PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological* MONKEY KING 2 is just as much a feast for the fantasy-loving eye as the first film, but maybe not quite as much for the imagination. Part of the reason for the perceived drop-off may be that, as I commented in my review of KING 1, the middle part of the source novel JOURNEY TO THE WEST is the part that has perhaps been adapted to film most frequently. Also, though the odyssey of Sun Wukong toward discipline and heroism carries over from the first film, it's 500 years later, and we're not in the same cosmic terrain as the first film. I stated before that I didn't think the 2014 film showed any evidence that mortals had come into being yet, but 500 years later, some sort of Chinese culture has come into being, though we still don't see too many ordinary humans in this world of gods and monsters.
Aside from a few incidental characters, KING 2 hinges on the relationship of Monkey King Sun Wukong (Aaron Kwok) to one particular mortal: the young Buddhist scholar Tang Shanzang (Feng Shaofeng). When Wukong's imprisonment ends, he either breaks free, or is allowed to break free. Then the hero learns that the Buddhist deity Kwan Yin has decreed that Wukong must act as a servant to Tang while the monk travels to India in search of rare scrolls on Buddha's teachings, the better to disseminate enlightenment throughout China. Worse, the goddess forces Wukong to wear a metal headband, and if he's disobedient, Tang can bring the monkey-god into line by chanting a Buddhist prayer, which will cause the headband to contract and cause Wukong pain. Though Wukong still has a lot of rambunctious energy, he seems to fall into line pretty easily. A little later, Tang gets two more servants-- a pig-man and a water-spirit, which means they're some sort of Asian fairy-folk-- and though Wukong fights with them a little, he quickly accepts their addition to Tang's retinue. Tang, despite being even-tempered and good-hearted, provides some unexpected slapstick humor with respect to Bajie (the pig) and Wujing (the water-guy). In fact, while many film-adaptations of this story make the monk something of a plaster saint, performer Shaofeng gives Tang a lot of amusing tics that enhance his humanity without diluting his role as the story's spiritual center.
The villain of this chapter started out as an ordinary human, but ill treatment by her fellows led to her becoming the Chinese equivalent of an "angry ghost," obsessed with harming mortals and with becoming immortal by eating the flesh-- or maybe the spirit?-- of a monk just like Tang. This creature, White Bone Demon (Gong Li), takes a variety of forms, sometimes showing all the natural allurement of the beautiful Chinese actress, other times showing herself as a grotesque death-spirit. A part of White Bone does desire to be emancipated from her evil ways, so when Tang offers to give her spiritual counseling to free her from her obsessions, she listens for a while. However, White Bone flip-flops just enough to provide Wukong with a good bout, unleashing a giant skeleton-monster upon the world. For his part, Wukong manifests into duplicate forms of himself, so that he can fight the colossus the way the Justice League would take on a similar titan. In conclusion, KING 2 is still a very good fantasy-film, but the plot is much looser than that of the first film and doesn't sustain as much of a symbolic discourse.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical* I've seen my fair share of "Monkey King" adaptations up to now, but this 2014 MONKEY, as I'll call it henceforth, is the first one that has made me actively curious to read the 16th-century novel on which it's based. I imagine director Soi Cheang and his scriptwriters might have interpolated some myth-material not present in JOURNEY TO THE WEST, just to make this expensive FX-project score with 21st-century audiences. But if so, they did a fine job of expanding on the first third of the source work, which I think usually gets the fewest adaptations. As in many archaic mythologies, the epoch previous to the birth of mortal man is determined by a struggle between the beneficent and self-controlling gods and the destructive and emotional demons. Led by the Bull Demon King (Aaron Kwok), the demons assail the Palace of Heaven to gain supremacy. The ruler of the gods, Jade Emperor (Chow Yun-Fat), defeats the Demon King and his forces, and considers wiping them all out. A merciful goddess named Nuwa declares that even demons' lives are valuable, and she sacrifices herself to make a barrier of mystic crystals that will keep the demons from invading Heaven again. Jade Emperor is thus satisfied to simply banish the evil beings and go back to doing the involved metaphysical exercises beloved by the gods. Demon King accepts his banishment but plans to watch for his next opportunity. (I emphasize again that I don't think humanity has come into being as it has in the novel's second part: all we see are gods, demons, fairies, and animal-people.)
One of the crystals falls to Earth, and inside this makeshift womb lies the fetus that will become Sun Wukong (Donnie Yen). A young fox-spirit, Ruxie, encounters the crystal but does not actually communicate with the infant. I don't know why this immaculate conception happens to be a humanoid monkey, but in any case, the next time we see Wukong, he's mingling with a tribe of similar monkey-people, though Wukong has far greater magical abilities than any of them. A teacher named Subhuti-- possibly a heaven-immortal rather than the historical figure with the same name-- seeks out Wukong and offers to train him so that he can realize his great potential and take his place with the gods. Wukong accepts the training, though he's cocky and egotistical-- which might indicate some common lineage with the demons, in case Wukong's conception wasn't all that immaculate. At the same time, however, the Demon King lays new plans to overcome the magic that restricts him from entering Heaven. One possible weak link is the Jade Emperor's nephew Erlang, who envies his uncle for his throne. However, Wukong will prove even more useful to the demon-lord because of the heroic monkey's tremendous ego.
As a result of Wukong's rash actions, he unleashes a destructive tsunami on the lower world. The Demon King, knowing that the minions of heaven will haul Wukong into their domain for judgment, so the evildoer appears to Wukong and makes a pretense of friendship. Wukong defies the constables of the gods but still shows up to knock on Heaven's door, where he's able to enter, presumably because he's part-god. His teacher Subhuti enters the heavenly halls as well to convince Jade Emperor that the arrogant simian simply needs discipline. The Emperor allows Wukong to train in Heaven and the hero masters new skills, but he still doesn't become mentally disciplined, as when he raids the Emperor's garden for a peach of immortality. Meanwhile, Demon King employs his pawn Erlang to bait Wukong, priming the conceited warrior for a major deception. In short, the demon-lord massacres Wukong's people and the fox-girl (who was also one of Bull Demon's agents) to convince Wukong that the immortals did the deed. Despite being deceived for a time, Wukong learns the truth and defeats Demon King in battle. However, for his past deeds he must spend 500 years in a prison devised by the merciful goddess Kwan Yin. After that, he will have to redeem himself by becoming a servant to a mortal Buddhist teacher-- which is where MONKEY KING 2 will pick up, chronicling some of the more familiar parts of the original saga.
Donnie Yen, continuously acting with heavy makeup, does a fine job of portraying the hero, whose faults make him human despite the trouble he causes. Kwok makes a good "thinking man's villain," though oddly he was switched to portraying Monkey in this film's two sequels, presumably because Yen opted out. Not too many of the other performers get show-stealing moments, but the script doles out a lot of good lines, serious and humorous, even for the stiffly noble deities. The costumes and CGI are excellent and fully drew me into this fantasy-realm, but the quality of the film's look proves secondary to the scripters' understanding of the original work's fundamental strength. As I currently see it, JOURNEY TO THE WEST was to many Asians what Milton's PARADISE LOST was to many European Christians: the former justified the ways of Buddha, and the need for discipline and compassion, to mortals who were often tempted by egoistic desires. It's a strength of the Cheang project that it captures that serious theme, and yet provides moments that are either funny or heartwarming without "talking down" to the audience.
PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*
AWESOME LOTUS looks to be the equivalent of a standup comic trying to hone his talents in dunghole comedy-clubs where, as the saying goes, "no one sees you being bad." I assume most of the participants were amateurs, given that hardly any of them did anything beyond this movie. However, though the director David O'Malley didn't score with this attempt to execute the anarchic comedy of 1980's AIRPLANE, he did end up working as writer and/or director from the eighties to the 2010s. In fact, he wrote and directed (probably with some input from Sam Raimi) the underrated biker-comedy EASY WHEELS.
The scattershot script is just one problem, co-written by one of the main actors, Peter Schuyler. But none of the actors do anything more than speak their lines correctly. Lorraine Masterson starts out the film as simple farm-girl Emily Anne. She gets torqued at her three older brothers, takes a kung-fu correspondence course (complete with instructional record), beats up her siblings, and leaves the farm. (Silly as it is, this is the strongest scene in the form.) When the viewer next sees her, apparently several years later, she's wearing a Chinese robe and a matching hairdo, and is calling herself "Awesome Lotus." Somehow she's become a master assassin, as well as a trainer of assassins, and her whole philosophy seems to be about confronting death, which would be fine if the script got any humor out of the subject. (She does have one decent line: "There's nothing like death to start your day.") The representative of a silk company (whose company name is the anagram SISSI) claims that his models are under attack by an evil organization, FART. There's some talk of it being a conspiracy to advance the fortunes of rayon in the fashion industry, but later the truth comes out: the evil mastermind Basset (made up to slightly resemble Hitler) resents the silk industry because vicious silkworms killed his beloved basset hound. Yeah, there's a lot of jokes like that one.
Aside from the opening scene, the script just barely finds energy in the film's middle to have Lotus lead her two allies-- her blind mentor Tofu Caca (Schuyler) and a blonde guy who hits his foes with a tennis racket-- against Bassett's compound, where they have comic fights with ninja guards. This looks like something that should have happened as the movie's climax, because the one they filmed really blows, even in comparison to all the other bad scenes. But to pursue my comedy-club analogy to the bitter end, since arguably at least one graduate of this "club" got better, I guess AWESOME LOTUS served a purpose.
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological* From what I can tell, although PHANTOM OF THE RED HOUSE is one of the earliest of the Mexican horror films to have received dubbed distribution in the States, it's not all that well thought-of. It seems to be the only horror move in the repertoire of Miguel M. Delgado-- at least I didn't recognize any other titles in his oeuvre-- but frankly I liked this comic "old dark house" film better than a lot of serious horrors from the period, and better than many of the American offerings in that subgenre.
The main plot is entirely derivative: a rich old guy pops off and the heirs, in order to claim any of his property, must dwell in the house for a set period of time. This naturally gives a masked maniac the chance to start knocking off the heirs to clear the path to the money. I actually don't remember anything being said about a "last man standing" who'd inherit everything if all the other heirs are gone, but maybe the scripters thought that sort of thing was a given.
Anyway, after one or two of the nastier victims are knocked off, the main heroine hires a detective to ferret out the "phantom" killer, who's a moderately spooky figure in a cloak, fedora and fright-mask. The shamus is also a goofus by the name of Diogenes Holmes (Antonio Espino), and in many comedic ODH movies, he would be the star. But Diogenes is not the main character, nor is the mystery killer the star, nor are most of the other candidates for murder (some of whom also sport names as wacky as the detective's, such as "Dr. Hipocrates Piedra," "Pedro Satan," and a woman nicknamed "Mulehead." No, this time, in a subgenre where the lead female is usually some colorless ingenue, PHANTOM gives viewers a lively, daffy female who's much funnier than the dopey detective. She too sports a peculiar name, that of "Mercedes Benz de Carrera," or "Mercy" as her boyfriend calls her, but as played by Alma Rosa Aguirre, she enlivens the predictable antics just as much as Bob Hope did with a similar role in the 1939 CAT AND THE CANARY. Delgado keeps things visually interesting with some quality B&W photography, but the oddball psychology of the female lead-- who, for once, isn't some simp who denies that she cares about a big inheritance-- is the main attraction in this "casa rosa." (Not that I ever found out the meaning of the estate's name, BTW...)
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmoglocal* The same year that director Alfredo B Crevenna finished up the "Neutron" masked wrestler series, he also went down to some famous Mexican caves with some actors and some monster costumes, to make this cheapjack version of JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. The caves make a good setting, and at least one costume, that of a subterranean "bat-man," is pretty decent. But the characters are so drab and colorless as to make BRING ME THE VAMPIRE look like a model of psychological acuity. A woman gets abducted by some monster and taken into the depths of the earth, so an expedition led by a scientist treks down into the caverns to find her. On the way two young guys pair off with two young women, all the better to press the panic button when the bat-man decides to do his hot-girl abduction routine again. I just watched this one and I've always forgotten everything about this dull foray. I assigned the movie the "cosmological" function because that's what one would normally find in an exploration of the inner earth, not because the script has any interest in exploring the subterranean cosmos as anything but a repository for terror-creatures.
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological* I tried at least once before to review PACIFIC RIM and couldn't seem to find much to say about it. I re-watched Guillermo del Toros "ode to Japanese kaiju films" again today, and finally concluded that, even for a big splashy popcorn flick, there's not much to the film. In Japan the battles of giant human-piloted mecha against titanic mutations was old news, but no one in the US had devoted the full extent of American-made FX to the subject. And the big CGI scenes of battling robots and monsters always looks great, though I don't know how much credit Del Toro deserves for that-- aside from lending his directorial clout to the project. Del Toro also collaborated on the screenplay with Travis Beacham, who, along with two other writers, had delivered a much more intelligent script in the 2010 remake of Harryhausen's CLASH OF THE TITANS. (Maybe CLASH benefited from having just one big monster?) I don't expect a lot of psychological subtlety from a movie focused on robots battling giant monsters, but the Beacham-Del Toro script gives every impression of holding contempt for the "kaiju" genre. For some time, the human race has been united against the attacks of various colossal beasts that pop out of a dimensional hole, "the Breach," beneath the Pacific Ocean. The main weapon of defense has been huge robots called "Jaegers," but these need at least two pilots to operate, and those pilots must be able to synch up their neural networks in order to interface with their Jaegers. One of the best teams during the early attacks is that of brothers Yancy and Raleigh Becket. However, when the Becket Boys deviate from the orders of their superior Marshal Pentecost (Idris Elba) -- a deviation undertaken to save a small contingent of potential victims-- Yancy dies as a result. Emotionally shattered, Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam) retires from the service.
Sometime later, the attacks of the kajiu escalate, and perversely the world government sidelines the Jaeger program to focus on other, never-specified defense options. To prevent the extinction of humanity, Pentecost brings Raleigh back into the program-- which I guess hadn't been terminated after all? Raleigh naturally needs a new partner to synch with, and the best nominee is a young Japanese woman, Mako (Rinku Kikuchi). Pentecost has a vague paternal reason for not wanting Mako to team with Raleigh, but this subplot proves a big waste of time. In fact, of the few characters RIM puts on stage, Pentecost is the least developed, and even Idris Elba can't do anything to enliven him.
Though Raleigh and Mako aren't any deeper, there's a little more interplay between these two characters as they bounce off one another, but their collaboration is somewhat set in stone and thus it's no big surprise when they are instrumental in saving humanity's bacon. Hunnam and Kikuchi do fairly well with their limited characters, but because there's not much room for them to grow, the script introduces a couple of nerdy scientists for comedy relief. One of the scientists manages to meld his mind with that of a mostly dead kaiju-brain, whereupon he learns the underwhelming truth: that the giants are bioweapons, sent to cleanse the planet for habitation by a race of invading aliens. I caught the smell of Del Toro's politics in the characterization of the ETs as "colonizers." But in real history, colonizers don't usually wipe out those whose lands they wish to usurp. Rather, they subjugate and/or marginalize the native peoples, and while this isn't good either, Del Toro muddies the already superficial script for a popcorn picture by introducing his superficial political stance. In conclusion, I also have to say that all of the bioweapon-creatures lack the iconic personality of either Japanese kaiju or even American colossi like The Black Scorpion and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.
PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical* Director Marco Van Belle's ARTHUR AND MERLIN looks like what John Boorman might have produced, had he been forced to make EXCALIBUR on MERLIN's budget. The Boorman comparison also applies in that Van Belle also sought to approach the familiar tropes of Arthurian myth in an idiosyncratic manner. However, Van Belle and his collaborators weren't even close to having organized their idiosyncrasies into a pleasing whole.
One big change is that Merlin and Arthur (who are given archaic Celtic names that I'm not going to type here) are roughly the same age. We first see both of them as kids, fifteen years before the story proper. Merlin is a child born with a caul, and his mother tells him that this is a mark of favor from the ancient (never seen) race of the Tuadann. (This is patently a derivation from the Celtic faerie-folk sometimes called "the Tuatha de Danaan.") Young Merlin's mother tells him that the Tuadann still exist and intervene in a never-ending war between "good pagan gods" and "bad pagan gods." As if to confirm the ongoing conflict, the druid Aberthol (Nigel Cooke) shows up on the doorstep of Merlin's tribe, demanding to sacrifice one of the tribesmen, and selecting Young Merlin for the honor. Since Aberthol is backed by the authority of King Vortigern, no one can stop the execution. However, Young Arthur, a minor byblow of a royal family, has come along with Aberthol's retinue, and Young Arthur makes possible Young Merlin's escape. The future wizard disappears into a haunted forest where no one will follow him.
Fifteen years later, Arthur (Kirk Barker) is a twentysomething warrior in the service of Vortigern. The monarch has become addled with age and is still under the control of Evil Aberthol. Arthur becomes convinced that the druid is truly allied to the invading Saxons, and that he plots to get as many Celts killed as possible. When Aberthol gets the king to exile Arthur-- and even to turn against Vortigern's own ward Olwen (Arthur's secret lady love) -- Arthur decides that he needs magical help. He delves into the forbidden forest and eventually finds the adult Merlin (Stefan Butler) -- though the wizard has become a bit addled himself, as he's been given invisible tutelage in the magical arts by those never-seen Tuadann. Long story short, Arthur finally manages to convince the sorcerer to leave his comfort zone and join the fight against Aberthol.
The joined heroes make one important discovery: Aberthol isn't working for the Saxons. Rather, he wants to kill as many people as possible in order to summon forth one of the dark gods-- though it's not clear if the druid does so for personal gain or for religious obsessions. This plotline resembles Robert E Howard more than Thomas Malory, but that's less a problem than Van Belle's inability to come up with compelling melodrama. ARTHUR AND MERLIN is not an awful movie. But Van Belle, who basically had only done shorts before this film, simply creates too many dead-end plot-threads. Here's one interesting "dropped thread": Arthur nobly rescues a Saxon woman from rape by Arthur's own Celtic kinsmen. The thugs fling her Christian cross into a nearby pond, but before they can do anything else, Arthur arrives and chases off the malcontents. The woman asks the hero to retrieve her cross from the pond. Arthur does so, and in taking that action, he finds a magical sword-- albeit one never called Excalibur. The sword does show the future king visions, though, and those visions lead him to Merlin, making it possible for the duo to defeat the evil druid. This was an odd confluence of Christian and pagan elements, but it might have given rise to good mythicity in the hands of a better storyteller. But most of the movie is mediocre, ending with only the suggestion of how the muddled mystic will lead the reluctant youth to his kingly destiny.
