VIOLENCE JACK (1986, 1988, 1990)

 

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

If people say you can’t do something, then you want to do it even more. Things that are considered forbidden, means other people aren’t doing them yet! -- Go Nagai

From what spotty English-language reviews I found online, I don't get a sense that all, if any, of these three OVAs were totally faithful to Go Nagai's manga VIOLENCE JACK. But I have no doubt that they had total fidelity to Nagai's aesthetic of transgressive sex and violence. 

Before watching these productions, I read a few months' worth of the manga online, just to get a sense of its parameters, and I got the sense that it's a fairly loose concept. Such looseness was probably ideal for an OAV series, in that it wouldn't be expected to adapt an accepted continuity, and to date the original JACK material has proved too hardcore for even the Japanese to adapt fully into an anime series. In addition to being far more violent than even a lot of Nagai's other works, JACK is alleged to be the first manga/anime to delve into the post-apoc disaster genre-- which had been around a long time but was not usually melded with the genre of high-octane adventure. (Roger Zelazny's DAMNATION ALLEY was one predecessor.)  But this mainly allowed the protagonist-- a ten-foot-tall giant capable of brutal retaliation to protect the innocent-- to wander from situation to situation as he pleased. So I don't believe the original manga followed a strict continuity, and neither do the OVAs.

       

HAREM BOMBER was the first-released OVA in Japan, but it doesn't make any concessions regarding introducing Jack, and it only provides a sketchy backstory for its world. It all takes place in the Kanto region of Japan, which was so devastated by a meteor strike that it became a pocket world of ravaged human cliques. What happened to the rest of Japan, or the rest of the world? You'll never learn from the anime. As in many later genre-pieces, roving gangs of plunderers comprise the only authority, and the most powerful gang-leader is a warlord, Slum King, who comes into conflict with Jack. The two fight a bit, get separated, and the rest of the film concerns Jack protecting a young couple from the motorbike-riding looters. Slum King steals women to sell to sex slave-rings, and he's an equal opportunity employer, given that he has a whip-wielding lesbian henchwoman who sorts out the new acquisitions. Since Nagai probably intended to have some more climactic clash between the hero and Slum King down the line, the story's big fight concentrates on Jack vanquishing one of the warlord's henchmen, the titular Harem Bomber. In a twist of expectations, the girl lives and the boy dies, and there's a fuzzy reference to some Nagai concept about Jack has some sort of link to an ethereal bird-creature.

EVIL TOWN, the second OVA, feels more like an intro to Jack. A huge section of a Kanto city is swallowed by an earthquake, with the result that several humans are confined to the sunken area, unable to get back to the surface. The survivors break into three groups-- A, B and C-- and A's citizens are the ones who unearth Jack from a pile of rubble, where he's apparently been comatose. Jack at first tells the A-guys that he has no name but then dubs himself "Violence Jack" because he happens to have a huge jackknife with him. Though at first the taciturn hero defends the A-group from the freakish and malevolent denizens of the B-group, eventually Jack turns on both when he learns that the C-group is totally made up of women who have been abused and preyed upon by both groups. Though some of the women can fight-- particularly one muscular babe-- Jack defends them and makes it possible for them to return to the surface. TOWN seems to state a key tenet of Nagai's creative philosophy: that the "freaks" are not intrinsically less moral than the "straights," given that the latter group is willing to descend into rapine at the drop of a hat. TOWN is unquestionably the most extreme of the three OVAs, barraging the viewer with scenes of nudity, rape, bloody slaughter, cannibalism and even a little necrophilia.

HELL'S WIND, as well as being the name of a predacious gang of bikers, is the weakest of the OVAs. The gang menaces a small town seeking to get back to normal civilization, but the bikers, who report to the warlord Slum King, continually prey on the innocents. Long before Jack makes the scene, Hell's Wind assaults a young couple, killing the man and raping the woman, one Jun. She trains herself to become an Action Girl so that she can take revenge, but Jack more or less saves her the trouble, so that Jun doesn't have a satisfactory arc. Jack, though never demonstrative, seems to have a special liking for a young boy, and based on what little I read of the manga, I think that the two characters were intertwined in some way, though this never becomes explicit.

EVIL TOWN has the strongest sociological motif, implying that when men and women are confined together in a figurative prison with no outside contact, the men will become inveterate rapists. But though this is an intriguing idea, it's just a side-dish to the main course, which is loads and loads of sex and violence.

                       

XXX: THE RETURN OF XANDER CAGE (2017)

 

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

Maybe I was just in the mood for near-mindless action, but I enjoyed this retread more than either of the first two films. My snap judgment is that I enjoyed the directorial moxie of DJ Caruso, who'd done a couple of previous high-ticket thrillers before this, but who's not exactly known as an action-guy.

Both of the previous films involved marvelous technology kept somewhat on the margins. CAGE foregrounds a major tech-threat involving "Pandora's Box," a device that can cause US satellites to crash to Earth like ballistic missiles. The heroes themselves don't use many gadgets themselves, except for a pair of briefly-seen "strength gloves" with which one can punch through steel. It's possible that in reviving the franchise the producers decided they would go full-bore with the "James Bond As Science Fiction" trope.  

Xander Cage, said to have been knocked off in the second franchise-movie, is really alive and off the grid, not wanting to get drawn into further espionage games. However, the Pandora's Box device is stolen by a bunch of extreme-sports agents, and one of those crashing satellites apparently kills Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson), the former head of the XXX program. The spy-chief in charge (Toni Collette) figures out that Cage is still alive and coaxes him into using his extreme-sports skills in the service of Good, even if he doesn't believe that the government is a good in itself. "It's all just rebels and tyrants," Cage tells the chief. Her response of "which are you" somehow gets him to sign up. She tries to give him a team of Marines for his support-team and Cage kicks them to the curb, selecting his own backup.

Understandably, none of the secondary players are as charismatic as Diesel's Cage, and the same is true as the enemy-team, with the possible exception of the other team's Really Hot Girl, Serena (Deepika Padukone). I'll give away one of the film's reveals by noting that the other team is also an XXX team that had been recruited by the maybe-not-dead Gibbons, and so you have another example of different government agents getting pitted against one another. The identity of the villain who has the deadly device is only a minor twist, but just when you think all is well-- it's time for another spyjinks-doublecross! Also, if anyone was missing Ice Cube's XXX 2.0 from the second movie, he comes in at the end, making this another crossover-movie.

The dialogue generally counterpoints the action: airy and light and thus matching Diesel's encore performance. Padukone and Ruby Rose (as a sniper) provide some femme-fight action, while Donnie Yen and Tony Jaa furnish representation on the XY side. Nina Dobrev as a non-combatant agent drawn into the chaos provides some humorous moments. The flick was a success, and thus I'm surprised that no further installments have appeared as yet.   
       

SWORDSMAN III: THE EAST IS RED (1993)

 

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

I assume that if the subtitle "east is red" is accurate with respect to the Chinese original, there's some pun involved on the name of the villain, Invincible Dawn, because he/she unleashes so much bloody carnage.

The third and last of the SWORDSMAN films dispenses with the starring characters of Ling and Kiddo from the first two films. In SWORDSMAN, both of them were young practitioners of a particular kung-fu school and they became involved in the battles of other schools to obtain a world-conquering manual of martial arts. I criticized that film for not really establishing the ethos of the main characters, but SWORDSMAN II did much better, in that Ling and Kiddo attempt to flee the fractious kung-fu world and appear to succeed by film's end. Taking their place here is a new viewpoint character, a court official named Ku (Yu Rongguang of IRON MONKEY), but he's not the central figure. That honor goes to the aforementioned male-turned-female kung-fu master Invincible Dawn (Brigitte Lin, returning to reprise her role from the second film). 

As EAST begins, it's been some years since Dawn appeared to perish at the end of SWORDSMAN II. The various martial clans lack a strong leader, and perhaps this lack encourages another attack of Japanese forces on the Ming rulership. It's possible that the Ming court seeks an alliance with Spain, for when we first see Ku, he's escorting a contingent of Spanish sailors to the last known location of a sunken Spanish ship from the second movie. (It was said to be Dutch in that movie's subtitles, but whatever.) Ku guides the Spaniards to the area where the ship was lost, which (in this film at least) is also the location where Dawn appeared to perish. 

For some reason Ku also guides the foreigners to the reputed gravesite of Dawn, where they all encounter a mysterious old man. At this point, the Spanish leader reveals that he wants to plunder the grave and steal the martial-arts manual, which he assumes was buried with the evil kung-fu master. I don't know how a bunch of Europeans with no kung-fu training could possibly have harnessed the book's powers, but anyway Ku takes exception to profaning the grave of a deceased master. However, Ku finds a new ally in the old man, who turns out to be Dawn in disguise, and who kills all the Spaniards.

Ku seems thrilled to see Dawn alive again, though he's not thrilled at his penchant for wholesale murder. Ku has some harebrained of enlisting Dawn to straighten out the chaos of the kung-fu world, for almost the first words out of his mouth is the news that a lot of martial masters are assuming the identity of Invincible Dawn in order to gain prominence. Indeed, we later find out that one of Dawn's courtiers, name of Xue (Joey Wong), has taken on Dawn's mantle.

After that setup, the rest of the film devolves into just one magical battle after another, with Dawn vanquishing nearly everyone with her special wuxia skills. Ku is more or less the guy who uncorks the genie but can't control it, but he doesn't seem to be conscious of his mistake, possibly because he's such a flat character. Ku also gets into some fights with the only slightly less powerful Xue, and in the background there's some indication that the Spaniards and Japanese have become allies against China. But from that point on, the filmmakers' only desire is to overawe the audience with a few dozen wuxia wonders. In the end Dawn regrets all of his misdeeds and retires from the kung-fu world-- which might disappoint some fans who felt some more exacting punishment was due.

While EAST is more interesting than the first movie by virtue of showing the near-impossibility of reining in such superhuman fighters, it's still not that impressive even in comparison to the better "chopwackies" of the 1970s and 1980s.   
            

     

BEASTMASTER SEASON ONE (1999-2000)

 

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

Just as the 1982 BEASTMASTER film was based only loosely on a 1960s Andre Norton space opera, this teleseries was based very loosely on the first film. There were two DTV movies in the nineties, but neither was worth much, aside from their keeping the franchise alive, until this series germinated.

Just as XENA took advantage of the unspoiled lands of New Zealand, BEASTMASTER shot in both Australia and Canada in order to put across the sense of a primeval fantasy-world. Though XENA had a higher number of strong myth-episodes, its jumbled use of different historical periods compromised any sense of the "enchantment" that many fantasy-fans prefer. BEASTMASTER takes place in a fantasy-world with no connection to Earth, and overall the producers did a better job of evoking, through sight and sound, the appeal of a sword-and-sorcery world, for all that the hero fights evil not with a sword but a staff.

As in the 1982 movie, titular character Dar (Daniel Goddard) is the last of his tribe, who are slain by invading hostiles, this time named "Terrons" and led by a ruthless warlord, King Zad (Steven Grives). Because Dar possesses an innate rapport with the entire animal kingdom, he can speak to them and sometimes ask their assistance. Four nonhuman creatures regularly travel with Dar: tiger Ruh, eagle Sharak, and two ferrets, Kodo and Podo. Dar also befriends itinerant scholar Tao (Jackson Raine), who provides a certain amount of comedy as well as discoursing on abstract matters far from Dar's concern. As is the case with most sword-and-sorcery serials, most stories are episodic, concerning Dar and Tao wandering from place to place, either being menaced by assorted aggressors or coming to the aid of innocents. There are occasional opponents whose peril extends over more than one episode, but there are none of the big, ambitious story-arcs seen in the aforementioned XENA.      

Zad is the duo's most frequent enemy but he's less interesting than two support characters not resembling anything in the movies: two magicians, The Sorceress (Monika Schnarre) and her master/tutor The Ancient One (Grahame Bond). Most of the time they simply watch Dar's struggles, like some Howardian take on The Book of Job, occasionally intervening to help Dar or Zad. The Ancient One is impossibly old, and any humanity he may have had has been overlaid by a dry scorn toward mortals. The Sorceress is also much older than she looks, and in olden times she and another student conspired to overthrow their perceptor. For this attempt, the Sorceress was punished with a loss of memory, while the male student was transformed into Sharak the Eagle. The showrunners may have been going for a lovelorn "Ladyhawke" vibe by making Sharak-- originally just a regular bird-- the lost romantic interest of The Sorceress. This trope is sometimes slightly affecting but in Season One at least, it doesn't develop into anything, since the Ancient One has to remain in power to utter all of his gnomic witticisms.        

           

Of the various recurring characters who appear more irregularly, the best is Curupira (Emilie di Raven), a sort of forest-goddess who tasks Dar with doing a good job of protecting her animal subjects. The one-shot characters range from nugatory (a tribe of Amazons) to mythically resonant (a culture of island-dwellers, more fully explored in my only standalone review of a Season One episode). But even those magical entities who are not fully realized still have a touch on unpredictability about them.

Dar has one romantic arc of sorts, in that his lover Kyra is taken prisoner by the Terrons, but it will come to no one's surprise that she disappears during the middle episodes of the season and comes back near the end just to get eliminated from the narrative. Dar himself is something of a pacifist; he seeks to knock out his enemies rather than killing them, though he restrains himself less out of righteousness than out of a desire not to be like his ruthless opponents. As a series it's more often pleasant rather than compelling, but it does have its own unique charisma.     

SWORDSMAN II (1992)

 

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

It's a minor puzzle to me that the 1990 Swordsman is so mediocre next to its sequel. They used the same characters (though barely any of the same actors) and the same source material. Two of the credited directors for S2, Tsui Hark and Ching Sui-Ting, had forged major pathways for Hong Kong cinema of the late eighties, particularly with the stylish, wonder-filled CHINESE GHOST STORY trilogy. I mentioned that the 1990 film had some mixed backstage history, in that original director King Hu departed the project, but why weren't Hark and Ching able to pull the 1990 film together? 

Whatever the reasons for the first film's failures, S2 finds an admirable way to provide some dramatic compass for the movie, even though this movie like S1 still focuses upon the often-confusing interplay between various kung-fu clans. During the Ming dynasty the generals of a Japanese militia, expelled from their own country, land in China and conspire to usurp the rule of the Emperor. These invaders, at least some of whom are ninjas, join forces with a kung-fu clan seen in the first film, the Sun Moon Clan. This alliance is made possible when the "good" masters of the Clan, one of whom is Ren Yingying (Rosamund Kwan), get expelled by a new master, Invincible Dawn (Brigitte Lin). Though Dawn is male and speaks with a deep voice, he underwent one of those many mystical transformations possible in wuxia movies, becoming female in terms of outward appearance-- though only his courtiers know his true nature. 

After this conspiracy is detailed, the script focuses upon the same two main characters of the first film, Ling (Jet Li) and Kiddo (Michelle Reis). Though both are still young albeit skilled members of the Hua sect, they're thinking about ditching the constant strife of the martial arts world. Kiddo, secretly in love with Ling, wishes that he could see her as a woman, though I have no idea why she constantly runs around in men's attire in the first place. Ling for his part has some romantic attachment to the aforementioned Ren. I confess I barely remember Ren from the first film, but she's a more interesting character this time, having some fun badinage with her serving-woman Blue Phoenix (Fennie Yuen, returning from the 1990 film). 

The assault of Dawn's forces on Ren's Sun Moon court provides one of the film's most memorable scenes, as ninjas ride into battle on their own flying nunchakus and toss scorpions at the guardians, who in turn toss snakes back at the invaders. Ren has to flee. Slightly later, Ling and Kiddo show up at the Hua pavilion and almost get into a fatal fight with their own young colleagues. Once they recognize one another, the martial artists-- all of whom plan to foreswear the martial life-- nevertheless enjoy their old camaraderie, though Kiddo finds herself not embracing being "one of the boys" so much. The youths all get a false message that Ren is being held by Dawn's forces, so they attempt to rescue her, only to get directed to the real location of the exiled Sun Moon luminaries. 

Somewhat later Ling makes a solo assault on Dawn's stronghold, but when he meets the "master," he mistakes him for a female prisoner and tries to shield Dawn from his own guards. Ling apparently falls for Dawn, who remains silent to conceal her deep voice. (Later the evil martial master learns how to modulate his voice into a feminine register, allowing Brigitte Lin to use her own speech.) Later, during a fractious encounter with Woxing, the father of Ren-- who's secretly colluding with Dawn-- Ling refuses to marry Ren, clearly breaking her heart (but giving Kiddo new hope).

The final battle shows the original Sun Moon acolytes and their Hua allies taking on Dawn's forces, and this results in Dawn's apparent death (though Lin returns as the character in the final sequel). In a nice if acrimonious scene between Ling and Woxing, Woxing mocks the younger man's naivete, saying it's impossible to really leave the martial world. "As long as there are people, there will be grievances. Where there are grievances, there is the martial arts world." I found that such realistic assessments of the Nature of Man acted as a pleasing counterpoint to the many wild wuxia wonders--- killing opponents with thrown needles, uprooting trees when opponents hide inside them. Additionally, though often I think that "queer theory" proponents overstate the significance of male characters masquerading as women, or even transforming magically into women, here t Ahe screenwriters might've had some "genderfluid" ideas going on in their conception of Dawn, though it should be noted that he is still an unregenerate villain as a woman.  At the end of the film, Ling and Kiddo depart the Sun Moon Sect and don't return for the sequel. This may imply that Kiddo's constancy may finally be reciprocated once they leave behind the world of senseless strife.                   

PLANET OF THE VAMPIRE WOMEN (2011)

 

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

Imagine that in the sleaziest era of Roger Corman's career-- I'll say the eighties, just for fun-- someone gave Corman, free and clear, the script to Mario Bava's PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES. Of course Corman would monetize the gift by making his own version of PLANET, with not only vampires but lots of tits and blood, and a few scenes swiped from his 1981 New World messterpiece, GALAXY OF TERROR.

That's what writer-director Darin Wood put together with PLANET OF THE VAMPIRE WOMEN, with numerous STAR TREK in-jokes as well. Surprisingly, I liked this goofy thing despite its extremely derivative nature. It's crap, but it's lively crap, and the quantity of cute actresses willing to provide upper-body nudity didn't hurt.

Quick summary: a crew of colorful space-pirates led by Capt, Richards (Paquita Estrada) raid a mammoth space-mall and escape with their booty. Space cop Falco in his own ship pursues the pirate craft, so Richards steers her ship onto a mysterious forbidden planet. Richards pays for her rashness, for some sort of energy-beings infect her, and she becomes a fanged space-vampire. She kills a couple of her crewmates and sabotages the ship. After she flees, the other pirates do recon on the planet. They find it's inhabited by such weird creatures as flying stinger-bugs and bipedal boar-people. Cop Falco also lands on the planet, but though he wants to arrest the pirates, he soon realizes that the vampire is creating more creatures like herself and thus is the greater cosmic danger. The cop and the pirates-- those don't get vampirized-- make a truce to get away in his ship, which proves extremely necessary because there's an ancient computer system on the planet that comes alive, attempting to destroy the whole planet to keep the vampire beings from escaping. However, Richards and her allies escape in the other ship and head for the space-mall, where they begin randomly killing people. The cop and the pirates join forces to save the day, but alas-- saving the day is not in the cards.

In addition to boobs and blood, there's a lot of fighting in the film, and though none of it is well-done, Wood and his costumers make the whole thing look super-colorful, not unlike the day-glo look of Sixties Batman. It's such a pleasure to see a cheapo SF-film that looks fairly pleasing to the senses-- even not counting the nudity--that I give PLANET extra mythicity points just for getting across the look of a PLAYBOY style future full of cheerful degeneracy. And besides-- who can hate a movie that shows space vampires shooting lightning from their eyes?             

IN THE NAME OF THE KING: THE LAST MISSION (2014)

 

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

The one good thing about MISSION is that it's so bad I won't have to spend much time on it.

It's also a minimal plus that we're now completely divorced from the faux-Tolkein RPG with which the series began. MISSION is close to being a remake of TWO WORLDS, with stony-faced Dominic Purcell taking over the role of the weary battle-scarred Earth-warrior from the far more charismatic Dolph Lundgren. Curiously, the writer for MISSION eschews the sympathetic-veteran type, choosing instead to make Purcell's character Kaine a reluctant hitman. This choice doesn't make for a hero in whom the casual viewer can invest, particularly since Kaine's "last job" involves kidnapping two little girls from a Bulgarian embassy in the US. Kaine, after having told his criminal bosses that the job is impossible, accomplishes it with very little trouble (no sign of any police action in the whole film) and imprisons the girls in a connex box for the bosses to pick up later. But before he leaves them in their temporary prison, he randomly swipes an amulet from one little girl.    

  Moments later the magical amulet whisks the bewildered assassin into a medieval village under current attack by a fire-breathing CGI dragon. Kaine takes shelter in one of the huts, owned as it happens by two exiled princesses, Arabella and Emelina (Ralitza Paskaleva, Daria Simeonova). Because Kaine briefly shot his pistol at the beastie, the ladies think Kaine's some sort of savior. They give Kaine a breakdown of previous events: they're hiding because a tyrant named Tervon killed their royal parents in order to take control of Bulgaria--

What? It's not the RPG fantasy-world of "Ehb," but medieval Bulgaria? I guess that when Uwe Boll negotiated with Bulgarian reps to shoot there with an all-native cast, someone thought that placing the film's action in a medieval version of their country might help tourism. That might've been interesting if there was anything one learned about Bulgarian history or customs, but as far as cultural depth goes, it might as well still be another interchangeable fantasy-verse.

Almost anyone can predict where the movie goes from here. Kaine doesn't want to get dragged into these RenFair shenanigans, but he learns that the only way to get back to his world to get hold of some other magical doohickey in Tervon's possession. Arabella initially doesn't like Kaine, but eventually they become slightly more romantic with one another. So Kaine goes from reluctant hitman to reluctant savior, with next to no character alteration, and there are lots of poorly staged battles, in which the two princesses show off their swordfighting skills.

Kaine does have one half-decent fight with Tervon before the Earthman returns to Earth. Once there, he suddenly turns on his employers and shoots it out with them, receiving some aid from-- the dragon, which followed him to Earth? What? Anyway, he kills all the other crooks and returns the girls to their daddy, who lets Kaine go free. He walks into the sunset with the dragon flying overhead.

I add the "clansgression" tag to this movie because when Arabella was talking about Tervon killing her parents, I could swear she said that (a) Tervon was her uncle, and (b) he got wroth with her parents because they wouldn't let him marry Arabella, his niece. I could be wrong, though, because I won't waste the time to re-check the scene.              

SANTO VS. LAS LOBAS (1976)

 

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

Researchers better than me have speculated that this choppy film, boasting two directors, may have been started as early as 1972, abandoned for a while, and then finished up in 1976. This doesn't sound like the usual assembly-line production for other entries in the long-running Santo series. But then, LOBAS is barely like any other Santo film I've seen.

Of the two directors, Jaime Pons also has credits for both writing and executive production for the film. and one reviewer even speculates that Pons may have a minor acting role in the film's early sections. It seems axiomatic that someone decided to make a moody werewolf film with Santo in it, in contrast to the many more action-oriented movies in which the masked wrestler contended with less formidable fiends. I'd also say that the first half is the better organized of the two.

LOBAS begins with what proves to be its best scene. In a mundane car park, a young blonde woman (Erika Carlsson) is accosted by an older female. The old woman, name of Luba, says that her time is at an end and that the blonde must become the new Luba. Possibly using magical persuasion, Old Luba compels New Luba to stab her to death. Then, out of the shadows spring various shaggy women, who proceed to feast on Dead Luba. From then on, New Luba is totally a monster through and through, and she makes a beeline for Santo, the Silver Mask, to prevent his interference with the wolf-cult's plans.

  Luba approaches Santo in his dressing-room at a wrestling-ring, trying without success to seduce the hero. After she leaves, a werewolf-hunter tries to convince Santo to oppose the werewolf-cult. This version of Santo has apparently never met any monsters before, for he scoffs at the possibility of lycanthropes. However, while Luba later ambushes and kills the werewolf-hunter, in his room Santo is attacked by what is supposed to be a wolf (though it's clearly a dog). Santo's bitten and this convinces him to investigate further. He goes looking for another of the hunter's allies, but while they talk, a young woman in a swimming-pool signals that she's having trouble. The hunter-guy goes to her rescue, but it's another ambush, for she almost drowns the fellow, obliging the luchador to rescue him. Hunter-guy also informs Santo that if he doesn't kill off the leader of the werewolf cult by the time of the Red Moon, the wrestler will become a lycanthrope as well.

Everything in the first half suggests that Luba, repeatedly called the Queen of Werewolves, will bring about the coming apocalypse, in which werewolves destroy humanity. However, Luba is killed, so Santo needs a new Big Bad. He leaves the big city for a country town where the brother of the original hunter lives, and learns that there's a Werewolf King, name of Licar, who's going to bring about the chaos. After a lot of running battles with wolves and wolf-people, and a few scenes of werewolves trying to usurp regular mortals as Young Luba was possessed, Santo finally slays the King and wins his own freedom.

The makeup in LOBAS is the weakest element, but nevertheless both directors created a lot of forbidding scenes that feel more like a regular horror-flick than a masked wrestler movie. If the hero were just a strong guy without the charisma of Santo. I might have labeled LOBAS a horror-drama.       

THUNDERBOLTS: THE NEW AVENGERS (2025)

 

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

First off, this movie has nothing to do with the THUNDERBOLTS franchise introduced in the 1990s. The comics-title concerned a handful of long-term Marvel villains led by master evildoer Baron Zemo, who orders them to masquerade as a new team of heroes, in order to perpetrate a "long con" of some sort. However, over time the newly minted Thunderbolts began to respond to the public accolades they receive for their heroic acts, and some or all of them become heroes in truth. THUNDERBOLTS the comic was both a series steeped in the never-ending palimpsest of Marvel continuity, and also one that used the many colorful characters in new and interesting ways. (Note my mention of "color," it becomes important later.) 

I suppose these "New Avengers" could be said to follow a very loosely similar pathway. The members of the Movie Thunderbolts are also characters established in other films, though obviously not with nearly as much history as the Marvel villains in the comic. All five members-- Second Black Widow, Red Guardian, The US Agent (though he's not called that here), Ghost, and Winter Soldier-- are borderline MCU players who were not hardcore villains but were nevertheless morally compromised in one way or another. Like the original Thunderbolts, these ne-er-do-wells get gradually beguiled into taking on the role of heroes and are even called "Avengers" by some citizens, which is only possible because so many other "Big-Name Avengers" were killed or sidelined by earlier machinations of the MCU.   

Without dilating at length on the way these disparate characters get teamed up, it bears a very slight resemblance to the comic-book Avengers in their first issue, wherein Thor, the Hulk, Iron Man, Ant Man and the Wasp assemble to respond to the threat of villainous Loki. Here, previously established "real villain" Valentina de Fontaine (Julie Louis-Dreyfus) assembles three of the five (including a fourth character who's almost immediately killed off) in order to murder them all, as well as to cover her tracks. But Valentina's a clumsy Big Bad. The sometime SHIELD agent brings her pawns together at an installation that also hosts a mysterious fellow named Bob-- and Bob is the X-factor who unites the first three, as well as Red Guardian and Winter Soldier.             

Speaking of the character Winter Soldier, the THUNDERBOLTS creative with the longest track record in Marvel movies, Eric Pearson, often seems to have an eye to replaying the theme of CAPTAIN AMERICA THE WINTER SOLDIER here. SOLDIER was primarily a denouncement of the arms race, or at least the American part of that endeavor. As political critique, SOLDIER was lightweight, but it was a fast-paced, well-mounted adventure movie. In THUNDERBOLTS Valentina is trying to continue the arms race, but she wants to use transformed humans as her arsenal. Bob is one of her experiments, though she apparently lost track of him when she set up some of her agents to be destroyed in an explosion that will also eliminate evidence of Valentina's activities. Instead, US Agent, Ghost and Second Widow escape with Bob in tow, and in due time they learn that Bob is Valentina's attempt to breed her own Superman. But they also learn that Bob is psychologically erratic. Once Valentina guides the young man into becoming a dimestore Man of Steel named "Sentry," he ceases to be her puppet and becomes capable of wiping out the world with his super-powers, the same way the armed helicarriers of SOLDIER were capable of being turned against American citizens. 

    

Pearson's plot is nothing special, but it's at least a serviceable superhero concept, in contrast (say) to MADAME WEB. And THUNDERBOLTS is at least a watchable superhero film with some easy-to-follow action-scenes and even a few jokes that land pretty well. But it's far from being as good as it might have been.

One problem is that, for a superhero movie, it's almost as dispiriting to watch as Zach Snyder's MAN OF STEEL. All the characters are dressed in dark browns and blacks and blues, with little variation. I'm not going to say every superhero flick has to be filled with day-glo hues like the '66 BATMAN, but there should more visual variety than THUNDERBOLTS has. I can't be sure, but the dull palette of the movie may have meant to resonate with the "dark" histories of the Thunderbolts. Of the five of them, three have killed for one reason or another, one (Ghost) became a super-criminal to save her own life, and the other (Red Guardian) is a former Soviet spy who now subsists running an uber service. Pearson's script tries to make audiences like these characters by virtue of their having suffered, and their endgame involves managing to get through to the psychotic Sentry with their own human vulnerabilities. But the most amusing moment in the movie takes place during the credits, where assorted media pundits are making fun of the ramshackle nature of "The New Avengers." 

The basic notion of "putting old wine in new bottles" can work when it's done with real insight into how characters can bounce off one another. The AVENGERS comic book began as a tacit emulation of DC's JUSTICE LEAGUE, uniting three of Marvel's heavy hitters with the not-so-momentous Ant-Man and Wasp. Then in the middle sixties Stan Lee, who had added a recrudescent Captain America to the mix, decided to largely banish Thor, Hulk and Iron Man from the regular ranks, putting the Captain in charge of three newbie heroes. Some ruminations by Roy Thomas, Lee's successor on the title, suggest that if Thomas had had his way, he would have been bringing in Thor and Iron Man all the time. But focusing on characters who didn't have their own serials forced Thomas to come up with strong soap-operatic plots for any and all heroes unique to the AVENGERS feature. However, that's not going to be a consideration with any big-budget AVENGERS movies, since at most two can be made in the space of a year.

THUNDERBOLTS includes a post-credits scene heralding the future project AVENGERS DOOMSDAY, which sounds like it's going to be stuffed with more costumed crusaders than one can shake the proverbial stick at. That alone suggests to me that the ersatz Thunderbolts aren't going to get any more development in future than they did in their first outing.    

SWORDSMAN (1990)

 

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

I've seen reviews touting this 1990 Tsui Hark film as starting Hong Kong's wuxia craze of the 1990s. Historically, this may well be true; maybe it's the first expensive film of the period to focus on the battles of wuxia practitioners, who can wreak all sorts of magical phenomena with their kung fu. But for me SWORDSMAN is all but indistinguishable from a dozen other chopsockies in which martial masters show off incredible powers-- often in stories that throw far too many characters at the audience.

 In addition, SWORDSMAN is mostly about two or more clans fighting over a prized item: one of those tomes of martial lore with which the possessor can Take Over the Kung Fu World. This unoriginal plot-setup is not that much of a deficit, but to get past that predictability, a kung-fu film needs one or more likable protagonists, with whom to identify even when one can't keep track of all the rest of the cast.

Producer Hark chose to adapt a work by popular novelist Louis Cha, and his original director of choice was the celebrated King Hu, though Hu departed the project after some time and SWORDSMAN had to be finished up by other hands. The change in creative administrators may be responsible for the sponginess of the two main characters, though it might also be a factor stemming from the original novel. Though I'm unlikely to ever read a Cha novel even in translation, I can form some tentative conclusions based on my experience of his works in movies-- such as DRAGON CHRONICLES. Like SWORDSMAN, CHRONICLES offered a lot of wild FX, but barely any characters worth identifying with.

After the Big Book of Kung Fu is stolen from the emperor's library, two young kung-fu students of a particular school travel to meet with a noble named Lam, master of a divergent school. Ling (Sam Hui, apparently best known as a comedy actor) and Kiddo (Michelle Reis, a female masquerading as a young man) eventually find their emissary-duties compromised when Lam involves them in caring for the missing tome. Okay-- but why is Lam's theft of the volume justified, and why do Ling and Kiddo feel honor-bound to help him keep hold of stolen merchandise? Later the duo is attacked by two distinct killers, one sent by the emperor and one from their own school. What greater good do Ling and Kiddo serve by keeping hold of the book for the betterment of Lam's school?

A lot of Chinese kung-fu movies have come up with good takes on the schtick of a female masquerading as a male in the company of men, but SWORDSMAN seems routine at every pass. Even a scene in which Kiddo is bathing and Ling refuses to get out of the room seemed tedious. Later, another female, Blue Phoenix (Fennie Yuen) seems to be competing for Ling's interest, but this too doesn't seem to get started-- though Phoenix has the most noteworthy wuxia stunt, somehow projecting snakes out of her gown-sleeves. The various kung-fu magicks lacked panache, and I've frankly seen more interesting effects in much cheaper chopsockies. 

I saw this over 20 years ago and remembered nothing about it, but I must admit that the same is true of the purportedly superior sequel SWORDMAN II, which used the same characters but kept almost none of the actors from the original film.       

PHANTOM 2040, SEASON TWO (1995-6)

 

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

Since the wrapup of Season 2 seems a bit rushed, it's possible that the producers were hoping to get one more season for their unique concept. Still, at least some subplots, such as the disposition of the missing father of Kit, are fully realized.

RITE OF PASSAGE/THE WORLD IS MY JUNGLE-- Both of these episodes are just recap shows with some new voiceovers, so they have no impact on the ongoing stories or their mythicity.

SANCTUARY-- Guran plans to take Kit back to Bangalla in Africa in order to complete his training as the Phantom. However, Nia wants to kidnap the hero and take him back so that she can use him to restore her rulership. To that end, she teams up with a master hunter, Gunnar, to take Guran prisoner as a way of luring the Phantom into their clutches. Gunnar has a secret agenda though, for he plans to execute a "most dangerous game" with the Man Who Cannot Die, hunting the Phantom down in the Sector Zero jungle. But Guran happens to harbor a deep secret with respect to a mysterious creature known as "the Shadow Panther," and that secret, alluded to in Season One, gets fully exposed here. "Sanctuary" directly follows the events of the last new episode of Season One, "A Boy and His Cat," which ended with Max Jr having retreated from the real world into a cyberspace haven. Rebecca makes a long-shot attempt to revive her son.

THE TIES THAT BIND-- Rebecca ramps up her plans to launch Cyberville, which will include her project of decimating most of Earth's ecology, although Phantom and his allies don't yet know her specific plans. She does launch an assault on Sean One's orbiting cities, though. Graft, for his own reasons, joins Max Jr in cyberspace and manages to talk the eccentric genius-youth into returning to the real world. A small army of biots attacks Phantom and his allies at their clandestine meeting-place, and even after the androids are vanquished, this development raises the possibility of betrayal from within. Graft then confides to Vaingloria that he plans to take over Rebecca's Cyberville project, and he tries to use Doctor Jak to that end. At one point both Sagan and Kit's aunt are injured, enraging Phantom into destroying the Cyberville project, at least temporarily. The episode ends with Kit's self-doubts about his status as a hero.

THE WOMAN IN THE MOON-- Sean One survives Rebecca's attack, and he seeks to persuade all of the orbital colonies to declare independence from Earth. Max Jr and Graft, however, try to swing the vote to their benefit. Vaingloria and Doctor Jak get taken on board the satellite as part of the big scheme, so I guess Vaingloria is the titular "woman in the moon." (This was probably a reference to a famous film about space travel, directed by Fritz Lang, who also helmed the film METROPOLIS, to which PHANTOM 2040 owes more than a little). I confess I didn't follow why Graft and Max Jr were farting around with the voting process, though, since they end up attempting to blow up the satellite, which seems to have been Rebecca's preference as well.     

MATTER OVER MIND-- Thanks to Graft's uneasy partnership with Max Jr, the junior Madison decodes the formula for the super-poison Max Sr almost unleashed during the Sector Zero catastrophe. By chance hacker Sparks gains access to the formula as well, altering the Phantom to its existence. The cyber-entity Mister Cairo learns of the formula as well and his encounter with the intel triggers in him a vague idea to "go home," though he has no idea how he was created. Sparks' investigation reveals that Cairo is a computer-probe that was split off from Doctor Jak's mind, and thus Cairo earnestly desires to be reunited with his creator. The Phantom team seeks to prevent that unison to protect Kit's secrets, but Heisenberg and Pavlova intervene to liberate Cairo. When Phantom again seeks to keep Doctor Jak from downloading Cairo's information, the shock-jock reveals the humanity beneath his obstreperous facade. Jak was originally a crusading journalist married to a tabloid reporter named Pavlova (on whom he patterned his android helper). Human Pavlova sneaks on board the train carrying Max Sr's shipment of poison, but she's killed by exposure to the poison. To learn the reason behind her fate, Jak splits off a part of his own mind to become the cyber-entity Cairo, but this eradicates some of his own memories and apparently shifts him into emulating the persona of his dead wife, being preoccupied with meaningless entertainment. The Phantom team is also made privy to Rebecca's plan to test a new iteration of the super-poison, making it possible to destroy the Madisons' chemical factory. Cairo then gives Phantom a gift of information that will solve the mystery of the Sector Zero catastrophe. An earlier episode worked in a reference to Miles Archer in THE MALTESE FALCON by naming Kit's teacher after that character. Here, it's clarified that the cyber-entity Cairo is named after the gunsel of that novel, for the technician who creates Cairo is made to look like Sydney Greenstreet, the actor playing Cairo's boss in the 1941 FALCON movie. Also, the two Pavlovas bear a slight resemblance to the two Marias of METROPOLIS.

SINS OF THE FATHERS PARTS 1-2-- Rebecca assures Max Jr that she's always known about Graft's attempts to undermine her authority but claims that they cannot stop the Maximum Era. Phantom gets access to information that suggests that his father did indeed cause the catastrophe that slew Max Sr and many others, and this fills Kit with mammoth self-doubt. Meanwhile, Graft and Vaingloria team up with Cordwainer Bird and descend into cyberspace to hack into Rebecca's plans. Kit, despite his misgivings, agrees to travel to Bangalla as Guran wishes, to learn more about the Phantom Heritage. However. he's interrupted by Sagan and DVL, for Sagan has figured out Kit's double identity. Phantom sabotages Rebecca's next project, but it's a fake-out on her part, for she plans to unleash Cyberville and the poisoning scheme. 

In Bangalla Phantom meets the grandfather of Guran, who still maintains the original Skull Cave. Rebecca's life is now complicated in that Max Sr's memory engrams have once more been implanted in a robot body, and the demented automaton tries to take control of Maximum Inc. To the frustration of Max Sr 2.0, he learns that the shipment he originally put on the train-- a toxin designed to eliminate "ghostwood"-- was replaced by Scythe, a more extreme poison with which Rebecca hoped to eradicate the world, aside from the survivors in Cyberville-- meaning that, when the Phantom interfered with the train, Max Sr died because of his wife's meddling. Phantom learns the same information, which exculpates his father of responsibility for the Sector Zero deaths. Phantom returns to Metropia and tries to destroy Rebecca's new plans, only to be attacked by Graft, who's been promised a new organic body by Rebecca. During the struggle Graft almost falls from a great height and Phantom offers to rescue him if he surrenders. Graft feels a moment of remorse and allows himself to fall, but Max Sr 2.0 saves him. Max Jr blunders and seals all of Maximum Inc behind a force field. At the conclusion Kit finds evidence that his father didn't die in the train-crash, and there's a cliffhanger showing that the previous Phantom does still live.

THE SACRIFICE PARTS 1-2-- Thanks to the information provided by Cairo, Phantom locates his father, but the previous hero was indeed affected by the poison, and only recently emerged from a cryonic slumber after sixteen years. The team seeks to find the antidote to the poison to save his life. Meanwhile, Max Jr suspects that his robot-dad has some encrypted data that will make it possible for the Madisons to escape the force-field prison. Max Sr discloses a way that the field can be disrupted, but only by outside forces, so Rebecca reaches out to her sometime associate, the smuggler Gorda. The obese criminal invades the jungle and informs Phantom that said jungle, brought into existence by the mutation of ghostwood, extends to many other areas far from Metropia. Phantom tries to prevent Gorda from freeing the Madisons but fails, barely escaping with his life.

Phantom and Sagan seek to find the formula for the super-poison by covertly accessing the Madison data banks, and Mister Cairo shows up to provide assistance. However, the Madisons retaliate by shutting down the computer system, threatening Cairo's cyber-existence. Cairo succeeds in transmitting the antidote info to the Phantom team, and also meets an old cyber-memory of Max Sr, and the two exchange pleasantries before both are annihilated by the power shutdown. Rebecca then launches a plan to have her biots to the Enforcers, with the aim of usurping the control of the police over the city. With this takeover, Rebecca decides she doesn't need Cyberville as she'll control Metropia as her private kingdom. While Guran seeks to heal Kit's father, Phantom and Sagan disable the compromised biots. Kit's father is somewhat strengthened, though the antidote isn't enough to provide full recovery, and so he must be returned to cryonic status.

THE SECOND TIME AROUND-- Phantom and Guran encounter a relatively ordinary crime, that of hijacking. However, one of the crooks displays a gold coin bearing the traditional "Good Mark," signifying that at some past point in time, he received the protection of a previous Phantom. Guran advises Phantom to release the hijackers, and Phantom reluctantly agrees. The Madisons seek to find out the coin's significance, while the hero accesses VR to figure out how the Good Mark coin came to be in a criminal's possession. It's one of the few weak episodes but is worthwhile for at least showing how one of the earlier Phantoms operated.

ROGUE-- Though Doctor Jak doesn't remember his nobler self, due to his separation from Cairo, Pavlova, who does remember all the disclosures, returns to work as his assistant. Jak records what seems to be a revolt of the self-aware biots, led by Heisenberg, and shows the Phantom coming to the biots' aid against Enforcer robots. The Enforcers thus put out a warrant for Phantom, meaning that he can't be seen accepting aid from Sagan anymore. The greater threat, though, is that Max Jr, who invented Heisenberg, devises a new method to regain control of the android, briefly forcing Heisenberg to fight the hero. Though things get sorted out to the status quo by episode's end, the script makes a good case for the concept of biots becoming self-aware, though without overstating the political interpretation of this championing of diversity, as did so many bad movies of the 21st century.      

THE FURIES-- Phantom tries to figure out a cryptic re mark made by his father before he had to re-enter cryogenic stasis. While looking into the unique properties of ghostwood in the Ghost Jungle, Phantom and Guran spot Gorda setting up some infernal machine and they attack, only to be routed thanks to the secret presence of Max Sr 2.0. Graft and Max Jr attempt to hijack an outer-space shipment of iridium, but they have to tell Rebecca that Gorda got there first. Both "business partners" began considering ways to sever their relationship. Finally both women figure out that Max Sr is playing them, but all the disputants are arrested by Enforcers. Unfortunately, all are also released for lack of evidence 

MOMENTS OF TRUTH-- Phantom and Sparks seek to expose a smuggling operation by Rebecca, which strangely involves a shipment of "special roses." During the investigation, Phantom discovers that Sparks doesn't have much knowledge of many practical matters, so over the teen's protests he gets enrolled in school. An unknown party, later revealed to be Gorda, steals the rose shipment, but she can't initially figure out what's special about the flowers. Graft, in throwing down with Phantom, records the presence of Sparks, so the Madisons seek to learn his identity. The truth is eventually revealed, that the roses were capable of neutralizing the good effects of ghostwood. 

THE WHOLE TRUTH-- The final episode begins with Kit meditating on the presence of mysteries in his life, which may be the reason the scripters kept making references to THE MALTESE FALCON. Rebecca and Gorda, having made their peace, launch a biot attack on the Enforcers for the purpose of conquering the city at last, but Phantom suspects there's more to it than a simple assault. He breaks into Maximum Inc and encounters Max Sr 2.0, who persuades the hero to leave the compound so they can talk. Because the robot still possesses all of the living man's memories, he's able to let Phantom download those memories (using a passcode, "flowers of evil," derived from the title of a poetry-collection by the original Baudelaire). In keeping with many spotty references to a friendship between Kit's father and the original Max Sr, the robot discloses that the two of them were seeking to implement ghostwood to clean up the toxins in Metropia, but without allowing the special plant to crowd out all other plants. As mentioned in an earlier episode, Rebecca substituted tanks of poison in the ghostwood shipment and caused the train to crash in a failed attempt to poison the city. Thus she killed her husband and almost slew Kit's father. (We also see in these memories an image of Max Jr as a pure young child, who has a normal-looking cat named Shakespeare.) All of the villains track Phantom and the robot to the Ghost Jungle, but Phantom evades them, hoping he can use the automaton's data to completely cure the comatose father. However, the cure fails and Kit must resign himself to his father's passing, as well as terminating Max Sr 2.0 (at the latter's request, of course). In a hurry-up-and-finish resolution, the four villains, who have dodged the law over and over are somehow convicted this time, and Kit can finally think about living another life, until the Phantom is needed again.    

                      

  

IN THE NAME OF THE KING 2: TWO WORLDS (2011)

 

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

Michael Weldon of the long vanished PSYCHOTRONIC magazine coined a great phrase for review of films like this one: "Sequels No One Asked For." Probably one of the least likely sources for added installments was Uwe Boll's flop fantasy 2007 IN THE NAME OF THE KING. I can only assume that Boll crunched some numbers and realized he could make some degree of profit by churning out extensions of this dubious franchise on a tight budget, for sale to cable/streaming.

So in my review of the original film, I found it to be a patchwork of poorly realized concepts from Tolkien and its alleged video-game source. But KING 2 is surprisingly good-- for about the first third of the film, after which it plunges into incoherence.

Boll starts out with action, showing a cloaked woman. identified as a sorceress (Natalie Burn), running from guys in black garments. She turns on them, flinging medieval grenades at some of them and dispatching others with twin daggers. She escapes into a space-warp. Cut to a martial-arts dojo in Vancouver, and we see Granger (Dolph Lundgren) demonstrating to a gaggle of peewee students the fine art of beating up four other adult attackers. It's a little confusing as to whether or not the attackers are being paid for their labors-- it looks like they're paying Granger for the privilege of getting ass-kicked. Maybe they lost a bet? Soon we're out of the dojo, as Granger goes home to a lonely apartment. It's efficiently communicated that he's former Special Forces and that he suffers some survivor's guilt, wishing idly that he might've died with some of his buddies.

Then both the sorceress and her black-garbed adversaries swarm into Granger's apartment, forcing him to fight for his life. Sorceress manages to grab the ex-soldier and whisk him into her world, the quasi-medieval fantasy-world of Ehb. The sorceress is killed by a bunch of warriors (after which she's pretty much forgotten for the rest of the film), and those warriors take Granger prisoner.

In short order the dazed ex-soldier is introduced to the "King" (Lochlyn Munro) of the title (whose only proper name, weirdly, is "Raven"), a big lug named Allard who seems to be spoiling for a fight with Granger, and a doctor (Natassia Malthe) named-- wait for it-- Manhattan. Actually, I don't believe anyone in KING 2 ever speaks that risible name, so I guess it's an in-joke. Raven apologizes for how his men roughed up Granger and informs the Earthman that he's the savior of Ehb according to some prophecy. Granger alone can destroy the evil sorceress known as The Holy Mother, and the confused fellow attempts to roll with this notion, as well as with being in some faux-medieval world. After some blandishments from the King and some threats from Allard, Granger's given a private room with a hot and cold running chippie. Granger dispenses with the chippie's services, but shortly thereafter he has his various wounds tended by the local sexy female doctor, and small sparks ensue.

I note in passing that even though Raven is strongly suggested to be the story's villain, Munro's approach to villainy is the exact opposite of the over-ripe performance of Matthew Lillard in the first film. Raven is sort of smarmy, and yet not without humor and the appearance of humility. That's why I could buy it that Granger more or less welcomes the chance to take on another killing-mission, even if it's for some medieval dude he never met before. Lundgren's charisma sells this notion better than the script does, and I could even buy that Sexy Lady Doctor is so taken with Granger's charms that she quickly beds him, though not without some morning-after regrets.

Unfortunately, the last engaging moment in the movie is when Granger wants to go off and assassinate the Holy Mother with nothing but a knife, but Raven insists on sending him along with Allard, Manhattan and a cadre of men. After this, Granger's arc as a soldier seeking surcease of sorrow comes to an end, and he becomes a cog in the jumbled gears of the story's clockwork. The detachment is attacked by more black-garbed ninjas, but Granger notices that one of the killers refrains from attacking him, the guy who's supposed to kill the ninja's lady boss. Does the Holy Mother have some special plans for Granger?

Well, no big surprise, the Holy Mother is the good guy and Raven is the bad guy. The old broad also informs Granger that she saved the child-heir of the previous regime ("The King Before," presumably the "Farmer" character) and sent that kid to an adoption agency on Earth. Did we really have to get another "prince-raised-as-a-commoner" trope, since it didn't work that well the first time? Also, for some reason Raven wants to unleash a plague on Earth, though I never saw how that was going to help him cement his power. The latter half of the film devolves into a lot of expositional blather and dull fight-scenes. Granger returns to his own world and doesn't "take Manhattan" with him, but the end of their off-again, on-again romance carries no emotional impact.

So instead of being blah all the way through like the first movie, KING 2 is promising at the start and then unravels into incoherence. I'm not sure which is worse.                           

PHANTOM 2040, SEASON ONE (1994-5)

 

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

Hardly any of the TV serials I've comprehensively examined for high mythicity have received a total score of "good," meaning that there's a strong symbolic discourse running through most or all episodes. Peter Chung's AEON FLUX managed it, but that show consisted of only ten full episodes and some shorts. Chung provided character designs for PHANTOM 2040, but the writers were probably responsible for keeping up the quality of 2040's 35 episodes over the course of two seasons.

GENERATION UNTO GENERATION, Parts 1-2-- In 2040, the venerable costumed jungle-hero of the Lee Falk comic strip gets a futuristic update, possibly with some guidance from the future-city patterns created by the example of METROPOLIS. Eighteen-year-old Kit Walker (Scott Valentine), who has no idea of his heritage, was raised by his aunt in the city of "Metropia," a city divorced from the world of nature. Kit wants to become an ecological engineer in the few parts of the world where natural ecosystems are preserved since the world-devastating "resource wars." But because Kit reaches his majority, his father's old teacher, Guran of Bangalla, comes to Metropia to teach Kit to become the new Phantom. The main source of evil in the "big-city jungle" is Rebecca Madison (Margot Kidder), whose primary plot is to create a closed community, Cyberville, where the wealthy will be served while the rest of the world goes to hell. Kit doesn't want to be a crusader against evil, but he gets a big push toward savior-dom when he discovers that a mutated plant, "ghostwood," may be capable ofto renovating Earth's wrecked ecosystem. Kit consents to become a high-tech "Ghost Who Walks," complete with an invisibility screen. The first two-parter also introduces Rebecca's decadent son Max Jr, who at a young age was traumatized by the death of his father Max Sr, supposedly killed by the father of Kit. Max Jr affects to talk to others through the medium of his grungy cat, named for the French decadent poet Baudelaire. Also present are (1) Rebecca's cyborg enforcer Graft, (2) righteous Metropian police officer Sagan and her cyborg-partner, a mutt named DVL (a knowing spoof of Original Phantom's wolf-pet "Devil"), and (3) Metropian shock-jock Doctor Jak (Mark Hamill) and his "biot" (android) aide Pavlova. In the first two-parter, Phantom destroys Rebecca's plan to brainwash citizens with a video game.

THE SUM OF THE PARTS-- Max Jr concocts a new type of biot to frame the New Phantom as a criminal. This is one of the weaker plots, but the android itself takes on a new and unpredictable identity befitting the name Mad Max bestows on the android: Heisenberg. Another Phantom-foe appears: Sean One, who rules over a series of orbital colonies and who, like Rebecca, has plans to encourage humans to desert Earth to become citizens under his control. 

FIRE AND I.C.E.-- Phantom and his team seek to break into Rebecca's security system in order to find out her plans for Cyberville. In the process the hero makes another ally: teenaged hacker Sparks. He also encounters a mysterious figure, Mister Cairo, who seems to be an intelligent hologram.

REFLECTIONS OF GLORY-- Rebecca has another brainwashing plan, and this one is directed solely at the city-council members whose approval she needs to build Cyberville. This time the Madisons plan to use a beautiful singer, Vaingloria (Debbie Harry), who's been outfitted with implants to hypnotize others. (Some slight inspiration from the Evil Maria in METROPOLIS is possible.) In the same episode, Sagan meets Kit a second time when she apprehends Sparks for a minor criminal act, and more or less strongarms Kit into accompanying her on a date. However, when Kit changes into the Phantom to investigate, the vigilante has his first direct run-in with the by-the-book lady cop.

SHADOWS FROM THE PAST-- An African warrior-woman, Nia, bears a grudge against the previous Phantom, and so ends up having a big battle with the new hero. Rebecca makes an alliance with Nia to kill the Phantom, and in so doing shows the woman how she Rebecca has preserved the persona of her dead husband online. Nia poisons Guran, who goes berserk until Phantom is able to find a cure.         

THE BIOT IN RED-- Phantom continues trying to figure out what happened in the events that led to the death of Max Madison Sr and the disappearance of Kit's father. Heisenberg, who has escaped the control of Max Jr, befriends a jazz-playing musician. Max Jr stashes an information cylinder in the musician's case and Doctor Jak sends Pavlova to engage a detective to find the case. Pavlova engages Professor Archer, Kit's college teacher, who's playing at being a detective in imitation of his ancestor (implicitly Miles Archer of THE MALTESE FALCON). Heisenberg conceives a thing for Pavlova and the two of them play out the farewell scene from "Casablanca."         

THE GOOD MARK-- Intrigue out the wazoo. Not only is the Phantom trying to learn more about his father's disappearance, Graft and Max Jr conspire to get hold of Rebecca's secret files. Sagan gets framed by her commander, so Phantom helps her bring him down. The script works in a little-used bit of Phantom lore: "the Good Mark," a symbol of righteousness.

DARK ORBIT PTS 1-2-- Sean One desires to have his orbital colonies declared independent of Earth's government, so he gathers supplies for a space laser from an obese Earth-smuggler, the Aussie-accented Gorda. Phantom is forced to league himself with Graft and Max Jr to foil Sean One's plans. Though Graft remains allied to Rebecca by the end of the episode, he and the Phantom part as respectful adversaries, and even Guran hopes that someday the old soldier will recover the better angels of his nature.

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE-- Max Jr has a dream of his childhood, being shown love by his father. But Max's adult psyche intrudes, reciting a (somewhat altered) poem from Baudelaire about angels knowing grief. Simultaneously, Guran reveals that at a very young age Kit received some instruction from his missing father, thus creating a parallel between the adversaries. Rebecca then launches a new scheme: downloading the mental engrams of her husband into a new biot body. However, the biot awakes believing that it's the original Max Sr and goes on a rampage, taking Sparks prisoner. Later he releases Sparks but abducts Max Jr, forcing Phantom to try to stop the android. When the biot drags Max Jr to Sector Zero, the site of Max Sr's death-- an area which should be replete with poison due to the catastrophe there-- all are surprised to see that the mutated ghostwood plant has neutralized the poison elements. The android realizes that it's no more than a machine and destroys itself, though not without claiming that the previous Phantom killed Max Sr. 

LASERS IN THE JUNGLE-- The episode opens with Vaingloria musing on the impermanence of human life. That day at one of the singer's concerts, a mad bomber tries to assault Vaingloria, but the Phantom saves her. The hero also plans to lure Graft into the Section Zero jungle to annihilate Rebecca's biot army, on which her Cyberville scheme depends. Max Jr sends Vaingloria along with Graft and the biot army as his "observer," but it's more likely that Max Jr just likes messing with people. There's the hint of a possible romance between the singer and the soldier, though both are too damaged to make a connection. Phantom manages to use Vaingloria's specialty, illusions, to wipe out the biot army. There's an amusing side-plot in which Rebecca loses her hair due to chemical exposure, but by episode's end has regained it all thanks to clone-transplants. In the scene dealing with her recovery, her full head of hair is juxtaposed with the image of the snaky-locked head topping a statue of Medusa.

THREE INTO ONE-- Sagan is forced to work with the Phantom when a trio of citizens-- one of whom is a policewoman known to Sagan-- become a unitary being with enormous telekinetic powers. Cairo appears again, appearing to make a deal with Graft. Both Graft and the Phantom learn of "the Triad Project," which was supposedly abandoned during the era of Kit's predecessor. At the end, though Sagan doesn't learn Kit's secret, she's a bit more sanguine about the vigilante's activities.

THE GAUNTLET-- Sparks, who essentially raised himself on the streets after being apparently abandoned by his parents, gets the chance to find out what really happened. Mister Cairo takes an interest in the teen's welfare, not even charging anyone for eliciting vital memories from Sparks' subconscious. The boy learns that biots from Maximum Inc kidnapped both mother and father, and Phantom resolves to ferret out the truth, though he orders Sparks to stay out of the matter. Naturally the youth deals himself in anyway, but he, Phantom and Guran can only learn the truth by subduing a security system named Gauntlet, whose minds were used to provide a template for the system.

LIFE LESSONS-- Phantom shoots a biot and is grief stricken to find that he wounded (but fortunately did not kill) a human being masquerading as one of Maximum's androids. Phantom learns from the soulful biot Heisenberg that some biots have asserted their status as free, cognitive beings, which Kit finds hard to countenance. The main threat, however, is a defective reactor under the control of Maximum Inc, one that Rebecca's totally willing to let detonate since it will only harm the lower classes.

THE MAGICIAN-- Phantom encounters a professional magician named Steele, a friend of his vanished father. However, because of that contact, Graft and Rebecca may get a pipeline to a horde of secrets Steele maintained from the earlier association-- including a lot of the tech the modern Phantom uses. However, Steele uses his tricks to flummox Graft long enough to destroy the secrets and protect Kit. Though Steele doesn't look anything like the classic Mandrake, whom comics-artist Lee Falk created slightly before he invented The Phantom, it's obvious that this is a Mandrake homage, even if one doesn't know that the Steele character is being voiced by the same actor who did Mandrake in the 1986-7 DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH cartoon.      

SWIFTER, HIGHER, FASTER-- Kit's Phantom crusade has led him to neglect the fellow collegians he used to hang with, but when he seeks to re-connect, he learns that one sportswoman, Jenna, has been enhanced thanks to Maximum Inc's promotion of risky nanobot tech. Jenna goes berserk. One of the other females who witnessed the debut of the New Phantom strongly suspects his identity, but nothing more comes of this plot-thread.

DOWN THE LINE-- Phantom and his allies receive a transmission from what appears to be the Phantom of a future era. The supposed descendant claims that for the safety of humankind, Kit must break the Phantom's rule against killing and exterminate Rebecca Madison.

CONTROL GROUP-- Thanks to Rebecca experimenting with memory transfers, Phantom and Sparks get to witness downloads of the memories of Rebecca's enforcer Graft. Both heroes are surprised to learn that the ruthless henchman was once a hero in his own right, defending the helpless people Rebecca wiped out during the conflicts of the resource wars. But because Graft lost almost his entire organic body in the wars-- he speaks the famous Ronald Reagan line from a similarly maimed character in the forties movie KINGS ROW-- he allows himself to succumb to being a madwoman's tool. Yet by the end, it's evident that the heroic Graft is far from being as dead as he thinks he is.

A BOY AND HIS CAT-- Despite Max Jr's facility for plotting evil plots, he enters a VR program and refuses to emerge, so that his body becomes comatose. Rebecca rages at the loss of her son to his own psychosis and brings in a programmer to extricate Max. Said programmer's name is "Cordwainer Bird," a well-known alias of writer Harlan Ellison, and the script not only has Bird comment on his "dangerous visions," the episode title references a famous Ellison story, "A Boy and His Dog." In VR Max encounters a female computer construct who takes the name Athena because she claims that she sprang from Max's head, a la the story of Athena's birth from the skull of Zeus. However, just like Rebecca, Athena is a jealous mistress who doesn't want Max to ever leave, and at one point she morphs into a Medusa-form, referencing the conflation of Rebecca and the snake-haired gorgon in the episode LASERS IN THE JUNGLE. Phantom tries to pull Max out of his delusive state but in the end must leave the confused Maximum Inc heir to his own devices.

In closing my remarks on Season One, I'll reiterate a point I made in my analysis of the book METROPOLIS. The word "Metropolis" means "mother-city," and the arc of the book connotes the madonna-figure of Maria reasserting her primacy over a city controlled by a  father alienated from his son. In 2040, Rebecca wields almost total control of the similarly named Metropia, as well as her husband-- reduced to a "ghost in the machine"-- and all of her children, real and symbolic-- and as such, she's closer to the lascivious goddesses of pagan myth, the antitypes to the madonna archetype. Season Two will prove to be no less rich in mythopoeic correlations.