DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS (2022)

 

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

Given my low opinion of the 2016 DOCTOR STRANGE, I wasn't in any hurry to see the sequel, MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS. Some advance reviews claimed that it was confusing in its buildup of the multiverse-concept last seen in 2021's SPIDER MAN NO WAY HOME, and there can be little doubt that the Spider-film introduced said concepts precisely in order to pre-hype MULTIVERSE.

To my surprise, I found MULTIVERSE to be a much more linear film that the first STRANGE, which was plagued by a villain's plot that could be conveniently postponed while the hero (Benedict Cumberbatch) learned his mystic skills. This time the villain is Wanda Maximoff, a.k.a. the Scarlet Witch (Eliabeth Olsen), last seen in the streaming series WANDAVISION, where she went a little crazy and used her magic to conjure up a pair of sons for her and the Vision. Despite the serial's moderately upbeat conclusion, MULTIVERSE finds Wanda still obsessed with regaining the kids she lost, and she's become corrupted by reading an evil book called the Darkhold. Thanks to her researches, Wanda's learned that there are endless alternate realities where her fictional children actually exist. She's also learned that there's one unique young woman, America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), who can travel to other alternate realities, and Wanda wants to steal those abilities, which will have fatal consequences for the girl with the name of a country. America seeks protection from the Doctor Strange of her world, but he dies in conflict with a gigantic octopus-entity (designed to look like Shuma-Gorath, a well-known comics-foe of the magician-hero). America shunts to "Earth-616," where our Stephen Strange becomes her new guardian.

The script of writer Larry Waldron keeps up the barrage of perils efficiently, but since he previously turned in a lot of tedious scripts for the streaming series LOKI, I tend to think that director Sam Raimi is at base responsible for the frenetic pace of MULTIVERSE. Every film in Raimi's repertoire follows the same balls-to-the-wall pattern, and in addition MULTIVERSE also brings in Raimi's equally-strong love of the macabre, as when Strange has to counter one of Wanda's moves by projecting his spirit into the dead body of one of his alternate-world personas. And though I can't be certain, I'd also like to give all credit to Raimi with a more moral take on the setup narrative of WANDAVISION. The streaming series tended to exonerate Wanda's misdeeds simply because of her gender, but MULTIVERSE makes clear from start to finish that the Scarlet Witch's obsession is ethically evil. Finally, the action-scenes, which have become routine in many MCU movies, are far more compelling in the hands of a director who's interested in doing more than just putting in his time.

There are flaws, of course. The first film harped on Strange's fatal flaw of arrogance, and this movie keeps up the same trope by showing that even if the 616-Strange is more together now, some of his alternate-world congeners have a tendency to betray people. Support-characters from the first film-- ex-girlfriend Christine, snotty ally Wong, and newly minted enemy Mordo-- do their bits but are not especially compelling. (Once again, the idea that Wong is supposedly Sorcerer Supreme but that Strange gets to save the universe leads to loads of cognitive dissonance.) Olsen's Wanda is at her best when she's acting insane-o, but the moments in which she shows moments of restraint don't play as well. And the girl with the country-name-- well, she's adequate. I never really cared whether or not America died, but I didn't hate her, the way I hated the dickish Valkyrie character from THOR RAGNAROK.

One sequence may have been inserted to stoke fannish interest in the MCU's acquisition of the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises. While visiting one alternate world, Strange meets some of the members of a superhero "insider group" known as the Illuminati, including such figures as Mister Fantastic and Professor Xavier (played once more by the irreplaceable Patrick Stewart). It's not really germane to the story, but it's damn fun.

I have not read the comics-sequence on which MULTIVERSE is based. Still, I have the impression that Raimi and Waldron made an attempt to remain true to the original story. I doubt that this marks a change in Kevin Feige's rat-in-a-blender attitude toward Marvel continuity, but at least an occasional on-target script proves refreshing.

DOCTOR STRANGE (2016)

 

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

I didn't have much to say about the MCU's DOCTOR STRANGE when it first appeared in 2016, and nothing much has changed. Having seen how little magic and mystery appeared in the two THOR films that preceded STRANGE, I suspected that the Feige-verse would be incapable of doing justice to the Master of the Mystic Arts, and my recent re-viewing did nothing to change that opinion.

I probably could have put up with the way the hero's origin is shoehorned into the "Infinity War" matrix and the increasing sameness of the MCU's mix of hyperkinetic action set-pieces with predictable bits of humor, if I thought there had been an honest attempt to capture the vibe of the classic Lee-Ditko stories. What the film needed was an authorial/directorial appreciation that could have channeled that subdued, ethereal sense of mystery, even if there's little chance anyone could have come up with a cinematic analogue to Ditko's graphics. What the film needed was Sax Rohmer; what it got was the usual Michael Bay bombast.

So there's a cadre of good magicians, led by the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), who serve to protect Earth from extradimensional menaces. One of their number, Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelson), has formed such an antipathy for mortality-- which he calls "time"-- that he believes the Earth would be better off if it was absorbed into the dimension of the evil conqueror Dormammu. The good magicians aren't able to stop Kaecilius from stealing the pages of a magic book for the summoning of Dormammu, despite being able to manifest a level of magical FX with all the charm of Christopher Nolan's INCEPTION. Kaecilius escapes, but for some reason I didn't catch, he's not able to perform his ritual for quite a while.

Enter Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). In a faithful but still mediocre recreation of the hero's origin, Strange is an arrogant (though not particularly money-hungry) neurosurgeon. Former girlfriend Christine, also a doctor, busts his balls for not being a one-dimensional altruist like she is. As in the comics-origin, a car accident robs Strange of the neural control he needs for his advanced surgical techniques, but he hopes to find a way to restore his abilities by learning the energy-manipulation techniques of the Ancient One. Despite her initial reluctance to teach the former doctor-- who often feels like a less horndog version of Tony Stark-- she and her foremost student Mordo spend weeks, if not months, training Strange in magic. 

Conveniently enough, Strange reaches the apogee of his training when Kaecilius is ready to strike, weakening the good magicians' veil of protection by annihilating one of their refuges. Following a mystical duel between Strange and Kaecilius, Kaecilius gives the hero his philosophy. The villain's maunderings about "time" exist so that the script can turn things around at the climax, when Strange foils Dormammu and his "timeless" dimension by casting a time-spell on the overlord. It's frustrating, because there could be the seeds for a stimulating "dueling concepts" in these contrasts, but in STRANGE they function just to wrap things up quickly. I suspect that this emphasis on time also ties in to Strange's function as a sort of "time-oracle" in AVENGERS ENDGAME.

Despite the predictable feel of everything Strange is given to do, Benedict Cumberbatch invests even the bad humor and the Tony Stark-isms with a sense of gravitas. All of the other actors put in their time without much distinction, particularly the horribly overrated Benedict Wong, playing the good sorcerer Wong. The script tells us that he, not Stephen Strange, is the Sorcerer Supreme of the Earth-realm, but this boils down to nothing more than virtue signaling, since his character does nothing to justify his lofty position. When the STRANGE project was first announced, some fans wanted to "race-bend" the hero so that he became Asian. I don't know precisely why the MCU chose not to do so. Yet I suspect that had they done so, the script would not have been able to harp on the sins of a non-white hero as gleefully as the writer of STRANGE does with its Caucasian crusader.

SCANNERS II: THE NEW ORDER (1991)

 

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

Probably the best thing about this sequel to David Cronenberg's SCANNERS is its total independence from the original film. Granted, Cronenberg's script arranged matters so that all the principal characters were placed in a position that a later raconteur would have it difficult to revive any of them. Accordingly, director Christian Duguay and writer B.J. Nelson start over with new characters that have also been given devastating psychic powers by the experimental drug Ephemerol.

Duguay et al do a decent job of turning out most of the kinetic effects a viewer might want from a SCANNERS sequel: car chases, family confusions and exploding heads. Intern David Kellum (David Hewlett) finds himself drawn into a major conspiracy in which an evil power-seeker seeks to use Scanners to help him gain political power. In the process of finding out the truth, David learns that he's the child of the original film's main hero and heroine, and that he has a sister of whom he never knew (played by token American actress Deborah Raffin, awash in Canadian performers). The most memorable performance is that of Raoul Trujillo, a nasty Scanner who revels in using his powers to serve the main villain's evil designs.

There's a smidgen of sociological content in that the viewer knows that the villain is evil because he wants to be "tough on crime," which everyone in movie-land is code for "evil fascist." NEW ORDER is a perfectly adequate sequel in every way, and if that isn't very impressive on some levels, it's certainly better than the ghastly infestation of such sequel-serials as those of HOWLING and CHILDREN OF THE CORN.

THE WARRIOR AND THE SORCERESS (1984)

 

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

I hadn't planned on doing loads of research on the production history of THE WARRIOR AND THE SORCERESS, one of assorted sword-and-sorcery flicks Roger Corman had shot in Argentina. But I got curious. The film has a warrior, all right, in the form of David Carradine. And though this character is only called the Dark One in the finished script, at least one early script gives the movie the title KAIN OF DARK PLANET, which I choose to believe was someone riffing on the name of Carradine's most famous role. But why did the film's title claim to have a sorceress in the story, where there isn't any analogous character present. nor even a need for one? And that led me to this blogpost by the film's co-writer William Stout, who averred that the film's director and co-scripter John Broderick tried to rip off both Stout and Akira Kurosawa.

Stout's account makes clear that the producers always wanted to rip off Kurosawa's film YOJIMBO (which in its turn may have been a swipe from Dashiell Hmmett's novel RED HARVEST). Stout claims that he wanted to avoid a total copy of the Kurosawa plot, but that Broderick rewrote things so that WARRIOR followed the template exactly: unaffiliated loner comes to town, sees a gang war between two factions, and manipulates them to fight each other. Broderick's side of the story will never be known, as he passed in 2001.

In truth, Carradine's character-- whom I will go ahead and designate as "Kain"-- doesn't really do that much manipulation. On a world with two suns, Kain, some sort of warrior-priest, happens upon an isolated desert city where all of the inhabitants are desperately dependent on a single wellspring. Consequently, the two main warlords of the city, Zeg and Bal Caz, are constantly trying to edge the other out, but they don't want to initiate all-out war. When Kain defeats a handful of soldiers with his sword, both warlords try to hire him to take out their enemy.

Kain's motivations are not clear. He has one exchange with Naja, a local priestess (Maria Socas, who spends most of the film nude) and Naja loosely suggests that their two professions were once allied in some way. Is that the reason he wants to undermine both warlords? The script does not say. In a very undeveloped subplot, both warlords also want Naja to create a great sword for one of them to use, but by the climax Kain is the one who ends up using the weapon to defeat an enemy. There's nothing magical or super-scientific about the blade, which is actually crafted by an unnamed blacksmith while Naja stands to one side, possibly blessing the process. I theorize that this rigamarole was just inserted because someone thought a little sword-mythology was a must for a sword-wielding hero. 

Broderick may have done just what Stout claimed he did, but I like the directorial look of WARRIOR much more than most Corman efforts in this genre; his locations are well photographed and the look of the city has a stark, deprived quality. I suppose said genre is more "sword-and-planet" than "sword-and-sorcery," for I didn't see any evidence of magic whatever. Instead, in addition to the mostly humanoid inhabitants, there are a smattering of alien creatures and one intelligent lizard-man, as well a female dancer who, when she dances for Kain, displays four breasts. Strangely, on IMDB everyone mentions the four breasts, but not the fact that she has some sort of ALIEN-like appendage that whips out and almost poisons Kain. At that point Kain loses his standing with both warlords, who go to war while Kain ends up using his new sword to take out his most persistent foeman.

In contrast to the severe look of the costumes and exteriors, there's a generous helping of female nudity in addition to that of Ms. Socas and the dancer, and Carradine, his face grizzled with five-o-clock shadow, seems more invested here than in his usual grind-it-out hackwork. I gave WARRIOR a fair rating of mythicity only for the copious scenes emphasizing the city's quite understandable obsession with their water supply, an "element" (heh) not present in either YOJIMBO or RED HARVEST.

Oh, and Roger Corman's reason for sticking "sorceress" in the title was ostensibly to justify sticking a hot babe in the promotional posters. I believe that he said that, but it's not like he needed such an excuse with any of the DEATHSTALKER movies. Possibly he just thought his title was catchier.

THE INVINCIBLE BARBARIAN (1983)

 

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

Online reviews have informed me that there are two English-language versions of this Italian Conan ripoff. Fortunately, I did not re-view GUNAN KING OF THE BARBARIANS, which cuts out not only cuts out the nudity but also the explanatory prologue, but one entitled THE INVINCIBLE BARBARIAN, so that at least I saw all the madness unleashed by director Francesco Prosperi and writer Piero (PLAYGIRLS AND THE VAMPIRE) Regnoli.

Other reviews also bag on INVINCIBLE as one of the worst of its genre. I might have agreed had I not just re-viewed THE BLADE MASTER, which is far more incoherent. Regnoli's script is a lot like the ones used for Luigi Cozzi's two Hercules films, in which the writer threw out a motley crew of myth-ideas with no attempt to make them cohere. 

The narrator of the prologue unreels a lot of New Age-sounding gobbledygook about the mystical destiny of mankind within what one assumes is some pre-historical version of archaic Earth. The essential point is that the mystical elders beyond the stars are going to send a Star Child who will be born among rude mortals and grow to destroy evil. 

So far, so mythic. However, the prophecy of the Star Child seems problematic. The hero who's born, destined to be named "Zukahn" (in this translation), isn't out to defeat some world-devouring serpent or any similar cosmic threat; he's just fated to destroy Nuriak, who leads a band of nasty raiders, the Hungats, who prey upon the villages. (Nothing more organized than a village is ever seen.) I have to say, if I was going to make sure a Star Child was being born to a tribe of rude mortals, I'd want him to do something more momentous by half.

On top of that, the prophecy is so well known that bandit-king Nuriak decides to do something about it. Regnoli's sequence of events is very confused, but the order of events seems to be that after the woman destined to bear the Star Child is impregnated by her husband, Nuriak manages to get his licks in too. How does he do it without being caught? The old Pendragon shuffle? No telling. But he must have done his business pretty close to the husband's, since in theory that's the only way a female womb can be inseminated twice.

In what may the film's looniest moments, the Elders Above get all pissed by the fact that the mother bears two non-identical twins, because this confuses the order as to who's going to get the sacred name Zukahn, a magic sword, and all that stuff. The Elders withhold their blessing and some bad weather ensues. Then Nuriak decides he doesn't think poisoning the well will prevent his being killed by one of the twins, so his Hungats raid the village and kill everyone. However, the twins are saved and raised in a village of magic-using Amazons, the Kunyats.

Because Kunyat seer Marga understands the reason for the Elders' wrath, the Amazons don't give a name to either of the twins, until one of them can prove he deserves to be Zukahn. So the two boys, Nameless One and Nameless Two, grow up in a fierce and unloving rivalry. When they're old enough to be played by adult actors, they have a big fight, and the handsome, muscular brother (Peter McCoy, as the Italian actor is billed) wins and gets called Zukahn from then on. Nameless Two runs off into the wilds and chances upon the raiders of Nuriak. One might expect that the renegade son might make common cause with the main villain. Instead Nameless Two makes the mistake of claiming that he's Zukahn, so Nuriak cuts his head off. (It's not clear whether or not Nameless Two is the real seed of Nuriak or not, though that would be the expectation, since neither or them is handsome or muscular.)

The real Zukahn finds out about his brother's death, and for some reason this makes him furious, even though there's no evidence the two brothers cared anything for each other. Zukahn tries to attack Nuriak but he's wounded by a raider-arrow and the hero has to crawl back to the Amazons for aid.

While recovering Zukahn makes a brand-new discovery about his adoptive tribe. Since the Amazons don't have husbands as such, they capture breed-worthy girls from other tribes, force them into relations with male captives, and keep the girl babies for the tribe, presumably dumping the males of the litter. Zukahn finds out this news-flash only because he takes a shine to Lenni (Sabrina Siani), one of the new captives, and wants to enter into regular connubial relations with her. This pisses off Marga, who's had a yen for Zukahn for some time. After various other adventures-- including a scene in which Zukahn duels an Amazon and loses-- Marga sends Lenni to Nuriak, so that Zukahn will follow his beloved and get killed. Then apparently Marga changes her mind and leads a bunch of Amazons to the rescue. The Kunyats kill all the Hungats, while Zukahn, despite having been told that he's Nuriak's child (really?), slays the bandit chief with his not very miraculous magic sword. Order is restored to the universe, and the narrator tells us that someday the sword will be known as Excalibur.

BARBARIAN might have been as fun as the Cozzi HERCULES films if there had been some half decent production values here, but this is so malnourished that even the fight scenes are dull and phlegmatic. The only "special effect" worth mentioning are a few prolonged shots of Sabrina Siani's nude body. "Peter McCoy" does the hero thing adequately, but the lack of good fight-choreography ruins what little potential the script had.

THE BLADE MASTER (1983)

 

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

As cheap and sloppy as ATOR THE FIGHTING EAGLE was, one can probably enjoy it in an indulgent frame of mind, and I've the impression that, in addition to being a theatrical success in its time, it's become known as one of the more memorable Italian cheese-fests of the 1980s, in part due to being riffed by Mystery Science Theater.

MST3K riffed the sequel BLADE MASTER as well, but the script for this one-- credited to director Joe D'Amato-- was so formless that even a spoof couldn't make it interesting. D'Amato commented online that he didn't really have a script when he began the project, and indeed, BLADE seems mostly like a stitched-together assemblage of scenes. I imagine the director telling the actors to waltz around in various settings while he tried to figure out the next scene.

The opening seems to imply that we may not be in a sword-and-sorcery neverland this time, but in some post-apocalyptic era in which people dress like ancient barbarians. Isolated scientist Akronos discovers a "geometric nucleus" and wants it protected from a horde of approaching bandits who may misuse the device's power with cataclysmic results. Akronos sends his daughter Mila (Lisa Foster) to appeal to all-round good-guy Ator (Miles O'Keeffe) to protect the nucleus project from the bandits. Oddly, though there's a line that seems to tie this Ator to the one from the previous film-- at least he's said to have married his love Sunya-- Sunya is never seen and the viewer has no idea what Ator's been doing since his last adventure. He does have a new mentor with the risible name of "Thong." The latter is apparently teaching Ator martial arts because the guy's played by an Asian, but if so Thong's not a great teacher, because the barbarian's swordplay looks as bad as it did in the first film.

And after that? Well, lots more episodic stuff happens, occasionally coming back to the menace of the bandits and their nasty leader Zor. Fights with a tribe of cannibals and a giant snake don't prove nearly as entertaining as they sound. Eventually, after Zor is defeated, the scientist lets the device be destroyed somewhere and it creates a nuclear explosion.

There's no romance subplot this time to make either hero or heroine somewhat palatable, and it's just as well, because Foster is just as bad at emoting as O'Keeffe. The most amusing thing about BLADE is that D'Amato was apparently enjoined to work in some scenes from a separate film about cave-people-- indeed, the title MST3K uses for its spoof is CAVE DWELLERS-- and these are so incredibly out of place with the sword-and-sorcery look of everything else that they're a little diverting-- but only a little.

ATOR THE FIGHTING EAGLE (1982)

 

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

ATOR THE FIGHTING EAGLE was a copycat sword-and-sorcery flick designed to ride the coattails of the big-budget CONAN THE BARBARIAN that year. While ATOR is far from being a good movie, even within this particular genre, at least it's not slowed down by time-consuming talking-heads scenes like another such coat-tailer, THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER.

I've no idea if anyone behind the scenes had seen clips of the Schwarzenegger film or read any of the source material, but in the opening scenes at least, ATOR does feel like director Joe D'Amato and writer Jose Maria Sanchez had a little grasp of Conan-style gravitas. The early scenes follow your basic "savior concealed from evil king" template, as Dakkar, head of the evil Spider Cult, eliminates his rivals, but the infant Ator, spawn of one such enemy, is spared destruction. Griba (an unrecognizable Edmond Purdom) steals the infant and coaxes a peasant couple, who have only a daughter, to raise Ator to manhood, where he's played by Miles O'Keeffe in the actor's most well-known role.

Ator is ignorant of his place in the scheme of things, but one can't say he's a slave of convention, for he conceives a passion for Sunya, the young woman he's been raised to think is his sister. She reciprocates his feelings but argues that their romance is forbidden by law. However, being two straightforward young people, they broach their romance to their parents, who cheerily reveal that the two of them aren't related and can be married any time they please. 

The marriage is all planned when the soldiers of Dakkar raid the peasant village and steal away victims for sacrifice, particularly Sunya. Ator plans to go after her, and providentially his benefactor Griba shows up-- having apparently been watching over Ator for twenty years-- gives Ator some quickie sword-fight training, and then disappears from the movie. 

Almost as soon as Griba disappears, Ator gets another helper, a sword-girl named Roon (Sabrina Siani), almost certainly patterned on the Valeria character from CONAN. She's a thief whom Ator rescues from her victims, and at first she rides off as if she has zero interest in the long-haired blonde barbarian. Then Ator strikes off on his own, and he promptly gets trapped by a tribe of Amazons, of which Roon happens to be a member. The Amazon leader declares that they need a man to put a baby in some tribeswoman's belly, and that they will decide the matter according to a melee. Roon wins the contest and gets the barbarian sent to her hut. But when Ator reveals that he's devoted to his stolen bride Sunya, Roon becomes envious of the woman who won the big lug's affections. She discards whatever status she held in her tribe and joins Ator on his quest.

Considering Joe D'Amato's credentials in erotic cinema up to that time, it's surprising that both Ator's relationship to Roon and to his not-sister is so relentlessly G-rated. Even the DEATHSTALKER films play up sexual tension more than ATOR. Ator and Roon go through a couple more episodic adventures until they finally have a showdown with Dakkar and Sunya is rescued.

I won't take shots at the movie's cheapjack costumes and effects (mainly a giant spider-puppet), but the stunt-work is inferior even for a low-budget Italian knockoff. O'Keeffe is one of the dullest actors to play a barbarian out there, so at no time did I feel it credible that he'd entranced Roon just by moaning a little about his lost love. Siani does a credible if not exceptional job as a sassy warrior-woman, though, and provides the only glue holding the movie together. For what it's worth, though the rest of the Ator films are not strongly tied together, the last in the series, QUEST FOR THE MIGHTY SWORD, has a stronger (if still episodic) script and even manages to work in the "forbidden love" thing by cadging elements from the Siegfried Saga. So even though ATOR is no great shakes, at least it led to a slightly better opus down the road.