ROBOT NINJA (1989)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

If anyone had told me I'd give even a "fair" mythicity rating to a micro-budgeted superhero flick from the director of WITCHOUSE, I would have considered that a faulty prediction. It wouldn't have helped the case for ROBOT NINJA that, in addition to being written and directed by J.R. Bookwalter, it was produced by another purveyor of DTV junk, Dave DeCouteau.

Nevertheless, even though the titular hero is neither a robot nor a ninja, Bookwalter's bloody-minded hero captures the mood of American comics as they became fully committed to new, adult levels of sex and violence. This movement was foregrounded by certain developments in the seventies, such as the appearance of the claw-handed Wolverine in the new X-MEN comic, but in the eighties, the mode known as "the grim and the gritty" became dominant. Yet hardly any eighties makers of live-action superheroes showed any awareness of this sea-change. The one major exception to this generalization was Tim Burton, whose 1989 BATMAN transformed cinema's ideas about costumed crusaders. NINJA didn't transform anything, and indeed, Bookwalter's been quoted as saying he doesn't like the film these days. But NINJA deserves some credit for tapping into the mentality of the time, and for channeling it into an unusually ironic approach that looks forward to the cinematic adaptations of Mark Millar's KICK-ASS.

Leonard Miller (Michael Todd) has created the comic-book hero "Robot Ninja" out of a fierce passion for justice, though the script gives viewers no reason for his obsession. The hero is published by the rinky-dink looking "Savoy Comics," but Miller has a little control over the comics proper. However, he ceded to the company the right to merchandise the character, and the result is that Robot Ninja has become a hit TV show, but rendered as goony comedy, allegedly in imitation of the 1966 BATMAN. Miller expresses his contempt for the adaptation to publisher Stanley Kane (the redoubtable Burt Ward) and Kane's secretary (Linnea Quigley), but they don't care. Kane warns that he may replace Miller when his contract is up, which sounds like the publisher does have some provisional control, possibly like the arrangement Siegel and Shuster accepted for DC Comics to publish SUPERMAN.

Miller's real troubles stem not from corporate malfeasance, but from street-crime. The artist tries to intervene when a gang of hoods, led by a bulky woman named Sanchez, interfere with a young fellow and his date. The gang kills both innocents and leaves Miller wounded. Filled with a righteous desire for vengeance, Miller appeals to a scientist-friend, Doctor Goodknight, to build him a super-suit like the one worn by Robot Ninja, complete with huge claws extending from the gloves (note the probable Wolverine influence).

The rest of the film is devoted to a series of hit-and-run encounters between Robot Ninja and the street-toughs. In many similar heroic stories, the hero's thrashing of lowly punks is just a baptism of fire. But even though Robot Ninja kills at least one of the gang-members in the first battle, he takes quite a few hits. He escapes to his home, having had his first taste of the challenges of being a vigilante. More, the punks don't simply fade into the woodwork; they keep looking for the masked hero for vengeance. Miller has a falling-out with Goodknight, who thinks the artist is causing more harm than good. Miller does manage to destroy his opponents, but in the process he suffers so much that he can no longer live with himself, leading to an exceedingly depressing denouement. A vigilante's lot, contrary to the hype, is not a happy one.

I don't want to omit NINJA's many faults, the worst being the pusillanimous acting by all of the performers. But Bookwalter does use some interesting angled shots to cover up the paltriness of his budget, and though the budget's also too low for any of the gore-FX to be convincing, the gore does serve the purpose of the story, given that Miller has to find out that it's not all that easy just to put on a fancy suit and kick the ass of evil.

It's standard for low-budget filmmakers to include posters of their own earlier movies in their efforts, and so Miller's walls include Bookwalter's DEAD NEXT DOOR and DeCouteau's MURDER WEAPON. But it's not so standard for a filmmaker to show awareness of key comic-book products. Most film-people avoid specifics. You would never catch M. Night Shyamalan's "comic book movie" UNBREAKABLE mentioning the DARK KNIGHT RETURNS or THE TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES. Indeed, Bookwalter probably gave his hero that nonsensical name in partial response to the success of the Turtles. When the artist (who may be named for Frank Miller) attacks the thugs the first time, a hoodlum speaks a line-- "don't do it, hero-man!"-- that sounds like it might have been written by some mainstream scribe like Len Wein. Bookwalter also mentions the term "graphic novel" at a time when not a lot of people had heard it, and exploitative publisher Stanley Kane seems named for two comics-professionals most often accused (whether fairly or not) for exploitation of talent: Stan Lee and Bob Kane.