TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES (2003)

 

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

The creators behind RISE OF THE MACHINES-- director Jonathan Mostow and three writers-- had the very unenviable task of following up the two Cameron movies. To be sure, Cameron himself considered working on a third movie, but no deal materialized, though he advised Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign up if he liked the script. 

Certainly there was nothing wrong in reworking the ending of TERMINATOR 2 to make room for a new storyline, since Cameron had rewritten the ending of the first TERMINATOR to make room for the sequel. My understanding is that after RISE, most iterations referenced only the Cameron movies as "canon." 

RISE takes place ten years after the events of T2, and arguably T2 casts a long shadow over RISE. The plot re-uses the basic idea of two Terminators squaring off, one seeking to kill John Connor, future savior of humanity, and the other seeking to protect him. In both movies the protecting cyborg is of the same model that sought to kill Sarah Connor in the first movie (all said cyborgs being played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), but both protectors had been re-programmed to counter an assassin sent by the intelligent computer system Skynet. RISE copies T2's idea that the killing-droid can change its shape due to being made of liquid metal (To be sure, in the first version of RISE's story, the murder-robot had a different set of powers.) This time, instead of John teaming up with his mother Sarah and the protector-cyborg, this time John (Nick Stahl) and the Schwarze-cyborg team up with Kate Brewster (Clair Danes). John, who's remained off the grid since the events of T2, is rather surprised to learn from the cyborg that Kate, a woman he only knew from high school, is his future wife. (John does have an amusing line after seeing Kate shoot down a robot attacker, saying that she reminds him of his mother.)

I think the script delivers lots of good skull-bursting violence, and some of the scenarios are as good as Cameron's best. Like the other films RISE is primarily a chase film, but it puts together a good "third act" when the Terminator reveals that Kate's father, a military man, is involved in the implementation of Skynet. Where RISE dwindles in comparison to the Cameron films is that the character interaction is not as rich. Stahl and Danes have good chemistry, but their arc isn't as strong as the reconciliation between John and his mother (who has passed away prior to the film proper). As for the third Schwarze-cyborg, "he" of course has none of the emotional bond thst the second one, destroyed at the end of T2, sustained with John. Still, Schwarzenegger still imbues the mechanical man with touches of humanity. This Terminator even possesses a touch of existential angst. He doesn't literally care about either John or Kate, but he feels that if he fails in his protective mission, his existence will become meaningless.

The FX-artists succeed reasonably well with all the tricks they give the T-X kill-droid (Kristanna Loken), but this automated assassin never becomes as iconic as the Robert Patrick version. Loken can do all the blank-faced expressions that Patrick could do, but the script didn't give her any comparable moments of quasi-humanity. Since it sounds as if the earliest script focused upon a female assassin, I wondered if this too came about as a reaction to T2. After all, T2 emphasizes how the assassin can unleash many powers to compensate for the superior size of the Schwarze-cyborg. So why couldn't a female assassin also outclass another bulky-bodied warrior, given that Patrick proved that "size did not matter?"  

THE BATMAN VS. DRACULA (2005)

 

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

I don't remember getting much out of the 2004-2008 animated series THE BATMAN, but it would be interesting to re-watch it some day, now that it's not nearly so overshadowed by the nineties series. I recall mildly liking this DTV film, though, and I think it's more rewarding a second time around. 

One of the better aspects of VS. is the romance-subplot between Bruce Wayne and Vicky Vale. According to IMDB, the lady reporter -- a Golden Age Bat-romance given greater visibility by the 1989 live-action movie-- did not appear in any of the episodes of the regular series. In this DTV, she and Bruce seem to have been acquainted for some time and may have even dated. Rather like the Vicky of the movie, the heroine is more interested in Bruce Wayne than in his masked alter ego, and at one point, while looking at an old article on Young Bruce's bereavement, she comes just this close to figuring things out. It's a much more soulful moment than the comics character ever attained.

Of course, the dust-up between the Gotham Guardian and the Lord of Vampires is the main focus. Yet the subplot of Batman's inability to have a normal life-- something faithful Alfred comments on more than once-- serves as a counterpoint to the hero's dedication to serve as a costumed super-dad to the entire city of Gotham. I'm not wild about the visual design of either Batman or Bruce Wayne, but the script does credit to the overall mythos of the crusader.

The visual design of Dracula is-- okay. He looks like a cadaverous version of Chris Lee, but with more angular features, but like the novel-version he possesses a wider variety of powers than the Hammer Dracula. He is, like some of the movie versions, unable to move about in daytime, but he enlists two of Batman's most prominent villains as his servitors. The Joker gets literally vampirized, meaning that before the movie's over Batman must find a vampirism-cure to return the Clown Prince back to his normal fiendishness. The other servant, the Penguin, functions more as a Renfield-type pawn, and provides some needed humor amidst all the posturing of the two bat-adversaries. 

In an interesting rewrite of the Dracula legend, this version of the Count was married to Carmilla Karnstein, a female vampire in Sheridan LeFanu's CARMILLA, a novel which debuted a little over thirty years before Bram Stoker's famous work. One guess what current Gotham resident just happens to resemble the late Carmilla.

Given that Batman is physically outclassed by his supernatural foe, he's able to use an assortment of quasi-scientific weapons, as well as traditional lore, to defeat the monster. It's a strong, lively end-fight, and if I get around to re-watching the series I'll be curious how the regular episodes handle their fight choreography-- very different from BATS, but with an equal appeal.

SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE (2012)

 

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

Before coming across the DTV movie, I'd never heard of the DC hero-team called "The Elite." The characters debuted in one of the Superman comics-titles, and some of them later migrated to a title called JUSTICE LEAGUE ELITE, into which I also never delved. When I saw a commentary that The Elite were meant to be DC's take on the popular Wildstorm group The Authority, I assumed that the characters by Joe Kelly-- who also scripted the DTV-- were meant to carry the same vibe of hip anomie.

Instead, to my happy surprise, SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE turned the usual "hipper than thou" narrative on its head. Said narrative has been brewing in the comics world since the so-called "British Invasion" of the eighties (which included both the writer and artist who created THE AUTHORITY), and its usual pattern was to make fun of the antiseptic ideals of Silver Age superheroes who never killed and refused to involve themselves in political conflicts. (I say "Silver Age" because the Golden Age originals weren't quite so above-it-all.) The Authority in particular was a group of raffish heroes out to remake the world as they wanted it to be.

I expected that SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE would follow that pattern, and in Kelly's DVD commentary he even talks about how much he enjoyed creating the disreputable personalities of the five Elite-members, though he admits that he toned their activities down in comparison to their comics-debut. To my surprise, ELITE turned the original pattern on its head.

Superman and his girl-reporter girlfriend-- who's in on his double ID in this iteration-- are tolerating the many disruptions characteristic of Metropolis, such as the rampage of a long-time malefactor, The Atomic Skull. On the international scene, violence is on the rise between neighboring nations Bialya and Pokolistan, and Superman intervenes when the latter country unleashes a number of huge bio-engineered monsters upon Bialyan soldiers. The Man of Steel receives aid from the four members of the Elite: Coldcast, Menagerie, The Hat, and Manchester Black, the leader. The first three characters are of minimal importance to the plot, inasmuch as the focus is upon the philosophical disagreement between Manchester Black and the spawn of Smallville.

Manchester is in many ways a typical anomie-hero: he was badly treated in his youth, and his vigilantism is motivated by a spirit of revenge. He often makes fun of Superman's supposed naivete, and when he and his fellows decide that they are going to become a supreme "authority" over the governments of Earth, it appears that Superman will simply have to slug it out with them to prove who's in the right.

Without spoiling the ending, the Man of Steel is for once allowed to use strategy in dealing with his opponents. And his strategy includes a hoax worthy of the best of Silver Age Superman's devious plots, but with much more impact. Though Manchester and his freaky friends are colorful and lively, the most memorable scenes in ELITE depict Superman apparently won over to the Elite's philosophy of "the end justifies the means."

Despite Manchester's defeat both in this DTV and in his comics-appearance, the character got a revival of sorts during the 2019-2020 season of SUPERGIRL. Given the Progressive focus of that series during the later years, it's not surprising that the writers had the stupidity to depict the vigilante as a righteous hero.

SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY (2018)

 

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

Just as the stand-alone movie ROGUE ONE came out between Parts 1 and 2 of the Sequel Trilogy, the second and last standalone appeared between Parts 2 and 3. But unlike ROGUE, SOLO flopped, becoming notorious as the first STAR WARS film to lose money.

I'd very much like to believe the prevalent fan-theory that Rian Johnson's equally bad LAST JEDI damaged the SW brand so badly that audiences turned away from SOLO. But that notion wouldn't accord with the fact that RISE OF SKYWALKER, just a year later, made almost three times its budget-- though that was an underperformance compared to JEDI, which made four times its budget before negative reaction set in. 

I'm sure the Kathleen Kennedy regime did nothing to improve Han Solo's status by killing off the character in FORCE AWAKENS. The bean-counters were perhaps impatient to eject a character who could only be played by the high-ticket Harrison Ford, but it's certainly possible that doing so diminished the heroic dimensions of said character. That said, SOLO also had other problems.

The original script was commissioned, like the script for ROGUE ONE, by George Lucas before he sold the franchise to Disney-- though there wasn't a lot of time between the SOLO commission and the franchise-sale. Lawrence Kashdan, celebrated for his earlier contributions to the SW saga, started the script but then turned it over to his son John-- though I surmise that the basic ideas were all assembled by the time of the torch-passing.

The real fault of SOLO-- and I felt this in my theatrical viewing as well as my recent re-watch-- is that it gave audiences a "space western" with too little emphasis on the "space" part. Possibly the Kashdans thought that, because Han Solo was supposed to be a charming rogue, they ought to follow the example of the "spaghetti westerns" from the sixties and seventies. The heroes of those European oaters were almost entirely mercenary, doing good only incidentally if at all. 

Of course, Han Solo wasn't meant to be quite that dark. All the minutiae about his earlier career gleaned from the original trilogy-- his meetings with Chewbacca and Lando, his acquisition of the Millennium Falcon, and even the Kessel Run-- are on display here, and all the details are meant to prefigure Han's later conversion to the forces of altruism. But though the script constructs a lot of action set-pieces, they prove even more hollow than those of LAST JEDI.

As played by Alden Ehrenreich, Han is a rogue without demonstrable charm. On his homeworld he and girlfriend Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) break away from a gang, but only Han escapes Correlia while Qi'ra is captured by the occupying Stormtroopers. In quick order, Han joins the military, leaves the military, joins a criminal gang, fails to steal a supply of valuable coaxium, and finally undertakes a larger heist to compensate gang-leader Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany). Oh, and Dryden's lieutenant is none other than the long missing Qi'ra, so now there's suspense about whether she'll remain loyal to Vos or switch back to her former boyfriend.

I imagine that viewers in the right mood may have been okay with all these pedestrian twists and turns. But I also think it likely that the movie was so ordinary that it never generated any good word-of-mouth. More oddly, SOLO is the least colorful STAR WARS film. Somehow, director Ron Howard and his team managed to make SOLO look much like Zach Snyder's MAN OF STEEL. It's not that bright colors don't exist, but that they're all muted by lots of black and brown hues. And with the exception of Woody Harrelson as Han's sort-of mentor, none of the performers manage to put across anything but very basic acting. The best thing about SOLO is that its failure may have spared audiences more botched "solo" efforts from the regime of Kathleen Kennedy.

THE NEW ADVENTURES OF BATMAN (1977)

 

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

It's tough to find much to say about these 16 mediocre Filmation cartoons, in marked contrast to my review of the 17 stories the same company did in 1968, also starring Batman, Robin, and Batgirl and featuring many of the well-known Bat-villains. I'm sure Filmation re-used various drawings from the 1968 series in this one, but I wouldn't have minded that, had the second cartoon emulated some of the clever writing as well. Further, I mentioned that I liked a lot of the 1968 voicework. But the 1977 show showed its poverty of imagination by having the same fellow, one Lennie Weinrib, execute almost all of the villain-voices. True, Adam West and Burt Ward were hired to re-enact Batman and Robin for the first time since the live-action show ended in 1968. But their participation added little, because the scripts were so incredibly pedestrian. Even the zany third season of the live-action show gave the Dynamic Duo more good lines to utter.

The show is notable, or notorious, for reviving the DC character Bat-Mite, an extra-dimensional imp. He wore a Bat-costume and strove to be a hero like his idol but proved generally incompetent. He'd been gone from the comics for ten years, since Bat-Mite's sort of humor was perceived as childish by long-time fans of Batman comics. But Filmation, who were going after little kid-viewers, never met a goofy mascot the company didn't like. And though the comics-version isn't very good either, his main appeal was creating chaos with his magical abilities. This Bat-Mite can barely do anything but very minor feats, and worse, for five or six episodes he actually uses a terrible catchphrase: "I was only trying to help!" I'm tempted to think that the deliberately bad catchphrase used by child-actress Baby Doll in an episode of BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES-- "I didn't mean to!"--might have been inspired by this real mediocrity.

The classic villains are poorly executed, and the new villains are all worthless, with one slight exception. Keeping current with the media fascination with "moon rocks" brought to Earth by 1970s space ventures, an astronaut (the show's only significant Black character) becomes physically and mentally altered by radiation. He begins transforming into the crazed Moonman and seeks to avenge the plundering of the lunar orb by causing the moon to crash into Earth. In the last three episodes of the series, the original Bat-Mite concept  -- that of an imp with near-illimitable magic powers-- gets funneled into Zarbor, a native of Bat-Mite's dimension who can perform all sorts of miracles. He enlists the help of four Bat-villains-- Catwoman, Clayface, Joker and Penguin-- for some dastardly plan in the show's only two-part story-- and then he gets his own episode as the series wraps up.

I suppose the sociological significance of the teleseries is that it was produced at the height of the "anti-violence" crusade in children's cartoons. In my review of the 1968 cartoon I noted that Batman and Robin made free with their fists while Batgirl didn't get much fight-action. But all three heroes are "neutered" of their violent aspects in the 1977 show, and the very minimal fighting here is all done with gimmicks. But one might say that Batgirl still gets the short end of the stick, since Bat-Mite constantly crushes on Batgirl in between his assorted screwups. 

SUPERMAN UNBOUND (2013)

 

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

I'd seen this DTV film once before, but before giving UNBOUND a re-watch, I read Geoff Jones' five-issue arc of ACTION COMICS on which the movie was based. My primary observation is that UNBOUND is one of the closest adaptations I've seen in a DTV film, with the only major discrepancy being that in the DTV, Superman briefly gets stuck in Kandor by his nemesis Brainiac.

The story is a decent if unexceptional take on the classic Brainiac mythos, with the exception that in the continuity of the 2010s, Supergirl experienced the android's rampage on Krypton some time before she was sent to Earth to seek out her super-cousin. The script also plays up the fact that this Brainiac is a computer intelligence not limited to any particular android body. In the reality of this stand-alone DTV, Superman has encountered the human computer before, but this tale is designed to give a definitive take on Brainiac's symbolic nature. In brief, rather than simply being a passionless collector of scientific knowledge who makes whole worlds his specimens, this Brainiac is said-- twice-- to be a "coward," unable to deal with the chaos of real life. Whether this is meant to be a jab at the reductive version of science is not made clear.

Though Superman is the star, Lois Lane and Supergirl both get hefty supporting roles, while of the other Daily Planet staff, obnoxious jock Steve Lombard enjoys considerable attention. A comic-book subplot involving Clark Kent's adoptive parents is reduced to just a few scenes. The Superman-Lois relationship is milked for acceptable melodrama, though the Superman-Supergirl one is underwhelming.

The film's greatest asset is its strong action-scenes as directed by James Tucker. Still, there really doesn't seem to be anything monumental enough to justify calling it "unbound" a la the archaic play by Aeschylus.

THE KIILLER IS ONE OF 13 (1973)

 

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

Paul Naschy must have got some satisfaction from his two previous collaborations with director Javier Aguirre, because he consented to appear in this Spanish film in what amounts to a glorified cameo; a butler on the estate where a bunch of killings take place-- eventually.

The star here, as in most such stories, is the mystery killer, to whom Aguirre gives one minimal "giallo" characteristic, that of wearing black gloves. But KILLER is not structured like any of the famous giallos, nor like the contributing influence of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None." 

Rich widow Lisa Mandel (Patty Shepard) invites twelve acquaintances of her late husband to a party at her estate. Her purpose in so doing is to reveal that she suspects all of them of having covertly arranged for the death of Lisa's husband. However, once she reveals this purpose to her confused guests, none of them decide to leave. In many comparable "house of death" movies, there's some reason for all the potential victims to stay on the premises. But since co-scripter Aguirre couldn't come up with any such motives, he simply holds off on killing anyone for the first hour of the film.

So the first hour is mostly talking heads dialogue, with a few brief sex-scenes or scenes of husbands accusing their hot wives of wanting to get sexed up at this party. One might think Aguirre would use all the conversational scenes to establish clues that will help the audience identify the mystery murderer. Instead, what the director puts out there is a lot of soap opera emotion that doesn't contribute to either plot or characterization. Only two characters establish a little tension as to what they might do next: Lisa's aunt Bertha (Trini Alonso), who mentally dominates her grown son Francis (Eusebio Poncela). Bertha's dialogue states that she thinks Francis constantly chases after "low" women, and this oppressive dynamic could have Oedipal psychological connotations-- except that Bertha does want Francis to romance his cousin Lisa, because Lisa has money.

When the killings begin-- with minimal gore and no imaginative setups-- the guests still don't simply flee the mansion, as they're fully able to do. The resolution of the "mystery" is nothing special, though it does involve a perilous psycho wearing the aforementioned black gloves. The effect is so underwhelming that I barely give KILLER any credit for assembling a quantity of gorgeous women, including Shepard, Dianik Zurakowska, and Carmen Maura.