unfailingly sweet demeanor, and though she often cradles men to her ample breasts, she seems to have no erotic tendencies whatever and never gets mad even if she thinks Yajiro peeps at her in the bath. I don't know a Japanese word that might mean "anti-yandere" but such a word might fit Rushuna. (The duo does however acquire a third member, a young, boyishly-dressed girl named Mikan, and she supplies some of the saltiness absent in the main character.)

It would be nigh-impossible to depict a mission as long-range as Rushuna's unfolding in real time. Thus after Rushuna and her two aides quell a few minor bullies in small towns, the heroine is informed that there's a bounty on her head, and that it was put there by her beloved teacher Tenshi. Being a total innocent, Rushuna bends her path to Tenshi's city in order to plead her case. As the trio travel overland on foot-- I'm not sure we even see anyone using horses or similar mounts at all-- they're attacked by various members of Tenshi's honor guard. All of these warriors have highly specialized pseudo-scientific attainments and Rushuna has to use her brain to figure out how to counter each of their powers, with some incidental aid from Yajiro and from Mikan (who has the rather original talent of fashioning useful tricks out of balloons). Naturally, once the three good guys show up in Tenshi's court, they find (not surprisingly) that Tenshi is a prisoner of a conspiracy that has abrogated all of her ideals.                 

There's a lot of strong fighting-action in GRENADIER, though Rushuna uses only very minimal hand-to-hand maneuvers. Her amusing gun-trick is that the heroine can use her bounteous funbags as a makeshift bandolier, storing ammunition in her boobs and popping out bullets every time she needs to reload. This is about as racy as the show gets most of the time, though one of Rushuna's passing allies is the madame of a brothel (who also has special martial powers, BTW). Yajiro and Mikan get their own B-plots and these are nicely executed, though they remain secondary to Rushuna's quest to root out the threat to her idealistic philosophy. I see a few possible parallels-- not influences as such-- between GRENADIER and the samurai-drama RUROUNI KENSHIN. But KENSHIN possessed a deeper cultural resonance despite its metaphenomenal content, while GRENADIER is just a pleasant but ad hoc fantasy-world with some memorable gimmicks.        

ASH VS EVIL DEAD SEASON TWO (2016)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

When Satan tempted Jesus, the devil offered all the dominions of the Earth before being refused. Ash Williams didn't refuse, but then he wanted a much simpler prize from his tempter Ruby Knowby: just to live a bacchanalian existence in Jacksonville Florida with his boon buddies Kelly and Pablo. ln fairness, Ruby also promised the hero that she could control the Evil Dead, which Ash had never been able to do. So his decision was made, at least partly, in the hope that Ruby could control the foul spirits like a Boss of Bosses reining in lesser gangsters.

HOME-- Rather, what Ash wants is a home away from his real home, and Jacksonville fits the bill. While Ash is enjoying a party with Florida residents who all adulate him, he almost scores with a hot mother-daughter pair. But the mother and daughter turn into Deadites and start a riot. It's later revealed that Ruby sent the evil spirits to summon Ash and his friends to aid her, though she's pretty roundabout in the way she tells him to seek her out in his old home town, Elk Ridge. On the way back to Michigan, Pablo, whose visions have been in abeyance since the truce, begins to suffer from his earlier exposure to the Necronomicon. In Elk Ridge Ash suffers the slings and arrows of outraged locals, who believe him guilty of the cabin-murders from thirty years ago. He meets old girlfriend Linda, now married to the local sheriff, and has an acrimonious encounter with his father Brock (a perfectly cast Lee Majors). Team Ash meets a now powerless Ruby, whose demon-children, formerly the base of her power, have turned on, hoping to bring their demon-father Baal to the earth-plane.

THE MORGUE-- For some damn reason, Ruby hid the Necronomicon inside a corpse at the local morgue, so Ash and Kelly go corpse-diving, without even knowing which body to look in, thus leading to lots of ghastly gooeyness. Ruby hints of a ritual that can divest Pablo of his connection to the evil book. Ash spots his old teacher/lover Lillian (Carmen Duncan), with whom he had relations back in high school, but he's aggravated to learn that Brock is now dating her. (Ash hints that his father, being as lascivious as Ash is, tended to steal his girlfriends.) However, at the morgue the hero learns that Lillian's been dead some time, so he and his friends rush to Brock's house to destroy the Deadite. The good guys defeat Deadite Lillian, but Ash makes the boner of leaving the book, so painstakingly acquired in the morgue, inside his car, after which a couple of naughty teenagers steal both car and book.

LAST CALL-- Ash, desperate to recover his car, "the Delta," from the thieves, co-ordinates a big party at the bar of his childhood buddy Chet (Ted Raimi). It doesn't work. The two thieves hang out with some of their friends, including Lacey (Pepi Sonuga), daughter of Linda and Sheriff Emery. and one of them, Amber (Olivia Mahood) gets possessed-- and so does the Delta itself, keeping the other teens imprisoned or killing them. Amber seeks out Ash'party and comes on to both Ash and Brock. Their Oedipal conflict inspires them to compete to ride the bar's mechanical bull, and Ash is humiliated when his father wins. However, when like his son Brock tries to get some nookie in a restroom, Amber tries to kill him. Ash dispatches the Deadite, so that Brock finally realizes that his son really has contended with demons, and that Brock can finally show pride in his offspring. But the bonhomie is short-lived, for the possessed Delta, now carrying Lacey inside it, shows up at the bar and kills Brock by running him down.

DUI-- As much as Ash loves his car, he's obliged to pursue the possessed vehicle. Pablo overtakes the Delta first, and for some unknown reason, the evil auto allows Pablo to join Lacey, keeping both prisoners. Ash squares off against the Delta in a demolition derby arena, at one point getting atop the car's hood and "riding" it as his father rode the mechanical bull (with a hilarious imaginary dialogue with Dead Brock), before smashing the engine with his chainsaw. The car releases Lacey and Pablo, and when Pablo brings the book with him, it comes alive and tells him he can be rid of the tome by casting it into the car's trunk. Sure enough, Ash and Pablo find a portal to hell inside the Delta's trunk, and they consign the book thereto-- which of course does not solve their problems in the least. 

CONFINEMENT-- Ash is arrested for having killed Amber, and the whole town believes him a serial killer, except possibly Linda. Emery locks up Ash and Chet. However, Ruby's traitor children have succeeded in summoning Baal to Earth, and he invades the jail by flaying the skin from a local cop and wearing it. (Why he can't just use simple illusion like other Evil Dead spirits, I do not know.) Ruby, Pablo and Kelly hold everyone in the jail at gunpoint trying to figure out Baal's identity. However, when Ruby separates from the group to retrieve the magic dagger Ash acquired from the cabin, Baal meets her and beats her down. Baal apparently leaves and so do the heroes, but in truth Baal has turned Emery into a vessel of his will.

TRAPPED INSIDE-- The allies return to Brock's house to attempt exorcising the book's influence from Pablo, with the aim of also defeating Baal. But through the vessel of Emery, Baal has convinced the whole town that Ash is a murderer, and the people gather outside the house, demanding Ash's surrender. For good measure, Baal revives Ash's sister Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) as a Deadite, even though her remains ought to be back in the forest. Since one of Brock's resentments of Ash stemmed from the belief that Ash murdered his own sister, this was obviously done to break the hero's spirit. Instead, Ash enthusiastically chainsaws the simulacrum, in such a way that the townsfolk learn that Ash really is a demon-slayer. However, Baal assumes another human guise and knocks out Ash.

DELUSION-- There's nearly no transition between the last episode and this one; Ash simply wakes up in an asylum and meets Doctor Peacock, who claims that all of Ash's experiences have simply been psychotic delusions. Peacock even shows the disbelieving hero a puppet made in Ash's own image. Ash also sees illusory versions of Pablo, Kelly and Ruby in the asylum, while on the outside the real allies are converging on the building. Ash is finally broken by the brainwashing and swears to re-acquire the book for Baal.

ASHY SLASHY-- The trio enters the asylum and meets Emery, who has made a deal with Baal to free his daughter Lacey. However, Lacey shows up at the bughouse as a Deadite and breaks her father's neck. Ash collars Pablo and forces him to go before Baal, who thinks he can use the book's imprints upon Pablo's body for his own purposes. Ash then reveals that he was never mentally dominated, he wanted Baal and Pablo in the same room so that Ruby could exorcise the demon. However, though Baal is apparently expelled, in taking his leave he manages to cut Pablo in half, killing him.

HOME AGAIN-- Broken hearted at the loss of Pablo-- whose bagged remains Ash keeps in his car-- Ash hits upon a solution. Since he previously used magic forces to travel to another time in ARMY OF DARKNESS, why not travel back to the past and stop his younger self from ever unleashing the Evil Dead? Ruby makes this possible, and soon they're back in the early 1980s. However, when the heroes arrive in the forest, Ash finds that Professor Knowby is now seeking to control the book's power, which has already possessed his wife and which the prof hopes to channel into the body of Tanya, a college student. Ash foolishly releases possessed Henrietta Knowby, resulting in chaos in the cabin while outside Ruby and Kelly seek to prevent their suffering the fate of Original EVIL DEAD: being raped by trees.

SECOND COMING-- Knowby doesn't escape, as he's killed by the Ruby of 1982-- whose surname of "Knowby" was apparently nothing but a jape, as the two are not related. Kelly and the 2016 Ruby arrive at the cabin. 2016 Ruby tries to tell 1982 Ruby that both Baal and Ruby's children will betray her, but 1982 Ruby simply kills her later incarnation. Ash and Kelly flee, but they get evidence of timeline-change when Ash regrows his missing hand. Also, Pablo comes back to life-- but wait, it's really Baal, who hid his essence in Pablo's corpse. Baal resumes his usual form and lets Ash and Kelly watch as Baal and 1982 Ruby seek to unleash all the Evil Dead upon Earth. Ash buys time by challenging Baal to a fistfight, and the amused demon consents, knowing that he can always cheat as he pleases. But Ash and Kelly turn the tables, banishing the demons to Hell and reviving Pablo for real. The season ends with Ash being feted by the citizens of Elk Grove for his deeds, though somehow 2016 Ruby is still around and planning more trouble for Season 3.  

HONOR ROLL #291

 The Evil Dead get possessive with RAY SANTIAGO.

Don't call RUSHUNA TARO "little sure shot."

ORSON WELLES gets to play both swordsman and sorcerer in one package.  

YU LING LUNG plays third wheel to femme fatale Hsu Feng and a very serious Jackie Chan.

 KAREN AUSTIN gives advice on the killing of robots.

THE BROTHERHOOD OF EVIL earns some credit for bringing together more representatives of evil-doings than any nasty organization before or since.   

TEEN TITANS GO MEETS DC SUPER HERO GIRLS (2022)

 

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

Though I gave the first two TEEN TITANS GO features a fair mythicity rating, this 2022 release-- which includes a long subtitle I refuse to type-- is no more than a mechanical exercise.

While I've watched a fair number of TITANS GO, watching for the moments that they employ quirky humor rather than poop jokes, I found myself impatient with the SUPER HERO GIRLS franchise. In a few words, it's just not funny. I'm sure the story of de-aged DC heroines (and some male heroes) learning their superhero craft resonated a lot more with its target audience of middle school girls. Strangely, though many crossovers exist to widen the appeal of a less popular franchise by linking it to one more popular-- an accusation that one of the TITANS characters levels-- GIRLS was the finale to the series, which only lasted from 2019 to 2021.

Further, this crossover is less than monumental, since another Titan points out that the two supergroups already met a few times. As if to summon forth low expectations for irony's sake, most of the Titans spend the whole narrative sitting in their HQ, watching the Super Hero Girls on TV with one of their regular enemies, Control Freak. At the same time, there's a short sequence in which the Super Hero Girls encounter the Titans of another multiverse, which is the biggest waste of time in the story. 

The majority of the story concerns the Super Hero Girls contending with Lex Luthor and his Legion of Doom. Luthor acquires a Phantom Zone projector and proceeds to start exiling superheroes to the Zone. However, for once Luthor's not the prime mover, for he's been covertly controlled by Cythonna, a Kryptonian goddess of evil. Cythonna only aids the Legion because her power is increased by acts of wickedness. The evil goddess also conceives the idea of possessing Supergirl, with the politically correct justification that someday The Girl of Steel will outstrip the power of The Man.

From a POV of a comics-reader, the presence of Cythonna-- a fairly obscure villain from a nineties Superman comic-- sustains a little interest, though she's generally a routine bad guy here. Since the heroines weren't going to be having further adventures, the script just has them go through the motions of familiar problems: Wonder Woman has leadership issues, Zatanna worries that the dark side of her personality may assume dominance, Supergirl resents Superman's bossiness. The only joke I found faintly amusing is that whenever Batman speaks, his voice becomes an indistinguishable mumble that only a few persons can understand. But this might have been a joke recycled from the TV show.

There is one subplot that gets closure: Harley Quinn, after having vacillated between heroism and villainy throughout the series, finally commits to the side of the angels. Tara Strong does quite well in capturing the manic nature of Harley's voice, and it might've helped her get nominated for a 2022 "Annie." Unfortunately, she lost out to a voice-actor for ZOOTOPIA-- and for all the failures of GIRLS, it's not as dull as that feature was.

WAR OF THE WIZARDS (1978)

 

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

WAR OF THE WIZARDS is an underrated magical fantasy that, while not meeting my criteria for high-mythicity, ranks in my book with similar charming (albeit child-friendly) productions by masters like Ray Harryhausen and Aleksandr Ptushko. WAR absolutely is not in any way a "space opera" just because there are a few opening scenes showing "spirits" in the starry heavens. It's true that co-director and FX-guy Sadamasa (DESTROY ALL MONSTERS) Arikawa worked out some effects-scenes that bore passing resemblance to the juggernaut that was the 1977 STAR WARS. But the universe of this WAR was predicated on the sort of folktales that genuinely took place "a long time ago," but in an archaic world far from space-lasers and FTL ships.  

Despite some opening narration, the movie takes some time to establish that universe. The most one can say is that at some time in the past, two great magical items get concealed in the ocean by parties unknown: a vessel of plenty, that will conjure up anything the owner wishes for, and a book of knowledge. The narration suggests that "three spirits" come to Earth looking for these items, but evidently the narrator can't count, because it's more like ten or twelve different questers.  I *think* the various spirits may have been alerted because humble fisherman Tai (Hsui-Shen Liang) finds the magic vessel on the ocean floor, fetches it up, and soon begins making wishes to benefit both himself and the local townfolk. Oddly, though the opening is careful to show that the poor fisherman is an avid reader of books, he apparently does not notice the book of knowledge in the same area as the vessel.

Tai's use of his endless wishes attracts several murderous agents who want the items. Some of them kill one another in competition for the prizes, and the last of them are slain by two beautiful fairy-sisters, Hyacinth and Violet. Tai is taken with the sisters and invites them to serve as his bodyguards, and they agree. There's like one more scene in which the girls beat up a couple of malcontents-- one of the few usages of martial fighting, since most of the spirits have magical, transformative powers. Tai is so taken with the girls that he offers to marry them both, and they agree. However, they fool him so that he doesn't get with either of them and the reason seems to be that they too were sent to collect the magical treasures by an evil fairy, name of Flower Fox (Betty Pei Ti).

I think Flower Fox gets tired of waiting for the sisters to deliver on their mission. She shows up at Tai's house, kills two other seekers with flame-breath, and cancels out the sisters' powers. Flower Fox captures her pawns and the magic vessel, but she doesn't know where the bamboo book is. In response, Tai dives into the ocean again and locates the book. Some timely advice tells Tai to "ride the Phoenix," and sure enough, when he surfaces a giant red bird sweeps him away from Flower Fox.

Up to this point, Tai has been a fairly passive protagonist, a lot like the original Aladdin of the Arabian Nights. However, the Phoenix takes Tai to some cloudy domain. Tai comes across some peaches and eats them, only to be reproved by an old man who meant the magical peaches for someone else. Both in Chinese and Japanese folklore, peaches often confer special powers and/or immortality, but the dubbed version of WAR just drops the point and goes on to the next thing: Tai asking to become the old immortal's disciple. I suspect that the dubbed version may have cut some training montage for time. In no time Tai, the former layabout, has mastered the use of a magic sword that fires ray-bolts, and even gets a suit of snazzy clothes from his master. He has at least become a temporary hero, though it's unclear if he made this ascension through training or through eating magical peaches.

Flower Fox threatens to flood Tai's hometown to get the book, but he temporizes until he's powerful enough to beard the evil fairy in her lair. With some help from the Phoenix, Tai vanquishes a rather impressive rock monster. However, the villainous fairy also has a human henchman, the mighty Steel Hand (Richard Kiel, who apparently played this part immediately after his star-turn in 1977's THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. released in the US three months after STAR WARS). The battle between Tai and Steel Hand-- so called because the henchman wears metal gloves-- is interesting because Tai has absolutely no kung-fu moves at all; he's like an ordinary guy fighting a colossus, except for having a magic sword to even the odds. The fight looks like it's modeled on those of the James Bond franchise, maybe even with some thoughts of GOLDFINGER in mind. Regardless, Tai defeats (but does not slay) Steel Hand. The hero goes looking for his captive wives, but now he has to fight Flower Fox, who conjures up multiple swordsmen out of the magic vessel. (Oddly Steel Hand is seen bringing the two fairy girls out of captivity.) Tai's then beats the villain by flinging the bamboo book at her. The book binds her arms and Tai prepares to kill her. However, two new spirits show up and surround Flower Fox with a force-shield that breaks his sword. The two new guys then send the evil fairy flying to heaven, and then they themselves fly into the sky with Violet, Hyacinth, and the two magical items. Violet and Hyacinth don't look like they're happy to be leaving, though it's anyone's guess if they'd rather stay with Tai. One of the "good spirits" invites Tai to join them all in heaven. However, the invitation may be sarcastic, for when Tai flies after them, his powers and costuming vanish. He falls into the same bay where he found the items, while a voice tells him, "You gained tremendous knowledge and great skillful powers. Be satisfied!" The film ends with Tai sputtering in the water while a fishing-boat comes to his rescue, assuring that he will survive to return to the workaday world. A fortune-cookie phrase that also appeared near the opening is repeated: "He who desires to possess everything must learn to be content with nothing."

I've no idea if WAR might owe anything to established Asian folklore. In Western terms, the "moral of the story" seems stuck somewhere between "Aladdin," in which a lazy loafer gets all his wishes fulfilled," and the Grimms' "Fisherman and His Wife," in which the greedy wife of the fisherman prevents their profiting from the wishes given them by a magical fish. My best guess is that the filmmakers wanted to give the audience some of the thrills of wish-fulfillment, while stopping short of total apotheosis. Thus Tai only gets a brief time to dally with the powers of the immortals, though I think he at least earns some of them, up to a point. Possibly the movie makes its message clearer in the original Taiwanese. But even if WAR isn't as clear as I might like it, I think there was some theme being invoked, that it wasn't just an endless, meaningless stream of marvels like those Asian films I've called "chopwackies."                      

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE, SEASON THREE (2016)

 

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

I was a moderate fan of AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES, and nothing I saw in the first two seasons of that show's replacement, AVENGERS ASSEMBLE, made me think the follow-up was an adequate substitute. However, though there were still various weak episodes in Season 3, for the first time other stories were at least on the same level of good melodrama as the best tales in MIGHTIEST.

One of the weaker arcs is an attempt to boil down the very involved introduction of the 1990s superhero-team The Thunderbolts into a handful of episodes. As in the comic, the members of the team are all supervillains pretending to be heroes, in line with a master plan by their leader Baron Zemo. In the comic book. the whole idea is to gradually show some of the villains turning good, but that's not possible in ASSEMBLE, so the best thing about the Thunderbolts is just that it puts a few new costumes into the mix. The character Songbird makes a few other appearances, and has a slight rapport with Hawkeye, who's a former criminal in the comics (not sure about in the cartoon).

 Ultron and Kang make return appearances, and they're both as forgettable as they were in previous seasons. But I greatly appreciated the show's take on The Black Panther's first encounter with these Avengers. I don't know to what extent this Disney XD show was privy to the MCU's articulation of its Panther-iteration, though elements of that variation began to appear as early as 2015's AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON (with the introduction of the Panther's regular enemy Klaw) and then with the Panther himself appearing in CAPTAIN AMERICA CIVIL WAR the next year. In contrast to 2018's BLACK PANTHER, the Panther-episodes in ASSEMBLE do not over-emphasize a "woke" political viewpoint, and in that sense the cartoon-Panther is better than the live-action one. However, I think that one or more of the ASSEMBLE writers may have known about the politics brewing in Ryan Coogler's teapot. In the episode "Panther's Rage"-- significantly named for a famous (if unrelated) arc in the comics-- Panther gets into a battle with Klaw, who of course now looks like the live-action character. During the battle, Klaw has a line which I'll paraphrase as, "I'm gonna steal all your vibranium for the cause of colonial supremacy! Just kidding; I'm doing it for the money!"

Various other Marvel characters make peripatetic appearances. The Carol Danvers of Captain Marvel (who had appeared as the original "Ms. Marvel" in MIGHTIEST) shows up, and though she's as lousy a character here as in the comics, at least no one avoids using the Captain Marvel tag for her. Close on Danvers' heels is the Kamala Khan Ms. Marvel, who's also a nothing character, though the animators make her a better fighter than a lot of other iterations. This Ms. Marvel is made to be in line with her late 2010s iteration, who was retconned into a spawn of The Inhumans due to Disney/Marvel's attempt to build up those characters into a franchise to rival that of X-MEN. That attempt failed both in the comics and in the dismal live-action INHUMANS show. But though the Royal Family of Inhumans aren't particularly memorable in their ASSEMBLE appearances, the show gets decent mileage out of the situation where the Inhumans' mutation-chemical gets loose and transforms various humans into super-types. among them the aforementioned Ms. Marvel II. The social panic of these transformations causes the government to clamp down on the Avengers' activities, particularly upon the Hulk, and this development at least makes a little more sense than the MCU's idiotic Sokovian crisis. Though Season Four will deal with some sort of "Civil War," I liked the fact that in this arc, all of the Avengers defend their green-skinned fellow member, and thus earns better characterization-marks than many similar events both in comics and live-action movies.   

HOLOGRAM MAN (1995)

 

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

No one goes to PM Entertainment for well-conceived science-fiction societies, and HOLOGRAM MAN is in essence another near-future, low-budget flick derived from movies like ROBOCOP and TERMINATOR. However, the society in HOLOGRAM at least makes more sense than the one in the two CYBER TRACKER films.  

To be sure, anything one learns about this near-future world has to be acquired in the midst of running gun-battles. We're apparently in future-California, but we don't know anything of the rest of the world except that somehow, humans caused the destruction of the ozone layer. This put a repressive government under the control of one Jameson (Michael Nouri). In reaction to that repression, anarchist Slash Gallagher (Evan Lurie) organizes a small band of similar terrorists devoted to violent overthrow of the government. However, tough cop Decoda (Joe Lara) manages to stymie Gallagher and send him to prison. But in this future world, the government places convicts' bodies into statis while computers seek to reprogram the sinners into useful citizens.   

Years pass, and it's time for the prison parole board to review whether or not the reprogramming had the desired effect. Decoda, who would have preferred seeing Gallagher put down like the mad dog he is, attends the hearing, while both his girlfriend Natalie and her father serve as technicians in the process. However, elsewhere Gallagher's old gang engages a hacker to interfere with the computers. Bingo: not only has Gallagher not been reformed, he becomes a being of pure energy, a "phantom terminator" who can't be harmed by bullets or bombs. 

A little past the middle mark, Gallagher corners Decoda and Natalie at the computer building, shoots Decoda fatally, and leaves both cop and technician behind to be annihilated by a bomb. But Natalie apparently figured out what rogue process created the energy-Gallagher, so she puts the dying body of her boyfriend through the same treatment, making him into an energy-creature too. This leads to a big battle between cop and criminal, as well as getting rid of the tyrant who fomented the toxic situation.

For me the most interesting thing is that even though the hero becomes a super-powered being like the villain, I'm not sure Decoda counts as the main character. Aside from the rage the cop expresses at the callousness of both Gallagher and Jameson, Decoda is even more of a cipher than most action-heroes in flicks like this one. In contrast, Gallagher's psychotic persona gets much more attention, and though nothing he says is overly witty, the movie seems far more predicated on what happens when a hologram-- intended to be a neutral representation of a human psyche-- becomes infused with the evil of the psyche's owner. True, by the end of the story Decoda is the only surviving "hologram man," and I suppose he might go on crusading against evil a la the inhuman Robocop. But when his girlfriend asks what they should do in the wake of Jameson's demise, Decoda ends the film by throwing the power back to the people with one word: "Vote."

Not much humor in HOLOGRAM, but I did like it when one of the goons calls the hacker a "chip shit."

HARLEY QUINN-- SEASON 3 (2022)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological* 

In my review of Season One, I left things open as to whether the writer-producers of HARLEY QUINN really believed all of their rants about White Patriarchy, and by extension, all other such cant, such as the un-ironic use of the term "cisgender" in Season Two. It was at least possible that these raconteurs were simply trying to make a buck by playing to an audience that wanted an ultraliberal version of SOUTH PARK, with loads of naughty language and hardcore violence. But if Season 3 of this show demonstrated anything, it's that only true believers could pen a line like this one:

Harley Quinn (speaking to another female): "Congrats on freeing yourself from the chains of hetero hell!"

The showrunners make other dubious decisions-- the Riddler is gay, and Catwoman had a lesbian encounter with Poison Ivy but can barely tolerate the "hetero hell" of an ongoing relationship with boring billionaire Bruce Wayne). All these things demonstrate that the producers have goneg full tilt boogie into a trope I'll call, "Gay Always Good, Straight Always Bad." Before this, the scripts focused almost entirely on celebrating one particular lesbian hookup: the written-in-the-stars romance of BFFs Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. Season 2 particularly burns up a lot of episode-time leading up to the inevitable union. But the apparent success of the HBO series evidently made the showrunners convinced that they could get away with anything-- just like SOUTH PARK, but with absolutely no wit or style.

From a very limited POV, Season 3 doesn't suffer from exactly the same crippling inevitability as Season 2. Once all the sexy pyrotechnics have been executed, Harley and Ivy have to deal with the pressures of an ongoing relationship. I don't mean to imply that the scripts show any logical progression of even very limited melodramatic characters; I'm only saying that the change of pace COULD have been allowed for better stories than those of Season 2. One big change comes from Ivy, who for two seasons of this show, put aside her forceful personality from other iterations and became a "shrinking violet," the better to play "femme" to Harley's "butch." Now, in order to play up the very different personalities of the lovers, Ivy starts to return to her eco-terrorist mode. Harley initially approves-- anything to make her leafy lover happy-- but at some point, even the empty-headed maniac realizes that Ivy's obsession is too extreme, even for her.

Season Two broadly implied that the main reason Harley launched a murderous campaign to take down most of Gotham's other villains was because she had no good lovin' in her life, and had never had even when she cohabited with the Joker, because well, "hetero equals hell." But once she's bumping nasties with Ivy, Harley conveniently forgets about her queenpin-ambitions and even starts making noises like a hero, which includes keeping Ivy from massacring large quantities of Gothamites. Of course, in the world of the fanatic, it doesn't matter than Harley herself has quite a few murders on her rap sheet, and not just villains-- unless we're supposed to believe that her attack on Earth with the forces of Darkseid conveniently cost no innocent lives. Being gay makes everything okay.

But in one sense Harley's dream of becoming a queenpin comes true, for in order for her to rise, the Big Bat must fall. Yes, the previous two seasons repetitively dragged Commissioner Gordon through the mud for a laugh, and other heroes were mocked, but the fanatics mostly left Batman alone. However, to him he's a straight white male hero, so he must be removed to make way for a gay (but also white) female villain with heroic aspirations. To be fair, in the comics Harley does undergo a psychological change that puts her mostly on the side of the angels. But the showrunners here have no interest in psychology except in the form of tedious bromides. "Batman has a savior complex. Bruce Wayne turns off Catwoman because his parental issues make him clingy." But in addition to all the factors that make the Big Bat a weak-ass white guy, he also belongs to the "one percent," and for that crime he must be punished, so that Killer Harley can take his place and check more boxes.

I confess I laughed at one joke that involved the Riddler running a danger room. However, the scripters lost that one point and more by making the Prince of Puzzlers gay for no reason but to create more pink representation. For TV animation, HQ is competent, particularly with respect to the violent fight-scenes. I'm aware there are two other seasons and another on the way, so I guess someone likes it. I won't be in any great hurry to review more of these turd-productions.