THE SPIRIT (2008)

 

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

I've long put off reviewing THE SPIRIT, because it's difficult to talk about the process by which a Good Artist seeks to adapt the work of another Good Artist and ends up producing Bad Art.

When the movie debuted in 2008, most of the fan-reaction was negative. Will Eisner's SPIRIT-- a specialized type of comic book that ran for a little over ten years, from the early forties to the early fifties-- had started out as a straightforward adventure-strip about a domino-masked vigilante in the pre-war period. But what most SPIRIT fans favored was Eisner's so-called post-war period, when Eisner began utilizing his formidable gifts to focus on the literary forms of drama and comedy. 

In contrast, Miller hit the big time in the later eighties and the rest of the nineties with a variety of works-- DAREDEVIL, 300, SIN CITY, and two major Batman projects-- which all fit the form of adventure. (Elsewhere I've argued that ELEKTRA ASSASSIN best fits the form of the irony.) Miller often stated his admiration for Eisner, and the two artists were friends up until Eisner's passing in 2005. Because of these factors, I believe that Eisner-fans expected that Miller, when he wrote the SPIRIT film, would seek to emulate some aspects of the drama-and-comedy stories that the fans had esteemed. 

This was, to put the matter mildly, a false expectation; there was no way that Frank Miller, master of comic-book ultraviolence, was going to follow the sort of low-key SPIRIT-stories those fans wanted. Yet, all that said, I found my own experience of the 2008 movie left me less than enthused with the result.

The problem I see in Miller's adaptation is that since 2001-- the year that he came out with a fifteen-years-later sequel to THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS-- the artist became increasingly fascinated with the form of irony, which stresses a type of dark, potentially nihilistic humor. This YouTube video by one Salazar Knight puts forth a detailed analysis of 2001's THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN in which he argues that this limited series hugely disappointed Batman-fans because Miller delivered not a respectful take on the Bat-mythos, as had the 1986 KNIGHT, but a wild and confused parody of the superhero genre as it had developed in the 1990s (at least partly in response to Miller's influence). I won't pursue Salazar's argument in detail, but I believe that Miller had analogous motives in his approach to adapting Will Eisner's SPIRIT.

By 2008 Miller had accrued great Hollywood repute thanks to the successful 2005 adaptation of his 1990s SIN CITY stories. These stories, while not without moments of acerbic humor, were dominantly adventurous film noir narratives. Miller thus got the nod to write and direct THE SPIRIT on the strength of the SIN CITY movie's success. However, since 2001 Miller's creative priorities had changed.

If my terms for literary forms might seem a bit abstruse, I might also cite some better-known terms for the differing ways that Eisner and Miller treated humor. Eisner's SPIRIT hews closest to what film studies call "the screwball comedy," where the humor's very light and sprightly. But Miller's SPIRIT piles on overbaked noir-tropes so heavily that he creates a self-aware burlesque of the genre. When the film starts out with the hero (Gabriel Macht) leaping about the rooftops of Central City, fantasizing that to him the city is like a "good mother" that does not paint itself like a gaudy hooker (I forget the exact wording), clearly Miller's head is in a different place.

Technically Miller keeps the skeletal of a dramatic Eisner plot, from an early 1950s storyline in which the crimefighter met a long-vanished girlfriend, Sand Saref (Eva Mendes in the film), who showed up in Central City as a part of a new crime-scheme, thus setting up the conflict of the two former lovers. Miller had used elements of the "Sand" story for his "origin of Elektra" tale, and so it was perhaps natural enough that he would choose the same narrative for the SPIRIT film. And to the extent that the movie even comes close to an Eisner original, Miller's script is moderately faithful.

However, everything else is Looney Tunes. In the Eisner story, Sand came to the city seeking to sell a germ-warfare weapon, and something similar happens in the film's first half-hour. However, the Spirit is alerted that his frequent enemy the Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) has some scheme going on. So when the hero shows up at Sand's entry-point, he's attacked by Octopus, who engages Spirit in a furious battle that culminates in the villain slamming an old toilet over the hero's head.

How does the hero survive? Well, Eisner frequently showed his vigilante protagonist getting the tar beat out of him, but in a loosely realistic manner. But Miller was hugely invested in ultraviolence, so he reworked both Spirit and Octopus into Wolverine-like beings able to heal rapidly from massive injuries. This rewriting was also Miller's way of justifying the hero's reason for calling himself "The Spirit," because he literally died but came back to life due to a super-serum. He even talks to a death-spirit named Lorelei (Jamie King), whose voice is heard only by "sailors and cops," and who continually bids him to return to her "cold embrace."

Octopus fails to get the item Sand brings to Central City, despite being aided by Doctor Silken Floss (Scarlet Johansson) and her crew of identical goofball clones. (The "Silken Floss" in the comics was not a villain, incidentally.) But I'll give away what the movie doesn't reveal until the last hour: Sand hasn't smuggled in a germplasm, but "The Blood of Heracles," which is supposedly the genuine blood of the Greek demigod. Octopus-- who seems to be the only person interested in this prize-- thinks that if he drinks this substance, it will transform him into a god who can conquer the world.

Yes, we're a long way from film noir here. And to keep up the Looney Tunes mood, Miller constantly gives almost every character bizarre lines, ranging from Floss making some comment about drugs that make people's "teeth turn into graham crackers" to Octopus frequently ranting about "eggs" for unknown reason. Next to some of these gems, the hero's soliloquy to the city almost sounds rational.

While the Spirit chases around trying to track down both Sand and Octopus, he's frequently waylaid by such beautiful women, where they're femmes fatales like Sand and the dancer "Plaster of Paris," or relatively good girls like Ellen Dolan (Sarah Paulson). In the comic she's the hero's faithful girlfriend, and here she's upgraded to a doctor who constantly cares for his wounds but is no less motivated to hogtie the vigilante to her alone. In fact, one of the few worthwhile things about Miller's version of the Spirit is that the crimefighter can't seem to turn off the charm when in the presence of hot women. Certainly, the hero's sex appeal works better than any of his exaggerated athletics.

Macht is decent in the role despite its problematic concept, and most of the actors deliver what Miller wanted of them. But Samuel L. Jackson is awful from start to finish. Perhaps he justified his wild histrionics with the idea that he had to be "the over-reactor" to Macht's "under-reactor," but he unlike other performers seems to relish all of Miller's absurd dialogue.

It's amusing that Miller somewhat name-checks his own creation by having a lady cop claim that Sand Saref suffers from an "Electra complex." However, the Spirit would seem to suffer from the opposing Oedipus complex, for instead of choosing any single female with whom he might "settle down" and protect, he devotes his existence, both at the opening and closing, to the Great Mother of the City. Some of these loose insights are what makes Miller's SPIRIT into "bad art," and not just your average "bad movie."

DESPICABLE ME 4 (2024)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*                                                                                                                                              I'd like to imagine Universal and Illumination allowing this fourth Gru-venture to be the last installment with the characters. However, the box office on Four was almost as impressive as the one for Three (despite Three's fall-off in quality), so it's likely that there will be more Despicable Movies down the road. But at least this one went back to the original template from the first film: imagining the origins of super-villainy as stemming purely from childhood frustrations.                                                                                                               

In contrast to the mediocrity of Three's Balthazar Bratt, this time Gru (Steve Carell), his wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig), and their three girls must combat a villain with connections to Gru's own history. In Gru's high school years, he attended an institution devoted to turning out super-villains, Lycee Pas Bon ("High School of Evil" by one translation), and Young Gru formed a one-upmanship antagonism with fellow student Maxime Le Mal. As an adult working for the Anti-Villain League, Gru uses his status to infiltrate an alumnus party for the Lycee, intending to capture the adult Maxime (Will Farrell) for the AVL. With the help of Lucy, Gru succeeds, though the action here is less amusing than the concatenation of evildoers standing around doing the high school reunion thing. However, almost as soon as Maxime's captured, he escapes, issuing dire threats against Gru and his whole family-- which, by the bye, now includes the infant son of Gru and Lucy. The AVL can't find Maxime, so Gru's family must seek the security of a witness protection program, transferring them to a new community, under contrived new names. This situation at least allowed for some varied comical situations, though as other critics observed, the script stuffed the story with too many minor characters of little consequence-- probably to instill suspense as to who was eventually going to "out" Gru's family and betray them to Maxime.                                                                         

       
  Without question, the worst schtick is that of the baby, Gru Junior. Gru Jr. loves his mother Lucy without reserve but seems to hate Gru no matter what the reformed villain does. This remains a lame schtick because as soon as I saw it begin, I knew that no feel-good cartoon movie was going to end with a baby despising his father, and as I predicted, at the eleventh hour Gru Junior overcomes his personal animus. Ho hum. Slightly more promising is a plot-thread in which a middle-school neighbor girl identifies her new neighbor as the former supervillain Felonious Gru. She then blackmails Gru into helping her commit a silly petty crime. But this contrivance worked better for me because it shows that the creators knew they needed to force the main character back into his criminal mode to keep his basic appeal, no matter how thoroughly he converted to the side of the angels. Again, DESPICABLE #4 would make a great conclusion for a pleasant if lightweight cartoon-series, but I don't imagine things will work out that way.                                

CANARY BLACK (2024)

 

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

Despite sporting a name that sounds similar to a DC Comics heroine, the name "Canary Black" refers to a computer file, and the heroine seeking to obtain said file is kickass intelligence agent Avery Graves (Kate Beckinsale).

This is a fast-paced thrill-ride of the movie with some slight sociological myth-content. Immediately after completing an assignment for her agency, one that proves how kickass she is, Avery's husband David is kidnapped by schemers unknown. To recover his living body, she must betray her agency and hand over the file to the blackmailers,

Up to the 60-minute mark, CANARY seems like any decent action-espionage flick, not unlike a lot of the 1990s output from NuImage. However, the script takes a turn into science-fiction with the revelation that the file is actually a viral bomb, capable of shutting down the Internet in any designated country. The villain (Goran Kostic) has a speech in which he derides the U.S. for having invented the virus as a weapon against computer hacking, but by any other name, he's still a black-hearted evildoer. Indeed, once he's got the virus, he beams a blackmail message to the UN while he wears a concealing black helmet. So we're not that far from the world of superheroes, after all.

Beckinsale's character is simple but evocative, and both production values and fight-choreography prove strong. So this CANARY sings its one song pretty well. 

MARVEL'S IRON FIST: SEASONS ONE & TWO (2017)

 

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


I've sometimes devoted one review to an entire television series, as with the 1990s Superman cartoon, and sometimes to a smattering of episodes in separate reviews, as I did with my incomplete survey of the KUNG FU teleseries.  This falls into the latter category, as I've only watched the first five of the thirteen episodes, which is about the same number of episodes that the "pro" critics watched before widely trashing it in online media.

One common complaint voiced concerned the level of action in the series. It's true that there's nothing here that even equals the better Jean-Claude Van Damme movies, much less the classic Hong Kong kung fu flicks, Yet the slow pace of IRON FIST is echoed in earlier Netflix online serials like DAREDEVIL and LUKE CAGE, and in all likelihood said pace is mostly a matter of economics, not lack of talent. The FIST fight-scenes are adequate, but the overall strategy of the show's producers is to draw viewers into the emotional world of Danny "Iron Fist" Rand. If they succeed in making you care about Danny as a character, then in theory you'll be more invested in his welfare than whether or not his battle with a gang of hatchet-wielding Triad gangsters comes up to the level of a Jet Li flick.

It's not by accident that I worked in a reference to the 1970s series KUNG FU, for the earlier series parallels some if not all of IRON FIST's direction. Both serials emphasize action enough to qualify for the mythos of adventure, but both also incorporate strong dramatic elements into the mix. Admittedly KUNG FU is superior to IRON FIST in both content and visual style. That said, the earlier series focused more on the main character Caine helping out "guest star" characters during the hero's peripatetic journeys, while Danny Rand is grounded in New York as part of his dramatic arc.

Rand's situation in a nutshell: fifteen years ago he-- a child of ten-- was lost in an airplane crash over the Himalayas, as were his wealthy parents. At age 25 he shows up in New York, seeking to connect with the Rand Corporation. the only link he has with his past. In the absence of the Rand family, the Meachams, the grown son and daughter of the elder Rand's partner, have assumed control of the company. Danny can't initially prove who he is and the Meachums don't initially want to listen to his story: that he was rescued from a freezing death by the monks of K'un-Lun. The explanation for his long absence-- that these monks inhabit a Brigadoon-like city that only intersects with the Earth-plane on rare occasions, and that Danny simply couldn't get back-- does not go over well.

While the dramatic resolution of Danny's identity problems might have been tighter, I found it interesting that the producers chose to resolve them gradually, given that the more common resolution in pop fiction is to have the doubters convinced immediately by some supernormal demonstration.  Though the leisurely pace is probably born of an economic need, the producers made the best of the situation, allowing the involved heritage of the partners and their children to unfold in a naturalistic manner.

It's been said online that star Finn Jones plays Danny Rand as a "ten year old in a man's body." This is inaccurate. Danny Rand's struggle in the series during the first five episodes is that of a grown man attempting to re-connect with the memories of his childhood, now layered over with the experiences he's had in the past fifteen years-- experiences that include not just living in a culture very unlike that of his birth, but also one in which things like dragons and disappearing cities are commonplace. In addition, because other Marvel serials have introduced Frank Miller's evil ninja-clan "The Hand," this group now becomes an opponent for Iron Fist, whose original comics-incarnation predates Miller's DAREDEVIL run. In emulation of the gritty, down-to-earth approach in Netflix's DAREDEVIL series, marvelous powers and creatures don't show up in the streets of IRON FIST's New York quite as often as they do in the Marvel Comics New York-- which adds to the tension, in which Danny Rand's story is simply not creditable in real-world terms, despite the fact that the Avengers and their ilk exist off on the margins of the Netflix universe.

I've already expressed my feelings on the matter of so-called cultural appropriation in this essay, but I should add that some of the aforesaid reviews apparently thought it was cool to fight racism with racism, as seen in this nearly incoherent piece from COMIC BOOK MOVIE:

The current MCU is very white. Danny Rand is a pretty lame character to begin with. Having him be an asian would have brought an actually interesting aspect to his character, especially as a fish out of water to a mystic asian culture. Instead we get some boring white guy about to do some more typical white guy stuff. 

Now, if I were to say that all black guys were inherently boring, or all Asian guys-- who would fail to label that racism? But generalizing about Caucasian characters gets an automatic pass from ultraliberal types-- not to mention the reviewer's reverse-racist conviction that not being white automatically makes a character "interesting."

Neither in any comics-incarnation nor in this series is Danny Rand likely to set any records for "greatest white character." But whatever shortcomings the character may have certainly do not depend on his race.                                                                                                                                                     PART TWO                                                                                                                                                       


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

Having reviewed just the first five episodes of this now cancelled series here. I don't have a whole lot to say about the remaining eight episodes of IRON FIST's Season 1. Though I disagreed with most of the prevailing fannish ire against the series, I would concur with many fans that the first season suffered in being a set-up for the DEFENDERS series, which was not capable of balancing so many disparate Marvel-Netflix characters-- to say nothing of the problematic idea of using the Hand as the "big bad" for both IF SEASON ONE and DEFENDERS.

Season 2 is at least an improvement in its handling of the Danny Rand identity of the titular hero. Throughout the first season, Rand varied from being a Taoist contemplative type a la Kwai Chang Caine to a hero given to extreme temper tantrums. With the Hand out of the way, Season Two concentrates on the more low-level exploits of Danny and his girlfriend Colleen Wing, attempting to find their place in New York's Chinatown.

The duo still fights various criminal gangs, but the "big bad" for the season is Davos, one of Iron Fist's former friends from the mystical city of K'un-Lun. In the original comics, Davos, a.k.a. "Steel Serpent," stole Danny's "Iron Fist" power from him, went berserk for a while, and then self-destructed so that the hero could get his power back. This doesn't exactly indicate a particularly complex villain, but it does allow for more development of the supporting characters. Misty Knight, originally partners with Colleen Wing in the comics, becomes bonded to Colleen in this season, and their alliance is at least decent if not quite as well-done as the original version. Typhoid Mary, one of the "ambivalent villains" from the DAREDEVIL comic, is transplanted to the IRON FIST milieu to good effect, though Joy and Ward Meacham remain useless time-killers.

There are also a few nice "shout-outs" to the comic-- Davos and Danny first duel wearing the cowls that the comics-character always wore-- but on the whole some of the scripting choices seem to have no real point beyond changing things up from the original to establish the TV-show's independence. The conclusion, which transfers the Iron Fist power to Colleen instead of back to Danny Rand, seems like little more than virtue signaling to feminists.

                                                                                  

ALIEN RISING (2013)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*                                                                                                                                Once again I find myself launching a mild defense of a low-budget film that's been bagged on, way out of proportion to its faults. Director Dana Schroeder and his two writers (one of whom was Michael Todd, star of ROBOT NINJA) didn't produce any sort of sci-fi sleeper. But there's a smooth progression of incidents and some half-decent fight-scenes, even if the plot doesn't always make perfect sense.                                                                                             

  So I'll unfold the plot as it's supposed to occur in the actual story, not the protagonist's fragmented discovery of it. At some past era, an alien craft with two ETs-- one small, one big--crashlands on Earth. The military prompted hides the first contact in a secret facility. Apparently the boffins' research shows that the small alien wields some sort of mental control over the big, powerful one, and the theory is advanced that the small one created the big one as a proxy with which to explore other planets. The head of the operation, Colonel Cencula (Lance Henriksen) separates the two ETs to test their level of contact, sending the big one to another laboratory. For some reason the head scientist gets the idea that they might better communicate with the alien and its "twin" with the use of a human twin that demonstrated psychic connection with her human twin. The military finds a female twin named Amy in prison, remands her, and uses her in a communication experiment. Amy dies somehow, and maybe it's the fault of Cencula-- because hey, how often does Lance Henriksen play a good guy?                                                           

   So Cencula sends his agents out to collect the other twin, whether she likes it or not. Lisa Morgan (Amy Hathaway), long estranged from her prison-bait sister, became a kick-ass homeland security agent. In a botched operation, Lisa's partner Manning (played by the sixty-something John Savage) gets killed, and because Lisa had enjoyed an affair with Manning, she quits her job. But Cencula's men abduct Lisa to their isolated facility and induct her into the government's alien-inquiry program. There, Cencula doles out just enough info to keep Lisa intrigued-- her sister's involvement, the possibility that Lisa possesses the same psychic powers as the late sister. Oh, would you believe that Cencula was far-sighted enough that he also spirited away Manning before he died, faked his death, and inducted him into the project because the colonel thought Manning would prove useful? Nah, and I didn't believe it either.                           

In fact, if anything Manning just further indicates to Lisa that Cencula's dealing from the bottom of the deck. Manning wants to get with Lisa again, but she finds love with Plummer (Brian Krause), an agent closer to her own age. (Both Krause and Hathaway were in their forties at the time RISING was made, though appearance-wise both were able to skew younger in 2013.)  Lisa also participates in the head scientist's experiments with the small alien, and I guess she provides the research guys with some extra data, though no one actually says so. But Cencula has some involved plans to make money off the ETs, and soon Lisa has to play one-woman army against the colonel, her former lover, and the troops-- though she gets some last-minute help from the Big CGI Alien.                                                                     

Director Shroeder is no Orson Welles, but he tells the formula story passably well in terms of visuals. I saw a number of critiques of Hathaway both as an actress and as a performer of movie-fights. There's not that much in the Lisa character that proves Hathaway's thespian abilities either way, but I thought she looked okay punching and kicking in the fight-scenes. I agree that sometimes the heroine would hit a full-grown man and that he'd fold too easily, and that her male opponents rarely managed to hit Lisa with a really strong blow. But those could be the fault of hasty, low-budget fight-coordination, and I've certainly seen a lot of actresses who were much less convincing as tough-girl heroines.                               

THE LEGEND OF HERCULES (2014)

  

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*                                                                                                                                I saw LEGEND once before, but I must have been "out of critical mode" while watching, because I remembered nothing about it. Only after this re-watch did I realize that it's much worse than even the bargain-basement Hercules flicks of the sixties.                                 

Only the opening scenes have any bite to them. King Amphitryon of Tiryns (Scott Adkins) is first seen leading his army to conquer another city. Amphitryon proposes single combat against the city's king for all the marbles, and he wins the battle and dominion over the city. What this ruthless monarch does not win, though, is the approval of his wife Alcmene (Roxanne McKee). Alcmene, despite having borne a son to Amphitryon, hates her lord's warring ways so much that she prays to Hera at the goddess' temple for a deliverer. Hera appears to Alcmene, and tells her that Zeus, King of the Gods, is willing to spawn a hero with the mortal queen, while Hera is willing to allow the infidelity because-- well, it's not clear why Hera's on board. My theory is that the writers knew they had to use the strongman's familiar Roman name "Hercules," rather than the Greek "Heracles," but they *may* have wanted to allude to the meaning of the Greek name, since said meaning occurs later in the script: "Heracles"= "Glory of Hera." Alcmene consents to have Zeus come to her at night, and Amphitryon witnesses what is essentially an "invisible man" impregnation. The evil king doesn't overtly make the connection to Zeus, but since he doesn't simply have the infant Hercules killed, Amphitron probably worries about the consequences of killing a god's spawn.                                                       

 After this setup, though, the script devolves into an amateurish level of predictability. Hercules (Kellan Lutz) and his older sibling Iphicles (Liam Garrigan) grow to manhood, and though crown prince Iphicles is scheduled to make a political marriage with Cretan princess Hebe (Gaia Weiss), she and Hercules fall in love. Amphitryon is the only one besides Alcmene who knows/guesses Hercules' divine parentage, but Iphicles gets some direct evidence of his half-brother's power when the two siblings are out in the wild and get attacked by a bad CGI creature that's supposed to be the Nemean Lion. At least the lion is invulnerable as in the myth, and Hercules breaks its neck with his demigod-strength. But this signals to Iphicles and his father that they need to get rid of this strongman, so they send Hercules off to a foreign war in the hope he'll get killed. The rest of the story is just a long, boring montage of action-scenes as Hercules gets taken prisoner as a slave, is forced to fight in gladiatorial games, and finally works his way back to Greece to reclaim Hebe and overthrow his false father and nasty brother.                   

 It's hard to choose which of LEGEND's faults is the worst. The CGI Nemean Lion looks great next to the awful gladiatorial battles, which seem as fake as hell. While director Renny Harlin had never been a critical favorite, I liked both of the nineties films he did with Geena Davis, CUTTHROAT ISLAND and LONG KISS GOODNIGHT. Despite the assorted problems of both movies, they're good basic formula-flicks that can catch an audience up with sheer momentum. But LEGEND drags from fake battle to fake battle with zero sense of kinetic power, and Harlin's phoning it all in. The dramatic scenes are equally terrible, and the dialogue is so clunky that it's hard to tell if any actor except Adkins has any talent. But I'd have to say Kellan Lutz is the worst performer here. He acts out his Herculean role with a sort of stone-faced indifference and fails to sell the alleged heroism of his character. Even a couple of scenes where Hercules invokes extra power from his heavenly father-- additional strength in one instance, a lightning-filled sword in another- fall flat. Though LEGEND came to theaters six months before the Dwayne Johnson HERCULES of the same year, I strongly suspect that LEGEND's producers sought to steal a march on the Johnson film. But coming out early with a mediocre script didn't help LEGEND, which flopped at the box office just as the Johnson film succeeded. Even the Asylum's HERCULES REBORN, also from 2014, proved more entertaining than this drab mythological misfire.

HONOR ROLL #263

Second-rate villain LIAM GARRIGAN is adequate to represent this third-rate movie.                                                                                        

Maybe the alien's rising, but not so the career of AMY HATHAWAY.                                                                                              

"One fist made of iron-- the other of--well, flesh."                                       

 Is GORAN KOSTIC a gorey agnostic?                                                 

 MAXIME LE MAL= Minimum Effect.                                                     

 It wasn't STEPHEN MACHT's fault that there was no Spirit in the script he had to work with.                                                                       

SUPERVIZED (2019)

 

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

Past a certain point in the lives of sentient human beings, age becomes strongly associated with being a time of suffering, regrets, and tragedy. And for those very reasons, old age is immensely funny, though different viewers will have different mileages in that regard.

Yet, though I've seen or read thousands of superhero narratives, I've never come across an overly laugh-worthy take on the trope of "old superheroes." It sounds like it ought to be a winning combination: icons of vitality and sexual attractiveness, being humbled by the ravages of Father Time. But most "old superheroes" I've seen have been lame and obvious when played for comedy-- not that the list of good superhero comedies, in any medium, is all that long either.

SUPERVIZED is the exception to that tendency. I won't say that every age-related joke lands, for exactly the mileage-reasons mentioned above. Yet I'm surprised that the story is so focused, because when I look at the credits of the three writers, nothing I've seen by any of them strikes me as noteworthy. As for director Steve Barron, who's not credited with scripting duties, his best-known comedy in the U.S. would be the dismal 1993 CONEHEADS, though he scored rather better with adventurous fare like 1990's TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES and 1998's MERLIN teleseries.

Like most superhero stories, this one's set in a modern urban world akin to the one occupied by the audience. We don't see much of that world, though, since extra sets cost money, and this project, shot in Ireland and the UK, ponied up for three actors who were, in their respective days, fairly well known for action-roles: Tom Berenger, Louis Gossett Jr, and (to a lesser extent) Beau Bridges. Most of the story takes place at Dunmanor, an Ireland-based "old folks' home" for former superheroes, where heroes in their "golden years" have to deal with infirmities physical and mental and with being forgotten by the public. 

The three major characters are Ray (Berenger, formerly "Maximum Justice"), Ted (Bridges, formerly "Shimmy," kid sidekick to Maximum Justice), and Pendle (Gossett, formerly "Total Thunder"). They and numerous other retired superheroes still remember their glory days fondly, but their powers don't always work as desired, and it's strongly implied that Dunmanor may be the government's means of keeping tabs on these hyper-powered individuals-- though the government is not expressly involved. All the authority devolves to the home's manager Alicia (Fiona Glascott). Alicia seems the epitome of the cheerleader for the superannuated, but eventually the audience learns that she holds a Damoclean sword over the heads of the occupants. If any of these ex-supers misuses powers, the administration can have those powers artificially removed.

Ray, however, sees some things going on at Dunmanor that don't track for him. All of his friends think he's merely paranoid, as does a late entry to the institution: Madera Moonlight (Fionnula Flanagan). An extra irritant to Ray is the presence of a former Russian super-villain, known only by the name of "Brian" (Elya Baskin), who received special treatment for having narced on a bunch of other super-villains. All these roadblocks aside, Ray can't let his conspiracy theories go, even though he puts his own super-powers in danger by his actions.

Is there a real conspiracy going on? If you think the answer is going to run counter to the film's continued refrain of "Sympathy for the Geezers," guess again. But the Big Reveal is just an excuse for a wealth of clever old-age jokes, many of which stem from the ultimate absurdity: getting old. What I particularly like is that SUPERVIZED never looks cheap. It looks inexpensive, but that's not the same. The various super-stunts are naturally more limited in scope than in a comparable superhero comedy like the 2006 ZOOM. But the stunts often capture, in comedic terms, the appeal of having super-powers like Total Thunder's super-speed or Moonlight's "power to warp reality." Ray is more or less the linchpin of the ensemble-- we become acquainted with Ted, Pendle and Moonlight through their interactions with Ray, because he's the representative "cranky old man" that the script wants you both to laugh at and laugh with. Nevertheless, it's a good ensemble, with Flanagan's white-haired warrior-woman standing out as one of the best comedic superheroines.

Up to this point, if I'd had to choose the best live-action superhero comedy, I might have gone with 1994's amiably goofy BLANKMAN. But sorry, Damon Wayans-- the Really Old Guard has taken away your pride of place.

ECHO (2024)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I didn't see all of HAWKEYE, the Disney streaming series wherein the MCU version of Marvel character Echo debuted. But this wasn't strictly necessary, in that (1) Echo was a side character, and (2) the five-part ECHO series recapitulates the essentials of her HAWKEYE arc, The character of Echo (she has a "regular name" but I'll omit it for sake of clarity) follows a few aspects of her debut comic-book arc. If I had not read the 2011 sequence PARTS OF THE HOLE, I would not have known how much of the Hawkeye arc was derived from the comics-story. In the latter, The Kingpin befriends Echo's father, kills him, and then frames Daredevil for the crime, so that the super-athletic Echo-- who regards Kingpin as a surrogate daddy-- goes after the Man Without Fear. After assorted fight-scenes Echo finds out the truth and takes an Oedipal vengeance upon her bad dad, shooting him in both eyes.

It's just as well I did not attempt to follow what happened to the comic book version of Kingpin after Echo's vengeance, since I strongly suspect that the ECHO series went its own way from then on. One divergent direction was that the ECHO show, like 2022's MS. MARVEL, was meant to celebrate a marginalized culture within America, that of an Amerindian tribe. (Echo is of the Cheyenne tribe in the comics but in the live-action show she becomes Choctaw for whatever reasons.) ECHO proves considerably better at the representation task than the 2022 program, for all the scenes with the supporting Choctaw characters are pretty good. It's just a shame that, as with so, so many MCU serials, the show-runners had no idea as to how to craft a compelling protagonist.

As I noted in my PARTS review, Comics-Echo is no great prize. The ease with which Kingpin tricks his surrogate daughter into believing Daredevil is her father's murderer does not reflect well on Echo's brain power. However, she's still got a basic heroic persona. TV-Echo is absurdly over-complicated in that respect.

Daredevil isn't in the HAWKEYE series. In the TV show, Kingpin sets up Echo's father to get killed by the Avenging Archer, rather than bringing about the father's death through Kingpin's own agency. At the end of HAWKEYE, TV-Echo shoots Kingpin, but only in one eye. The first episode of ECHO recapitulates this history. It's implied also that Kingpin was responsible for the death of Echo's mother when Echo was a small girl, and that this somehow caused Echo's dad to flee the reservation to work for Kingpin in New York. In that bailiwick, separated from neighbors and family members, Echo "echoes" the Kingpin's ethics, becoming hard and ruthless as she works for one of the crime-lord's gangs. In that first episode, she has a big fight with Daredevil when the latter raids one of Kingpin's businesses, but the Man Without Fear has no direct effect on the course of Echo's story. Five months after shooting Kingpin and going on the run, Echo returns to her rez-home in Oklahoma.

However, the first three episodes dispelled any sympathy I might have had for MCU-Echo. Not only does Echo nurture fantasies of taking Kingpin's place as a gangland "queenpin," she immediately expects the members of her family to join her in fighting Kingpin's forces. Her uncle Henry, brother to Echo's late dad, attempts to dissuade her, but she endangers the people in her orbit with her bull-headed agenda. She's particularly unsympathetic in that she won't even make contact with her cousin Bonnie, though Bonnie repeatedly tried to keep in contact with Echo in her absence.

The writers finally have Echo re-discover a little of her humanity after she almost gets Bonnie and Henry killed. But the heroine suffers so little remorse that she almost seems like another incarnation of the MCU's favorite trope, "the conscienceless girl-boss." Also, Echo belatedly discovers that she's inherited a vague mystic healing-power from both her mother and an ancient cultus of female shamans, so she has to confer with her estranged grandmother to find out what's going on. Echo's selfishness isn't validated as much as that of Wanda Maximoff in WANDAVISION, but the Choctaw female's eleventh-hour conversion to heroism is still unconvincing. She makes contact with ancient Amerindian spirituality and more or less gets Kingpin out of her life without following the path of vengeance-- which had to be the MCU's path too, since they had future plans for the villain.

In the comics Echo's name came from her ability to emulate other fighting-styles, an attribute dropped by the MCU adaptation. In the TV version, the fourth episode finally rationalizes her superhero name by stating that she "echoes" the deeper cultural matrix of her people. While this wasn't wildly original, it could have worked, because all the Native American support-characters are well cast and decently written. But Alaqua Cox's one-note performance as Echo defeats the trope. The actress performs her fight-scenes well, so her casting wasn't a total loss. Too bad, for given that the original story isn't anything special, the MCU for once had a chance to be "better than the book."

THE APOCALYPSE (1997)

 

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

You know, I can live with a low-budget film that has characters behave like idiots, as long as it's diverting to look at. But when the look of the film is repulsive, that's another thing entirely.

Curiously, the writer credited with THE APOCALPYSE co-wrote, in the previous year, a serviceable space-adventurer in TIMELOCK, which even shares some similarities to the later film in featuring what I called a "tough girl/weak guy teamup." But TIMELOCK also had a different director, which may be the reason the look of that film didn't bug me. It's one thing to stage the whole film in a series of grey-metal corridors that are supposed to be the insides of space vessels. But does every actor in the film have to be wearing brown, black and white garments?

The setup: The Agamemnon, a ship carrying a cargo of unstable materials, is taken over by an insane computer hacker named Goad (Laura San Giacomo). After causing the deaths of the crew, she sets the ship on a collision course with Earth and records, for a non-existent posterity, a series of password requests for anyone who might want to override the ship's course, all of which messages are quotes from Shakespeare. Then I guess she offs herself, since she's never seen except as a computer-representation.

On Future-Earth, cargo pilot J.T. Wayne (Sandra Bernhard) is drinking at a bar, wanting to be left alone for some unspecified reason. Bartender Lennon (Cameron Dye) makes some overtures about wanting a berth on her next run, and she shoots him down. Another barfly spills a drink near Wayne and she slugs him, obliging the bartender to shoot her down, with an entirely modern-looking stun-gun. 

An associate named Noel bails Wayne out of jail and talks her into captaining a salvage mission to reclaim the supposedly dead vessel Agamemnon. For some reason Noel wants Bartender Lennon to go along; I never figured out why, unless it's because it was in the script. Not only does Wayne have to tolerate this exigency, Noel informs her that the only other crewmen he can get are associated with Wayne's former boyfriend Vendler (Frank Zagarino). Wayne accepts this condition even though, as she'll later reveal to Lennon, she knows Vendler's a rotter and his crewpeople are likely to be rotters too.

Sure enough, once the salvage ship nears the Agamemnon-- everyone still unaware of the ship's pre-set course-- Vendler and his buddies take over the ship and kill everyone not on their side. Wayne and Lennon manage to avoid the assault and keep clear for a while, and in the meantime Vendler's crew boards the death-ship. Vendler's computer-tech interacts with the ship's computer and starts trying to work his way through the password-challenges, which depend on the programmer's knowledge of Shakespeare. (These sequences provide the film's only moderate entertainment.)

Eventually, the programmer finds out that he can't crack the computer's override protection and tells Vendler that they have to leave the ship before it collides with Earth. And here's the film's really stupid part: the obsessed villain won't let his own crew save their lives, and most of the other henchpeople follow his lead. In fact, Vendler beats up a blonde henchwoman-- his new girlfriend-- when she defies him, and then lets one of the other henchwomen kill her. At least in TIMELOCK, the villains, a bunch of prison escapees, were seeking freedom at any cost.

Lennon, to his credit, does prove useful to Captain Wayne a few times, so he's not a complete weakling. But the funniest scene in the movie takes place after Vendler captures the duo and locks them in what looks more like a lion's cage than a brig. Knowing that Vendler will get ticked off by seeing Wayne have sex, the two heroes pretend to be humping-- though neither of them takes any clothes off, particularly where it would be absolutely necessary to do so.

The funny scenes are too few and far between to dispel the boredom though. Dye and Zagarino are competent in their roles, but Bernhard is one of those performers who's totally unable to play roles not set in her own timeframe. Arguably she's even harder to watch in this role than the ugly attire and scenery, even though she tries to put a certain gusto into her part. I assume the film went straight to home video, because I can't imagine anyone trying to make patrons pay for this mediocrity. 

LUPIN III: PURSUIT OF HARIMAO'S TREASURE (1995)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*

MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*                                                                                                                                                  This LUPIN III TV special is, as the title suggests, a treasure-hunt story. In fact, in keeping with several callbacks to the James Bond franchise, there's not much of the marvelous phenomena common to many other LUPIN-tales of the period. Even Goemon confines himself to one quasi-marvelous feat, that of using his sword to cut slabs of street-concrete out from under a fleet of cop-cars. The period in the history of things Lupin-esque seems dubious too, for though Lupin and Jigen are working together, Goemon doesn't seem a regular part of the team, and continually makes remarks about being a "part-timer" who expects to be remunerated on an hourly basis. The Lupin Gang's status with respect to Fujiko seems standard though, and Lupin even remarks that Fujiko dealt herself in to get the others' help in finding the booty, in contrast to the more frequent situation where Lupin calls on the seductive siren for special reconnaissance.                                                                                       

  The desired treasure is a cache of gold and precious metals hidden by a Malaysian bandit, Harimao, who during WWII ripped off the English and the Japanese alike. Two competitors for the prize are the British lord Sir Archer-- strongly implied to have been a real agent on whom the fictional stories of James Bond were based-- and his super-competent granddaughter Diana. The treasure's location is hidden in three separate statues, and when Archer gets one of the statues, Lupin consents to work with Archer and Diana to find the trove. One of the special's best moments is the revelation of how Harimao forged the valuables into a vehicle of sorts, suggesting that he might have anticipated a not dissimilar episode of the SPEED RACER teleseries.                                                                                       

 Of course it wouldn't be a Lupin adventure if there weren't "bad thieves" to play off the "noble thieves." In this case, there's a gang of Neo-Nazis who also want Harimao's riches, and the foremost henchman is a brute named Goering, who stomps the usually athletic Lupin in each of their altercations. Strangely, though the original Nazis were not precisely welcoming of alternative sexualities, these goose-steppers are led by a rouge-wearing cross-dresser whose punny name, at least in his mastermind identity, is "Herr Maffrodite." Given that he hates women but plays up a feminine appearance, Maffrodite might have been a major Lupin antagonist had the script built him up better. However, he comes off as little more than a cartoon of a cross-dresser and so proves no more than a curiosity. The script devotes much more attention to Lupin's constant attempts to grope and/or or court Diana. She usually kicks his ass in response, and while Fujiko shows mild jealousy of Diana in just one scene, most of her time in the movie is taken up being ogled by Dirty Old Sir Archer. So I can just barely label this item as participating in the "fighting femmes" category. TREASURE is a mildly entertaining romp with more naughty jokes that one would ever find in an American heist film, nothing more. Oh, and Zenigata's in the story, but is only used for occasional comedy relief.                                                                     

BABES IN TOYLAND (1997)

  

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

As my review of the 1934 BABES IN TOYLAND should show, I'm not overly enamored of that film, and the same goes for every other adaptation I've seen of the 1903 operetta. However, I have to give the original story some credit for being one of the first crossovers of the 20th century, even if the crossover-characters are all figures out of fairy tales and Mother Goose rhymes.

Aside from charting the similarities between original and adaptation, this 1997 film has little to recommend it beyond an assortment of celebrities voicing the characters (Christopher Plummer, Bronson Pinchot, Jim Belushi and Charles Nelson Reilly, the latter voicing "Humpty Dumpty," who might not have appeared in any TOYLAND iterations before this). And to be sure, no movie adaptation has faithfully adapted version of the operetta, either in its original or revised form. TOYLAND '97 mostly copies the plotline of the 1934 film, except that it brings in two kids as viewpoint characters to the wonders of Toyland, as well as being the niece and nephew of their cruel uncle Barnaby (Plummer). That, and one song by Victor Herbert (the redoubtable "Toyland"), are probably the only elements taken from the operetta.

In the absence of comedic stars Laurel and Hardy, the centricity shifts to the young couple, with Mary (of Little Lamb fame) acing out Little Bo Beep, though Tom Piper is still the male lead. The script does away with a fatherly Toymaker, but Mary, in deference to girl-boss models, runs the toy shop for her late father, and Tom is her employee. There's a slight attempt at characterization, as Mary is briefly seen as officious and Tom as scatterbrained, but little comes of it. Tom arguably is melded with 1934's "Stannie Dum," since the Piper's Son constructs the same troop of giant toy soldiers. This time, though, Tom just makes the soldiers because he wants to, in contrast to the way Stannie Dum made his giant toys after misinterpreting an order put in by the shop's major client, Santa Claus.

Barnaby's motivations are more envy-driven this time. He doesn't want to marry Mary; he just wants to take over her toy shop in order to keep children from having toys, since he never had any as a child. This time around, he's given the surname "Crookedman" to align him to the old poem, but as far as denoting his characterization, his last name should have been "Grinch."

Tom, Mary and Humpty are the only major nursery-rhyme crossovers here; others just appear in background scenes, like the Three Blind Mice and the Gingerbread Man. Barnaby's two comic henchmen (modeled on the imagery of Laurel and Hardy) from the 1961 adaptation are shoehorned in to provide some alleged comedy. Their only important action is obeying Barnaby's order to deliver the two kids (who have witnessed their uncle's schemes) to the cannibalistic goblins, but the kids and the two henchmen are rescued by Tom and Humpty.

Since I didn't think Barnaby's climactic action in the '34 movie-- somehow drawing the goblins into attacking Toyland-- made a lot of sense, I might argue that in this movie, the villain is a little better motivated to destroy Toyland, in that he's been frustrated of his scheme to take over the toy shop. I've also argued that the conflict in the '34 film between the goblins and the giant toy soldiers was too brief and desultory to sustain the combative mode, but this cartoon provides more relatively spectacular scenes of soldier-goblin combat. Barnaby's given one more opportunity to demonstrate his black heart by threatening his niece and nephew again, but he ends being chased out of Toyland by a horde of aggrieved goblins. In some versions of the story, Tom stabs Barnaby at the end. Here, since Tom made the soldiers, the combative victory still goes to him, albeit indirectly.

One last note is that the two kids are named Jack and Jill, but they seem to have come to Toyland from the real world, and nothing indisputably connects them to the Jack and Jill of nursery rhymes. 

SEVEN MINUTES TO DIE (1969)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*                                                                                                                                                  This late entry to the Eurospy genre, co-written and directed by Ramon Fernandez, currently occupies the lower rungs of that category. I've often complained about how Eurospy movies often downplay the villains for whatever reasons, but SEVEN MINUTES TO DIE is unique in that I could hardly keep track of the villain's ID or his plot. I know that early in the movie he eliminates another agent and takes his identity and then plots to sell a list of undercover agents to a power hostile to the democracies.  US Secret Service agent Bill Howard (Paul Stevens, a couple of years after he starred in the superhero fantasy FLASHMAN) trundles around Europe, trying to locate the list and getting into a few desultory fights. (I slightly liked a scene where the hero is attacked on a dock by thugs dressed in judo-gis and headbands.) He encounters a few pretty women but doesn't romance them. There are two diabolical devices in the movie. Howard, escaping from pursuers in his car, releases an oil slick from said car so that his foes skid off a cliff to their doom. Later some enemy or other traps Howard and his secretary in a room with crushing walls, but he breaks out with the use of explosives (without causing harm to either himself or the secretary). Oddly, the photography's pretty good, but everything else about the movie is humdrum as hell.    

HONOR ROLL #262

 NIEVES NAVARRO prospered more in giallo movies than in the last of the Eurospy flicks.                                                                                   

TOM PIPER gets his elf-self off the shelf.                                                 

"The name is Archer, SIR ARCHER-- and no, no relation to the guy with the mommy issues on FX."                                                            

The most apocalyptic thing about SANDRA BERNHARDT here was her acting.                                                                                             

To the extent that an echo is a lesser copy of an original phenomenon, that describes the ALAQUA COX character perfectly.            

FIONNULA FLANAGAN shows that there can be fire in the spandex even when there's frost on the cowl.                                                

LEGO DC SUPER HEROES: THE FLASH (2018)

 

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

As I may be the world's greatest despiser of JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE FLASHPOINT PARADOX-- and not much more sanguine about the comic-book plot that birthed it-- I may not be the best audience for even a Lego Flash flick with a time-travel theme. Obviously, this production is not burdened with pretentious doom-and-gloom, since all the Lego movies keep things light. But still, for me The Flash works best having contemporary adventures against evil aliens and dastardly super-villains, not messing around with time-paradoxes.

Though this movie doesn't sport the "Justice League" banner, much of the story revolves around Flash's place in the League. The short version: Professor Zoom, an evildoer from Earth's far future, forms a massive hate for 20th-century super-speedster The Flash, and devotes his life to ruining the hero's life. The first part of Zoom's plan involves subjecting Flash to a series of "deja vu" experiences, and later he takes over Flash's role as Earth's favorite speed-hero, as well as making the rest of the Justice League look bad. 

As is often the case with the Lego movies, the main plot is fleshed out with one or more subplots. Here, one involves the induction of the size-altering Atom into the League, and in deference to his debut here, he gets a fair-sized amount of attention (such as his shrinking down to atom-size to change the makeup of the Joker's laughing gas). In addition, there's a pointless interpolation of a "League of Super-Pets," consisting mostly of Superman's Krypto, Batman's Bat-Hound, and Aquaman's sea-horse Storm. 

A tangential plotline involves Flash solving his problems by appealing to two of DC's wizard-types, Doctor Fate (given a voice like Berry Gordy for some reason) and Zatanna. They tell Flash that he was given his power by "The Speed Force," as if it were some metaphysical entity. That may well be current DC canon, but this sort of notion is a little abstruse for a comedy-oriented cartoon.

LEGO FLASH is fairly ordinary of its type; not too good, not too bad, not too-- FLASH-y.