STAR TREK: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (1991)

 

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

When I first saw COUNTRY in the theater, I was less than charmed with the script, primarily by Nicholas Meyer and Leonard Nimoy. I concede the argument made at the time, that the eighties movies needed to reflect the culture of their time, just as the original series had reflected that of the sixties. What I found problematic was the one-to-one correlation between modern events and those of a far-flung space opera. Gene Roddenberry-- who died shortly after having seen rushes of this movie, whose politics he did not embrace -- executed some very bad TREK scripts based on overly close resemblance between "the reality" and "the fictional." Yet even a ham-fisted story like "The Omega Glory" has more of the quality of a thought-experiment than anything in COUNTRY. Director/co-writer Meyer is a little too literal in transposing current history upon the TREK universe.

It's more than lame jokes like, "Only Nixon could go to China." COUNTRY starts out with a "big bang," supposedly an analogue to Chernobyl, which is made the proximate cause for the dissolution of the Klingon Empire-- which presaged the dissolution of the Soviet Union in reality a few weeks later. A Klingon diplomatic mission, headed by Chancellor Gorkon (David Warner), meets to discuss the Klingon version of perestroika. Captain Spock (Nimoy) shows little of his father's diplomatic tendencies by high-handedly volunteering the Enterprise for the duty, and Starfleet, with logic more dubious than Spock's, agrees. 

With the exception of Captain Sulu, who's off commanding his own vessel, most of the Enterprise regulars are up for the new task, but Kirk (Shatner) is something less than pleased. Roddenberry reportedly did not care for Meyer's imputation that Kirk was racist against Klingons-- which, whatever Roddenberry's reasoning, is also not supported by the characterization of Kirk in TOS. Meyer over-emphasizes Kirk's lust for vengeance due to a Klingon's having killed the captain's only son, and even stacks the deck by giving Kirk the self-denigratory line, "How on earth can history get past people like me?"

Kirk and his crew meet with the diplomatic entourage, including Gorkon's chief of staff Chang (Christopher Plummer). Following a tense dinner, the Klingons return to their ship-- and are apparently attacked by the Enterprise. Kirk and McCoy beam to the ship to render medical aid, find Chancellor Gorbachev-- er, Gorkon-- dead, and are summarily arrested by Chang. While the rest of the Enterprise crew labors to figure who masterminded the assassination and framed the captain, Kirk and McCoy are fast-tracked through a trial and sent to an icebound prison planet.

I'll give Meyer and his scripters due credit for keeping things hopping. Whereas FINAL FRONTIER looked like a patchwork of clumsy scenes despite having a higher budget, COUNTRY looks admirably streamlined, and all of the actors, even Shatner, are given valid bits of emotional business. Kirk and McCoy's escape from the Klingon prison adds a note of much-needed exoticism, and the detective-work needed to uncover General Chang as the mastermind is efficient if not much of a thought-experiment. There's also a decent space-opera battle at the end, just so that no one forgets that it's not just an episode of MURDER SHE TREKKED. And Plummer gives a lip-smacking performance as the Shakespeare-spouting conspirator; he may be the best villain to come out of any of the TREK features.

COUNTRY is far from the best of the TREK movies. Yet as a fan, I'm certainly glad the film franchise did not end with FRONTIER. Reportedly some executive helped to greenlight this film not out of any deep love for the concept, but because he knew that 1991 could be heralded as the 25th anniversary of the TV show's 1966 advent. I don't know if Meyer would have celebrated the exceptionalism of Western history as Roddenberry did-- though admittedly Roddenberry had his socialist moments. But to me it's still appropriate that the original TREK cast was allowed to shine together thanks to good old-fashioned capitalism.

                

PRINCESS ROUGE (1997)

 

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

According to one IMDB review, this two-part OVA was supposed to have had six installments, but for unknown reasons PRINCESS ROUGE was interrupted and never finished. Another review asserts that the two episodes were handled by two different animation houses, and I suppose this is true, as the second part is a little more professional looking. Since ROUGE didn't derive from any prior source, its plotlines would never be resolved.

The emotional core of ROUGE is a very simple love comedy, much like the more popular OH MY GODDESS. Orphaned high-schooler Yusuke lives alone until a strange young woman literally drops into his lap. She wears an exotic costume but suffers from amnesia, remembering nothing about her background, save that her name is Rouge. Yusuke doesn't take Rouge to social services but instead invites her to live in the little shed he rents from a landlady. There's an odd moment in which Yusuke thinks that Rouge looks like his mother, though this might have been thrown in to establish his loneliness, and to motivate him to keep the pretty young thing in his personal orbit. In the course of ten narrative minutes the two young people fall for each other.

Then the "in laws" move in. Two exotically garbed women named Meige and Kaige, the latter wielding a sword, come looking for Rouge, claiming that she is their sister. They appear just as Rouge disappears, so Yusuke joins the sisters in looking for their sibling. It comes out that all three sisters were cast out of their unidentified domain by a tyrant's usurpation, and one of the tyrant's agents, female warrior Vega, has taken Rouge prisoner, keeping her in an energy-bubble. Yusuke shows his feeling for his lady-love by attacking and getting swatted aside, and Vega similarly defeats the sisters. She also reveals that all of them came from "the underworld," by which she seems to mean the Japanese afterlife, which would seem to imply that the three sisters and all their enemies are spirits of some sort, rather than denizens of some faux-medieval realm. Anyway, seeing Yusuke in trouble sparks Rouge's secret powers, so that she breaks free and kills Vega. 

The second half is much more slapsticky in tone. Once all three sisters are shacking up in Yusuke's shed, Yusuke's female classmate decides that he's doing something scandalous with the girls-- presumably because said classmate is jealous-- and she gets her brothers (I think) to beat up Yusuke. Yusuke manages to soft-soap the irate citizens by claiming the girls are cousins or something, but then Kaige (the more obstreperous sister) thinks Yusuke's making a move on Rouge, so SHE beats on Yusuke. The whole matter of whether they hearken from the Japanese underworld seems to have become irrelevant. The tyrant of that realm sends a male swordsman and some random monsters to the Earth-realm, again seeking to kidnap Rouge-- because she's the heir apparent, I suppose. The male swordsman duels Kaige, and there's an odd flashback in which the two of them are showing dancing together at court. In a confusing subtitle, when Kaige kills the guy she calls him "brother," though Rouge and Meige don't recognize him as such. I suppose it's some pet name, like using "onee-sama" figuratively rather than literally.

And so it ends with Yusuke stuck with three women in his dwelling, which actually ensures that he's not going to get any illicit action from this "harem." The only reason I grade ROUGE as "fair" is because of the unresolved "underworld" plotline, though that might have proven as average as everything else in the story.

           

STAR TREK THE FINAL FRONTIER (1989)

 

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

One might have thought that after the box office debacle of 1987's SUPERMAN IV THE QUEST FOR PEACE, Hollywood producers would have learned one lesson-- even in the short term-- that they should not allow actors to conceive story ideas unless said actors had proven histories of professional writing.

Just as QUEST was hobbled from the beginning by Christopher Reeve's idea of the Man of Steel enforcing nuclear disarmament, FRONTIER is just as compromised by director William Shatner's lamebrain notion of using a TREK movie to satirize televangelists. I'm tempted to think that none of the Paramount suits in the late eighties had any cognizance of what sort of stories had transpired in the run of the Original Series, not least "Who Mourns for Adonais," in which the Enterprise crew met an ET masquerading as one of the Greek gods. If any of them had possessed such knowledge, wouldn't one of them said to Shatner, "Let's not repeat old plot-ideas like having the TREK-heroes 'meet God.' Bad enough that they started calling the 1979 movie 'Where Nomad Has Gone Before!'"

But no one told Shatner to go back to the drawing-board; they just handed off his ramshackle notion off to journeyman writer David Loughery, and what emerged wasn't close to being any sort of commentary on televangelists' hubris, or whatever that would have looked like in the TREK-verse. The publicity attempted to sell the film on the idea that FRONTIER toyed with the possibility of the space-travelers might actually encounter the Judeo-Christian deity. Yet one didn't have to have seen a single TREK episode to know nothing like this would transpire. Even a basic knowledge of science fiction would have told anyone that metaphysically valid deities simply don't appear in the genre; they're always just alien impostures or psychic constructs. At least "Adonais" plays fair: from the first the Enterprisers don't believe that Apollo is the genuine article. And because that writer played fair, he was able to make the "false god" resonant in ways Willaim Shatner never dreamed of.

Before Shatner made his directorial deal with Paramount, the only cinematic direction he'd accomplished were episodes of T.J. HOOKER. While he may have only kibitzed on the finished script, FRONTIER has the piecemeal construction of a TV show-episode. The action starts when Sybok (Lawrence Luckinbill), apparently a terrorist of Vulcan heritage, takes three diplomats-- human, Klingon, and Romulan-- as his hostages. However, this is just a feint, so that he can lure a Federation starship into his clutches and dominate the crew with his weird "let me heal your pain" power. The Federation responds to this diplomatic emergency by sending to the site the newly reconstructed Enterprise-- though it isn't even fully functional.

Needless to say, after a very cheap-looking action-sequence, Sybok and his buddies take over the Enterprise. Sybok then reveals to Kirk his purpose: to penetrate a mysterious "barrier" at "the center of the galaxy," where, according to this illogical Vulcan's vision, they will meet some sort of "God of all people." Oh yes, and Sybok is Spock's half-brother, which merely distracts from the main theme: the risks of claiming to have revelatory experiences. The script tries to goose this static situation with some failed escape-scenes and a Klingon ship tailing the Enterprise, but it all leads to a depressingly predictable resolution: the travelers meet an alien who's just pretending to be God, Sybok dies, and all the regular characters escape.

About the only thing salvageable from this farrago is the opening scene-- before all the nonsense gets started-- wherein Kirk, Spock and McCoy are camping out in Yosemite National Park. Shatner might not be any kind of real writer, but here he does manage a good chemistry with his colleagues Nimoy and Kelley. (The latter is the only performer to contribute any decent humorous moments.) All the other regulars, though, have to get by on random bits of unimpressive business.

About the only thing Shatner accomplished here was to make STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE look a whole lot better by comparison.

  

SHINESMAN (1996)

 

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

This 2-part OVA, based on a manga I've not read, has a longer title in Japanese, seen in the illustration above. Long ago I copied a subbed copy off the International Channel, and rewatching it now confirms my recollection: it's a cute one-note premise. SHINESMAN the OVA might have been intended as a pilot for a prospective TV show, given that it reputedly introduces a character that wasn't in the manga. But (most of) the world will never know.

The premise: aliens, led by an unseen overlord named "Voice," plan an invasion of Earth. However, the aliens, led by Commander Sasaki and his aide Seki, aren't launching a military invasion, but a hostile business takeover. For reasons that I found elusive, Voice has his servitors infiltrate Earth businesses to conquer from within-- although the only business concern depicted is a kids' TV show, GREATMAN, transparently patterned after SUPER SENTAI/ POWER RANGERS. And some representative of Earth (I guess) has another corporation, Right Trading, come up with a rival team, Shinesman, consisting of six color-themed warriors who wield weapons like "explosive tie clips" and "business-card shuriken." The joke, such as it is, is that the five guys (and one girl, of course) live the lives of ordinary salarymen while waiting for their first summons to fight alien evil. (I'm not sure if the Shinesman characters are also being merchandized as TV characters at the same time.)

The original-to-OVA character is the most enjoyable element of SHINESMAN. Sasaki and Seki don't actually do very much, but Sasaki's ditzy girl cousin Shiina involves herself in taking action against the Shinesman team, leading to some modestly enjoyable TV animation-fights. While she's in disguise as an Earth-girl, Shiina also meets and falls "in like" with the Shinesman leader in his secret ID of Hiroya, and by the OVA's end she's figured out that he's also Shinesman Red.

SHINESMAN is an amusing trifle but its jokes on the commercial world make it stand out a bit from the crowd.    

   
         

ROBOCOP (2014)

 

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

I saw the 2014 ROBOCOP in the theater, but I remembered nothing about except for the "horrorshow moment" in a laboratory, when director Jose Padilha reveals how little of Alex Murphy's body is left after he's been incorporated into the figure of the iconic cyborg-cop.

Financially, I can understand any franchise-holder seeking to rework a popular concept to see if it can become more profitable. And some franchises are particularly elastic. Christopher Nolan's Batman had little in common with Tim Burton's, but both proved popular. However, the mediocre box office of this film, as well as the failure of the various TV iterations to catch fire, suggest that the original 1987 film is not overly malleable. Even that film's sequels failed to provide more than routine, unmemorable variations of the theme.

The original blended deft satire and straight adventure to tell the story of Detroit cop Alex Murphy, whose body is all but destroyed by predacious criminals and then transformed by a moneymaking company into a cyborg guardian. All of the action concerns domestic control of crime in the US, including corporate crime. Padilha's three writers, however, attempt to inject commentary on world politics by positing that the cyborg technology stems from the company OCP's attempt to monetize foreign military tech for domestic use. The film opens in Iran, showing a security drone and an American military detachment riding herd on local Iranians, only to have the drone kill an innocent when contending against suicide bombers. I don't know if the writers intentionally meant to make heroes of suicide bombers but that was the effect of their anti-military screed. The only thing I can say in favor of this take is that though the negative take on US politics does surface again, it doesn't pervade the entirety of the movie.

In the 1987 film, a junior executive of OCP spearheads the attempt to monetize the cyborg-tech in Detroit, whereas in 2014, it's the company's CEO, Sellars (Michael Keaton). Keaton's performance as the corporate greed-head is curiously downplayed, and he's something less than a compelling villain. Further, whereas in 1987 there's a major gang-lord who kills cop Murphy (Peter Weller), the criminals in the 2014 film also seem an afterthought, even the one responsible for killing 2014 Murphy (Joel Kinnman) with a car-bomb. The writers are more focused on their "satire" of conservatism, provided by a talk-show host (Samuel L Jackson) who seeks to validate Sellars' project with the public.

Curiously, once Murphy's decimated body is retooled into Robocop-- with the full knowledge and consent of Murphy's wife this time around-- OCP does its best to publicize how they revived an ordinary cop and made him a superhuman protector for Detroit. However, Murphy's partner this time plays nearly no role in Robocop's new life, and there's no subplot about the Detroit cops striking for better pay. By eliding the notion that Robocop's brain is wiped of his human memories, the writers sacrifice the potential appeal of his human selfhood, fighting back against impossible odds. 

Though the script weakens the quality of Robocop's villains, the action overall is decently staged, and Kinnaman has some good moments acting out his character's trauma. The film's cautionary attitude toward the military-industrial complex is certainly not without foundation. Yet I tend not to like cautionary tales that only work in one direction. Still, a lot of viewers probably watched ROBOCOP 2014 without noticing the political commentary, which is certainly preferable to the many superhero films loaded with bombastic preachiness. So 2014 is far from the worst remake ever executed, even if its impact on the franchise's popularity seems negligible.

              

BEN 10 (2005-07)

 

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

Though I often survey serial cartoons by their seasons, here I've decided to combine all four seasons of the original BEN 10 show into the same review. The reason is simple: there's barely any difference between an episode from Season One and one from Season Four. There are a few two-part episodes, but no sweeping arcs, and the three significant characters-- ten-year-old Ben Tennyson, his same-age cousin Gwen, and their grandpa Max-- stay the same. In fact, all four seasons are supposed to take place in one summer, where the two kids join their grandpa in his RV and tour the country. 

The expedition turns out to be much more adventurous than Grandpa expected, for at the outset Ben finds a strange device of alien origin, and when he touches it. it binds itself around his wrist like a living watch. Then aliens attack, seeking the device, an "Omnitrix," and Ben learns that he can defend himself and others by transforming into super-powerful heroes, all derived from ET-DNA. After a short period of adjustment, Ben becomes enthralled with the prospect of being a superhero, despite the protests of his irritated cousin Gwen. Grandpa Max, for his part, turns out to have inside knowledge of alien incursions on Earth, and he's often able to render critical advice to Ben on "going alien."

Though Ben and his relations contend with various hostile ETs, the series follows the template of most superhero comics, in that as soon as the superhero debuts, a coterie of super-villains springs up to become the crusader's "rogues' gallery." The eccentric Earth-crooks-- the animal-obsessed Doctor Amimo, sorcerers Hex and his niece Charmcaster. the evil clown Zombozo-- are a lot more fun than the extraterrestrial menaces, and the writer-collective behind the series, "Man of Action," frequently features crossovers of the colorful criminals.

As a gesture toward girl-fans, Gwen soon gets a power-upgrade in that she becomes a talented sorceress in her own right, giving Ben a "sidekick" to help in the fight-scenes. The most frequent jokes arise from the quarrels between Ben and Gwen, with Max playing referee, and there's a certain sameness about all three of them, even given that serial TV characters usually don't change much from season to season. I suppose the predictability of the setup helped with the show's longevity in other iterations, but I for one never found any of the Tennysons even slightly nuanced. The most subtle episode has Ben and Gwen travel to the future, when both of them are thirty-something adults. Mature Ben, called "Ben 10,000" because of all the alien powers he's mastered, seems to live in some joyless funk for reasons never disclosed, and Mature Gwen has brought him into contact with his younger self to snap Mature Ben out of his depression. However, in the only other episode taking place in this future, Ben 10,000 has become a routine well-balanced hero, and even has his own ten-year-old kid-- meaning that the writers never meant to open up any complex avenues for this simple kids' adventure series.               

CROWN OF SHADOWS (2025)

 

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

On one hand, CROWN OF SHADOWS is just another micro-budget fantasy with the usual subpar CGI-FX. On the other, it's a missed opportunity, because it's over two hours of pseudo-Tolkienian nonsense, with even less concept of Tolkien than the awful IN THE NAME OF THE KING series. The writer and director-- who have no other IMDB credits-- act at all times as if they're serving up a grand history of the fantasy-world Aberon, when in truth it's less well-designed than even your basic D&D domain. The creators cover up their lack of design with booming Gregorian music. static shots of well-costumed characters reciting portentous dialogue, and implied connections to the Lovecraft mythos of "The Old Ones." (This is signaled by an opening quote from HPL's "Call of Cthulhu," though the cosmic pessimism of that author has nothing to do with Tolkienian dynastic struggles.) There is enough fighting to qualify the film for combative status, but the performers are not very good with either emoting or fake-fighting.

There was a little potential here, though, in that CROWN concerns family quarrels over power. The previous regime is overthrown by Ginnarra (Megan Tremethick), daughter of the previous king, who perishes in a military battle. The king's death means that his son Elderon (Andrew Gourlay) is next in line for the legitimate throne, but Ginnarra seems to hold all the power. Naturally there's no attention as to how Ginnarra gathered such great armies to oppose those of her late father; all we see is the queen and her high priests making obeisances to their evil gods. I think they may be responsible for the CGI dragons, though we don't see them in combat. Most of the action is low-level, as soldiers burn up time trying to corral Elderon, or Elderon interacting with weird mystical characters. The conflict between Ginnarra and her brother doesn't catch fire till near the end, when she captures him and plans to sacrifice him to her dark lords. But she pauses to torture him first with some magic spell, and this leads to her undoing. 

CROWN is also one of the few dynastic struggles in which the script doesn't make even minor attempts to justify Ginnarra's quest for power. Was she mistreated somehow? Did she resent Elderon being next in line for the throne? Late in the film, the script introduces Ginnarra's grown son, who ends up dueling against Elderon at the end. Who's his father, and under what circumstances was the son raised? The writer doesn't even think it's important. I suppose I've seen worse cheap fantasy flicks than CROWN, but even the cruder sword-and-sorcery flicks seem to have a better sense of what they're copying.