SUPERMAN LEGACY (2025)

 

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

SPOILERS OUT THE WAZOO

Yes, I'm going to discuss lots of stuff about the film's twists and turns, and so I wouldn't blame anyone for not reading this review before seeing the movie. I tried not to watch very many of the trailers or interview-spots with LEGACY's writer-director James Gunn, and nearly none of the advance commentary. Now that I have seen it, my basic verdict is that it's not "too political" or "too jokey." Rather, it's just, to play off the AMADEUS joke, "too many notions" from a former comics-fan trying to fit in everything and the kitchen sink. However, two days after I saw the film, many reviews and box office calculations suggest that LEGACY will be a winner. It's not impossible that on some future second viewing, I might even like it a little better. But it's far from any sort of masterpiece, and I don't think the movie will provide a new model for good superhero films generally.     

One aspect that other moviemakers might imitate is that here Gunn adjures the usual "one gimme" approach to superhero origin films. Instead. like the real comic books, most heroic debuts become "many gimmes" as the creators seek to blend new characters into some overall franchise-universe. Gunn gives us a Superman (David Corenswet) who began his costumed-hero career three years previous to "the present day." There aren't nearly as many wacky heroes, villains and monsters running around as there were in Gunn's SUICIDE SQUAD. Still, there's a motley-crew version of the Justice League in existence and Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) has apparently been making assaults on the Man of Steel for some time, though as in many comics the public perceives Luthor as a law-abiding businessman. Also, Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) knows who Clark Kent really is, and they're seriously involved though not yet sharing toothbrush-space. What a busy three years. LEGACY is probably a better advertisement for the prolific creativity of the DC Universe than SQUAD ever was, though I have a lot of reservations about Gunn's choices.

 The main plot can be summed up as "Superman Vs Cancel Culture." Some weeks prior to the film's main action, Superman intervened in a war between a Middle Eastern country, Jarhanpur, that was being invaded by neighbor-nation Boravia, a U.S. ally. In the 1940s the Man of Steel was occasionally seen forcefully brokering peace/ending wars using nothing but his own force of arms. But in the 21st century, real-world governments don't like it when superheroes enforce peace. Luthor plays on the U.S. government's reticence toward superheroic solutions to set a trap for Superman, though the villain seems to have been selling arms to Boravia for a long time before Superman's intervention there. (This too was a Golden Age trope for Siegel and Shuster: War Profiteers Are the Scum of the Earth.) So Luthor concocts two super-flunkies: Ultraman and The Engineer (who both sport two of the most butt-ugly costumes ever seen in superhero cinema). He dresses up Ultraman, who has Superman-like powers (cue reference to the fourth Chris Reeves film), and has the flunky masquerade as a Boravian avenger. Using computer-interfaces Luthor not only stage-manages Ultraman's fight with the hero, the super-scientist also has Ultraman knock Superman all the way to the Arctic wastes. Luthor does all this not to humiliate Superman, but to find the Kryptonian's Fortress of Solitude. How'd Luthor know of its existence? Watched SUPERMAN II, I guess.

Gunn's conception of the Fortress is almost entirely borrowed from Richard Donner's 1978 classic, except that Gunn adds some funny robots to guard over Superman's few Kryptonian relics and a handy solar healing ray, Keep in mind Luthor can't possibly know that an injured Superman will have such a ray; can't know that when injured the hero might, I don't know, call upon some fellow superhero for help. But it just so happens, for the plot's convenience, that Injured Superman whistles up Krypto, who drags the hero all the way to the Fortress. Later, after Superman has repaired himself and gone out again in search of his foe, Luthor and his crew manage to find the Fortress again. Gunn does maintain a little mystery as to how the villain gains access to the hidden retreat. But this minor note of mystery also serves to cover up the fact that Luthor does all this without having any true knowledge that he can find something in the Fortress to help him cancel Superman.                 

But of course, Luthor's trip is not in vain; he learns a deep, dark secret of Kal-El's Kryptonian "legacy" that hurts his reputation with many, though not all, of the people who have lionized the hero. This fall in popularity makes the government politicos give Luthor a free hand in taking the Man of Steel prisoner. However, as Gunn's plot makes clear, Luthor actually manages to imprison his enemy because the mad scientist also lucks into capturing Krypto at the Fortress. Superman explicitly turns himself over to Luthor because he's the kind of guy who'll even go to the wall for a mangy mutt. I could argue that it would be possible to drop the "Kryptoninan legacy" folderol and keep the plot essentially the same. The legacy plot-point only functions to supposedly motivate the U.S. government to give Luthor a free hand. But then, no government agency is explicitly involved in capturing or even questioning the Kryptonian. Even Snyder's BATMAN VS SUPERMAN did a better job of distilling how a government of humans might react to the precipitate actions of a superhuman. In essence, Gunn wants it both ways: he wants to take a shot at government overreach, but all the dirty work is done by the film's main villain, so the government's role is nugatory.

 I will give Gunn props in that he finds a way to make Clark Kent's colleagues, the reporters of the Daily Planet, vital to the story. In a comic but still essential subplot, Jimmy Olsen discovers that the captive Superman is being held in a "pocket universe." Lois takes this knowledge to the ersatz Justice League in the hope that they will succor their fellow crusader. But not only do we barely know anything about these three yobbos-- Hawkgirl, the Guy Gardner Green Lantern, and Mister Terrific-- we also don't find out why they're mostly indifferent to the fate of Superman. Hawkgirl and Guy are just jerks because Gunn wants them out of the story at that juncture, while Mister Terrific agrees to help Lois not because he holds Superman in any regard. but because Luthor's meddling with extra-dimensional forces could pose a threat to Earth. 

Now, Luthor could have come up with assorted ways of restraining the captive Superman, but in line with Gunn's "too many notions" practice, Gunn decided to shoehorn in quirky DC hero Metamorpho as the method of restraint. Gunn gives the audience no more backstory on the Element Man than he does on the Justice Jerks, but at least Metamorpho shows emotionally torment at working for Luthor, and he actually relates to Superman in a one-on-one manner. Superman, Krypto, Metamorpho, and Metamorpho's Element Baby (don't ask) manage to break out of Luthor's prison just as Lois and Mister Terrific make the scene. It's a slam-bang escape, though too busy for my taste.

The impeding menace of the pocket universe is put on hold because Superman needs time to recover from a close encounter of the Kryptonite kind. The recovery includes a rest at the Kent farm, where we meet Ma and Pa Kent (cast rather against established physical types) for one of LEGACY's few quiet moments. Then there's a well-choreographed big battle scene between Superman and the super-flunkies, while the hero must also seek to save Metropolis from a black hole and the imperiled Jarhanpur from Boravian invaders. Luthor finally has a belated monologue about his obsession with Superman that I found too little too late. The question of Superman's true legacy among humans is more or less wrapped up but in a somewhat superficial manner.

I think my main frustration with LEGACY is that I regarded both Gunn's SUICIDE SQUAD and his three GUARDIANS films as masterclasses in how to adroitly present backstories for large cinematic character-ensembles. In LEGACY, though, Gunn skimped on most of the characters except for Superman, Lois and Luthor. Maybe, despite the clear intention to make LEGACY a tentpole-film, Gunn decided that those three characters had to receive almost all of his attention. And while I have issues with some of the ways Gunn presented information about the three characters, Corenswet, Brosnahan and Hoult have a lot of good scenes playing off one another, probably as good as anything in the Reeve-Hackman-Kidder interactions. So if LEGACY succeeds, it will succeed not so much on presenting a new vision of the Superman mythos, but for being entertaining with dynamic performances and splashy action-scenes.

A last point: LEGACY is not even close to being woke next to the many artistic offenders in that category, from most of the CW TV shows to almost everything in the MCU since 2018, to Gunn's own godawful HBO Max series PEACEMAKER. The story doesn't seriously engage with whatever politics would come about from a superhero ending wars, and the whole BS about Superman being an immigrant was just agitprop from Gunn. Hawkgirl and Mister Terrific may not be very good characters, and they're jerks at times, but she's not a Girl Boss and he's not an Advertisement for Reverse Racism. No one should avoid the film because of false narratives of wokeness, despite all the garbage that almost wrecked the cinematic genre of the superhero.              
             

ANGEL, SEASON ONE (1999-2000)

 

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

The success of Joss Whedons BUFFY series allowed his company to spin off the supporting character of Angel (David Boreanaz) into his own series, running concurrently with BUFFY's Season Four. ANGEL's first season recapitulates some of the problems seen in the first season for the Vampire Slayer: a fair number of make-work menaces who are meant primarily to provide conflict for the starring ensemble. That said, ANGEL had two advantages over its companion show. The new program benefited from being able to draw upon appearances from characters in the Buffyverse, and the new setting of Los Angeles arguably allowed for a greater variety of monsters than ever seemed entirely probably in the smaller venue of Sunnydale. Arguably the character of Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) had much more room to grow in her role of secretary to Angel's detective agency-- essentially a front for the heroic vampire's quest to save others and seek redemption for past crimes. New character Doyle (Glenn Quinn) provided Angel with a psychic hotline to the machinations of Los Angeles' many evildoers, at least for the first nine episodes.

CITY OF (F) -- Angel comes to Los Angeles and sets up Angel Investigations as a cover for his noble activities. During this time, he meets Doyle, a half-demon who claims his psychic forecasts are sent to him by the mysterious "Powers That Be," beneficent beings seeking to guide Angel in his quest. Angel also has two brushes with Cordelia, leading her to more or less designate herself his secretary because she needs a paying job. In his first case, Angel fails to save the life of a young woman menaced by a rich old vampire, though Angel subsequently slays the evildoer. This action incurs the hostility of the diabolical law agency Wolfram and Hatt, who will be Angel's recurring opponents throughout the series.

LONELY HEART (F)-- A demon takes advantage of all the lonely people in LA by hopping from one body to another, leaving each of his hosts dead. Prior to destroying the creature, Angel makes the acquaintance of police detective Kate Locksley, who makes incidental appearances during the show's first two seasons.

IN THE DARK (F)-- Angel's first crossover with BUFFY is marked by both a hero and a villain. Following up on events in "The Harsh Light of Day," Willow's boyfriend Oz delivers the mystic ring of Amara to Angel, since said ring can make a vampire invulnerable to any of his normal banes. Somehow Spike, who had possession of the ring before Buffy took it from him, finds out that Angel will become the recipient and so he seeks to recover the bauble for himself. (Presumably Spike doesn't know how the ring's being delivered, since it would've been far easier to steal the ring from Oz than from Angel.) In the end, Angel both defeats Spike and destroys the ring to prevent it from falling into evil hands--including his own, should he revert someday to Angelus.

I FALL TO PIECES (F)-- It's stalker-slaying time again, as a vulnerable young female is harried by an obsessed neurosurgeon. The evil doctor also has the power to separate parts of his body to go on errands for him, which doesn't have much utility beyond expanding the episode's creepiness factor.

RM W/A VU (F)-- The show's first Cordelia-centric episode gets off with a bang, as Angel and Doyle help their ally find a new apartment. Trouble is, it's haunted by two ghosts, a mother and the son she more or less smothered. Carpenter gets a rich variety of emotional states here, credibly going from simply unnerved by the haunting, to outright terrified, to filled with rage at the invasive spirits.

SENSE AND SENSITIVITY (F)-- In one of the least believable make-work concepts, a mobster seeking to escape police custody pays a shaman to unleash on LA "sensitivity training" that will make them unable to resist said mobster's breakout. Strong dramatic tension saves the episode, ranging from Detective Locksley's covert interest in Angel to her issues with her emotionally stunted cop father, who will appear again in later episodes.

THE BACHELOR PARTY (P)-- There's some good potential to build up the backstory for Doyle, as his estranged wife comes to town, requiring Doyle to sign divorce papers so that she can get married to another man-- who, like Doyle, is part-demon. It's all very civilized, until someone almost loses a head.

I WILL REMEMBER YOU (G)-- Following the events of "Pangs," Buffy travels to LA, ostensibly to call out Angel for having covertly spied on her. But thanks to a chance demonic encounter, Angel becomes mortal again, which should mean that he and Buffy at last can be together, at least for the rest of their mortal lives. But since ANGEL can't be a show without a hero-vampire, the noble protagonist must find some way back to undead status. The excuse is that Angel feels he may be needed against a future demonic threat, though one might think that a mortal Angel would also end the potential threat of Angelus and thus would be a pretty good trade-off. Still, it's another strong example of the Whedon shows messing about with multiversal possibilities.        

HERO (F)-- The main menace is forgettable, but the episode allows Doyle to go out with a bang, so that he can transfer his psychic hotline to Cordelia. I speculate that the writers realized that they couldn't expand much on Doyle's character in concert with Angel and Cordelia, and so he's out.

PARTING GIFTS (F)-- As with the previous episode, the menace is a weak one, but it garners a fair rating for the way it brings former Watcher Wesley onto the Angel Team. This doesn't just make possible more Stuffy Brit jokes, but also plays into Wesley's more idealistic psychology, even if that outlook takes a beating in "Five by Five."

SOMNAMBULIST (F)-- At least this time the one-off menace has personal ties to Angel's past, as he's a vamp Angel sired, committing various serial crimes. The title refers to Angel's fear that he might be committing the deeds in sleep. The big reveal here is that Kate learns Angel's bloodsucking nature.

EXPECTING (P)-- "What should you expect when you're expecting a bad episode?" Cordelia is faux-impregnated by a demon. Charisma Carpenter gets a lot of comic scenes. 

SHE (F)-- This one's an okay change of pace. Jhiera (Bai Ling) is an other-dimensional freedom fighters who comes to LA and starts involving Earth-people in her activities. In addition to saving people, Angel is somewhat attracted to this exotic arrival, though nothing comes of it.

I'VE GOT YOU UNDER MY SKIN (F)-- This one's an efficient demon-possession yarn, with some good tension between the possessed boy and his aggrieved parents. 

THE PRODIGAL (G)-- Good dramatic parallels here. At the same time that we see flashbacks involving 18th-century Angel's tormented relationship with his father, even as Kate's father starts messing with demons. He dies, after which Kate's attitude toward Angel cools.

THE RING (F)-- Angel is kidnapped and forced to be a contestant in a death-match ring, battling other demons. Cordy and Wesley come to his rescue in reasonably clever ways.

ETERNITY (F)-- Angel agrees to become the bodyguard to Rebecca, a former TV star, but in the course of their association, she finds out his true nature, and thinks she wants the eternal youthfulness of vampirism. Unfortunately, she tries a ploy that ends up unleashing the persona of Angelus.

FIVE BY FIVE (G)-- Following directly on the heels of "Who Are You," Faith wanders to LA after her disastrous attempt to usurp Buffy's life. She accepts an offer from Wolfram and Hart to kill Angel, but Faith's true purpose is to get Angel to kill her. This is largely the culmination of Faith's long arc, in which she tried to ignore all the rules of society and thus found herself corrupted. In fact, her concern with her own mental breakdown seems to have made her forget that Angel was one of the people who brought down her quasi-father Mayor Wilkins, who's never again mentioned by her. To provoke Angel to murder, Faith catches and tortures Wesley, who loses a lot of his idealism. The final battle between Angel and Faith is one of the best-choreographed fights in the history of serial television.

SANCTUARY (G)-- Angel gives Faith sanctuary because she's wanted by the police. Unfortunately Buffy's been informed that Faith meant to kill Angel, so she comes to Angel's offices while he's in Faith's company. Despite Buffy's breakup with the noble vampire, she's deeply jealous, as well as already being torqued at Faith for sleeping with Riley while in Buffy's body. It might've been interesting to see all of these alpha-characters work things out, but some nasty killers intrude on their psychodrama and give them other people to beat up. Faith ends finding a degree of redemption.

WAR ZONE (P)-- This unremarkable episode involves the Angel Team helping out some anti-vampire ghetto warriors. Notable only for introducing the character of Gunn, who later becomes a series regular.

BLIND DATE (F)-- Angel must stop a blind female warrior, out to kill a bunch of kids. Good action scenes. Notable for the first time the character Lindsey-- one of the lawyers working for the corrupt law firm-- finds that killing kids is a bridge too far. He helps the Angel Team prevent the assassination, which includes a good fight scene. In the end Lindsey returns to the side of the devilish lawyers for most of the series, though his relationship to the Angel Team remains marked by ambivalence.

TO SHANSHU IN LA (F)-- The made-up word means "to live and die," so the episode-title is a spoof on the old movie title "To Live and Die in LA." Wesley finds a prophecy that seems to indicate that Angel is fated to die, but in the end this turns out to be an ambivalent oracle that plays out over the course of the series. Once more the heroes must face an apocalypse-cult, but the villain Vocah visits a particularly nasty fate on Cordelia, causing her to experience massive visions that almost drive her insane. Angel and Wesley save her, but the episode ends on a cliffhanger involving the woman who originally sired Angel.         

APE VS. MECHA-APE (2023)

  

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

Now this is more like the usual Asylum output. APE VS. MONSTER surprised me by interpolating a typical cheesy giant-monster battle with a decent melodrama for the human viewpoint character. So did Asylum bring back either the writer or director of that film for a follow-up? Of course not. Instead they drafted a guy named Marc Gottleib to both write and direct-- the guy also responsible for the godawful 2025 ARMAGEDDON. 

I don't blame Gottleib for not using the same human cast in this sequel, and maybe he even earns a little credit for keeping MECHA-APE loosely in continuity with its predecessor. Abraham the Ape still has the same backstory: he's an ordinary Earth-ape sent into space as part of an experiment and then infected with alien DNA so that he grew up to Kong-size and went on a rampage. In MECHA-APE, the government has set up the big simian in his own wildlife preserve. I wasn't sure exactly where the preserve was until it was eventually established to be within the States, apparently somewhere near Chicago since that becomes a plot-point. Again Abe has a female protector as he did in MONSTER, but this time it's a scientist named Sloane (Anna Telfer). But the government isn't investing its dough in Abe out of the goodness of its collective heart. Sloane, along with some vague scientific project, have constructed Mecha-Ape by using Abraham as a model. Why did the US government think it worthwhile to build a giant robot ape with artillery in its arms? Who knows? At least in KING KONG ESCAPES, the evil scientist had a comprehensible reason for making a Mecha-Kong.

In fact, for a movie filled with actors mouthing Bad Exposition, no one has much in the way of motivation. Some East European spies, aided by what one presumes are some radicalized diverse Americans, manage to take remote control of Mecha-Ape, stick a nuclear bomb in him, and send him lumbering toward Chicago. What's their purpose in blowing up Chicago? Heck if I know. Sloane manages to jump off a building onto the robot's metal back without breaking even one bone, but though she can't deprogram the mecha, she can draw her anthropoid buddy Abe into a fight with Mecha-Ape. It's not the worst CGI behemoth-battle I've ever seen, but it's still forgettable.

All of the actors were unknowns to me except for the obligatory "name" performer whom almost no one cares about any more-- this time, Tom Arnold in an absolutely nothing role.   

JUSTICE LEAGUE ACTION (2016-17)

  

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

Though I didn't care for my initial exposure to JUSTICE LEAGUE ACTION in its Cartoon Network broadcast, I have to admit that a binge-watch of the 52 episodes proved a more felicitous experience.

The tongue-in-cheek attitude of ACTION bears some resemblance to that of the 2008-2011 series BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD. Both serials were the work of fan-writers intent on mining all the peculiar content of DC's Silver and Bronze Age comics, albeit given an antic sense of humor foreign to the original, often stodgy stories. I observed in this review that the Batman in BRAVE AND BOLD promulgated a form of "hip humor," but filtered through the main hero's deadpan demeanor. Batman is also worked into every episode of ACTION, as if he were a black-and-grey security blanket for DC adaptations. However, this Batman is played with the near-humorless characterization seen in BATMAN: THE ANIMATED ADVENTURES, probably because ACTION uses three of the key players from that series and its many sequels, writer Paul Dini and voice-actors Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill. 

All the rest of the DC characters are also given a light-hearted touch, though in the course of 52 episodes this strategy gets more than a little repetitious. The most tiresome bolt in ACTION's quiver is building an episode around one of DC's lesser luminaries, portrayed as some sort of goof-up, and showing how these characters triumph in spite of their shortcomings. This is fine when dealing with somewhat oddball types like Booster Gold and Plastic Man. It's not so great when the only episode centered on Green Lantern depicts this major hero losing his power ring down a bathroom drain. Yuk, yuk, yuk-- yawn. 

I also could've done without so many appearances of the 1950s sci-fi curiosity known as "Space Cabbie," a character whom no one has been yearning to see revived. Strangely, while almost none of the ACTION episodes are literally tied to any other series, the last of the "Cabbie" episodes contains a covert reference to the character of Aya from the second and last arc of 2012's GREEN LANTERN: THE ANIMATED SERIES.

The humor does work at times; at least I found myself caught off guard enough to laugh mildly. The downside of the humor-emphasis is that it's very rare that any person or world seems at all seriously under threat, and this is partly because all of the fight-scenes are very quickly executed, so that there's rarely any sense of genuine menace. The strongest episode is a homage to the movie FANTASTIC VOYAGE, in which three of the Leaguers have to be shrunk to germ-size to enter the afflicted body of Superman. Another good one draws from a comics-arc in which the Riddler reforms and becomes a private eye; the episode pits the Prince of Puzzlers and a couple of heroes against the Crown Prince of Crime himself-- and, rather refreshingly, Batman spends the whole episode as a captive. Superman and Wonder Woman do get one designated episode each, and they do have some strong kickass moments, though I for one never got used to the "pop-star" haircut of the Amazon Princess. Harley Quinn gets a fun story in which she's caught between two heroes (the redoubtable Superman and "legacy-hero" Stargirl) and two Silver Age icons (the villainous gorilla Grodd and the monstrous Titano, otherwise known as "King Kong if he had kryptonite vision".)

My biggest complaint is that although the visuals for the opening theme-song promise a big confrontation between the League and some new version of the Legion of Doom, fans never really get a major dust-up between two such opposed groups; the closest is the episode "System Error," where most of the villains turn out to be robots. ACTION is a decent little series to watch once, but if I want a cartoon rich in Silver Age goodness, I'll probably default to episodes of BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD. 

THE RANGERS: BLOODSTONE (2021)

 

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

Once in a great while, I'll stumble across a micro-budgeted fantasy flick that, despite limitations of cast-size and fx, still shows a little charm. Not this one, though. In addition to all the usual failings, the flick's most egregious flaw is that the script waits until the last half-hour to inform viewers as to what the object sought by good and evil questers, the titular Bloodstone, is capable of doing.

I noted a 2016 "Rangers" title on streaming that must be a precursor to this one. At least the same individual who wrote, directed, producers and starred in BLOODSTONE plays a character with the same name in the 2016 film, so I guess they must tie together somehow. I strongly doubt that the earlier movie expounded much on the fantasy-world though, or BLOODSTONE would have recycled some of that content here.

 So this much is clear: two groups are looking for some artifact, the Bloodstone. A raiding-party abducts the young daughter of the hero, forest-ranger Drustan (David Nordquist), so Drustan pursues the raiders, though he only encounters two of the evildoers: a snarky "orc" with an English accent and an unspeakin hulk. He has various back and forth encounters with the two. For instance, he declines to kill them from afar in order to follow them to his captive daughter, but they capture him instead and beat him up. He finally kills them both and leaves, but a dark-elf sorceress shows up and revievs the talky one. Meanwhile, Drustan runs into Shariya (Wendy Tuck), a lady elf. He doesn't initially trust her and they get into a short hand-to-hand fight that remains the only memorable scene, but only because it's an elf doing kung-fu blocking-blows. There are more forgettable fights, flashbacks to how Drustan became a Ranger, some mystic stuff about the Bloodstone, and-- I guess it ended somehow, I've already forgotten it.

Still better than WIZARDS OF THE DEMON SWORD, though.          

THE SENDER (1998)

 

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

THE SENDER is a decent time-killer from the last few years of PM Entertainment, before the company was sold to another business entity. Like many PM productions, it attempts to cover big plot-holes with lots of gunfights, car chases and martial battles, but it does so efficiently enough.

Thirty years before the main story, an Air Force pilot named Jack Grayson disappears after his encounter with a UFO. The main tale then begins as Jack's son Dallas Grayson (Michael Madsen) visits an air base where his father's old plane is hangared, and immediately butts heads with an asshole officer, Rosewater (R. Lee Ermey). Following an action scene that has little relevance save to demonstrate Grayson's fighting-skills, he next checks out a local hospital, where he discharges his cancer-afflicted little girl Lisa. 

Some dialogue establishes that Lisa has an imaginary friend named Angel. Yet that night the viewer learns the truth: Angel (Shelli Lether) is a sexy blonde alien who visits Lisa in her bed and administers energy-treatments to save the little girl from her disease. These scenes carry a sort of emotional resonance foreign to most bang-bang crash-crash PM offerings in that, since Lisa's mother died a while back, Angel can easily be seen as a magical mother-surrogate for Lisa. 

Shortly after the lady ET departs, or seems to, Rosewater and other soldier-goons invade Grayson's house, setting it on fire after abducting Lisa and fatally shooting Grayson. However, for whatever reason Angel's still hovering close enough to come back and use her powers to save the hero's life. From then on, the armed forces guy and the alien form an unlikely duo as they seek to liberate Lisa from Rosewater's boss Lockwood. This evil scientist, portrayed by that block of wood known as Steven Williams, has learned (the film never says how) why the aliens have been watching Lisa. The tyke possesses unique genetic traits that make her capable of becoming a "Sender," someone who can magically open gateways between worlds. Angel was sent to keep tabs on Lisa, though since she is by definition a good alien, she never explicitly says that she wants to abduct Lisa in order to make her into a wormhole-engineer for Angel's people. One would think the writers would have given their villains some bwaa-ha-ha moment where they explain how they plan to profit from suborning Lisa's talent. But no, for the writers, it's good enough to say that Lockwood runs either Area 51 itself or a near relation, and that's enough to prove he's evil.       

The action-scenes are plentiful if unremarkable, leavened slightly by Angel's ability to perform an occasional energy-stunt. Madsen at this point in his career was beginning to phone in some of his performances, and as a result Grayson always seems distanced from the goings-on, even when he's supposedly on fire to recover his beloved daughter. This also holds true for Angel's eleventh-hour revelation that Grayson's father Jack is still alive. Why did the aliens keep him away from his family for thirty years, and why does Jack seem to be OK with it? It doesn't seem to have anything to do with his sharing his granddaughter's genetic propensities, since the writers go out of their way to assert that the wormhole-power only manifests in females. Anyway, once the evil Area 51 1/2 has been destroyed, Angel takes her tearful leave from Lisa. Then Grayson, his father and his daughter all plan to go get ice cream, as if there wasn't any possibility that they'd ever again be menaced by acquisitive government agencies. But if one can turn off any desire for verisimilitude in one's brain, THE SENDER manages to be marginally enjoyable.              

HONOR ROLL #283

 MICHAEL MADSEN might've wanted to return this movie to "Sender."

DAVID NORDQUIST draws a bead with his movie and misses the mark.

 I will be surprised if STARGIRL gets to star in any other animated projects within the rest of my lifetime.

ABRAHAM THE APE looks a trifle Kong-confused.

  You don't want to make a date with DAVID BOREANAZ's "Angel."

"I didn't ask to be born on Krypton," cried DAVID CORENSWET of his new legacy.