SPY KIDS: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD (2011)

 

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

Robert Rodriguez's attempt to reboot the SPY KIDS franchise eight years later was not a box-office success, but it's the only one I mildly liked. It's not something I would have watched again except for purposes of review, but it does exemplify what I said in the previous SK review: that the writer-director finally did learn the difference between "stupid-wacky" and "clever-wacky."

The opening setup for SK4 alone is far more inventive than anything in the other films, suggesting to me that Rodriguez managed to improve his talent for the absurd in movies like ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO and the first SIN CITY movie. This time the mother of the eponymous kids-- specifically, "step-kids"-- gets equal time, as embodied by lady spy Marissa (Jessica Alba, reunited with the director after both SIN CITY and MACHETE). Marissa is the hitherto-unmentioned sister of Gregorio Cortez, and thus the aunt of Carmen and Juni (who both make minor crossover appearances to support the new franchise). And this time Marissa keeps her spy-dentity secret from both her husband (Joel McHale) and Rebecca and Cecil, his kids by his first (and deceased) wife. Marissa is first seen capturing a super-villain named "Tick Tock" even though she has to endure labor pains while driving a super-fast car and battling henchmen.

A year later, Marissa has stepped down from her duties in order to raise her toddler, as well as trying, not successfully, to bond with her stepchildren. Her hubby, just to add to the faux-irony, is a TV "spy-hunter," who of course has no idea he lives with a secret agent woman. Then time begins to run backward, albeit in slow increments. A new villain, The Timekeeper, has unleashed a secret doomsday weapon, though the genesis of the time-stopping device is muddled at best.  

The Timekeeper's forces attack Marissa's house for some doodad, and this provides the justification for Cecil and Rebecca to learn that they are "step-spy-kids." After various twists and turns, it's up to Marissa, her three kids and the original (now twenty-something) heroes to foil the Timekeeper. Oh, and they have a robot dog voiced by Ricky Gervais, and yes, Rodriguez works in another cameo for Danny Trejo. The director's design sense is no better than it ever was, and the two new kids are no better or worse than the originals. But both the humor and the pacing is better overall. Alexa Vega gets to fight in one scene, but Alba has more presence in her two scenes. The Timekeeper has a better than average motive for his destructive actions. though calling him the best villain in the series is faint praise.          

SPY KIDS 3D: GAME OVER (2003)

 

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

Robert Rodriguez meant this to be the final flick in the SPY KIDS series. I said before that he must have known he couldn't keep the franchise going as the two main actors aged out of their roles, but what he cobbled together for his finale was even less compelling than the first two films in the series.

I have dim memories of having seen part of this movie in a theater, sans 3D glasses-- and since I can't believe I would have paid even Dollar Movie prices to see this, I must have "theater-jumped," possibly to see what Sly Stallone was doing in a particularly- insipid kiddie flick. I mention this to say that I did not experience the movie's 3D effects, though I've read that they were not well-regarded.

This time Rodriguez discards all attempts to ground things even in "superspy reality." A super-villain named the Toymaker (Stallone) has been incarcerated in the real world, possibly thanks to the efforts of Valentin (Ricardo Montalban), grandfather of Carmen and Juni. But the evildoer has constructed a virtual game that has some capacity to take over everyone's 's minds, so the OSS sent Carmen Cortez's virtual self into the game to investigate. Carmen disappears, so the OSS appeals to her brother Juni-- who left the agency for contrived reasons-- to come back and find his sister, and to save the planet. After a handful of VR adventures, VR-Juni gets a lifeline to the real world for one assistant, and he calls up Valentin-- who, though wheelchair-bound in the real world, can become a virtual superhero in cyberspace. Then Juni and Valentin have various adventures, find Carmen halfway through the movie, and Valentin confronts the Toymaker. who is responsible for Valentin losing his legs. Will Grandpa take bloody vengeance upon the Toymaker? Yeah, rhetorical question.

The difficulty of all three of the original three movies is that Rodriguez thinks he's being "clever-wacky" when he's really being "stupid-wacky," and plainly he didn't know the difference. Since he made his film debut in 1992, he'd never done a full-fledged comedy, and his lack of ability to script a good one shows. He also was overly indulgent to performers he liked. While Stallone was nominated for a Razzie due to his mugging performance, actors like Sabara and Montalban were worse, delivering their dopey dialogue with no charm whatever. Gugino, Banderas, Marin and Trejo are barely in the movie. But at least Rodriguez could justify bringing them into the chaos, whereas it's obvious he just included other characters from the first two films because he liked them and/or the actors.

However, something good (in the view of this not-kid viewer) finally came of this tedious, cringe-worthy franchise-- as I'll address in the next review.  

    

SPY KIDS 2 (2002)

 

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

Robert Rodriguez didn't let any grass grow under his feet once the first SPY KIDS made bank: the next one came out the next year. Apart from striking while the iron was hot, the producer/director/writer faced a certain limitation as to how long his central characters could fill the role as "kids." 

Plot-wise ISLAND OF LOST DREAMS is more of the same as #1, even to sending Carmen and Juni Cortez to an island full of weird things. (In interviews Rodriguez cited Harryhausen as an inspiration, but Roidriguez would have to work much harder to come close to Harryhausen's unique charm.) I did think the visuals looked more vivid than they did in the first film, particularly in an opening carnival scene, and I assumed the director had spent more money. Instead, cost-conscious Robert made ISLAND for the same money but reached out to startup effects-houses. This resulted in the carnival-ride "The Juggler," a completely improbable device that throws its riders (encased within compartments) into the air like juggling-balls. I'll at least remember that visual better than all the CGI monsters on the lost-dream island.

ISLAND moves faster thanks to having dispensed with the superficial setup of the first film, and goes the extra mile by claiming that, in the space of a year, Carmen and Juni so impressed the OSS that now the agency not only employs other spy kids but have also instituted a "Spy Kid of the Year" tradition. Though this is even sillier than the Juggler-ride, it gives the mediocre kid-heroes a pair of age-appropriate professional opponents, Gary and Gerti Giggles-- though I deduct points for using the name "Giggles" for characters who are not specifically humorous. Gerti (Emily Osment) is a pre-teen like Juni, while Gary (Matt O'Leary) is in the middle-teen range of Carmen, and becomes her first crush as well as a professional rival. When it comes out that the two rival spy-kids are implicated in the world-conquest plans of their father (Mike Judge in an underwritten villain-role), Carmen has one funny line: "I think I can change him" (the boy, not his dad). But as performers I still found Vega and Sabara charmless.

This time, Vega is the only "fighting female" in the house-- albeit only briefly-- because her mom and dad, as played by Gugino and Banderas, are stuck in a tedious side-story, where the mother's parents (Holland Taylor and Ricardo Montalban) tag along and interfere with the parents' efforts to rescue their kids. Rodriguez had already shown in the first movie his tendency to load the series with performers just because he liked them (Danny Trejo, Cheech Marin), and as memory serves, the third flick in the series gets even worse in that department.          

SPY KIDS (2001)

 

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

I'm going to try reviewing all four films in this franchise, but they're going to be short reviews because this series is SO not aimed at me. In fact, I can't say that it would have been my kind of thing had I been born a Millennial. I'm sure I liked a fair amount of ephemeral junk in my pre-adolescent years, and on the whole I like movies about superspies better than movies about real, mundane spies. And I can just barely tolerate flicks starring high-schoolers as covert operatives. But somehow I think that even when I myself was a middle-schooler, middle-school spies would have been a bridge too far.

The biggest flaw of the first SPY KIDS is that, even though writer-director Robert Rodriguez was going for what he described as a blend of James Bond and Willy Wonka, the first half of the first KIDS takes too much time trying to lend verisimilitude to the goofy concept. Gregorio and Ingrid Cortez are retired superspies who seem to have a flawless life, except for the fact that their middle-schoolers don't know anything of their heroic pasts. But I found that during the setup I thought adult actors Banderas and Gugino had far better chemistry than the two destined "spy kids," Carmen (Alexa Vega, 13) and Juni (Daryl Sabara, 9). The kid-performers weren't terrible, but they also weren't overly charismatic.

The plot is routine. Gregorio and Ingrid come out of retirement to face a threat of a kids' show performer who has invented hordes of killer robots, mostly with the faces of famous children-- as well as both Carmen and Juni, for some reason. The wacky Wonka-esque inventor Floop (a mug-happy Alan Cumming) is really more thoughtless than fiendish, so Rodriguez has to introduce three more villainous types to compensate, played by Robert Patrick, Teri Hatcher and Tony Shahloub. The action is routine too, and the only time the two adult spies get to fight, Rodriquez cuts away from the action--even though he revels in a long sequence of the two kids battling their robot doubles. 

Obviously, the film was successful, so it reached its target audience. I can only say that despite the director's passion for children's films, I've yet to see one I thought really good. Said passion does make me wonder what sort of kid-vids he liked as a youngling, though.         

KUNG FU PANDA 3 (2016)

 

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

Not surprisingly, the simple PANDA formula began to show some cracks in its facade by the third film. No #3 is still a reasonably entertaining variation on that simple theme, but it helps not to look too hard at some things.

This time the main villain is tied not to Po or to Shifu but the turtle Oogwai, who in the first film named Po as the Dragon Warrior and then ascended to another spiritual plane. In PANDA 3 we learn that all is not peaceful on that higher plane, for Oogwai encounters an old enemy, General Kai (a yak), whom Oogwai consigned to the spirit world for his crimes. (I guess for small tyke-viewers, "sent to the spirit world" sounds less grievous than "killed.") Kai was exiled because he'd learned the technique of stealing "chi" from other masters. But living in the spirit-world has done nothing to cool Kai's conquering temperament, and he's already stolen a lot of chi from other ascended masters when he crosses paths with Oogwai. Kai defeats Oogwai and steals enough chi to re-enter the mortal world-- though Oogwai predicts that the Dragon Warrior shall defeat Kai's evil.

By total coincidence, Shifu decides to retire from teaching martial arts, and he appoints Po as the new teacher to students who know more than Po does. Hijinks ensue, and for good measure Shifu also informs the panda that having achieved inner peace (in the second film) is not enough; that his next step must be mastering the power of chi-manipulation. 

On top of that, Po finally meets Li, the birth-father he never knew, and Ping, who regards himself as Po's real father, seethes with jealousy of Po's new dad. Po also has an excuse to hang out with Li in that Li claims that he and his panda-tribe are masters of chi, so they can complete the next stage of Po's training. However, Li actually doesn't possess the skill, and his excuse for lying stands as one of the most cockamamie in cinematic history-- not least because he knows that General Kai will eventually cross chi-swords with Po, which could result in the death of Li's cherished son.

Perhaps worse than all this plotting-by-convenience is that none of the pandas Po meets are slightly memorable as characters, including Li. The pandas were all tiresome and made me wish for more scenes devoted to the Furious Five, who were simple comedy-types that still had some individuality. The evil Kai is the least interesting villain of the first three movies, and even his primary gimmick-- being able to change his enemies into obedient "jade zombies"-- adds no luster to the film. The climactic face-off between Kai and Po is decently staged, but getting there is not half the fun one might expect it to be.

             

KUNG FU PANDA 2 (2011)

 

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

Once the first PANDA hit big, the filmmakers stuck close to what worked for both the second and third films: raucous cartoon chopsocky violence with a side-dish of Eastern wisdom. 

In the first film, the story arc of Po the Panda (Jack Black) concerned his efforts to become a kung-fu fighter, though fate-- and the will of the turtle-oracle Oogwai-- threw Po into the deep end of the pool, by promoting him as the destined "Dragon Warrior." In choosing this destiny, Po forswears dedicating himself to the noodle-shop run by his adoptive father Ping (a goose who never informs Po as to his non-goose heritage). But Ping is not the source of conflict: the "heavy father" figure is supplied by Shifu, who puts Po through many rigors before finally conceding that Po deserves his status. Shifu is also, like Ping, an adoptive father, but his "son" became a menace, whom Po must defeat. In essence the first film completes Shifu's arc and he's only of modest importance in the second and third films.

The good news re: No #2 is that while the writers might have chosen to make Po's second "big bad" another kung-fu bully-boy, they crafted a much more ingenious villain this time, one linked to the circumstances that orphaned Po. Having the villain of an anthropomorphic kung-fu flick be a peacock, a delicate-looking bird, might seem counter-intuitive. But the writers shift the conflict to one of weaponry rather than hand-to-hand conflict. Villainous Lord Shen (Gary Oldman) seeks power by weaponizing his clan's discovery of gunpowder into destructive cannons, with which he plans to conquer all of Cartoon-China. But a prophecy about his being defeated by "black and white" leads him to massacre a tribe of black-and-white pandas, leading to the circumstance wherein Baby Po is adopted by Ping the Goose. As it happens, Po and his fellow martial-arts cops encounter Shen's threat at precisely the same time Po experiences existential doubts about his being the only black-and-white panda that anyone's seen in his neck of the woods.

Despite all these doubts, Po's teacher has informed him that the solution is "inner peace"-- and this is what eventually gives the warrior-panda the moxie he needs to defeat the seemingly-unbeatable cannons. The film frames the idea of spiritual transcendence as something as simple as a fortune-cookie maxim, but the movie delivers what the viewer wants: a hissable villain, who relies not on brute force but upon skills with knives (hidden within Shen's wings) and an inventive conclusion in which martial arts trumps, at least in cartoons, martial arms.

A coda establishes that Po's father is still alive after all, setting up the events of the third film.                  

ARROW: SEASON TWO (2013-14)

 

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

It's been some time since I visited the ARROW series, possibly because I still remember how terrible the later seasons became. However, on re-watching Season Two, I think this season, more than Season One, earned the show the reputation on which those terrible late seasons coasted.

Admittedly one thing never changed about ARROW in any season: the melodramatic characterization was always cranked up to eleven. One big plotline continued from One was that Oliver Queen's mother Moira was tried for her complicity in Malcolm Merlyn's scheme to destroy an entire neighborhood. This caused erratic mood swings in both her adult children, Oliver and Thea, who varied between adoring and despising Moira, though never both in one mood at the same time. Naturally, whereas such a major trial would have taken a year or more in the real world, in the Arrow-verse it's wrapped in a few weeks, Moira is exonerated and even runs for mayor of Starling City.

A somewhat more consequential subplot involves the revelation that Thea unlike Oliver was not the natural daughter of Moira's husband but rather was conceived between Moira and Malcolm Merlyn. In the latter half of the season, Malcolm returns and successfully claims Thea as her true father, even though her initial reaction is to shoot him. The writers also devote a fair amount of time into developing a romantic arc between Oliver and his slightly wacky assistant Felicity.  But though the soap operatics are generally entertaining in the first few seasons, I'd have to say that they never got quite as good as producer Berlanti's debut superhero series, SMALLVILLE. That show also may have had more low points in its first few seasons, but I tend to prefer a show that has a greater variety of the high and low, as opposed to playing things straight down the middle.

Another positive development is that Season Two wraps up many, though maybe not all, of the "island-adventure" plotlines. These flashbacks consumed much time in Season One, showing how Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) got stuck on a not-so-deserted island, dealing with madmen in search of a scientific weapon and other castaways seeking to avoid being victimized. However, as a result of those struggles, Oliver incurs the enmity of former ally Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett), who trained the playboy in archery. Wilson, aka "Deathstroke," returns to Starling City with vengeance in mind, monomaniacally fixated on destroying everything his former pupil loves. That includes the new addition to the cast, Sara Lance (Caity Lotz), who survived her apparent death at sea to become one of the League of Assassins. She incidentally becomes the program's incarnation of the comics' Black Canary, albeit called only "the Canary," and the actress is decent in the role, in marked contrast to her later acting-history.

The various shout-outs to DC characters proves at least as attractive as the well-done action-scenes. There might not be total agreement between the original characters and ARROW's reworked versions of Professor Ivo, Cyrus Gold, William Tockman and Sebastian Blood. But the reworked characters here are generally efficient at putting across good superhero melodrama. (An additional note is that Barry Allen, prior to undergoing his flashy transformation in his own show, appears in a couple of Season Two episodes, as do two of the support-characters from the proposed program.) But Manu Bennett's formidable performance as Deathstroke is Season Two's greatest asset, as is his plan to use the aforementioned super-weapon-- a drug that can make humans into super-soldiers, roughly on the Captain America level-- to make vicious killers into his shock troops against Starling City.  Given TV's budgetary limits, the showrunners made this scenario far more bracing than many higher-budgeted feature films.

My memory is that Season Three still remains decent entertainment, particularly when the Flash starts interacting with the Arrow-verse. I hope to verify that within at least the next year.            

KUNG FU PANDA (2008)

 

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

It's entirely appropriate that Dreamworks landed Jackie Chan to essay one of the voices in KUNG FU PANDA. The core idea of this comic kung-fu cartoon is that the heroic panda Xiao Po can only bumble his way through the rigid disciplines of kung fu until he finds his own unique (and funny) way to kick booty. Chan made this sort of comedy-fu his specialty, but even if a viewer never saw a Chan movie, he will probably be able to guess the way Panda Po will succeed not in spite of his faults, but because of them. 

In this case, though, predictability isn't all bad. The script's simple structure makes it possible to keep feeding the audience with a steady stream of slapstick gags, balanced by a healthy sense of respect for the imagined traditions of fantasy kung-fu-- a discipline practiced in a China populated entirely by anthropomorphic animals. Po (Jack Black), a panda adopted in infancy by a goose who runs a noodle shop, conceives a passion for kung fu. He wishes he could fight with the elect masters, the Furious Five (voiced by Chan and a host of other celebrities), and to be trained by the great master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). To his surprise, Po is selected to become the Dragon Warrior, the supreme warrior who will protect China from all threats-- even though the panda can barely muster the most basic fighting-skill.

One of the film's best conceits is its villain, the snow leopard Tai Lung, because Tai, like Po, was adopted by a parent of a different species. But Po's adoptive father tried to get him to be devoted to noodle-making, he accepted the panda's decision to choose his own path. Tai was raised the red panda Shifu to inherit the Dragon Warrior status, and to judge by the crap Shifu dumps on Po, Shifu was probably a very demanding parental figure, which results in Tai becoming a dangerous criminal. The film's best scene is not one of Po's many goofups, but a climactic battle between Tai and Shifu, in which Shifu is defeated but feels more pain for having been a bad dad.    

Naturally the drama doesn't last too long, and Po cobbles together an eleventh-hour mastery of his own unique discipline so as to defeat Tai Lung. I have not seen the other movies in the series, but the initial outing shows more promise than most cartoon franchises.  

        

TYRANT OF LYDIA AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES (1963)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

TYRANT OF LYDIA, a TV-title, was actually the third peplum-film centered upon a hero named "Goliath," though none of the films were related to one another. But while it's true that there's no Hercules, or any son thereof, in this mundane historical flick, the Italian title isn't much better. First, not all markets kept the name "Goliath," since some christened Gordon Scott's hero with the name "Gordian," as in "the Gordian knot" solved by Alexander in a famous story. Second, it's not clear who "the rebel slave" is. One or two reviews thought it was female lead Princess Cori (Ombretta Colli). However, as her name indicates Cori is royalty, and though she's sometimes treated as a bone over which two national "dogs" are fighting, there's only a small part of the movie during which Cori is captured and sold in a slave market-- none of which action is important to the main plot.

The aforementioned "dogs" are Greece and Persia, who are at odds under the respective commands of Alexander and Darius. Both nations impinge upon the smaller kingdom of Lydia, typically an ally to Greece. The heroic Lydian soldier Gordian favors Greece, but Lydia's tyrant king (Massimo Serato) and his queen Zoe (Gloria Milland) plan to hand over the kingdom to the Persians for profit.

The setup could have made for some decent political intrigue, but TYRANT is slackly written, with lots of talking-heads who don't say much of anything, with occasional bouts of action whenever Gordian gets into a fight for some reason. There are no metaphenomenal elements, and even Gordian seems just slightly stronger than average, despite all his associations with myth-figures. There's a slightly interesting bit of stunt-casting in that Gordian receives a little aid from a Black muscleman, played by Serge Nubret, a bodybuilding competitor of some note in the day. Ombrella Colli holds up her end by looking stunning all the time, but the villains don't do anything all that dastardly. Really, Milland's Zoe doesn't do anything more than listen to the evil king's plots, so it's a bit surprising near the end when she's gratuitously speared to death during a battle-scene. TYRANT is a pretty ordinary peplum in every way, and only worth seeing for completists.

Incidentally, my dubbed copy came with a German title, "Goliath vs Hercules," but if Gordian was Goliath, I have no idea who some marketer thought Hercules might have been.       

THE NINJA VIXENS: THE FINAL CONSPIRACY (1991)

 

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

Forget: "final conspiracy"-- it's finally the end of this awful series, at least for me. I've watched a shit-ton of subtitled Japanese movies and TV shows, and I've never seen such a complete lack of storytelling talent as I behold in the NINJA VIXENS series. The writers and directors of this series of TV-films seem to be positively in love with talking-head scenes that essentially SAY NOTHING. The actors for that matter communicate the same indifference to their material, and the series doesn't even succeed as simple sex-and-violence offerings.

There are two scenes that engaged me a little, though they seem to be unrelated to the rest of the film, which is again just a lot of blah court intrigue. One of the lady ninjas-- Gincho I believe-- has two encounters with a demonic-seeming fellow who can perform two marvelous-seeming feats. First, he can project his head off his body, so that the head can attack victims with biting teeth. Second, the fellow can send a pair of separate arms burrowing through the topsoil, holding a sword in the hands-- possibly a variation on the "burrowing ninja" seen in some earlier flicks. But though these scenes are technically better than anything else in all three telefilms, they're no explanation as to whether the magician-guy has real powers or is faking his stunts. So even the two scenes that are a little arresting also manage to be disappointing. So based on the mediocrity of the authors, I'm gonna guess there was some BS "uncanny" explanation for these miracles.

Avoid avoid avoid.   

 

THE NINJA VIXENS: VEIL OF ILLUSIONS (1990)

 

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

In my review of the previous NINJA VIXENS installment, I scoffed at Kagero's power to call up cartoon butterflies. However, VEIL could have used them, or something comparable, to keep from being even duller than SQUAD. The phenomenality here just barely enters the uncanny domain, through one ninja girl's use of a thrown needle to kill someone and the not-quite-Edo-period outfits the Vixens wear.

This time they're investigating a smuggling operation on behalf of their shogunate patron, However, as in the previous story the ladies are also acting to avenge some criminal deed against one or more private citizens, just so the Squad doesn't seem like cops. This time the older male ninja of the team doesn't appear often, and some of his screen time may've gone to a hot new female member, name of Gincho. The added femininity, though, doesn't mark any improvement in the underwhelming fight-scenes, while the seduction sections are just as vanilla as in the previous TV-film. Cast info is spotty online, so I'll guess that the names "Misa Shimizu" and "Kaori Yuki" might go with the actresses playing Gincho and Akane, but then, they might belong to two other actresses. Both actor-names do appear in the IMDB credits for the third movie, though.

Once again, the makers spotlight lots of lame talking heads and very little sex or violence, and the villains are even duller this time. There is one henchman of the bad guys who wears white makeup and whips a captive ninja-girl briefly, but he's quickly offed.

Possibly someone somewhere made an exciting film about the crime of smuggling, but this isn't one. Avoid.

        

THE NINJA VIXENS: THE KAGERO SQUAD (1990)

 

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

There may be as many as nine films in this cheapie series of TV-films, but only three are currently streaming. KAGERO SQUAD, named for the leader of the ninja-team, might be the first in the series, but if so, its creators didn't feel any impulse to provide an origin.

Kagero (Hiromi Takagawa) has on her team just two other ninjas, a female named Akane and an older man who sometimes wears a puppet on one hand. The trio receives word of a plot by an Evil Clan (not sure of the name) to usurp power in a particular domain of the shogunate, so the squad informs their superior, a woman highly placed at court. The squad then initiates attacks on the Evil Clan for the rest of the movie.

The court-intrigue story is very talky, and the action scenes are poorly staged. There's no strong villain-- just an enforcer-guy with a neck-brace and a redbearded foreigner who practices black magic. Speaking of magic, Kagero has one of the goofiest ninja-powers of all time: she can sic big yellow butterflies (crudely animated) on her enemies.

The Land of the Rising Sun has produced lots of junk, but usually it's at least lively junk. Avoid.

             

HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL ("THE MONSTER ON MOON RIDGE," 1959)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

It's no great tragic thing to remain a child. Theirs is the best age. Their world is mysterious, wonderful, half real, half make-believe. Mr Bella, the world we live in is not always so pleasant. -- Paladin, "Monster of Moon Ridge"

 

HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL stands at the pinnacle of a small category that might be called "intellectual westerns." Most if not all of the half-hour episodes were framed as dramatic exercises, in which the cultured gunfighter Paladin (Richard Boone) accepted troubleshooting missions on behalf of his clients. Rather than passively doing what his clients wanted, Paladin applied his own strong ethical principles to suss out who among the parties he met were or were not meritorious. TRAVEL's writers wore their intellectual credentials on their sleeves, as Paladin seemed to have a literary quote for every occasion. So those scribes clearly understood how to frame moral problems on the didactic level-- but for my purposes, did any of them succeed on the corresponding mythopoeic level of meaning?      

The script for "Monster on Moon Ridge" might have been compromised by the length of the episode, making it impossible to shake out some of the fuzzy spots. From his base in San Francisco Paladin is summoned to Moon Ridge, Colorado, but even before he leaves, there's a newspaper item alleging that weird events have happened in the town, centering upon one Emily Bella. Paladin's client is rancher Dan Bella, who wants to get to the bottom of the rumors about his daughter and some sort of "monster" dwelling in the barren mountains. At least the yahoos in town believe there is one, claiming to have seen tracks that are neither animal nor human.

Paladin meets Emily Bella and finds that she acts like a child in a grown woman's body. Dan explains that ten years ago an "epidemic" ravaged the area, and that its legacy was that some of the afflicted became mentally childlike (thus prompting Paladin's remark above). Dan too has seen the mysterious tracks. and though he doesn't believe in monsters he knows that Emily wandered off for a week earlier, and he suspects she's been beguiled by something in the mountains.

Once Paladin ventures into the mystery area, he's exposed first to a hideous witch, and then to a hairy beast that overwhelms him. The gunhawk awakes to find himself chained to a wall in a cave, not far from a black bear, similarly chained. The witch appears and uses flash powders to make it look like the bear transforms him to a man. But Paladin has gone beyond the make believe of childhood, and though he's a little thrown for a bit, he quickly recognizes that the witch wears a mask and has been counterfeiting the monster-tracks, while the "were-bear" is her grown son, who like Emily was mentally impaired by the epidemic. The trickster, one Maria, was forced to leave the town because the yahoos tormented her retarded son. But as she had no money, she set up a cabin on the mountain and tried to scare away the yahoos with her witch-act.

One detail omitted from the rushed script: why did Emily leave her father's house for long periods of time? Surely Maria would not want to encourage that behavior, given that it resulted in more publicity than she would want. The narrative's broad implication is that somehow Emily befriended Maria's similarly limited son Clairy, for they're seen laughing and playing with Maria's trained bear. Still, the script rushes past those details-- including the whole utility of Maria's deceptions-- to put together a happy ending, in which Dan takes a shine to Maria, implying that he will extend his male protection to her and her son, making feminine trickery unnecessary.             

"Monster" was one of 24 TRAVEL scripts written by Gene Roddenberry, who in my estimation is one of the few toilers in the TV medium who succeeded at making mythopoeic scripts, mostly in the series STAR TREK. "Monster" is not as good in the myth-department as the best TREK scripts (which Roddnberry reportedly always rewrote, no matter who was the credited writer of each episode). However, underneath the routine contrivances of "the rational Gothic" pattern followed by the episode, Roddenberry invokes a folkloric motif that I'll term "the demon lover." In some iterations, the motif takes the form of some demon or devil luring innocent girls-- who may or may not be "special" in some way-- into assignations. Maria admits that she patterned her witch-act on MACBETH, but in the symbolic sense Emily's the true witch-woman. Because she's a child in a woman's body, she suggests the possibility of sexual transgression-- which here could be one involving intimacy with a man-child. Maria's trickery can't keep that from happening, but a strong father like Dan Bella can. Together Dan and Maria can not only keep away the bothersome town yahoos, they can also ensure that Emily and Clairy are never more to one another than de facto brother and sister, and so never produce any "monsters."

A minor point: though Paladin does not dispense justice this time using either his fists or guns, he does so on many other occasions. Therefore the episode is a combative drama because so many others in the series have been in the combative mode.

                

GENERAL INVINCIBLE (1983)

 

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

I'd never seen GENERAL INVINCIBLE before, nor did I know that it was one of the last movies to feature the Chinese kung-fu diva Chang Ling. To my surprise, I only found one substantial review of INVINCIBLE: this detailed post by the late Todd Stadtman. I was very intrigued by Stadtman's assertion that this film was pretty much the "final star turn" for the Taiwanese actress.

For me the greater question, though, was whether it was either (a) a fun but somewhat ephemeral chopwacky, like WOLF DEVIL WOMAN,  (b) a dull formula outing like DARK LADY OF KUNG FU, or (c) that rarest of rarities, a mythopoeic Asian kung fu film, like MIRACULOUS FLOWER. 

Well, INVINCIBLE is not another MIRACULOUS FLOWER-- though there are a few times where it feels like that's what it's trying to be. It's definitely not just a chopwacky, because such martial movies always seem the results of harried writers pulling anything and everything out of their asses in order to keep the audience entertained. One vague reference suggested that the movie might have been an adaptation of some other work, so that *might* explain why INVINCIBLE seems to be shooting for some metaphysical truth that the film's scripter couldn't articulate.

That metaphysical truth, in this fictional context, feels like someone trying to adapt the complex confluence of Chinese faiths and folklore regarding "the search for enlightenment," which in this fictional universe can also lead one to become a peerless martial artist. There's also a slight suggestion of a familiar western homily that might be phrased as, "What shall it profit a woman to win the martial arts world, if she loses her only shot at romantic love."

It's ancient China again, and a new emperor has just succeeded his late father. The new ruler gets wind of an assassination conspiracy directed at him by an unscrupulous Chief Justice, one Lu Ruh-Ti (Tien Feng). The emperor sends for the four dukes of his empire to serve as his protectors, but Ruh-Ti just compensates by putting out hits on the dukes. Only one, "Duke Philip," concerns us, for he's the father of our heroine.  

 Oddly, though Chang's character Sparrow is the star of the show, first we see the love-interest she's doomed to lose, "Mean Red" (Adam Cheng). Red is seen washing out of a martial-arts test given an imperturbable teacher, "The Old Master," and after being kicked out of the Master's school, Red seems more than a little perturbed.

Then Duke Philip's killed, and Sparrow-- who passed her tests with the Old Master (but evidently never met Red) -- is called upon by her retainers to go after her father's killer. But even though the courtiers call Sparrow "general"-- a title that really means nothing to the plot-action-- she's a retiring type who doesn't like politics. She's also prone to epileptic fits, though this only comes up three times in the movie and never has much importance either. Still, one of the courtiers embarrasses Sparrow by taking his own life to force her to act. So she takes her mute slave (called only "slave") and seeks to find the one-armed killer of her father. (FUGITIVE jokes are taken as a given.)

She does eventually kill the killer, who puts her on the trail of the evil Chief Justice. But Sparrow's more significant encounter is with Mean Red. She pretends indifference to Red's flirtations, but she allows him to join her quest once she learns that Red used to be a student of the Old Master. He, however, despised the Old Master's high-flown devotion to transcendence of human emotions and his utter lack of compassion. (Maybe that's why Red is "mean?") However, if I followed the choppy script, Red is also a servant of Ruh-Ti, and ALSO may or may not also go by the name of Swift Thunder. 

So yeah, this is one of those chopsockies where new character-names are thrown out with wild abandon, and the English translators don't manage to follow it all. Early in the film Ruh-Ti references some mysterious ally named "Red Sow" and the dubbing says it's a "she." But when the character appears late in the film, it's a male-- and by any name, the character's not important to the movie. (Possibly this was some book-character shoehorned into the crowded story.) The Stadtman review asserts that a female martial artist named Ruh Yuh (played by Lin Dang) is one of the Chief Justice's allies. However, she spends most of the film trying to persuade Mean Red to join her in her own domain, so I felt she might've been intended as an independent player. Certainly she's tries her utmost to seduce Red away from Sparrow, and, to my surprise, she wins the romance contest.

The film's greatest appeal is that the credited author (who has just four IMDB credits) seems, in a very confused way, to filter a lot of real Chinese metaphysical concepts into this opus. The Old Master appears in a lot of flashbacks, uttering weird pithy observations like "nothingness leaves the door of transcending." And after the defeat of Ruh-Ti, the Master shows up to engage Sparrow in mystical combat, apparently just because he really wants to be sure Sparrow's fit to succeed him-- somehow, I never quite figured out what he wanted her to do. There's a flashy power-battle, the Master loses. Yet he doesn't die, but just walks away with a strange downbeat conclusion. Ruh-Ti, by the way, wasn't just content to knock off the emperor and his supporters. He's conspiring with Persian scientists (!) to create crystal knives which are somehow going to help him conquer the world. 

The upshot is that though INVINCIBLE seems like an issue of DOCTOR STRANGE that Stan Lee wrote for Chinese investors while dropping acid, at least the movie's never dull. It ends with Sparrow, sitting in lotus position with a rainbow in the sky, and that's not the worst image with which Chang Ling could (more or less) conclude her diva-career.

              

    
   

THE CHALLENGE OF THE LADY NINJA (1983)

 

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

Though CHALLENGE is one of the many "marvelous ninja" films, the creators don't just throw random powers out in all the scenes. Usually the titular lady ninja Wu (Elsa Yeung) fights with her enemies with hand-to-hand arts or with swords, while only occasionally resorting to abilities like illusion-casting. To be sure, there's a scene toward the end in which a rival ninja burrows through the ground like a mole. But for most ninja-flicks, that's restrained.

It's WWII, and the Japanese occupy large parts of China. Despite this state of affairs, Chinese national Wu has managed to live in Japan for 17 years, learning all the arts of the ninja from her master and a fairly small number of adherents. After Wu survives a rigorous baptism of fire, she wins her "ninja badge" and is subsequently informed that her father in China has been murdered. Worse, the murderer appears to have been Lee Tung, fiancee to Wu, who's become an agent for the Japanese and is rounding up Chinese dissidents. Wu doesn't spend much time emoting about losing her dad; in no time she's back in China, planning to execute her traitorous ex-fiancee.

She's not able to get past the guards of Lee Tung's compound, though, so she tells some friends that she's going to enlist a quartet of women-- all total strangers, by the way-- to help her pull off her assassination, arter she gives them a few days of ninja training. This is the weakest section of the film, but fortunately, the script doesn't expect the viewers to pay much attention to the four sidekicks, aside from an ex-prostitute who furnishes some sexual humor. Better, they're really just extra hands and don't detract from Elsa Yeung, the only martially skilled performer, getting most of the action. 

The sidekicks are merely necessary when Wu decides that the only way to get a shot at Lee is to knock off his highly-skilled bodyguards individually. These scenes are the film's highlights, particularly for a scene in which one guardian fights by flinging spider-webs (!) while another, a female wrestler (Yin Su-li, seen above at left), engages Wu in a fight within a watery basement. Wu is nothing if not prepared: she comes wearing a bathing-suit decorated by hand-imprints. What this is supposed to mean back in WWII China is anyone's guess.   

Once the bodyguards are eliminated, there's nothing much left but a big face-off between Wu and Lee-- though in contrast to most chopsockies, there is a twist ending that works pretty well. It's a low-budget ninja-flick with minor sexploitation elements, and for what it is, it's decent diversion.     

DOUBLE AGENT 73 (1974)

 

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

I'll start by picking on the title of this infamous dog. Yes, everyone knows that that the "73" denotes the size of the knockers sported by star Chesty Morgan, and I suppose the "double" is thrown in to remind the intended audience that there were a whole *TWO* 73-inch breasts on display throughout much of this micro-budgeted production.

But the exploitative title provides more amusement than most of the script for AGENT, co-written by director Doris Wishman. A "double agent" is expressly a agent of one government who infiltrates another such agency, pretending to be loyal to the second group while actually funneling intel back to the agent's original employer. But that's not the case with Morgan's character Jane Tennay (IMDB claims it's Jean Genet, which I think must be someone's inside joke, but probably not Doris Wishman's). Jane is just an "agent." Her employers want to find out who's smuggling in drugs with aid from the Communists, so they give Jane a list of suspects. The entire plot involves Jane going from place to place and becoming acquainted with the suspects in order to suss out their criminal endeavors. In practice, though, Jane always fails to fool her targets, and there's some violence, with Jane managing to kill her opponents. Frankly, it would have made more sense if Jane's agency had just directed her to kill off all these crooked types, since she ends up playing the role of assassin anyway.

But if she was just an assassin, she wouldn't have need the gimmick that obliges Jane to expose her mammoth mammaries every 15 minutes. The agency somehow sticks a mini-camera into her boobs, and every time she kills or at least incapacitates a foe, she takes his picture with her tit-cam. Again, the info doesn't really seem to do the agency much good when they get it at picture's end, and certainly doesn't justify the bosses installing a self-destruct device in the camera, one that will destroy the evidence and keep Jane from falling into enemy hands. To be sure, Jane returns to her bosses before this happens, but she does not seem to resent the strategy in any way.

Wishman's gimmicks, by the way, were the only thing that interested me in reviewing this dull flick. Her tit-cam doesn't qualify as a diabolical device, but her cut-rate arsenal-- including am exploding lipstick and a spiked earring she can fling to kill an opponent, as with a shuriken-- certainly make the grade. She even has what appears to be an "acetylene ring," for when she's tied up in her last encounter with the main villain, she uses *something* to burn off her ropes. These weapons are the only things that mark Jane as a combative type, for there's no indication that Jane can fight. To be sure, no one else in the movie can fight either-- and that's probably because the exigencies of fight choreography would have strained the film's budget. (Jane does stun a guy by hitting him with a tit, though.) 

But there's no similar excuse for the banal dialogue, or for Wishman's over-reliance on extreme close-ups to cover for the fact that so little is happening. The sex scenes are brief and mediocre, as if Wishman was convinced that the near-constant display of the Size 73's was her film's only selling-point. She showed the same attitude in her only other film with Morgan, the earlier DEADLY WEAPONS, which I'll probably never review because it was even duller than AGENT, not to mention purely naturalistic. Of course, no one in the movie can act worth a damn, but since Morgan is the star, her deficiencies take center stage. Further, her sagging boobs aren't likely to inspire lust in any but the most breast-fixated. 

It's a shame that there were never that many female superspies in cinema, but Chesty Morgan adds nothing to their ranks. AGENT isn't amusing enough to be "so bad it's good," but I suppose it's interesting to wonder why Wishman undertook such a project. I still haven't fully evaluated her repertoire, but AGENT will probably add little luster to any such analysis.  

LEGEND OF THE SEEKER, SEASON TWO (2009-10)

 

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

The first season dealt with the relatively mundane threat of warlord Darken Rahl's dominion of the SEEKER fantasy-realm. Season Two, however, concerns a more cosmic threat. The three heroes-- Richard, Kahlan, and Zedd-- managed to kill Rahl, but in so doing they open a rift between the living world and the world of the dead. The Keeper, malefic ruler of the death-realm, uses this opportunity to seek the world's destruction, unleashing zombie-like beings called "banelings" and installing the ghost of Darken Rahl as his lieutenant. The heroes must find a mystic artifact, the Stone of Tears, in order to seal the gap between the worlds.

This time, though, the three heroes get a fourth ally. drawn from the ranks of the Mord-Sith, the priestesses of pain and torture who normally serve the head of the Rahl bloodline. Early in the second season it's revealed that the father of Darken Rahl wished to spawn a second son who would overthrow the first one, and that second son was Richard. Cara Mason (Tabrett Bethel) decides that as a Mord-Sith formerly loyal to the previous Rahl, she now must follow Richard's band as they seek the talisman that can save the world. Her decision is aided by the discovery that the priestesses who recruited Cara betrayed her-- but even more so, her choice to walk the heroes' road represents a desire to reaquire her lost humanity. That said, though the trio of Richard, Zedd and Kahlan worked well, Cara adds a refreshing new element, as her ruthlessness and acerbic attitude add considerable "edge" to the proceedings.

As in the first season, the showrunners alternate between simple, "done in one" predicaments and the more "cosmic" events. The Mord-Sith Denna returns to cause the Seeker-group more trouble, and a new group of enemies, the Sisters of the Dark, are prominent in Season Two; they seek to control the magic of the Rahl line that Richard has inherited. The vague mythology behind the fantasy-verse is established as a duality: the female Creator engendered the world, but her consort envied her love for humans and sought to destroy her children. In the best tradition of the Miltonic deity, the Creator exiled her consort to the afterlife, so that he became the Keeper. Toward the end of the season, Darken Rahl is able to come back to life, playing a lone hand against both his infernal master and his half-brother Richard.

The most mythically complex episodes all congregate toward the end of the season, such as--

"Bound"-- This story exemplifies the "Wizard's Second Rule:" the greatest harm can result from the best of intentions. Nicci, the most formidable of the Dark-Sisters, casts a spell that imperils Kahlan's life. The spell can only be broken if Kahlan contacts the spirit of her long-dead mother, but this necessitates making contact with Kahlan's long-estranged father. Kahlan's father Frederick tyrannized his two daughters after their Confessor-mother passed away-- but he too was the victim of tyranny, as he was forced to love, marry and procreate with Kahlan's mother. The dispelling of ghosts from the past proves more effective than the cancellation of Nicci's magic.

"Desecrated"-- a magician, Cormac, abducts Cara and Kahlan to force Richard to dispense justice upon the leaders of a village that sinned against him. A ticking clock inheres in the fact that the two heroines are confined in a tomb where the air is running out. Cara and Kahlan, despite often competing with one another, now compete to see which of them can sacrifice her life for the other, resulting in a hand-to-hand battle.

"Extinction"-- Rahl has returned to the living world, and because he knows his brother needs the help of the fairy-like Night Wisps, he orders the delicate creatures massacred. Kahlan finds and saves one pregnant Night Wisp and charges Cara with getting the fairy to a spawning-ground, which makes for more scenes both amusing and touching as the hard-bitten warrior-woman has to call upon her softer side to keep the fragile entity alive.

"Eternity"-- the Seeker-group encounters a Mord-Sith named Dahlia. She claims that Cara spawned a son with Darken Rahl during her service to him, and then Rahl now wants to use him as a pawn. Cara won't agree to let this matter distract from their mission to use the Stone of Tears to save the world, but the others are more humanitarian in nature. It's a trick, of course, for Dahlia, despite having had intimate relations with Cara in the past, is working for Rahl. Cara is captured and subjected to new tortures to restore her allegiance, and at the end of the episode, Cara seems to have been turned.

"Tears"-- The final episode of Season Two starts with Zedd having rewritten the past to restore Cara to normal. Then it's a race to reach the site where the Stone can used to seal the rift, so of course Richard gets separated from his allies. This separation prefigures other shifts in loyalty, with the sorceress Nicci enslaving Kahlan and the Keeper taking over the body of a young boy whom Richard trusts. Unfortunately the final season does end with some dangling plot-threads, as both Rahl and Nicci remain at large once the world's been saved, and Richard and Kahlan still can't consummate their love for Various Reasons. I said earlier that SEEKER may have been a little too much a "straight" magical fantasy to be as successful as XENA and HERCULES, and that still seems like the most likely reason for its brief shelf-life.

             

SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY (2026)

 

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

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

The substantial improvement of the third and fourth MCU/Sony SPIDER-MAN films, in comparison to the "meh" first and second films in the series, moves me to posit a symmetry between NO WAY HOME and BRAND NEW DAY.

HOME is about how the hero responds ethically to villains.

DAY is about how the hero responds ethically to monsters.

I'm sure I could be cooking up this symmetry out of my on preoccupations. Still, all four of these MCU/Sony spider-projects have shared in common two writers-- Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers-- so that's one real-world symmetry. And until the fourth in the series, Jon Watts directed them all, only to be replaced by Destin Daniel Cretton. But even if none of the previous raconteurs had returned, whoever worked on DAY would have been obliged to deal with the dangling plotline from HOME: the mind-wiping spell that restored the secrecy to Spider-Man's secret identity but also caused his two best friends to forget they'd ever known Peter Parker.

Now while NO WAY HOME probably owes some debt to the 2007 comics-story ONE MORE DAY, BRAND NEW DAY movie bears little resemblance to the 2008 comic of the same name. DAY's script forces Peter Parker (Tom Holland) to revert to a status not unlike that of the 1962 comics-Parker: an antisocial loner. Having been cut off from his boon friends MJ and Ned (Zendaya, Jacob Batalon), Parker chooses not to seek new acquaintances, but to devote all of his time to being Spider-Man. Even his confidante on the NY police force, Jean DeWolff, intuits that the hero is burning the candle at both ends. But there's a new menace in town, and this time it's not a familiar face from the Spidey rogues' gallery, but a monster-- albeit a monster with a hero's name.

I belabor this point because audiences don't respond to monsters the same way they respond to villains. Some reviewers were understandably ticked off to learn that the mystery menace-- a psychic able to remotely possess and control innocent people-- is named after the classic X-MEN character Jean Grey. This Jean Grey shares none of the history of other Jean-iterations, so while I wasn't crazy about the usage of the name, I wasn't as scandalized as those other reviewers. I will castigate the writers for making Grey *seem* to be a diabolical villain for the movie's first two acts, when they show her executing some mysterious grudge against the government agency Damage Control. Then the writers shift gears in the third act, making Grey a monster obsessed by the wrongs done her by the agency, more "sinned against" than embracing the life of sin, as do proper villains.

Yet I cut McKenna and Sommers a small break on the storytelling problems of DAY. I admire how the relatively new concept of Jean Grey's monomania against Damage Control-- for reasons I'll skip over-- acts as a mirror to the hero's obsession. This Spider-Man didn't lose his Uncle Ben, but "with great power there comes great responsibility" remains his watchword. But just as Grey loses herself in her obsession-- so much so that it never occurs to her to tell Spidey why she has a mad on for Damage Control-- Parker in effect neglects his "responsibility" to himself. The spider-DNA within his system begins to mutate the hero, at least partly due to his emotional trauma. This makes it tough for him to cope with the many pawns Grey sends against him, as well dealing with more unscrupulous crusaders, like the Punisher, making his debut in a live-action Spider-movie.

I'd find it easy to believe that the main reason McKenna and Sommers only name-dropped Jean Grey because some higher-up demanded some X-reference in DAY, just because the impending DOOMDSAY movie will reboot the MCU Universe to include the X-Men and other "Disney acquisitions." This possibility should seem probable to any viewer who suffered through ABC's godawful attempt to shoehorn The Inhumans into the AGENTS OF SHIELD universe. But the film's other major crossover proves far less problematic. After Spider-Man experiences his own "Hulk-out" moment due to his mutations, he has a smidgen of good fortune when Bruce Banner lectures at a Big Apple college, allowing Parker to get some advice about controlling one's inner monster. Unfortunately, this also puts the power of the Hulk into Jean Grey's clutches.

I'm not giving away much in divulging that the only cure for Peter Parker's malady is a return to the status quo from just before the worldwide revelation of Spidey's identity. I'm still not in love with these iterations of Parker's besties, but Zendaya and Batalon acquit themselves well-- though it goes without saying that all the support-cast proves secondary to Holland's performance as the wall-crawling bad-luck boy. DAY has its share of good character moments, but the movie wouldn't have become such a box-office phenomenon if it were not also, to invoke Martin Scorcese's terms, an entertaining roller-coaster ride. The biggest downside to this DAY is that Tom Holland probably doesn't have many more years to play the web-slinger, even though the character's finally been purged of all the extraneous MCU elements of the first two films.

                             

      

          

SUPERMANSION SEASON TWO (2017)

 

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

The season starts with the mansion and Robobot rebuilt, and the reference in the last episode to "new candidates" for the League of Freedom is blown off in one joke. Season Two does reach out to the former member (and Wonder Woman analogue) Zenith, a celestial goddess who shares the body of a mortal talk-show host Oprah W-- I mean, Portia Jones. The fugitive Injustice Club figures into more plots this season. but the only ones worth mentioning are Devizo, Groaner. and Lex Lightning, still full of passionate hate for Titanium Rex but no longer inclined to morph into a male version of herself. Curiously, though she was ostensibly raised by Devizo, there's nearly no sense that the two of them have ever had a father-daughter relationship.

VIRTUAL REALITY BLUES (G)-- Cooch misses Brad, so when Ranger tells her Brad's in heaven, she wants to become a Christian to join him, but she gets hinky about baptismal immersion. When Saturn learns Groaner's alive, he crushes hard on his nemesis, resulting in many embarrassing moments.  More importantly for ongoing plotlines, Devizo steals a computer file containing Rex's greatest secret, and when Rex descends into a VR world to recover the file, Devizo and Lex are waiting for him. To Rex's good fortune, a rendezvous between Saturn and Groaner crosses his path in VR and a goofy time is had by all.

SCHOOL ME ONCE-- Rex plots to get Zenith back on the team, and that leads the League to "go back to school," i.e., the university of which Ranger and Saturn are alums. Saturn's old frat is ashamed of him, while Cooch is enlisted to be the school mascot. The upshot is that Portia does rejoin the League, but mainly to help the heroes upgrade their tarnished reputation.

THE LEAGUE OF CHEESEDOM-- Portia's first move is to use the League's images to merchandize a pizza place, "the League of Cheesedom," on the advice of her boytoy Courtney. Ranger becomes attracted to Portia when she scolds him and Saturn gets Groaner to perform on stage. Menace arises when Robobot, who's taken on the persona of a rebellious teenager, reprograms a band of animatronic robots, who promptly go berserk. Best line:

ROBOBOT: "I thought I'd found a family, but they ended up being bloodthirsty monsters." 

REX: "That's pretty much every family."

I DON'T EVEN HAVE TO USE MY J.K.-- With Portia's encouragement, Oscar winning actor J.K. Simmons floats the idea of a Titanium Rex movie, but only if Rex is willing to reveal his deepest secrets. It's all a Devizo plot, which goes a lot better than Lex's short-lived takeover of the Injustice Club. Lex has her first meeting with Rex since he shot her in the face, and it's an ambivalent encounter.

 

BLACK TO THE FUTURE (G)-- This one's a knowing satire of time-travel stories like X-MEN's "Days of Future Past." A future-version of Black Saturn changes places with the current version and he warns that his era will be turned into a hellscape by Gamora. the spawn of Zenith and American Ranger. The League must prevent the two of them from procreating in the current era. There's a brief scene showing Zenith's paradisical all-female domain. Good payoffs on all plotlines this time.

BLAZARMAGGEDON (G)-- The villain Blazar was devolved to a monkey earlier, but it turns out that Blazar was an alien herald of a Galactus-sized humanoid, Asteros, who plans to destroy Earth. For once Ranger gets the best plotline, as he goes space-mad at the meaninglessness of the cosmos.

THE GURMAN FILES (G)-- Two sex-heavy plotlines diverge here. In one, Ranger wants his wife to sign their divorce papers, and to that end he and Portia seek out Gloria at a fetish-convention, leading to Dueling Dominatrixes. In the other, Black Saturn tries to go solo (albeit with Courtney as a sidekick) to solve the mystery of kidnapped 1970s models. Rex, who is to some extent a father-substitute for Saturn, falls under suspicion because he knew the models in his youth. With the League's help, Saturn finds the kidnapper and his victims, but also that one of the models is his own mother, and that Rex boned her numerous times.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT LIPLOR (G)-- Rex's big secret is revealed to the public and the League-- that he came to the surface looking for new worlds for his people, the Subtopians, to conquer. Rex let his people think him dead so that he could use his powers to protect humans (and to chase tail). But now Rex's older brother Dax reaches the surface with his rock-monster slave. Dax is disgusted that Rex didn't use his beacon to summon an invasion-force, so he takes the initiative. Rex and the freed slave defeat Dax, but now the government deems Rex an enemy agent. To protect his friends, Rex pretends complicity and flees.

LOGS DAY JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (G)-- Rex takes the identity of a lumberjack to conceal himself but still finds himself forced to battle injustice. The other heroes have been forbidden to crusade, but it turns out that Dax managed to send a message to his people. Robobot deduces that because Lex stole the anti-magno rod from the mansion, the League must make common cause with the Club. Unfortunately, Devizo has the rod now, and he seeks out Rex. In addition, the Subtopians reach the surface.

TITANIUM LEX (G)-- Within a short space of time, the Subtopians conquer Storm City while holding off all counterattacks from the government. Both the League and the Club are in hiding, and Devizo brings Rex back to the city for his own reasons. Devizo shows off the anti-magno rod and announces that they need more of the element to repel the invaders. Despite lots of bungling by the heroes and villains, Lex acquires the needed ordnance-- and though she plans to leave Rex to the mercies of his evil brother, she can't resist returning to save her dad, killing her Uncle Dax. Rex almost sacrifices himself in the stratagem that banishes the Subtopians, but Lex rescues him again, and agrees to join the League, but under her new name, Titanium Lex. But more trouble for Season 3 looms, as Doctor Devizo is put in charge of the heroes' future.

WAR ON CHRISTMAS-- Cooch, who believes in Santa Claus, releases from captivity an evil imp, Skibumpers (a clear analogue of Mxyzptlk). The elf grants Cooch's wish to make Santa real, forcing the League to cope with the chaos. This and one other special were filmed before Season Two, so Portia and Courtney don't appear, though on streaming the specials are lumped in with the second season.

DRAG ME TO HALLOWEEN-- In this Halloween offering, Ranger is almost seduced by a sexy ghost, Robobot is "possessed" by malware, and Cooch uncovers a malevolent dentist. The best plot involves Saturn and Groaner trying to score at a Halloween party, with more homoeroticism resulting.