TOMORROW NEVER DIES (1997)

 

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


In contrast to Pierce GOLDENEYE, Brosnan's first outing as Bond, TOMORROW NEVER DIES shows no particular desire to re-interpret the famed superspy for a nineties audience.

While some Bond films have opened with short sequences that have nothing to do with the main story, this time the hero's first mission-- targeting an arms-dealers' bazaar-- relates tangentially to a plot to bring about nuclear war between China and the U.S. This trope has been around since the 1950s, and the only new twist contributed by primary screenwriter Bruce Fierstein (who had collaborated on GOLDENEYE) is that the mastermind is a media-mogul, Elliott Carver, more or less a de-politicized version of real-life publisher Robert Maxwell.

Presumably MI-6 chooses to investigate Carver simply to aid their American allies. It helps, though, James Bond is in a unique position to investigate Carver's dealings, because Carver is married to a woman named Paris (Teri Hatcher), formerly one of Bond's old flames. As is often the case in Bond films, the hero doesn't maintain the illusion of being just an ordinary fellow for very long, particularly since Bond's raison d'etre in getting acquainted with Carver is to steal a code-device from the publisher. Nor is it long before Bond wins the affections of Paris away from her husband, which eventuates in Paris's death. But the film sets up a second "Bond girl" in Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh), an agent of the Chinese government who's also checking out Carver's plots.

TOMORROW never slacks its pace, dishing out big fights and fast chase-scenes, the standout being one in which Bond and Wai Lin, handcuffed together, have to use a motorcycle to escape an almost endless slew of pursuers. However, the humor's not as sharp as it was in GOLDENEYE, and neither Hatcher nor Yeoh has very good chemistry with Brosnan. At the time the film was made, Yeoh was a major action-star in Hong Kong film, but her balletic martial-arts grace doesn't fit in a James Bond film, and the attempt to make her an "independent woman" who doesn't fall for Bond until the very end is thoroughly predictable.

Perhaps TOMORROW's greatest flaw is a boring villain. True, one shouldn't expect the sort of freakish geniuses birthed by Ian Fleming. But Carver never has much of a reason for wanting to start WWIII and then cover the news in his multi-media empire, despite Fierstein's invocation of the journalistic sins of William Randolph Hearst. It's not that a good villain requires an extensive backstory: Fierstein's own Xenia Onatopp has no backstory, but her character is intense enough to distinguish her from any other Bond-villain. Carver has no emotional center, and even Stromberg, the minor-league Captain Nemo from THE SPY WHO LOVES ME, comes off better.

If the film's phenomenality were to be judged only by Carver's THUNDERBALL-like escapades, it would be uncanny, but this time out the filmmakers chose to emphasize the superspy's many gadgets. In addition to humble devices, like a cellphone that emits an electric shock, Bond drives a heavily armored car that puts his old Aston-Martin to shame. Not only can the car shrug off gunfire, it can fire missiles and drive itself when its occupant is otherwise occupied.

HONOR ROLL #215

 Before she was the main squeeze for Supermam, TERI HATCHER dallied with "Bond, Pierce Brosnan Bond."

RYUNOSUKE KAMIKI went from fighting yokai as a boy to dueling with the King of Monsters in manhood.

Little MICHELLE MOFFETT failed to profit from her role in a Deathstalker pile o' shit.

RODDY PIPER could hardly be any rowdier than when he had repopulate the world through his, uh, rod.

JAMIE ROSE thought she signed up for a movie entitled "Shopper Chicks of Zombietown."

I guess that since I'm counting Santo a "costumed crusader" just for wearing a mask, then EL SUPERBEASTO AND SUZI Q are loony Rob Zombie's equivalents of The Lone Ranger and Tonto.

BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD; SEASON TWO (2009-11)

 

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

I enjoyed my re-watch of BTBATB Season One but I wasn't expecting anything but more of the same formula. And to be sure, the series' showrunners didn't stray too far from that template. However, it's a mark of their stated enthusiasm as fans that Season 2 did delve into one aspect of DC superheroes far from the vein of camp aesthetics, and that's the trope of the heroic death.

Now, there are a lot of the standard adventures, which, even without the jokes, verged on the absurd by having Batman cross over with a host of DC luminaries, good and bad, famous and obscure. The most successful episode is probably "Death Race to Oblivion," in which various heroes (Batman, Guy Gardner, Plastic Man and sidekick Woozy, Huntress and Green Arrow) are forced to participate in a cross-country car race with various villains (Catwoman, Joker, Gentleman Ghost, and Black Manta). Many episodes reference famous (or infamous) moments in Batman comics, particularly from the goofier moments of the Silver Age. Batman gets super powers on an alien planet and meets a villain with the name "Rohtul." Batman gets split into three separate Batmen, each with his own portion of Bruce Wayne's personality (which not only resembles one of the Batman comics, but also a 2013 TEEN TITANS episode by some of the same writers). The only crossover of Batman with Superman references two or three Superman stories and Miller's DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, while the "teaser" for that episode shows Batman and Robin dressed in mummy-versions of their standard costumes, duplicating a famous 1960s gimmick-cover. 

And yet, the shadow of Real Death intrudes fairly often. "Chill of the Night" has the Spectre and Phantom Stranger making a bet on Batman's soul, a bet suspiciously reminiscent of the story of Job. Spectre predicts that the hero will become vengeful when he finds his parents' killer, while the Stranger hazards that Batman will rise above such temptation. (In the episode's teaser Spectre also implicitly kills one of Batman's minor foes.) 

A three-part story involves the giant starfish Starro trying to conquer Earth, but one of the heroes often regarded as a joke, B'wana Beast, nobly sacrifices his life to defeat the alien.

In "Emperor Joker," the magical imp Bat-Mite accidentally transfers his powers to the fiendish Joker, who then becomes near-omnipotent. Joker uses those powers to put Batman to death, revive him, and put him to death again. These temporary deaths are rendered to be as over-the-top as possible, but it's still rather grotty to imagine the crusader experiencing real death again and again, and presumably keeping those memories even after he manages to trick Joker out of his "emperor" empowerment. Ultimate nerd Bat-Mite does step up and help, and gets some aid from Harley Quinn (wearing a flapper-like costume, presumably to avoid stepping on Bruce Timm's toes).

There aren't any episodes as good as "Music Meister" from the first season, but "The Last Patrol" comes the closest. It's a patent love letter to the 1960s series THE DOOM PATROL, one of DC's quirkiest superhero titles, and one which atypically ended when all the heroes gave up their lives to save those of ordinary citizens. (I think later hands revived all of the Patrollers, but it's the thought that counts.) The episode works in not only a number of bizarre Doom Patrol villains but even reproduces images from old covers.

None of the episodes are actively bad. I could have lived without seeing Batman do a "Turnabout Intuder" body-switch with the Kathy Kane Batwoman. In another episode, Speedy, Aqualad and Robin-- who in comics would be the nucleus of the first Teen Titans-- get too big for their britches. and take on the insidious Ra's Al Ghul and his sexy daughter Talia. Robin even gets so full of himself he makes a pass at Talia, who's renowned for being one of Batman's many squeezes. I don't mind having a little Oedipus wreckage here and there, but that one just comes out of the blue and doesn't have any impact on the story.

Possibly some of the meditations on death came about because the showrunners weren't sure BTBATB would get a third season. But Cartoon Network did order thirteen new episodes-- half the number alloted to both Seasons One and Two-- and this contingency allowed the devoted Bat-fans behind the drawings to send off their series in style with a standout conclusion. 

 

THE GOLDEN MASK (1977)

 

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

According to online sources the performer Chi Kuan-chun was a headliner at Shaw Brothers before going independent for features like this 1977 chopsocky. I don't believe I've seen him before GOLDEN MASK and I'm not likely to seek him out again.

Despite having the form of a kung-fu murder mystery, MASK feels as if it was made up while filming. Chi plays Lung, a martially trained contract killer, though the audience doesn't know why he chose this vocation. A mysterious fellow in a golden Buddha-mask hires Lung to kill a particular victim from afar, without even seeing who it is. Lung does so, only to find out that the victim is his own brother. (Guilty Lung later sees the ghost of his brother, though this may be his imagination.) Anyway, Lung decides to find and punish Golden Mask.

Lung is no ratiocinative detective; he just runs around like a bull in a china shop, and clues obligingly fall in his lap. Somehow, Lung ties Golden Mask to an inn called Eagle House, run by a former bandit turned into a square citizen. Various officials at Eagle House interrogate the rash young fellow. Two individuals, Chow (Lung Chung-erh) and her father, try to suborn Lung's services, but he's not having any. Chow is put out by this, and this seems to be a setup for a romantic pairing, but such is not the case. Oh, and there's a weird moment in which a couple of fiery spheroids zoom around Lung's head. Ghosts? Optical illusions? Who knows?

Lung gets attacked by various martial minions, a couple of whom dress up in golden masks, so he knows his enemy is about somewhere. None of the fights are very creative and the characters are mostly bland red herrings. When one reaches the end, we're told that Chow and her father were working with Golden Mask to get revenge on the Master of Eagle House, but I never figured out why Golden Mask involved Lung in the first place.

As an excuse for a "big finish," Lung has to fight a dozen guys in gold masks, all wielding bladed discs that can spin around like mini-flying guillotines. But this doesn't make up for this "flopsocky's" criminal under-use of the talents of Lung Chung-erh.

OUT OF TIME (1988)

  

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

OUT OF TIME is a cheaply-shot telefilm that was supposedly a set-up for a TV series, though the premise seems largely exhausted by the execution of the time-paradox storyline. Surprisingly, given the molasses-slow pacing and routine setups, the director was Robert Butler, who'd shown himself capable of much better cinematic storytelling with the first episodes of both BATMAN and STAR TREK.

The script, by three writers mostly known for series-TV, took a little time to establish some characterization for future-cop hero Channing Taylor (Bruce Abbott). Born in the futuristic era of 2088, he feels that his department relies too much on fancy crime-fighting devices and not enough on human instinct. (Patrons of sixties TV will recognize this as The Mannix Trope.) Channing also has a conflict with those devices because many of them were invented by Channing's own great-grandfather Maxwell Taylor, so the cop tend to reject high-tech because his contemporaries idolize his ancestor so much. In fact, Channing's gut-instinct approach to tracking down master criminal Marcus (Adam Ant) gets him suspended from the future force.

However, rule-breaker Channing tracks Marcus to a hideout where Marcus is making use of a time-machine to travel back to 1988. The two are separately transported back in time, and "out-of-water fish" Channing has to leap over a bunch of piddly hurdles to figure out how to cope with the transition. He manages to capture Marcus temporarily, but also runs into a young cop, who is none other than a young Maxwell Taylor (Bill Maher), still just a beat cop who has yet to invent any dazzling inventions. (When Maxwell sees some of the future-devices he will later invent, he comments, "What; did Buck Rogers have a garage sale?") So what evolves is yet another buddy-comedy, in which Channing gets Maxwell to assist in his efforts to foil Marcus's plans-- which, frankly, I never figured out myself. The pilot ends with Channing stuck in 1988 because he needs fuel for his time-machine, but the script leaves open the possibility that Maxwell may be able to invent something to send Channing back to-- you know.

As I said, it's a very dull-looking, dully-paced time-travel tale. Bruce Abbott doesn't have much to work with, Bill Maher does okay with a semi-straight role, and Adam Ant's villain is shamefully bland. This loser deserves its place in the dustbin of TV history.

EROTIC GHOST STORY (1990)

 

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

Some online reviews compare the Hong Kong movie EROTIC GHOST STORY to the book-and-movie THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK, and I suppose this could be a partial influence. But even having only a smidgen of familiarity with Chinese literary tropes, I tend to think that the story owes a lot more to the oft-adapted Chinese story of THE LEGEND OF THE WHITE SNAKE. SNAKE is about a female snake-spirit who falls in love with a mortal man and so attempts to pass as human, only to be separated from her love by a busybody Taoist monk. 

GHOST is about three spirits-- my subtitling calls them both "foxes" and "fairies"-- who are seeking to purge themselves of lustful impulses so that they can become human. In a reversal of the SNAKE plotline, they meet a male-- only apparently a mortal-- who seduces them all and ruins their chances to become human beings. The film's references to Chinese metaphysics are the only reason I give GHOST a fair mythicity rating, since most of this Category III film consists of loads and loads of softcore sex.

The three fairies (Amy Yip, So Man and Hitomi Kudo) descend to Earth and take up residence in some Chinese city, where they're able to pass as humans with their neighbors. A busybody Taoist priest stops by to provide exposition about how the fairies need to avoid sex in order to attain humanity, and the girls all vow to stay chaste.

In no time, handsome young scholar Wu Ming (Pal Sinn) comes along and implores the women to give him shelter until he gets wherever he's going. And equally quickly, each of the sisters in turn finds some excuse to corner Ming in private and sex him up. The sisters aren't even particularly possessive, for when they find out that they've all done the scholar their next step is line up a foursome.

But Ming isn't a mortal scholar at all; he's the fertility demon Wutung, the very incarnation of the lust the sisters were attempting to avoid. This leads to a magical duel, which includes flashing CGI rays and the use of  a voodoo doll. (The scene in which Wutung writhes in pain as the three girls repeatedly stab his image is the movie's high point.) Aside from that scene, both the fight-scenes and the sex-scenes are nothing special, and the three female stars don't even get to defeat their seducer, as the Taoist comes back to deal the demon his defeat-- though oddly, Wutung gets a sequel and the fairy-girls don't.

BLADE II (2002)

 

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

Time has not improved my opinion of the second BLADE movie. In whatever year I saw it on DVD, I thought its action scenes were uninspired and repetitive and its new characters tiresome. One insight: since I did not remember that the director was Guillermo del Toro, from now on BLADE II will be my go-to, should I want to demonstrate the vast contrast between his quality works and his crap.

David S. Goyer is once again the sole credited writer, but I don't believe anything in BLADE II is derived from the comic. I neglected to note in my review of the first installment that Goyer had dumped all of the supernatural aspects of Marvel's "vampire-verse," substituting the Mathesonian concept that vampirism was caused by an infectious virus. Yet the disease still gives its infectees some of the vulnerabilities of traditional bloodsuckers, in that they turn to ash when stabbed with silver or exposed to sunlight. For Number Two, Goyer followed up on the virus-idea by creating a variant species, "Reapers," who don't have the same weaknesses but DO have weird ALIEN-like tentacles that can sprout from their mouths, as an opening scene is swift to reveal. I find myself wondering if this idea came from Lovecraft-fan Del Toro, though it doesn't really matter who came up with an idea almost as dumb as sparkling vampires.

Blade (Wesley Snipes) has a busy opening: he learns that his mentor/armorer Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) wasn't really killed in the first movie, but was vampirized. Blade captures and cures Whistler and kills a few dozen traditional vamps. Then his kung fu skills are tested by two highly trained warrior-vamps, who eventually announce that they want to enlist his help against the Reapers, who threaten both vampire-dom and humanity. Blade meets with their elderly vampire leader Eli and agrees to make an alliance of convenience.

Nyssa (Leonor Varela), the daughter of Eli, leads an elite squad of warriors who have been training for two years-- albeit not to battle Reapers, but with the expectation of taking down Blade himself. The hero shows no real reluctance to risk his life by fighting beside bloodsuckers sworn to kill him-- in fact, during most of the movie Blade never shows any emotions at all. Even when he cows the elite warriors by showing up the foremost tough guy Dieter (Ron Perlman), there's no sense that Blade gives the matter any more thought than he does about the proper polish for his swords.

After all that setup, the rest of the movie just reduces down to a lot of commando missions with no strong sense of what's being accomplished. The combat-vamps, with the encouragement of Eli, do attempt to wipe out both the Reapers and Blade. Only Nyssa honors the alliance, and not surprisingly, things don't go well for her either. The closest thing to human interplay is that Whistler butts heads with Scud, who took Whistler's place as Blade's human aide while the older man was off being a vampire. It doesn't come to much, but it's more fun than watching Wesley Snipes run through super-fast, boringly mechanical martial arts moves with trained stunt-guys.

The one good thing about the mediocre BLADE II is that because it made money, it led to one last installment, which I for one liked better than the first two.