MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological, sociological* Though the first season of BUFFY is a quantum leap in storytelling compared to the 1992 movie, the season's twelve episodes are fairly simple fare next to the involved mythology of the ensuing seasons. The mythicity never rises above fair, but none of the stories are actively poor, either. I tend to think of Season One as providing the scaffolding used by builders as they construct a more lasting edifice. WELCOME TO THE HELLMOUTH/ THE HARVEST-- Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), only tangentially based upon the character from the 1992 film, transfers to the California town of Sunnydale, accompanied by her divorced mother Joyce. The change in locations allowed creator Josh Whedon to imagine Buffy's new school, Sunnydale High, as the nexus of many supernatural phenomena, aka the Hellmouth, thus allowing "the Slayer" to take on a lot of non-vampiric menaces. That said, vampires are the menace for this two-parter, a clutch of them commanded by a road-company Nosferatu named The Master. Against these foes, Buffy is aided primarily by Xander (Nicholas Brendon) and Willow (Alyson Hannigan), who become her aides more out of friendship than from any desire to fight monsters. Buffy's middle-aged librarian/advisor Giles plays a very circumscribed role in this season, rarely doing more than rendering advice, while the character of Cordelia is merely used as an occasional comic foil. She and Buffy's potential love interest Angel (David Boreanaz) occupy something like a secondary ensemble in that they don't appear in all episodes. WITCH-- This is the first episode not to involve a vampire menace. Buffy makes what may be her only attempt to resume her cheerleading career, only to discover than some of the girls are falling victim to peculiar fates, such as going blind or losing the power to speak. All indications are that one of the cheerleaders is responsible for the curses, though there's a good twist involved regarding the witch's identity. TEACHER'S PET-- While Sunnydale residents are losing their heads to a new head-hunting menace, Xander seeks to deal with masculinity issues, not least because Buffy puts him in the "friend zone." Then new biology teacher Natalie (Musetta Vander) seems to be very interested in Xander-- or is just that she's a mantis-monster, obsessed with her unique way of "getting head?" Since the story includes a regular vampire as well, this counts as a monster- mashup. NEVER KILL A BOY ON THE FIRST DATE-- Buffy tries to have a normal date with a nice classmate named Owen, but she's forced to put him out of her life to save his. The Master plans to unleash a new vampire-menace, The Anointed One, and despite the heroes' efforts he succeeds. Unfortunately, the producers' casting of a grade-school boy in the role of the Appointed One proved to be a misstep that wasn't corrected until Season Two. THE PACK-- This time Xander's masculinity issues are aggravated by his falling in with a bad crowd, made up of teen boys infected by the spirits of hyena-shapechangers.
ANGEL-- From the character's first appearance, the characters remark that he has an "older man" appeal for Buffy, but here she finds out that he's much older than she imagined, as well as a "good vampire" dedicated to fighting evil. The thin plot involves the Master sending vamp-assassins after Buffy, which results in Angel saving her and various romantic complications. I ROBOT, YOU JANE-- It's Willow's turn to experience an unhappy romance, as she falls for a guy she met online, who just happens to be an archaic demon who got translated into the Internet. Xander shows himself unduly perturbed at Willow's budding romance, despite not being willing to date her himself. The episode introduced "techno-pagan" Jenny Calendar, who becomes a later romantic interest for Giles. THE PUPPET SHOW-- It's a minor accomplishment that this is a show featuring a snarky puppet possessed by a dead man's spirit, but he's NOT the monster of the week. The menace is less interesting than the hilarious attempt of Buffy and company to perform a scene from "Oedipus Rex" for the school talent show.
NIGHTMARES-- This time everyone at Buffy's school is besieged by horrific dreams, which may have something to do with a small boy hanging about. Though some of the dreams, like Xander's, are played for humor, others are more harrowing than any demon or vampire, since they stem from the dreamer's deepest insecurities. Buffy gets not one but two evil dreams, one centering upon her father (only seen in four episodes in the whole series), who tells Buffy's dream-self that she was responsible for his divorce from Joyce. Buffy also dreams of being infected by vampirism, which was certainly a foreshadowing of the events of the season finale. OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND-- A high-schooler named Marcie is so relentlessly ignored by the other students that she becomes literally invisible and thus is a perfect position to exact revenge on the popular crowd. One might call the preachy theme of this episode rather-- transparent. A wry ending shows Invisible Marcie being recruited by a secret agency. PROPHECY GIRL-- Buffy learns of a prophecy that she's doomed to die when the Master breaks free at last, and so she seeks to refuse the "call to action" and return to being an ordinary girl. But her desire to protect the innocent overpowers her natural self-defensiveness. The prophecy is proven half-right, when the Master overcomes the Slayer and drinks her blood, albeit without vampirizing her, and leaves her to drown to death. However, Xander and Angel find her and revive her, though I thought Xander's use of CPR to purge Buffy's lungs of water didn't exactly explain her survival of massive blood loss. Buffy recovers, confronts the Master and kills him, putting an end to the first of the show's season-long "Big Bads." This is the strongest episode of the season, and Buffy's temporary demise would become a source for further plotlines later on. One interesting touch is that Giles, who's been something less than paternal throughout the season, announces his intention to take Buffy's place in facing down the Master, forcing Buffy to knock him out to save his life. Later seasons will do a much better job depicting the father-daughter relationship of Slayer and Watcher, encouraged in part by the disappearance of Buffy's real father from her life.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*MYTHICITY: (1) *poor* (2) *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological* Here are three more of the 22-minute DTV Scooby-sodes to add to my previous review of SCOOBY DOO AND THE BEACH BEASTIE. The least of the three is SPOOKY SCARECROW. The writers don't even try to concoct a half-decent juvenile mystery, and as there are only two real candidates for the transgressor playing the role of cursed scarecrow "Corncob Clem," it's not hard to guess that it's going to be the one not voiced by celeb Wendy Malick. In addition, Clem never does anything that a man in a costume could not do, so even a kid who never saw any Scooby-Doos before this one would probably not be surprised by The Reveal.
There's not any sort of spooky mystery going on here. Mystery Inc attends some sort of non-scholastic "science fair" competition, with Fred entering one of his super-sophisticated traps. A fully adult scientist has entered a giant robot dog that has supposedly been designed for Mars exploration. (Shouldn't there be some sort of limits on the amount of money spent on these competitive exhibitions?) Some nefarious schemer reprograms the huge "Mecha-Mutt" to go on a rampage, and there's some blather about a "Space Spectre" that might be responsible. But of course it's a human villain, and there's only one real suspect. The only good part of MUTT involves Fred chasing after a cute young thing and Daphne's barely concealed jealousy. GHASTLY GOALS redeems the DTV series slightly, in part thanks to offering some well-thought-out exoticism as Mystery Inc visits Brazil during a big soccer game. For some reason several people are seeking a particular soccer ball, and one of the seekers looks like the traditional Santeria demon-god Eshu. Though the usual Reveal is heavily foreshadowed, at least Eshu's costume is a good one. Scooby, Shaggy and Velma all perform their usual routines. But this time Daphne gets to provoke jealousy in Fred when she moons over hot-guy Brazilian soccer-players, though her infatuation does not play a role in the story as such.
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological* There's so little entertainment in RETALIATION that I had less fun re-watching it (having barely remembered the first viewing) than in concocting the following theory: that these two live-action G.I. JOE feature films recapitulate the unrelated (save by content) history of the MCU phases.
From what I've read about the making of the 2009 RISE OF COBRA (which appeared one year after the debut of the MCU's breakout hit IRON MAN), the filmmakers didn't originally intend to make a close adaptation of their source material. How those original intentions would have turned out, no one can say, but some insider leaked those plans to the Internet. The makers, who in those days actually wanted to please their audience and thereby make money, reworked their existing script to work in all the usual gang of Cobra-crooks as adversaries for the heroic Joes. RISE is no classic, but it is, like the majority of the MCU's first three phases, generally decent formula-fare. In contrast, RETALIATION is like nearly everything that followed the MCU's Phase Three, stuffed with cynical grandstanding, poorly conceived spectacles, and overconfidence as to the makers' ability to make the customers line up and pay for tickets. You might think, for instance, that after the financial success of RISE, no production team would be dumb enough not to copy the essence of both the preceding film and the successful franchise-- said essence being the appeal of seeing America defended by a cadre of gonzo commandos with wacky code-names and oddball gimmicks. True, RISE focused mostly on four of the heroes (Scarlett, Ripcord, Snake Eyes and Duke) and the three main villains (The Baroness, Cobra Commander and Destro). But there were six or seven other Joes contributing to the heroic goings-on, so the sense of the franchise's original intent was preserved. Not so RETALIATION. Channing Tatum's Duke is only in the movie long enough to get killed off, as are various other Joes, thanks to a "first strike" by Zartan, who was left on the loose at the end of RISE. Most of the narrative follows three surviving Joes, none of whom were in the previous film, as they seek a means to retaliate: Flint (DJ Cotrona), Lady Jaye (Adrienne Palicki), and, perhaps most consequentially, Roadblock as played by that 300-pound gorilla Dwayne Johnson. Given how Johnson's history of spotlight-stealing negatively impacted 2022's BLACK ADAM, I think I'm justified in speculating that the script was written to play up Johnson's dubious charms at the box office. Palicki and Cotrona have almost nothing to do, as does Bruce Willis in a throwaway support-role. The other two heroes in the film's ensemble-- Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and Jinx (Elodie Yung) -- are not so sidelined, but only because they occupy a separate story-arc, in which they pursue another of Cobra's allies: the elusive Storm Shadow (Lee Byung-Hun).
Though RETALIATION is poorly paced and only a few spectacles are worth looking at, I will admit that Cobra's evil plot makes more sense than the one in RISE. This time the villains aren't unleashing a superweapon capable of destroying the world they too occupy. They've simply got their disguise-master Zartan (Arnold Vosloo) impersonating the President in order to destroy the Joes and to put Cobra in control of the world. Aside from that Storm Shadow subplot, it's almost entirely Cobra Commander's show, for the master villain leaves his former comrade Destro in prison and the fate of the reformed Baroness is never revealed. The leader does bring a minor henchman out of mothballs, Firefly (Ray Stevenson), but his only function is to have a couple of throwdowns with Johnson's Roadblock. (I almost want to say it's just "Johnson," because this role feels like almost every other part "The Rock" ever essayed.)
The only actor well-served by the script is the aforementioned Storm Shadow. The first film set up the quasi-sibling rivalry he shared with Snake Eyes and alluded to his supposed murder of his uncle/mentor, and RETALIATION does at least provide closure for that storyline. One of the few praiseworthy spectacles in the film is a bang-up ninja-battle between Snake and Shadow, concluded only when Jinx renders Shadow unconscious with knockout gas. Since Jinx is said to be Shadow's niece, I assume there was some idea of building up some drama in this conflict, but nothing is done with the subject; she gets a couple of decent fights but on the whole she's as underserved as Palicki and Cotrona. But in both films Lee Byung-Hun projects indomitable ferocity in this potentially cartoonish character, putting Johnson and his "ain't-I-a-cute-asskicker" routine to shame. In any case, though RETALIATION made decent box office, no sequel manifested, possibly because the filmmakers holding the franchise couldn't figure out what to do next. I know simple incompetence is not usually the thing that kills franchises-- certainly the MCU just keeps chugging along despite numerous failures-- but I find it pretty to think so.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological* Though I didn't get much bang out of the slam-bang antics of AVENGERS ASSEMBLE Season One, Two offers even less impact. One thing I didn't give Season One credit for was that at least the stories packed in loads of established Marvel villains to offset the repetitious menace of the Red Skull and his Cabal. This season, the Cabal is scattered, with characters like Attuma and Modok mounting individual assaults on the heroes, and Red Skull handing off his baton of villainy to Thanos. Hyperion, the road-company Superman, is joined by four other alternate-world versions of famous DC heroes, all of whom are pretty dull. The killer robot Ultron also carries over from Season One, but the focus only upon the major menaces creates a sense of sameness in the episodes. On the plus side, at least Elvish Dracula is out of the picture.
One new hero, the Scott Lang version of Ant-Man, joins the Avengers, but like the other members, he barely has any backstory, and less personality. Maybe he improves when the series introduces his fellow shrinking-partner The Wasp, but since that character will probably be based on the girl-boss from the live-action MCU, I'm not anticipating the advent.
The villains are no better. Thanos lacks the gravitas of the comic-book original or the lesser stature of the MCU version, and his hench-villains The Black Order are dull, regardless of whether they're close to the comics-originals or not. The Squadron Supreme is no better, and though I can understand why the writers dropped the dorky name given to the "Wonder Woman" doppelganger-- that of Power Princess-- the artists took a step back in giving the character an even more dorky costume. Ultron is just Ultron. Only two episodes were slightly memorable. In "Valhalla Can Wait," Loki tricks Thor and the Hulk into visiting the domain of Hela to settle their strength-quarrels, while in "Beneath the Surface," Black Widow has an above-average subsea-catfight with a female enemy of Attuma's. Oddly, this Atlantean original shares her name, Zartra, with that of a little-remembered ancestor of Namor's Atlantis. I wouldn't have credited the writers of ASSEMBLE with knowing such Marvel minutiae.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological* Like the majority of live-action film-adaptations of comics and cartoons, RISE OF COBRA is structurally (though not aesthetically) indebted to Tim Burton's 1989 BATMAN-- take a wild fantasy-scenario and add just enough allusions to real-world psychology to make the scenario seem relatively relatable as entertainment for adults. Like the 80s cartoon, COBRA is first and foremost about the heroes (the G.I. Joes) and their villains (the hordes of Cobra) chasing each other across the globe in pursuit of whatever super-weapon both sides covet. However, the script imports the sort of romantic concept one barely if ever saw in the cartoon: the trope of "the rescue of the princess from the fortress of evil," even though the princess has become one of the evildoers.
Unlike the JOE cartoons, which tend to throw their viewers into an encounter with a motley crew of weirdly codenamed commandos, the script for Stephen Sommers' COBRA gives readers unfamiliar with the concept a chance to assimilate things gradually. Two soldiers, both of whom already have the non-JOE code-names of "Duke" (Channing Tatum) and "Ripcord" (Marlon Wayans), are ambushed by the forces of Cobra while transporting a radical new set of miniature missiles. Duke recognizes the attack squad's leader "The Baroness" (Sienna Miller) as his former girlfriend Ana, just before the attackers are repelled by the forces of G.I. Joe. For debriefing purposes, Duke and Ripcord are transported to the HQ of the commandos, becoming acquainted with a half-dozen Joes, though functionally only Scarlet (Rachel Nichols) and Snake Eyes (Ray Park) sustain major subplots. With very little effort Duke and Ripcord manage to get transferred to the Joes' unit, the better for Duke to suss out how his former lover Ana became allied to a terrorist organization.
Just as efficiently, the viewers are introduced to the principal villains of the story: an arms dealer named McCullen (who will become Destro), a weird mad scientist (Cobra Commander), and the white-clad ninja Storm Shadow, who bears an ongoing grudge against his adoptive brother Snake Eyes. Two other minor Joe-villains, Zartan and Mindbender, also appear but have little to do. All three of the main villains will turn out to be implicated in the reason that Ana became the Baroness, with Destro as her lover (as in the cartoon), Storm Shadow as her sensei/teacher, and the Commander as the technical wizard responsible for brainwashing Ana. In fact, there are times that the mystery of Ana's conversion outweighs the emotional importance of the missiles' threat, which is never credible in the least. (For some vague goal of vengeance, Destro seems willing to destroy the whole world, as well as Cobra's place in it.) That said, if one can ignore such real-world exigencies, COBRA provides a good blockbuster-style wild ride. The movie does not emulate the cartoon's lack of violence by having both sides fire stun-rays at one another: everyone here uses regular firearms, aside from the two battling ninjas. That may be one reason the Joes sometimes employ battle-suits not seen in the cartoon: an invisibility costume for Scarlet, and heavy armor that boosts the speed and strength of the wearers to superheroic levels. Duke, despite wearing such a suit, is taken prisoner by Cobra, though this leads to Cobra's defeat when he's able to lead his fellow Joes to Cobra's door.
While the sibling quarrel of Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow yields some decent fights but is dramatically inert, the strange influence of the three main villains over Ana doesn't make much rational sense. Though the Baroness is a skilled fighter and leader of her troops, there doesn't seem to be any particular reason that one of the threesome-- who is also her sibling-- chose to make her into a brainwashed pawn for Cobra. But it does make them seem more devoted to villainy for its own sake, more so than the missile-menace. There's also a minor subplot in which Ripcord tries to score with Scarlet, but though it's nothing special, it's also adequate as a time-filler. No actor's given any really impressive lines to speak-- which is one of the things that makes it NOT like '89 BATMAN-- but I don't think anyone embarrassed him/herself with the meat-and-potatoes dialogue. I've certainly seen a lot of big, noisy summer blockbusters much worse than RISE OF COBRA.
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological* I held out hopes for ONE FOOT CRANE to be better than average. I've often appreciated the kung-fu roles of Lily Li, though as it happens, I've usually seen her in secondary parts. And for the first thirty minutes of CRANE, the movie makes her character of Fung a good standard avenger-type. When Fung was a small girl, her magistrate father was tasked with arresting a quartet of killers. Who did the killers kill, and why did said killers kill? No reasons are proffered, but the four murderers resent being targeted, so they show up at the magistrate's house and murder everyone there. Fung and her brother escape, though we don't find about the brother's escape until much later. Fung is taken in by a Shaolin monk or some reasonable facsimile and trained in crane-style kung fu. As an adult she decides to track down the killers and execute them. She's such a badass that when she investigates a martial arts dojo, some a-hole throws knives at her, and she bats them away so that they all impale themselves in a conveniently placed target board-- in the center, of course.
However, after various fair-to-middling fights, Fung kills the second of her quarries, but he manages to poison her. She wanders into a forest and meets a complete stanger, who gives her an antidote and takes her to a nearby farmhouse to recover. While Fung is there, the farmer there falls in love with her, though Fung's feelings toward him are ambivalent. The stranger shows up again, as does Fung's grown brother, though she has to convince the latter that they are related. I think the stranger is some sort of Chinese marshal, but not sure. Fung also becomes a lot less cool and much more emotional, though the confused script is probably to blame for the shifts in tone. The two men, who are schooled, respectively, in Mantis and Eagle styles, join with Fung's Crane-fu to take down all the villains. Oh, snd the innocent farmer dies, thus furnishing a very bathetic finish. Though some of the fights are worth watching, nothing stands out. The one "diabolical device" here appears when an attacker jumps at Fung, and she kills him by running him through with-- a spike that emerges from the bottom of her shoe? Maybe that's the real reason she learned "one foot crane." I know if I had to walk around in one shoe fitted with a collapsible spike, I might find myself using only "one foot" to get around.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological* Here's one of those very scattershot OAVs based on Marvel characters-- scattershot in this case because I doubt anyone in the customer base was longing to see a team-up of the Black Widow and the Punisher, not even one that includes some cameo-appearances of other Avengers and various ancillary (and pointless) guest stars. Actually, a better name for the project would have been "SHIELD Confidential," because the alliance between Natasha Romanof and Frank Castle comes about because the former is a loyal employee of the spy-cabal while the latter is a loner who wants no interference, by SHIELD or anyone, in his private crime-destroying crusade. Though this video was produced by the Japanese studio Madhouse-- which provides better quality animation than one sees in most Marvel OAVs-- the story came from an American author of prose and comics, Marjorie Liu, and the master trope that Liu chose to pursue was that of "by-the-book enforcer must work with loose cannon." In theory the Punisher might seem well suited to be the loose cannon in any team-up, though there are a number of narrative problems that arise from involving Castle with stories involving spycraft, numerous SF-gimmicks, or both. Liu is on even shakier ground in trying to justify using the resourceful Natasha as the rule-follower. True, as a hired gun Liu had to "follow the rules" of the MCU Bible for these characters, and since no MCU production, live-action or animated, ever defined the terms of the Black Widow's allegiance to SHIELD, Liu allows that dramatic shoe to go on hanging in mid-air.
The teamup comes about because Castle goes after an illegal arms dealer who's also being monitored by SHIELD for his connections to an evil organization called Leviathan. Nick Fury decides that since Castle mucked up their investigation, SHIELD drafts him in their crusade against Leviathan, and the Widow is assigned to keep the Punisher from getting too punitive. Castle plays along because he still wants to take down his original quarry and any of his buddies. Natasha tries to use reason and humor to shake Castle out of his monomania, but the problem there is that without the monomania, the Punisher has no identity. He's the last hero anyone should want tied into a complex espionage operation, but the Widow is stuck with him, much as Writer Liu was. The menace of Leviathan is so badly constructed that the group is responsible for two separate threats to world peace: one involving a super-soldier serum and the other some mind-control technology. The evil org's master, one "Orion," is a nothing villain, and since Natasha can't get any human reactions out of Punisher, the script works in a secondary threat: Elihas, an agent of Leviathan with whom Natasha was romantically involved. Elihas and Natasha still harbor deep feelings for each other, but it's never clear as to why Elihas faked his death and allied himself with an evil conspiracy. There's a loose implication that Elihas had a deep inferiority complex toward the Widow and wanted to become a super-soldier so that she would be proud of him-- though all this psychologizing is minimal at best. Punisher for his part wants nothing but the chance to take out more criminals-- though very briefly, he considers offing himself when he accidentally kills some innocents. But he gets over that little impulse.
I must admit that even with the lack of substantive drama, even at the level of a good action-movie, CONFIDENTIAL is never dull, for there are a lot of battles counterpointing the unlikely duo's progress until the big fight in Leviathan's sanctuary, and Black Widow gets her best, and sexiest, animated incarnation here. In contrast to the toxic feminism of the MCU, which forbids the depiction of nubile femininity, Madame Natasha looks really good. Frankly the movie would have been better focused only on her, though I did like her initial fight with Punisher, in that once they throw down, Castle shows no compunctions against shooting the Widow dead if she doesn't get out of his way. Liu's script may have been influenced by productions like CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, given that late in the film it's revealed that Fury has been less than honest with his agents-- which is a surprise only to one of the duo. But Liu doesn't make the Punisher's credo of "personal vengeance above all" resonate, and even with the revelation of Fury's skullduggery, SHIELD's more organized campaign against evil still makes much more sense in terms of the world's complexities. A last complaint about Natasha's self-involved Lover-Boy is that Liu evidently gave him the name of "Elihas Starr." In the comic books this was the regular name of a criminal named Egghead, though the MCU used the name for a different character. But neither character was anything like the one to which the name is attached here, which seems to be a pointless bit of non-continuity.
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological* The best thing about this routine B-western is the villain's use of a "diabolical device" to commit murder. While cowboy Bob Neal (played by sound-alike performer Bob Steele) is away from home, Bob's father is robbed and killed. But the killer, instead of simply shooting the father, uses a smoldering corrosive chemical in a jar to suffocate the victim. Neal and the sheriff examine the curious weapon-- to whose fumes they're also exposed-- and decide to ask local assayer Otto Zenz (William Quinn), the only guy in town who knows chemistry, to analyze the substance. They stumble across the fact that Zenz is the killer, but he escapes using the smoking chemical concoction again. Zenz doesn't go far; he hides out in some podunk town nearby, using a comical disguise to establish a new identity. (Maybe he didn't manage to get away with the dough he stole?) Neal goes looking for the killer but only stumbles across him by accident, in the process of getting accused of a separate murder of the father of your standard pretty young thing. Finally, at the climax Zenz tries to kill Neal with that smoking acid but of course he fails while the hero survives. I suppose this setup is mildly preferable to sitting through a tedious mystery about some mystery killer's true identity, but since the viewer already knows the villain's ID, the whole middle portion is a waste of time even for a B-western.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological* One online review of this movie suggested that its sheer incoherence would make DRAGON a good candidate for "so bad it's good" status. But I would say its hectic exposition is no match for the mind-bending craziness of SILVER HERMIT FROM SHAOLIN TEMPLE. Be that as it may, my main reason for seeking out this DRAGON was to see the internationally lauded dramatic actress Gong Li lending her beauty to a wuxia kung-fu film. Though her character Han-wen is the "good guy" here, I didn't think she was as important to the story as her opposite number, the villainous Chou-Shou (Brigitte Lin). The two of them are apparently disciples of a mentor named Siu, as is Chou-Shou's identical twin sister, the meek and mild Chong-Hoi (also Lin), and all of these kung-fu paragons and their enemies have mastered martial arts to the level that they can fly about and shoot power blasts. These FX-scenes are probably the second-best thing about DRAGON next to Lin and Gong, not to leave out Sharla Cheung as the comic support-character "Purple." There's a vague subplot suggesting that Han-wen has a lesbian affection for meek little Chong-Hoi, and that maybe this budding romance cheeses off Chou-shou somehow. But the main concern here is what it almost is in these stories: rival sects and their adherents ceaselessly trying one-up one another. In this case, Siu has an enemy from another sect, name of Ting, and at the outset Ting has poisoned Siu. The noble Siu is able to keep himself alive with his chi or something, though in the last third of the film he does succumb so that he can surrender his power to one of the combatants. Chong-Hoi really has little to do and apparently dies at some point (I must have nodded off), but Lin seems to be having a great time playing the avaricious Chou-Shou. Gong Li also doesn't get many dramatic beats, and in many ways director Andy Chin (reputed to be mainly a comedy guy) seems to relegate the best scenes to Cheung. The character of Purple, though subordinate, is a lighter, less extreme version of Chou-shou. She serves the evil Ting but plainly would like to sit in the catbird seat herself. On the other hand, she's forced to enlist the aid of a confused young monk (Frankie Lam) in reading her some sutras, and the monk gets mixed up in all these mystical shenanigans. Most surprisingly, Purple actually shows a certain dim non-romantic affection for the monk, and he for her, which is more character-change than anyone else gets. The story BTW was adapted from a popular novel, but there's no telling how closely Chin followed the source material.
After Siu dies, he conveniently passes on his super-powers to the most illogical vessel: the clueless monk. Ting shows up and engages everyone in power-blast combat, so Purple persuades the monk to whip up a "Dragon Ball" (heh) and fling it at the evil wizard. At first the extra energy just turns Ting into a younger, more powerful version of his aged self, but Lin and Gong team up to defeat him amid many pyrotechnics. I think Purple ends up ruling Siu's old sect, but I wouldn't swear to it. Though the Asian audiences had embraced a lot of the FX-heavy wuxia films of the 1990s, DRAGON flopped at the box office, and reputedly Gong Li regretted ever having been part of the project. Still, though I don't think either the director or his writer really "got" the appeal of this genre, one of DRAGON's best scenes is that of Gong and Lin, both clad in filmy white dresses, flying through the sky and trying to zap one another. It's not a good film, but it's hard to really hate it.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological* There's no mystery in the story of FURIOSA more profound than that of its failure at the box office. Its predecessor FURY ROAD enjoyed strong ticket sales even though there had not been a Mad Max film in theaters for the past 25 years, so even though it took director/co-scripter George Miller almost ten years of red tape to get FURIOSA funded, that amount of time doesn't seem an insuperable barrier to success.
Much of FURY ROAD's appeal was hero Max's eventual attachment to the cause of Furiosa: that of liberating imprisoned female sex-slaves from the harem of the repulsive tyrant Immortan Joe. As played by Charlize Theron, Furiosa made a major impression with her grit and determination to spirit the innocent women away to Furiosa's "promised land," even if she and Max are forced to change that plan late in the film. This is such a dynamic myth that it doesn't matter that much of the action involves driving back and forth through the Australian desert from one isolated human compound to another. In FURIOSA, we get the same back-and-forth action, but since this time Furiosa is much younger (played first by a child-actor and then by almost-twenty Anna Taylor-Joy), she's forced to shuttle between the compounds of two desert-tyrants, the earlier-seen Immortan Joe and new arrival Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Since the FURY ROAD continuity establishes that Furiosa must be present in Joe's fortress in her later life, the prequel can only offer satisfaction by making Dementus the slayer of Furiosa's mother, so that the movie is fundamentally a revenge-tale.
The big narrative problem for FURIOSA, and the reason I think it didn't pay off, is that this time out, Miller's forced to focus on the subcultures of the two tyrants, with the flamboyant, almost Shakespearean Dementus getting much more attention than the rather flat malevolence of Joe. I think Miller may have meant Dementus to incarnate the penchant of males to exhibit more violent and domineering tendencies than are readily apparent in females. However, even in the conclusion where Furiosa gets her vengeance, he doesn't succeed in making Furiosa the incarnation of femaleness, She certainly comes closer to some such status than the toxic feminism seen in the Marvel films. But in the end, Miller's reach simply exceeded his grasp.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological* This movie is ostensibly based on the 1960s board game, which to persons of a certain age, remains immortalized by its catchphrase "You sank my battleship". BATTLESHIP's scenario of Earth's naval battleships fighting an alien invasion did not score at the box office, yet for various reasons, next year's PACIFIC RIM from a not dissimilar plotline, but substituting manga-style mecha in place of naval vessels.
The two "military-men-vs.-aliens" flicks also have in common the use of that venerable trope: "self-centered potential hero learns to serve the greater good." In RIM the protagonist loses his brother early in the film and has to form a bond to a new mecha-partner so that he can save the world. In BATTLESHIP, main hero Alex (Taylor Kitsch) acts up so much that his square-citizen brother Stone (Alexander Sarsgaard) forces Alex to join the navy to escape prison. One doesn't have to have seen even one war-film to guess that when the main conflict starts, Stone will be the sacrificial goat whose death helps motivate Alex to shape up and repel alien hordes. 
Though I recognize that there's little in BATTLESHIP that isn't derivative of other films, I liked this movie more than PACIFIC RIM, or, for that matter, the nineties ET-effort INDEPENDENCE DAY. The aliens themselves are largely standard heavies, but I did like the fact that they're so powerful, they don't bother sending the equivalent of shock troops. All we see are five huge spaceships (and some of their occupants), which descend to the humans' world to set up a communications array, paving the way for a titanic attack force. But their incursion happens to coincide with a series of battleship war games-- usually of ships from all over the world, but here limited just to Americans and Japanese participants. These happy few are called upon to undermine the invasion by taking out the task force. 
It's hard for me to say why the gung-ho militarism works better here than in many comparable projects. Certainly none of the subplots are distinctive, and the acting (including that of pop singer Rihanna) is never more than decent. Yet the best subplot serves as a reminder of military sacrifice for a greater cause. The character of Lt. Col, Canales, played by real-life double amputee Gregory Gadson (who bears the same real-life rank), provides such a reminder. Whereas starring character Alex has to take on the hero's role after losing his brother, Canales has already lost both his legs and much of his will to live prior to the invasion. Repelling the evil extraterrestrials is a baptism of fire for both characters, though they never meet, and the contrast between newbie and old hand gives BATTLESHIP a little more vraisemblance than one usually finds in such big-budget spectacles.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological* As I stated earlier, I've never read any version of JOURNEY TO THE WEST, the 16th-century novel on which this film and its two predecessors were based. According to Wiki, much of the latter half of the book concerns the episodic adventures of the traveling monk Tang Shangzan and his supernatural helpers, and one of those episodes dealt with the travelers entering a "land of women," where Tang, Wukong, Baije and Wujing, being males, are not welcome. Seven years have passed since the third installment in the series of adaptations, so there's a fair chance that KING 3 will be director Soi Cheang's conclusion to the series.
Whatever the story from the 16th-century novel might be like, the Chinese/Hong Kong film industry has a strong history of adapting older works for the purposes of romantic fantasy. On the face of things, the overall mission of Monk Tang-- to acquire Buddhist sutras in order to spread enlightenment throughout China-- does not suggest any romantic story possibilities. Cheang may have solved that problem by asking a "last temptation" sort of question: what if the selfless representative of a religious movement becomes beguiled by the possibility of a normal life with love and sex?" Thus, in this version, as soon as the four males meet the (apparently nameless) Queen of Womanland (Liying Zhao), sparks immediately fly between Tang and the Queen, who's never seen a man before and was birthed by her mother via magical parthenogenesis. To complicate things even further, there's a prophecy stating that the advent of males to Womanland will spell the nation's doom. (Note: despite the many lissome ladies in the story, there are never any full-fledged female-led battles here, though it's clear that many of the girls are capable, as when one of them kicks Yujing's butt at arm-wrestling.)
One narrative weakness of KING 3 is that unlike the previous two films, there's no strong villain driving the story. There's some sort of river god (or goddess, since "he" sometimes looks female) who forced the travelers into this hostile domain, and maybe the god's keeping them from leaving, thus increasing the chances that the more martial maidens will execute the infidels-- which they try to do, on one occasion, only to be saved by the Queen's intervention. I think the river-god was spurned by the Queen's mother in order to protect Womanland, which makes it more poignant when the young Queen considers leaving everything behind to be with Tang. The actor playing Tang has to thread a narrow line: showing absolute fidelity to his religious priorities while being mightily tempted by his connection to the only woman who will ever be in his life.
Though KING 3 was probably less expensive than the previous movies, it still looks good, and the humor is far more controlled than one sees in most Chinese comedies. For instance, given the lack of much villainy going on, Wukong, Baije and Wujing don't have much to do, except for an extended joke in which some magic makes Baije, Wujing and Tang all pregnant, which affords the ladies much amusement. Wukong has to find another spell to "abort" the unwanted pregnancies, but even here, Cheang keeps things much less goony than one would expect from any comedy dealing with pregnant males. Thanks to the talents of the actors, I enjoyed the interactions of Tang and the Queen even knowing that theirs was a "love that could never be." Both characters sacrifice temporal love for a higher form, which accords well enough with the overall themes of the series. That said, I didn't think KING 3 went the extra mile in showing this irresolvable human conflict, in contrast, say, to the 2011 romantic fantasy SORCERER AND THE WHITE SNAKE.
