SUPERMANSION SEASON ONE (2015)

  

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

At first glance SUPERMANSION, a stop-motion animation series launched on the defunct service Crackle, might seem to be in exactly the same vein as Cartoon Network's acidulous ROBOT CHICKEN. Both of MANSION's creators had CHICKEN associations, with Matthew Senreich billed as the CHICKEN co-creator while Zeb Wells worked on the CN program in assorted creative capacities. Further, CHICKEN frequently used superhero-themed blackout gags that revealed the writers' geek-level knowledge of superhero comics, while MANSION is obviously about nothing but superheroes. However, I consider CHICKEN an irony and MANSION a comedy, and I define the difference here as being the degree to which the characters' world is effed up.

 MANSION's main focus is to bombard the viewer with sexy/slapsticky jokes about the six superheroes, the League of Freedom, who watch over Storm City and/or the world. The humor's crude but inventive, and most episodes are at least fair in mythicity (I've used "G" to denote the ones rising to the "good" level). The League members all derive from well-traveled genre tropes, to wit:

TITANIUM REX-- the League's leader and the "Superman" of the group, though he arrived in Storm City not from outer space but from a civilization beneath the surface. He came to the surface world as a young man but as he's old now, implicitly he's been a superhero for some forty years.

COOCH-- a former housecat evolved into a feline humanoid. Drawn from various heroes with animal-like characteristics, like both Spider-Man and Spider-Woman.

BRAD-- A mountainous crusader who, like many other heroes who are enhanced through chemistry, only has power as long as he takes steroids.

BLACK SATURN-- A thorough parody of Batman, Saturn is conceited and stupid, sounds like a whiny baby most of the time, and has recurring encounters with a Joker-like villain, "the Groaner," which relationship eventually turns homoerotic.

ROBOBOT-- A spoof of android heroes like Vision and Red Tornado, constantly questioning his identity due to his artificial origins. In Season One he converts to Judaism and takes the name Jewbot.

AMERICAN EAGLE-- A super-patriotic WWII hero in the mold of Captain America, and one who, like the Captain, got unnaturally preserved for decades until reaching modern times. This is the weakest character, used almost exclusively to assert that his patriotism is infused with racial and religious chauvinism.

GROANER'S WILD-- Rex's irresponsible teammates have abused the League's government budget so badly that a governmental bean-counter, Sgt Agony, is assigned to rein the heroes. Saturn's dialogue with the Groaner establishes the hero's pathetic need for the validation of an "arch nemesis."

THEY SHOOT OMEGA PETS, DON'T THEY? -- The League comes across what seem to be amiable super-pets, but the name "Omega" suggests their nefarious nature.

LET'S TALK ABOUT REX-- Despite Rex's many powers, including a titanium hand that can morph into various weapons, his battle with the villain Blazar makes the public wonder if the hero isn't too old for superheroing. Despite many age-jokes, Rex does get a little validation from his team of goofballs.

A SHOP IN THE DARK-- Rex invites the Defense Secretary for dinner at the Mansion to wangle a higher budget from the government. Rex thinks the deal's sealed because as a teen the Secretary was the kid sidekick of American Ranger, but of course everything goes wrong with the dinner. At least when it's revealed that the Secretary is a gay man, his relationship with Ranger remains platonic.

PUSS IN BOOKS-- The terminally distracted Cooch must pass a college-level test to stay in the League. 

LEX (G)-- A hot young costumed woman, Lex Lightning, shows up at the Mansion asking for Rex, and the geriatric bladesman assumes it's a groupie. Instead she shows him her titanium hand and claims to be the offspring of one of his many hookups. Since Rex doesn't know what the name "Lex" means in another super-universe, he tries to bond with Lex, endeavoring to teach her how to fly-- though he also runs out on her, showing his paternal reluctance.        

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S REAM-- Jewbot experiments with his feminine side, Saturn goes clubbing, and three Leaguers get trapped by an evil gym membership. 

BRAD MEDICINE-- The company that makes Brad's steroids cuts him off, causing him to shrink back to his original size. His friends try to get him back on the sauce.

UNFORTUNATE SON-- Lex gets a look at Saturn's home life, where the latter is always seeking the approval of his uptight parents, who prefer his more practical-minded younger brother Dudley. Jewbot, however, learns that Dudley is a drug dealer.

BABES IN THE WOODS (G)-- Apparently sympathetic to Saturn, Lex plans to have sex with him on a League camping-trip. Saturn is willing but has fears of Rex punishing him for crossing a line. Rex has his own secret, revealing to Ranger that he Rex has been sleeping with Ranger's 80-something wife. Ranger unfriends Rex but still comes to the team's aid against killer hillbillies.

THE INCONCEIVABLE ESCAPE OF DR DEVIZO (G)-- Doctor Devizo, imprisoned in a Mansion cell, informs Rex that he plans to escape. He almost does, only to be thwarted by Lex Lightning, thus making the other Leaguers look bad. Ranger, having tasked his elderly wife with her infidelity, plans to commit his own transgression, but his plans go astray.

LEXANITY (G)-- Rex won't let Lex join the League, so when another superhero team is formed by a billionaire, she accepts that offer of membership. The highlight is Saturn acting the fool as he tries tp get into the new group-- until the ending, when Jewbot learns a secret about Lex and she chops off his head.

LEX AS A WEAPON (G)-- The Big Reveals: Lex is the bisexual offspring of Rex and one of his old villainess-flames, and since childhood Lex was raised to hate Rex by Devizo. Lex releases the evil doctor and his Injustice Club from their cells and incapacitates all the Leaguers. Devizo plans to unleash the Mansion's nuclear missiles on the world, but Lex becomes frustrated at her inability to torment Saturn with his having slept with a bisexual. She assigns Groaner to torture Saturn, but when Saturn proves to be the only hero who appreciates Groaner's villainy, Groaner releases Saturn, who frees his friends. Rex and Lex have a brief but intense battle on both physical and psychological levels. after which Lex escapes, albeit with her eyes (temporarily) burned out. Further, Brad ends up sacrificing his life to save the world. This probably stands as the show's best episode, dependent though it is in other continuity.

ADDENDUM: In the above review of "Babes in the Woods," I said that Lex "apparently" felt sympathy for Saturn, by which I meant that the writer(s) wanted viewers to think that. Having seen Season One before, I knew Lex intended to betray the League, so everything she did was oriented to that end. However, she really does not gain any advantage by sleeping with Saturn and is generally disgusted by him. Her only probable motive was that she knew her real father would disapprove of her dating Saturn, and that she mainly wanted to honk him off. On a deeper level (or as deep as a fictional character can get), Lex also wanted to know that Rex gave a shit what she did, and this is supported by Season Three's "Masters of Lex," wherein Lex dates a scumbag to draw a reaction from both her fathers.

KUNG FU PANDA (2008)

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

It's entirely appropriate that Dreamworks landed Jackie Chan to essay one of the voices in KUNG FU PANDA. The core idea of this comic kung-fu cartoon is that the heroic panda Xiao Po can only bumble his way through the rigid disciplines of kung fu until he finds his own unique (and funny) way to kick booty. Chan made this sort of comedy-fu his specialty, but even if a viewer never saw a Chan movie, he will probably be able to guess the way Panda Po will succeed not in spite of his faults, but because of them. 

In this case, though, predictability isn't all bad. The script's simple structure makes it possible to keep feeding the audience with a steady stream of slapstick gags, balanced by a healthy sense of respect for the imagined traditions of fantasy kung-fu-- a discipline practiced in a China populated entirely by anthropomorphic animals. Po (Jack Black), a panda adopted in infancy by a goose who runs a noodle shop, conceives a passion for kung fu. He wishes he could fight with the elect masters, the Furious Five (voiced by Chan and a host of other celebrities), and to be trained by the great master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). To his surprise, Po is selected to become the Dragon Warrior, the supreme warrior who will protect China from all threats-- even though the panda can barely muster the most basic fighting-skill.

One of the film's best conceits is its villain, the snow leopard Tai Lung, because Tai, like Po, was adopted by a parent of a different species. But Po's adoptive father tried to get him to be devoted to noodle-making, he accepted the panda's decision to choose his own path. Tai was raised the red panda Shifu to inherit the Dragon Warrior status, and to judge by the crap Shifu dumps on Po, Shifu was probably a very demanding parental figure, which results in Tai becoming a dangerous criminal. The film's best scene is not one of Po's many goofups, but a climactic battle between Tai and Shifu, in which Shifu is defeated but feels more pain for having been a bad dad.    

Naturally the drama doesn't last too long, and Po cobbles together an eleventh-hour mastery of his own unique discipline so as to defeat Tai Lung. I have not seen the other movies in the series, but the initial outing shows more promise than most cartoon franchises.  

        

SPY KIDS 2 (2002)

 

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

Robert Rodriguez didn't let any grass grow under his feet once the first SPY KIDS made bank: the next one came out the next year. Apart from striking while the iron was hot, the producer/director/writer faced a certain limitation as to how long his central characters could fill the role as "kids." 

Plot-wise ISLAND OF LOST DREAMS is more of the same as #1, even to sending Carmen and Juni Cortez to an island full of weird things. (In interviews Rodriguez cited Harryhausen as an inspiration, but Roidriguez would have to work much harder to come close to Harryhausen's unique charm.) I did think the visuals looked more vivid than they did in the first film, particularly in an opening carnival scene, and I assumed the director had spent more money. Instead, cost-conscious Robert made ISLAND for the same money but reached out to startup effects-houses. This resulted in the carnival-ride "The Juggler," a completely improbable device that throws its riders (encased within compartments) into the air like juggling-balls. I'll at least remember that visual better than all the CGI monsters on the lost-dream island.

ISLAND moves faster thanks to having dispensed with the superficial setup of the first film, and goes the extra mile by claiming that, in the space of a year, Carmen and Juni so impressed the OSS that now the agency not only employs other spy kids but have also instituted a "Spy Kid of the Year" tradition. Though this is even sillier than the Juggler-ride, it gives the mediocre kid-heroes a pair of age-appropriate professional opponents, Gary and Gerti Giggles-- though I deduct points for using the name "Giggles" for characters who are not specifically humorous. Gerti (Emily Osment) is a pre-teen like Juni, while Gary (Matt O'Leary) is in the middle-teen range of Carmen, and becomes her first crush as well as a professional rival. When it comes out that the two rival spy-kids are implicated in the world-conquest plans of their father (Mike Judge in an underwritten villain-role), Carmen has one funny line: "I think I can change him" (the boy, not his dad). But as performers I still found Vega and Sabara charmless.

This time, Vega is the only "fighting female" in the house-- albeit only briefly-- because her mom and dad, as played by Gugino and Banderas, are stuck in a tedious side-story, where the mother's parents (Holland Taylor and Ricardo Montalban) tag along and interfere with the parents' efforts to rescue their kids. Rodriguez had already shown in the first movie his tendency to load the series with performers just because he liked them (Danny Trejo, Cheech Marin), and as memory serves, the third flick in the series gets even worse in that department.   

TRUMP VS. THE ILLUMINATI (2020)

  

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

I've reviewed a couple of the low-budget, made-for-streaming cartoon movies made by writer/director BC Fourteen, and both were pretty dull. I have to assume that Fourteen, whose career is dominantly in CGI animation, keeps getting work because streaming services are willing to buy kilotons of animated flicks. This would make sense if all of Fourteen's movies were designed to keep the kiddies entertained. Instead, the guy has a whole science-fiction series which uses foul language, meaning that someone thinks there are consumers, adolescent or older, who might be beguiled by such films. I doubt that most streaming-consumers are even aware of Fourteen's efforts, and the only reason I decided to explore them further is because I'm deeply into both (a) crossovers and (b) monster-mashes.

TRUMP VS. THE ILLUMINATI seems to be the first of Fourteen's SF-series, also involving such featured characters as Bigfoot, Xterminator, and Jack Van Helsing, a clone of the descendant of the DRACULA slayer, appearing here three years before he gets his own film. In the time of the historical Donald Trump, Earth is wiped by aliens called "Illuminati," who look like the popular image of alien abductors, "The Greys." However, the Chinese clone Trump, and Clone-Trump escapes Earth before it's destroyed. He lands on Mars and lives there, with another lost astronaut, for a thousand years.

At the end of that millennium, the Illuminati face opposition from another band of aliens, called the Allies, who somehow form the idea that only Clone-Trump can destroy the Illuminati, and their devilish master Lucifer. To that end, the Allies' queen Varuna (named for a male Hindu god and claiming to be an "Atlantean") journeys to Mars. Clone-Trump refuses her invitation to battle her enemies, but then Illuminati foot-soldiers, aware of a prediction that the reborn 45th President can destroy them, also show up on Clone-Trump's doorstep. Surprisingly he beats them up, and when reinforcements arrive, Varuna teleports the clone into her ship, where he reluctantly agrees to join them.

Varuna's subordinate Princess Kali may be the one who gathered at least two other clones of Earth-entities: Doctor Jekyll and Bigfoot. Fourteen devotes no time to explaining either one, though he would later use Bigfoot in half a dozen other similar productions. Van Helsing, though, is the only clone with whom Kali is sleeping. Kali may not be a Grey, since she and Van Helsing, like Clone-Trump, are never seen outside of a heavy spacesuit-- which suggests that the director knew his CGI couldn't make credible human beings. Yet another historical figure is apparently reincarnated as a Grey: the 20th-century occultist Aleister Crowley, who communes with the Egyptian god Anubis but serves the unseen Illuminati lord Lucifer.

All of this folderol does align BC Fourteen with other bad-movie makers, such as Ed Wood and Jerry Warren with respect to erratically raiding history and pop culture to buttress their grab-bag universes. Fourteen's version of Donald Trump is as stupidly executed as all his other borrowings, with all the usual Liberal triggers included, so it seems a given that he only used Trump's name as a means of getting attention. From what I can tell, this was Clone-Trump's only appearance in the Fourteen-verse, and most of the installments that followed would focus upon his not-much-less-stupid iteration of Bigfoot. FWIW, I judge Clone-Trump to fit the persona of "monster," since in his confrontation with Lucifer, he's more of an unleashed force of nature than a hero.

PASSWORD: KILL AGENT GORDON (1966)

 

In contrast, though Doug Gordon, the titular character of PASSWORD is not any more interesting than Perry Grant, and though the movie's plot is even more loosely organized (something about arms smuggling), the filmmakers at least give the male viewer plenty of pulchritude. Not one but two famed Eurobabes, Helga Line and Rosalba Neri, liven up the dull action. Neri draws a gun on Gordon, but he disarms her and ties her up until she tells him what he wants to hear. Line, apparently an agent for Russia, has a fun moment when an enemy gets the drop on her, and she blasts him with a handheld pocket laser.

That laser, by the way, is the only element in the film that qualifies as marvelous. Gordon uses no gimmicks, though at one point a henchman of the bad guys tries to off the hero with a halfway interesting weapon: a seltzer bottle that sprays corrosive acid. In a scene toward the end, one of the villains-- a woman in a wheelchair who's not actually crippled-- kills one of her foes with an umbrella that shoots a spear into the guy's back. Oh, yeah, and the wheelchair-woman puts both Gordon and Line's character into death-traps, and Gordon escapes his trap with ludicrous ease.

Going by IMDB credits, Roger Browne apparently made this cheapie between two of his somewhat better Eurospy outings, his "Superseven" films.

PHANTOM 2040, SEASON TWO (1995-6)

 

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

Since the wrapup of Season 2 seems a bit rushed, it's possible that the producers were hoping to get one more season for their unique concept. Still, at least some subplots, such as the disposition of the missing father of Kit, are fully realized.

RITE OF PASSAGE/THE WORLD IS MY JUNGLE-- Both of these episodes are just recap shows with some new voiceovers, so they have no impact on the ongoing stories or their mythicity.

SANCTUARY-- Guran plans to take Kit back to Bangalla in Africa in order to complete his training as the Phantom. However, Nia wants to kidnap the hero and take him back so that she can use him to restore her rulership. To that end, she teams up with a master hunter, Gunnar, to take Guran prisoner as a way of luring the Phantom into their clutches. Gunnar has a secret agenda though, for he plans to execute a "most dangerous game" with the Man Who Cannot Die, hunting the Phantom down in the Sector Zero jungle. But Guran happens to harbor a deep secret with respect to a mysterious creature known as "the Shadow Panther," and that secret, alluded to in Season One, gets fully exposed here. "Sanctuary" directly follows the events of the last new episode of Season One, "A Boy and His Cat," which ended with Max Jr having retreated from the real world into a cyberspace haven. Rebecca makes a long-shot attempt to revive her son.

THE TIES THAT BIND-- Rebecca ramps up her plans to launch Cyberville, which will include her project of decimating most of Earth's ecology, although Phantom and his allies don't yet know her specific plans. She does launch an assault on Sean One's orbiting cities, though. Graft, for his own reasons, joins Max Jr in cyberspace and manages to talk the eccentric genius-youth into returning to the real world. A small army of biots attacks Phantom and his allies at their clandestine meeting-place, and even after the androids are vanquished, this development raises the possibility of betrayal from within. Graft then confides to Vaingloria that he plans to take over Rebecca's Cyberville project, and he tries to use Doctor Jak to that end. At one point both Sagan and Kit's aunt are injured, enraging Phantom into destroying the Cyberville project, at least temporarily. The episode ends with Kit's self-doubts about his status as a hero.

THE WOMAN IN THE MOON-- Sean One survives Rebecca's attack, and he seeks to persuade all of the orbital colonies to declare independence from Earth. Max Jr and Graft, however, try to swing the vote to their benefit. Vaingloria and Doctor Jak get taken on board the satellite as part of the big scheme, so I guess Vaingloria is the titular "woman in the moon." (This was probably a reference to a famous film about space travel, directed by Fritz Lang, who also helmed the film METROPOLIS, to which PHANTOM 2040 owes more than a little). I confess I didn't follow why Graft and Max Jr were farting around with the voting process, though, since they end up attempting to blow up the satellite, which seems to have been Rebecca's preference as well.     

MATTER OVER MIND-- Thanks to Graft's uneasy partnership with Max Jr, the junior Madison decodes the formula for the super-poison Max Sr almost unleashed during the Sector Zero catastrophe. By chance hacker Sparks gains access to the formula as well, altering the Phantom to its existence. The cyber-entity Mister Cairo learns of the formula as well and his encounter with the intel triggers in him a vague idea to "go home," though he has no idea how he was created. Sparks' investigation reveals that Cairo is a computer-probe that was split off from Doctor Jak's mind, and thus Cairo earnestly desires to be reunited with his creator. The Phantom team seeks to prevent that unison to protect Kit's secrets, but Heisenberg and Pavlova intervene to liberate Cairo. When Phantom again seeks to keep Doctor Jak from downloading Cairo's information, the shock-jock reveals the humanity beneath his obstreperous facade. Jak was originally a crusading journalist married to a tabloid reporter named Pavlova (on whom he patterned his android helper). Human Pavlova sneaks on board the train carrying Max Sr's shipment of poison, but she's killed by exposure to the poison. To learn the reason behind her fate, Jak splits off a part of his own mind to become the cyber-entity Cairo, but this eradicates some of his own memories and apparently shifts him into emulating the persona of his dead wife, being preoccupied with meaningless entertainment. The Phantom team is also made privy to Rebecca's plan to test a new iteration of the super-poison, making it possible to destroy the Madisons' chemical factory. Cairo then gives Phantom a gift of information that will solve the mystery of the Sector Zero catastrophe. An earlier episode worked in a reference to Miles Archer in THE MALTESE FALCON by naming Kit's teacher after that character. Here, it's clarified that the cyber-entity Cairo is named after the gunsel of that novel, for the technician who creates Cairo is made to look like Sydney Greenstreet, the actor playing Cairo's boss in the 1941 FALCON movie. Also, the two Pavlovas bear a slight resemblance to the two Marias of METROPOLIS.

SINS OF THE FATHERS PARTS 1-2-- Rebecca assures Max Jr that she's always known about Graft's attempts to undermine her authority but claims that they cannot stop the Maximum Era. Phantom gets access to information that suggests that his father did indeed cause the catastrophe that slew Max Sr and many others, and this fills Kit with mammoth self-doubt. Meanwhile, Graft and Vaingloria team up with Cordwainer Bird and descend into cyberspace to hack into Rebecca's plans. Kit, despite his misgivings, agrees to travel to Bangalla as Guran wishes, to learn more about the Phantom Heritage. However. he's interrupted by Sagan and DVL, for Sagan has figured out Kit's double identity. Phantom sabotages Rebecca's next project, but it's a fake-out on her part, for she plans to unleash Cyberville and the poisoning scheme. 

In Bangalla Phantom meets the grandfather of Guran, who still maintains the original Skull Cave. Rebecca's life is now complicated in that Max Sr's memory engrams have once more been implanted in a robot body, and the demented automaton tries to take control of Maximum Inc. To the frustration of Max Sr 2.0, he learns that the shipment he originally put on the train-- a toxin designed to eliminate "ghostwood"-- was replaced by Scythe, a more extreme poison with which Rebecca hoped to eradicate the world, aside from the survivors in Cyberville-- meaning that, when the Phantom interfered with the train, Max Sr died because of his wife's meddling. Phantom learns the same information, which exculpates his father of responsibility for the Sector Zero deaths. Phantom returns to Metropia and tries to destroy Rebecca's new plans, only to be attacked by Graft, who's been promised a new organic body by Rebecca. During the struggle Graft almost falls from a great height and Phantom offers to rescue him if he surrenders. Graft feels a moment of remorse and allows himself to fall, but Max Sr 2.0 saves him. Max Jr blunders and seals all of Maximum Inc behind a force field. At the conclusion Kit finds evidence that his father didn't die in the train-crash, and there's a cliffhanger showing that the previous Phantom does still live.

THE SACRIFICE PARTS 1-2-- Thanks to the information provided by Cairo, Phantom locates his father, but the previous hero was indeed affected by the poison, and only recently emerged from a cryonic slumber after sixteen years. The team seeks to find the antidote to the poison to save his life. Meanwhile, Max Jr suspects that his robot-dad has some encrypted data that will make it possible for the Madisons to escape the force-field prison. Max Sr discloses a way that the field can be disrupted, but only by outside forces, so Rebecca reaches out to her sometime associate, the smuggler Gorda. The obese criminal invades the jungle and informs Phantom that said jungle, brought into existence by the mutation of ghostwood, extends to many other areas far from Metropia. Phantom tries to prevent Gorda from freeing the Madisons but fails, barely escaping with his life.

Phantom and Sagan seek to find the formula for the super-poison by covertly accessing the Madison data banks, and Mister Cairo shows up to provide assistance. However, the Madisons retaliate by shutting down the computer system, threatening Cairo's cyber-existence. Cairo succeeds in transmitting the antidote info to the Phantom team, and also meets an old cyber-memory of Max Sr, and the two exchange pleasantries before both are annihilated by the power shutdown. Rebecca then launches a plan to have her biots to the Enforcers, with the aim of usurping the control of the police over the city. With this takeover, Rebecca decides she doesn't need Cyberville as she'll control Metropia as her private kingdom. While Guran seeks to heal Kit's father, Phantom and Sagan disable the compromised biots. Kit's father is somewhat strengthened, though the antidote isn't enough to provide full recovery, and so he must be returned to cryonic status.

THE SECOND TIME AROUND-- Phantom and Guran encounter a relatively ordinary crime, that of hijacking. However, one of the crooks displays a gold coin bearing the traditional "Good Mark," signifying that at some past point in time, he received the protection of a previous Phantom. Guran advises Phantom to release the hijackers, and Phantom reluctantly agrees. The Madisons seek to find out the coin's significance, while the hero accesses VR to figure out how the Good Mark coin came to be in a criminal's possession. It's one of the few weak episodes but is worthwhile for at least showing how one of the earlier Phantoms operated.

ROGUE-- Though Doctor Jak doesn't remember his nobler self, due to his separation from Cairo, Pavlova, who does remember all the disclosures, returns to work as his assistant. Jak records what seems to be a revolt of the self-aware biots, led by Heisenberg, and shows the Phantom coming to the biots' aid against Enforcer robots. The Enforcers thus put out a warrant for Phantom, meaning that he can't be seen accepting aid from Sagan anymore. The greater threat, though, is that Max Jr, who invented Heisenberg, devises a new method to regain control of the android, briefly forcing Heisenberg to fight the hero. Though things get sorted out to the status quo by episode's end, the script makes a good case for the concept of biots becoming self-aware, though without overstating the political interpretation of this championing of diversity, as did so many bad movies of the 21st century.      

THE FURIES-- Phantom tries to figure out a cryptic re mark made by his father before he had to re-enter cryogenic stasis. While looking into the unique properties of ghostwood in the Ghost Jungle, Phantom and Guran spot Gorda setting up some infernal machine and they attack, only to be routed thanks to the secret presence of Max Sr 2.0. Graft and Max Jr attempt to hijack an outer-space shipment of iridium, but they have to tell Rebecca that Gorda got there first. Both "business partners" began considering ways to sever their relationship. Finally both women figure out that Max Sr is playing them, but all the disputants are arrested by Enforcers. Unfortunately, all are also released for lack of evidence 

MOMENTS OF TRUTH-- Phantom and Sparks seek to expose a smuggling operation by Rebecca, which strangely involves a shipment of "special roses." During the investigation, Phantom discovers that Sparks doesn't have much knowledge of many practical matters, so over the teen's protests he gets enrolled in school. An unknown party, later revealed to be Gorda, steals the rose shipment, but she can't initially figure out what's special about the flowers. Graft, in throwing down with Phantom, records the presence of Sparks, so the Madisons seek to learn his identity. The truth is eventually revealed, that the roses were capable of neutralizing the good effects of ghostwood. 

THE WHOLE TRUTH-- The final episode begins with Kit meditating on the presence of mysteries in his life, which may be the reason the scripters kept making references to THE MALTESE FALCON. Rebecca and Gorda, having made their peace, launch a biot attack on the Enforcers for the purpose of conquering the city at last, but Phantom suspects there's more to it than a simple assault. He breaks into Maximum Inc and encounters Max Sr 2.0, who persuades the hero to leave the compound so they can talk. Because the robot still possesses all of the living man's memories, he's able to let Phantom download those memories (using a passcode, "flowers of evil," derived from the title of a poetry-collection by the original Baudelaire). In keeping with many spotty references to a friendship between Kit's father and the original Max Sr, the robot discloses that the two of them were seeking to implement ghostwood to clean up the toxins in Metropia, but without allowing the special plant to crowd out all other plants. As mentioned in an earlier episode, Rebecca substituted tanks of poison in the ghostwood shipment and caused the train to crash in a failed attempt to poison the city. Thus she killed her husband and almost slew Kit's father. (We also see in these memories an image of Max Jr as a pure young child, who has a normal-looking cat named Shakespeare.) All of the villains track Phantom and the robot to the Ghost Jungle, but Phantom evades them, hoping he can use the automaton's data to completely cure the comatose father. However, the cure fails and Kit must resign himself to his father's passing, as well as terminating Max Sr 2.0 (at the latter's request, of course). In a hurry-up-and-finish resolution, the four villains, who have dodged the law over and over are somehow convicted this time, and Kit can finally think about living another life, until the Phantom is needed again.

                    

  

HONOR ROLL #315

 PHANTOM, meet Metropolis; Metropolis, Phantom.

MILA STANIC is one Euro-babe that can make even a dull Eurospy pop.

I'd say the director of this film was more monstrous than the TRUMP-CLONE starring in his film, but there ya go.

 
 Change your name, ALEXA VEGA, to Alexa the Vaguest to fit your acting-style.

How can the adopted panda's full name be XIAO PO if "Xiao" is not the adoptive dad's name?

  The first three of the nine Freedom Leaguers: AMERICAN RANGER, BRAD and BLACK SATURN.

STEEL (1997)

 

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

Though I hadn't seen STEEL since the nineties, and barely remembered it, I wanted to like it. I mean, I was fairly sure that it was at best mediocre. But I didn't get the sense that it was mediocre because it was slammed together by a bunch of Hollywood hacks coasting on a superhero project, like the Schumacher BATMANs, the second nineties TURTLES movie, and almost every MCU movie after AVENGERS ENDGAME.

Like most of the viewing public, I had no burning need to see an adaptation of DC's STEEL comics franchise. The character, introduced during the "Death of Superman" sequence, was good-hearted super-scientist John Henry Irons. Seeing a need for a new superhero in Metropolis, he formulated a suit of armor, a weaponized super-hammer, and a persona loosely based on the "John Henry" folklore character, calling himself "Steel." I never followed the DC title, and it was never overly popular, so that for the most part Steel's history is comprised of guest-star spots in other heroes' titles.

Yet I must admit that STEEL is at least true to its source material, and its opening signals the sort of flatly virtuous liberalism I've come to expect from the TV-work of writer-director Kenneth Johnson. I still esteem Johnson for the hours of enjoyment I derived from his FUGITIVE-themed reworking of THE INCREDIBLE HULK (even though said program was NOT true to its source). But with STEEL, I felt Johnson straining to find some way to make this minor superhero more significant than he was then, or could ever be.

Since STEEL the film has nothing to do with the Superman mythos, Johnson built up a minor motif from the comics-hero's origin. In the comic Irons faked his death to keep a weapon he engineered out of the wrong hands. In the movie script, Irons (Shaquille O'Neal) is an officer in the U.S. forces, seeking to perfect an energy weapon that will incapacitate victims without killing them. He works with a fellow engineer, Susan Sparks (Annabelle GIsh), and the two are prepared to demonstrate their device for the high command. But scheming officer Burke (Judd Nelson) alters the weapon's setting in some weird delusion that his alteration will reflect well on him. Instead the weapon blows up and puts Sparks in a wheelchair. Burke is discharged from the army but simply turns his talent for destruction to the private sector.

For some reason Irons also leaves the army, but his past follows him, as robbers use variations on his invention to pull holdups. Of course Burke is responsible, empowering minor thugs as an audition of his wares for dictators and terrorists. Irons decides to fight back as Steel, and he enlists both the wheelchair-bound Sparks and civilian scientist Uncle Joe (Richard Roundtree) to work as his backup. After Steel has various engagements with various thugs, he also falls afoul of the cops and other contrivances by Burke.

Surprisingly, even though O'Neal is clearly out of his depth in the acting department, he's not the movie's biggest shortcoming. Arguably, Judd Nelson, a proven actor, makes a lousy villain-role even worse with his mugging. The biggest problem, though, is the lack of decent FX. Even in the late nineties, the budget of $17 million was not enough to mount the sort of eye-popping visuals audiences had come to expect since the 1989 BATMAN. I speculate that Johnson, having honed his craft on TV budgets, had the notion that he could just skate his way into the big time on a wing and a prayer. (To be fair, he had directed the second SHORT CIRCUIT theatrical film on a budget similar to that of STEEL.) All of the action scenes look incredibly clunky, and the dialogue is not much better. Once in a while, a scene almost comes alive, as when Irons invades the space of a self-pitying Sparks and more or less forces her to join his merry band, which is of course exactly what she really needs. But there are no surprises in the pedestrian script, which seems to be begging audiences, "Love Me," rather than doing anything to earn that love. 

Could another writer have done something better with the Steel character by building on the folklore of John Henry, "the steel-drivin' man," rather than focusing on dull crap about weapons-brokers? Hard to say. Yet because there's something of a dopey good-heartedness about STEEL, it still wouldn't make my list of even the 100 worst superhero movies. (Worst five hundred-- yeah, probably.)

PHANTOM 2040, SEASON ONE (1994-5)

 

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

Hardly any of the TV serials I've comprehensively examined for high mythicity have received a total score of "good," meaning that there's a strong symbolic discourse running through most or all episodes. Peter Chung's AEON FLUX managed it, but that show consisted of only ten full episodes and some shorts. Chung provided character designs for PHANTOM 2040, but the writers were probably responsible for keeping up the quality of 2040's 35 episodes over the course of two seasons.

GENERATION UNTO GENERATION, Parts 1-2-- In 2040, the venerable costumed jungle-hero of the Lee Falk comic strip gets a futuristic update, possibly with some guidance from the future-city patterns created by the example of METROPOLIS. Eighteen-year-old Kit Walker (Scott Valentine), who has no idea of his heritage, was raised by his aunt in the city of "Metropia," a city divorced from the world of nature. Kit wants to become an ecological engineer in the few parts of the world where natural ecosystems are preserved since the world-devastating "resource wars." But because Kit reaches his majority, his father's old teacher, Guran of Bangalla, comes to Metropia to teach Kit to become the new Phantom. The main source of evil in the "big-city jungle" is Rebecca Madison (Margot Kidder), whose primary plot is to create a closed community, Cyberville, where the wealthy will be served while the rest of the world goes to hell. Kit doesn't want to be a crusader against evil, but he gets a big push toward savior-dom when he discovers that a mutated plant, "ghostwood," may be capable ofto renovating Earth's wrecked ecosystem. Kit consents to become a high-tech "Ghost Who Walks," complete with an invisibility screen. The first two-parter also introduces Rebecca's decadent son Max Jr, who at a young age was traumatized by the death of his father Max Sr, supposedly killed by the father of Kit. Max Jr affects to talk to others through the medium of his grungy cat, named for the French decadent poet Baudelaire. Also present are (1) Rebecca's cyborg enforcer Graft, (2) righteous Metropian police officer Sagan and her cyborg-partner, a mutt named DVL (a knowing spoof of Original Phantom's wolf-pet "Devil"), and (3) Metropian shock-jock Doctor Jak (Mark Hamill) and his "biot" (android) aide Pavlova. In the first two-parter, Phantom destroys Rebecca's plan to brainwash citizens with a video game.

THE SUM OF THE PARTS-- Max Jr concocts a new type of biot to frame the New Phantom as a criminal. This is one of the weaker plots, but the android itself takes on a new and unpredictable identity befitting the name Mad Max bestows on the android: Heisenberg. Another Phantom-foe appears: Sean One, who rules over a series of orbital colonies and who, like Rebecca, has plans to encourage humans to desert Earth to become citizens under his control. 

FIRE AND I.C.E.-- Phantom and his team seek to break into Rebecca's security system in order to find out her plans for Cyberville. In the process the hero makes another ally: teenaged hacker Sparks. He also encounters a mysterious figure, Mister Cairo, who seems to be an intelligent hologram.

REFLECTIONS OF GLORY-- Rebecca has another brainwashing plan, and this one is directed solely at the city-council members whose approval she needs to build Cyberville. This time the Madisons plan to use a beautiful singer, Vaingloria (Debbie Harry), who's been outfitted with implants to hypnotize others. (Some slight inspiration from the Evil Maria in METROPOLIS is possible.) In the same episode, Sagan meets Kit a second time when she apprehends Sparks for a minor criminal act, and more or less strongarms Kit into accompanying her on a date. However, when Kit changes into the Phantom to investigate, the vigilante has his first direct run-in with the by-the-book lady cop.

SHADOWS FROM THE PAST-- An African warrior-woman, Nia, bears a grudge against the previous Phantom, and so ends up having a big battle with the new hero. Rebecca makes an alliance with Nia to kill the Phantom, and in so doing shows the woman how she Rebecca has preserved the persona of her dead husband online. Nia poisons Guran, who goes berserk until Phantom is able to find a cure.         

THE BIOT IN RED-- Phantom continues trying to figure out what happened in the events that led to the death of Max Madison Sr and the disappearance of Kit's father. Heisenberg, who has escaped the control of Max Jr, befriends a jazz-playing musician. Max Jr stashes an information cylinder in the musician's case and Doctor Jak sends Pavlova to engage a detective to find the case. Pavlova engages Professor Archer, Kit's college teacher, who's playing at being a detective in imitation of his ancestor (implicitly Miles Archer of THE MALTESE FALCON). Heisenberg conceives a thing for Pavlova and the two of them play out the farewell scene from "Casablanca."         

THE GOOD MARK-- Intrigue out the wazoo. Not only is the Phantom trying to learn more about his father's disappearance, Graft and Max Jr conspire to get hold of Rebecca's secret files. Sagan gets framed by her commander, so Phantom helps her bring him down. The script works in a little-used bit of Phantom lore: "the Good Mark," a symbol of righteousness.

DARK ORBIT PTS 1-2-- Sean One desires to have his orbital colonies declared independent of Earth's government, so he gathers supplies for a space laser from an obese Earth-smuggler, the Aussie-accented Gorda. Phantom is forced to league himself with Graft and Max Jr to foil Sean One's plans. Though Graft remains allied to Rebecca by the end of the episode, he and the Phantom part as respectful adversaries, and even Guran hopes that someday the old soldier will recover the better angels of his nature.

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE-- Max Jr has a dream of his childhood, being shown love by his father. But Max's adult psyche intrudes, reciting a (somewhat altered) poem from Baudelaire about angels knowing grief. Simultaneously, Guran reveals that at a very young age Kit received some instruction from his missing father, thus creating a parallel between the adversaries. Rebecca then launches a new scheme: downloading the mental engrams of her husband into a new biot body. However, the biot awakes believing that it's the original Max Sr and goes on a rampage, taking Sparks prisoner. Later he releases Sparks but abducts Max Jr, forcing Phantom to try to stop the android. When the biot drags Max Jr to Sector Zero, the site of Max Sr's death-- an area which should be replete with poison due to the catastrophe there-- all are surprised to see that the mutated ghostwood plant has neutralized the poison elements. The android realizes that it's no more than a machine and destroys itself, though not without claiming that the previous Phantom killed Max Sr. 

LASERS IN THE JUNGLE-- The episode opens with Vaingloria musing on the impermanence of human life. That day at one of the singer's concerts, a mad bomber tries to assault Vaingloria, but the Phantom saves her. The hero also plans to lure Graft into the Section Zero jungle to annihilate Rebecca's biot army, on which her Cyberville scheme depends. Max Jr sends Vaingloria along with Graft and the biot army as his "observer," but it's more likely that Max Jr just likes messing with people. There's the hint of a possible romance between the singer and the soldier, though both are too damaged to make a connection. Phantom manages to use Vaingloria's specialty, illusions, to wipe out the biot army. There's an amusing side-plot in which Rebecca loses her hair due to chemical exposure, but by episode's end has regained it all thanks to clone-transplants. In the scene dealing with her recovery, her full head of hair is juxtaposed with the image of the snaky-locked head topping a statue of Medusa.

THREE INTO ONE-- Sagan is forced to work with the Phantom when a trio of citizens-- one of whom is a policewoman known to Sagan-- become a unitary being with enormous telekinetic powers. Cairo appears again, appearing to make a deal with Graft. Both Graft and the Phantom learn of "the Triad Project," which was supposedly abandoned during the era of Kit's predecessor. At the end, though Sagan doesn't learn Kit's secret, she's a bit more sanguine about the vigilante's activities.

THE GAUNTLET-- Sparks, who essentially raised himself on the streets after being apparently abandoned by his parents, gets the chance to find out what really happened. Mister Cairo takes an interest in the teen's welfare, not even charging anyone for eliciting vital memories from Sparks' subconscious. The boy learns that biots from Maximum Inc kidnapped both mother and father, and Phantom resolves to ferret out the truth, though he orders Sparks to stay out of the matter. Naturally the youth deals himself in anyway, but he, Phantom and Guran can only learn the truth by subduing a security system named Gauntlet, whose minds were used to provide a template for the system.

LIFE LESSONS-- Phantom shoots a biot and is grief stricken to find that he wounded (but fortunately did not kill) a human being masquerading as one of Maximum's androids. Phantom learns from the soulful biot Heisenberg that some biots have asserted their status as free, cognitive beings, which Kit finds hard to countenance. The main threat, however, is a defective reactor under the control of Maximum Inc, one that Rebecca's totally willing to let detonate since it will only harm the lower classes.

THE MAGICIAN-- Phantom encounters a professional magician named Steele, a friend of his vanished father. However, because of that contact, Graft and Rebecca may get a pipeline to a horde of secrets Steele maintained from the earlier association-- including a lot of the tech the modern Phantom uses. However, Steele uses his tricks to flummox Graft long enough to destroy the secrets and protect Kit. Though Steele doesn't look anything like the classic Mandrake, whom comics-artist Lee Falk created slightly before he invented The Phantom, it's obvious that this is a Mandrake homage, even if one doesn't know that the Steele character is being voiced by the same actor who did Mandrake in the 1986-7 DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH cartoon.      

SWIFTER, HIGHER, FASTER-- Kit's Phantom crusade has led him to neglect the fellow collegians he used to hang with, but when he seeks to re-connect, he learns that one sportswoman, Jenna, has been enhanced thanks to Maximum Inc's promotion of risky nanobot tech. Jenna goes berserk. One of the other females who witnessed the debut of the New Phantom strongly suspects his identity, but nothing more comes of this plot-thread.

DOWN THE LINE-- Phantom and his allies receive a transmission from what appears to be the Phantom of a future era. The supposed descendant claims that for the safety of humankind, Kit must break the Phantom's rule against killing and exterminate Rebecca Madison.

CONTROL GROUP-- Thanks to Rebecca experimenting with memory transfers, Phantom and Sparks get to witness downloads of the memories of Rebecca's enforcer Graft. Both heroes are surprised to learn that the ruthless henchman was once a hero in his own right, defending the helpless people Rebecca wiped out during the conflicts of the resource wars. But because Graft lost almost his entire organic body in the wars-- he speaks the famous Ronald Reagan line from a similarly maimed character in the forties movie KINGS ROW-- he allows himself to succumb to being a madwoman's tool. Yet by the end, it's evident that the heroic Graft is far from being as dead as he thinks he is.

A BOY AND HIS CAT-- Despite Max Jr's facility for plotting evil plots, he enters a VR program and refuses to emerge, so that his body becomes comatose. Rebecca rages at the loss of her son to his own psychosis and brings in a programmer to extricate Max. Said programmer's name is "Cordwainer Bird," a well-known alias of writer Harlan Ellison, and the script not only has Bird comment on his "dangerous visions," the episode title references a famous Ellison story, "A Boy and His Dog." In VR Max encounters a female computer construct who takes the name Athena because she claims that she sprang from Max's head, a la the story of Athena's birth from the skull of Zeus. However, just like Rebecca, Athena is a jealous mistress who doesn't want Max to ever leave, and at one point she morphs into a Medusa-form, referencing the conflation of Rebecca and the snake-haired gorgon in the episode LASERS IN THE JUNGLE. Phantom tries to pull Max out of his delusive state but in the end must leave the confused Maximum Inc heir to his own devices.

In closing my remarks on Season One, I'll reiterate a point I made in my analysis of the book METROPOLIS. The word "Metropolis" means "mother-city," and the arc of the book connotes the madonna-figure of Maria reasserting her primacy over a city controlled by a  father alienated from his son. In 2040, Rebecca wields almost total control of the similarly named Metropia, as well as her husband-- reduced to a "ghost in the machine"-- and all of her children, real and symbolic-- and as such, she's closer to the lascivious goddesses of pagan myth, the antitypes to the madonna archetype. Season Two will prove to be no less rich in mythopoeic correlations.

         

       

KUNG FU PANDA 2 (2011)

 

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

Once the first PANDA hit big, the filmmakers stuck close to what worked for both the second and third films: raucous cartoon chopsocky violence with a side-dish of Eastern wisdom. 

In the first film, the story arc of Po the Panda (Jack Black) concerned his efforts to become a kung-fu fighter, though fate-- and the will of the turtle-oracle Oogwai-- threw Po into the deep end of the pool, by promoting him as the destined "Dragon Warrior." In choosing this destiny, Po forswears dedicating himself to the noodle-shop run by his adoptive father Ping (a goose who never informs Po as to his non-goose heritage). But Ping is not the source of conflict: the "heavy father" figure is supplied by Shifu, who puts Po through many rigors before finally conceding that Po deserves his status. Shifu is also, like Ping, an adoptive father, but his "son" became a menace, whom Po must defeat. In essence the first film completes Shifu's arc and he's only of modest importance in the second and third films.

The good news re: No #2 is that while the writers might have chosen to make Po's second "big bad" another kung-fu bully-boy, they crafted a much more ingenious villain this time, one linked to the circumstances that orphaned Po. Having the villain of an anthropomorphic kung-fu flick be a peacock, a delicate-looking bird, might seem counter-intuitive. But the writers shift the conflict to one of weaponry rather than hand-to-hand conflict. Villainous Lord Shen (Gary Oldman) seeks power by weaponizing his clan's discovery of gunpowder into destructive cannons, with which he plans to conquer all of Cartoon-China. But a prophecy about his being defeated by "black and white" leads him to massacre a tribe of black-and-white pandas, leading to the circumstance wherein Baby Po is adopted by Ping the Goose. As it happens, Po and his fellow martial-arts cops encounter Shen's threat at precisely the same time Po experiences existential doubts about his being the only black-and-white panda that anyone's seen in his neck of the woods.

Despite all these doubts, Po's teacher has informed him that the solution is "inner peace"-- and this is what eventually gives the warrior-panda the moxie he needs to defeat the seemingly-unbeatable cannons. The film frames the idea of spiritual transcendence as something as simple as a fortune-cookie maxim, but the movie delivers what the viewer wants: a hissable villain, who relies not on brute force but upon skills with knives (hidden within Shen's wings) and an inventive conclusion in which martial arts trumps, at least in cartoons, martial arms.

A coda establishes that Po's father is still alive after all, setting up the events of the third film.

                  

BIGFOOT VS. THE ILLUMINATI (2020)

 

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

Given that this film shares the same date as TRUMP VS THE ILLUMINATI, the creator probably never meant to follow up his lame "satire" directly. Thus BIGFOOT VS THE ILLUMINATI stands as a soft reboot of the other film, with no references to the Trump-Clone or his climactic confrontation with Lucifer. All of the other regular characters are in place: Van Helsing (now said to be the clone of a Jack Van Helsing, who as far as I know never appeared anywhere), his suit-clad paramour Kali, the Allies, the Illuminati (whose foot soldiers are now called "Archons"), and the occultist Aleister Crowley, who's been incarnated in the body of a Bad Grey alien. Bigfoot appeared briefly in TRUMP but did almost nothing, so that may have been the director monetizing the animation-work he did in advance of this flick. BVTI may also be the first appearance of "Xterminator," who gets his own feature in 2023, and his appearance in the same film as Bigfoot makes the movie a very minor monster mashup.

This time, Van Helsing goes looking for Bigfoot to help out against the Illuminati, going on the memory that the real VH was acquainted with the hairy monster as a buddy. Their meeting is complicated by the fact that VH is a clone, but Bigfoot eventually gets over his reluctance and joins the space-war effort. Fourteen's sloppy script more or less implies that Bigfoot is a thousands-years-old survivor of the devastated Earth, but how he came to live in the galactic empire is never related. Bigfoot talks tough and uses lots of foul language, but he does very little and most of the combative action here is just spaceships, fighting with the most minor CGI-FX.

Once again, it's a lot of plotless jibber-jabber with a few esoteric references to Crowley's occultism thrown in for no good reason. Oh, and there's also no explanation as to whether Kali's ship-physician "Doctor Jekyll" has anything to do with the original Victorian experimenter. As I work my way through this sludge, I think an explanation is unlikely to appear, so if anyone's a crossover-icon here. Jekyll's probably not one.  

  

SPY KIDS (2001)

  

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

I'm going to try reviewing all four films in this franchise, but they're going to be short reviews because this series is SO not aimed at me. In fact, I can't say that it would have been my kind of thing had I been born a Millennial. I'm sure I liked a fair amount of ephemeral junk in my pre-adolescent years, and on the whole I like movies about superspies better than movies about real, mundane spies. And I can just barely tolerate flicks starring high-schoolers as covert operatives. But somehow I think that even when I myself was a middle-schooler, middle-school spies would have been a bridge too far.

The biggest flaw of the first SPY KIDS is that, even though writer-director Robert Rodriguez was going for what he described as a blend of James Bond and Willy Wonka, the first half of the first KIDS takes too much time trying to lend verisimilitude to the goofy concept. Gregorio and Ingrid Cortez are retired superspies who seem to have a flawless life, except for the fact that their middle-schoolers don't know anything of their heroic pasts. But I found that during the setup I thought adult actors Banderas and Gugino had far better chemistry than the two destined "spy kids," Carmen (Alexa Vega, 13) and Juni (Daryl Sabara, 9). The kid-performers weren't terrible, but they also weren't overly charismatic.

The plot is routine. Gregorio and Ingrid come out of retirement to face a threat of a kids' show performer who has invented hordes of killer robots, mostly with the faces of famous children-- as well as both Carmen and Juni, for some reason. The wacky Wonka-esque inventor Floop (a mug-happy Alan Cumming) is really more thoughtless than fiendish, so Rodriguez has to introduce three more villainous types to compensate, played by Robert Patrick, Teri Hatcher and Tony Shahloub. The action is routine too, and the only time the two adult spies get to fight, Rodriquez cuts away from the action--even though he revels in a long sequence of the two kids battling their robot doubles. 

Obviously, the film was successful, so it reached its target audience. I can only say that despite the director's passion for children's films, I've yet to see one I thought really good. Said passion does make me wonder what sort of kid-vids he liked as a youngling, though.

THE VALLEY OF VANISHING MEN (1942)

 

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

This is one of the more solid Columbia serials, not showing the tendency toward ruthless cost-cutting seen in later years, nor the barren strategy of keeping all the filmed action in one or two restrictive sets. In fact, of all the works of Spenser G. Bennett, credited with directing more serials than any other individual, I'd probably rate VALLEY in the top five.

VALLEY opens at the conclusion of the Civil War, with the amicable meeting of two field commanders on opposite sides, one of whom is hero Bill Tolliver (Bill Elliott). I don't remember if the script mentions what state Bill fought for, but the dissolution of the Confederacy frees him up to seek out his father, who's prospecting in the New Mexico territory. He and his wartime-buddy Missouri (Slim Summerville) ride west, leaving the turmoil of North and South behind (a motif also found in the classic western novel THE VIRGINIAN).

Bill and Missouri soon learn that Bill's father has gone missing, and that the nearest city is dominated by an outlaw gang run by Jonathan Kincaid (the superbly oily Kenneth MacDonald, forgotten these days except for THREE STOOGES shorts). Kincaid's gang has abducted several locals-- the "vanishing men"-- to labor as slaves in a hidden gold mine. Further, Kincaid is funneling the gold to Emperor Maximillian, supporting the French conqueror against the forces of Juarez. Two female agents of Juarez-- young Consuela (Carmen Morales) and her duenna-- seek to figure out who's sending the gold and how, but neither woman does much but provide exposition for the benefit of the main hero and his sidekick.

As with most serials the action comes down to various back-and-forth struggles between the hero and the villain's henchmen, but Bennett and his writers provide enough variety that the serial's 15 chapters don't become tedious. Elliott, a popular B-western actor, handles all the fisticuffs and riding-stunts very well, while his sidekick provides good comic relief, due to his being more of an "ornery cuss" rather than the more standard dopey doofus. In fact, the writers got into the antics of Missouri that for one episode alone, they had him talking to his horse, which answered him back a la "Mister Ed."

The limited sets of Kincaid's mine are given some cool decorations, such as a big Aztec deity-statue posed behind the bib boss's desk. Said desk has an uncanny execution-gimmick built into it: a concealed gun that "fires" any henchman who displeases Kincaid. The standout gimmick, however, was left behind by the vanished Aztecs: a giant mounted prism able to focus the sun's rays and start fires where directed. This device is used for the chapterplay's best cliffhanger: Bill tied to a stake and surrounded by flammable brush, while a weight-device slowly causes the prism to move toward Bill and his death-trap. Naturally, after the outlaws take all this trouble to give the hero a ghastly death, they decide to leave and do something else, making it easy for Bill to escape. 

In one of the serial's best touches, the credits-sequence for each episode plays over scenes of the vanished men (including Bill's dad) laboring in the mine, pushing a wheel connected to a rock-crushing press. In the last episode, Bill almost dies under the press. But not only are the hero and the kidnapped men liberated, Kincaid perishes beneath another crushing weight: that of the pagan idol in his office. The end of Kincaid's rule isn't quite on the symbolic level of the Philistine carnage wrought by Samson, but there's a little more religious resonance here than in the majority of serial conclusions.

HONOR ROLL #314

Down into the Valley of Vanishing Men goes BILL ELLIOTT.

"Where's my series, SPY MOMS?" complains CARLA GUGINO.

Nothing luminous about these ILLUMINATI.

 

LORD SHEN: just a bird on the wing.

They called him THE MAGICIAN, but insiders knew he was MANDRAKE.

 

SHAQUILLE O'NEIL, his name rhymes with Steel! 

THE BATMAN, SEASON ONE (2004-05)

  

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

Like many fans of the 1990s BATMAN cartoon series, I probably was so impressed with that show's accomplishments that I didn't give this 2004-2008 program a fair shake. I didn't initially find the art style of the latter series, with its strong manga influence, attractive. However, I now think it's a creditable approach. It's true that some characters, like Bruce Wayne, seemed a little too "rounded," though this series does take place when Bruce Wayne is young and has only been Batman for a year or so. In compensation, some of the villains are drawn as less realistic, almost "bigfoot" grotesques, but the sense of their being more "cartoony" had its own attractive aspects.

THE BAT IN THE BELFRY (F)- Not surprisingly, the show led off with the debut of both the New Batman and a more demonic looking version of The Joker. In contrast to BATS, here the two adversaries have never met before, so this is Young Batman's first encounter with both the Clown Prince and his dominant weapon, Joker Venom. It's a fairly straightforward story, though Joker has an interesting observation as to how he and the crusader might be viewed as iterations of the "comedy" and "tragedy" theatrical masks.

CALL OF THE COBBLEPOT (G)-- Though both the 1992 and 2004 cartoons took considerable inspiration from the Tim Burton Penguin, both in terms of his freakish looks and a Dickensian style of attire, I now like the 2004 concept better. In the 1992 cartoon as in the comics, Penguin is generally just a weird-looking fellow with pretenses of social refinement. But the 2004 writers came up a new and valid take: this Oswald Cobblepot actually comes from old British money, so some of his affectations are rooted in family heritage. However, when Bruce Wayne first encounters the pudgy purveyor of perfidy, he finds that his social standing is just a mask for his rudeness and petty larceny-- not long before Batman learns that Penguin believes himself entitled to become a full-time criminal. Alfred provides some strong comedy relief in that his grandfather butled for Penguin's ancestor, and Alfred conveys the opinion that the Cobblepots were all rotters. Since Penguin's tics are so familiar, it's tough to do anything inventive with him, but THE BATMAN's version of the Birdman Bandit may turn out to outrate that of BTAS. An additional improvement is that this Penguin's henchpersons are a couple of identical "kabuki ninja girls."

TRACTION (P)-- The only thing I can say for the debut of Bane-- a hugely overrated Bat-foe in my view-- is that here he's no worse than the one in either the comics or in BTAS. The fight between Bane and the hero is okay, but of course there can be no direct reference to Bane's big moment in the comics: that of breaking Batman's back.

THE CAT AND THE BAT (F)-- This Catwoman-debut is no match for BATS' iteration, "The Cat and the Claw," and the quasi-romantic encounter of hero and villainess is only adequate. I wasn't a big fan of the grey BTAS costume, but I can't stand a Catwoman with huge ears on her cowl, less like those of a cat than a fennec fox. But Selina Kyle in regular clothes is arguably sexier than BTAS Selina.        

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE BAT (P)-- It's a new origin for Kirk Langstrom, Man-Bat. In the comics, the scientist foolishly injects himself with his serum in Doctor Jekyll fashion, thinking he'll develop a bat's natural sonar. There's a brief mention of his outdoing Batman, but the 2004 show gives its Langstrom a major case of bat-envy, and the scientist wants to mutate himself into a Man-Bat from the start. His character's not believable and the Man-Bat design is unexceptional.

THE BIG CHILL (F)-- Like Man-Bat, this version of Mister Freeze elides all potential for tragedy, for this Freeze is just a professional thief who gets turned into a cold-dependent freak. Since he's not a scientist, this means the script has to give the villain ice-powers. The only thing that elevates this episode to "fair mythicity" is that Young Batman hasn't grown a hard shell over his emotions, and so he's briefly traumatized at the result of his actions when he inadvertently caused Freeze's mutation.

THE BIG HEAT (F)-- This episode arguably places less emphasis on the debut of a new villain-- the fire-spewing arsonist Firefly-- than on Bruce Wayne's problems with his corporate image. This Wayne is perhaps more concerned than the BTAS version with keeping faith with the heritage left him by his parents, which proves a welcome variation.

Q&A (P)-- I'd like to grade this one higher, given that the script addresses the fact that as a child Bruce Wayne ceased to have any sense of "child's play" in his life, once he'd dedicated himself to a life of crimefighting. However, the villain is jejune and predictable, a guy who obsesses about having lose a TV quiz-show as a child, and so becomes The Cluemaster to take vengeance on those he thinks he cheated him. In the comics, The Cluemaster is just a C-list villain, but he's still better than this conception.

THE BIG DUMMY (F)-- This episode debuts a new version of The Ventriloquist, who commits crimes under the apparent "leadership" of his dummy Scarface, who represents his criminal alter ego. No better or worse than the BTAS version.

TOPSY TURVY (F)-- Joker returns with more chaotic crimes, but the emphasis is more on the two of the cops tasked by their commissioner with bringing in The Batman. Of the two, Ethan Bennett, a friend of Bruce's, is nominally sympathetic to Batman's crimebusting activities, while his new partner Ellen Yin is more a traditional cop, resentful of the hero's vigilantism. 

BIRD OF PREY (F)-- Oswald Cobblepot, having fully embraced his supervillain destiny, gets a mad-on for Bruce Wayne, so he and his taloned ninjas show up to loot Wayne Manor. But at the same time Wayne has scheduled an interview with an ambitious news reporter, the first person in the show to suspect a Batman-Wayne connection. Penguin's ego gets full display as he interacts with the reporter and tries to make the news story all about him.

THE RUBBER FACE OF COMEDY/ THE CLAYFACE OF TRAGEDY (F)-- These interlinked episodes come close to being a "villain crossover" between Joker and the new version of Clayface, though I disqualify it on the grounds that the two don't meet in their villain-forms. The commissioner-- just a fool here, rather than a corrupt Gotham cop as in many other versions-- demands that all Gotham cops bring in The Batman. Ethan Bennett gets the commissioner's particular attention, so Bennett seeks to be more pro-active, like his partner Yin. Wayne considers revealing his true identity to his sympathetic buddy, but fortunately does not, for Joker has a new game, involving a putty able to mutate people. As Batman seeks to stop Joker, the two detectives get involved, and ironically, it's the hard-ass Yin who ends up cutting Batman a break for exigent reasons. But in the battle, Bennett is exposed to the putty, and he gets mutated into the shape-changing creature, Clayface. The Clayface of BTAS was only moderately impressive, but I liked Bennett-Clayface better for the way the script captures his confusion at becoming a monster-- giving him the sort of tragic dimension the show elided from Man-Bat and Mister Freeze. As of the end of Season One, Bennett is still a victim of the Clayface curse, though he's cured in a later season. Further, while Bennett loses himself to his monster-self, Yin becomes Batman's unofficial partner.