The Immortal Voyage of Captain Drake

 Lazy sunday afternoon, so that means time for one of those traditional TV adventure movies, this one hailing from 2009.

 

 

Don't expect a blockbuster though, these are the kind of movies you just enjoy on the couch for what they are: television flicks.

 

In 1592, Captain Francis Drake sets sail from Cadiz, his rival Don Sandovate (hello Boba Fett) on his tail.  But unbeknowst to him, his daughter had hidden onboard his ship as well.  They get into a storm, finding themselves suddenly 2000 miles of course in Syria.  Here they are greeted by a Sultan, who tells them his oracle magically had them summoned to him.

 

 

His reputation preceeding him, the Sultan had him brought in order to find the Tree of Life and help his people, who suffer from a plague.  Drake agrees to the proposed terms, and first sets of to find the Map of Plato in the Library of Alexandria's ruins.  His onboard historian unlocks the riddles as they go, leading to finally find the tree on the artic regions, where he finally gets rid of Sandovate as well.

 

So, the positives of this short (86 minutes) SyFy channel made movie: it is enjoyable for what it is, a historical figure (sir Francis Drake) tossed in a story suitable for Sindbad or Jason and the Argonauts, including mythical monsters, hidden tombs and swashbuckling galore.

 

The neutral is the special effects.  You can see this is a television budget made movie, and especially the big monsters suffer from it, not going above "Xena Warrior Princess" level, except that technology has advanced more then a decade between this movie and the venerable series of my youth.

 

And of course there is the negatives, and one that is for many critics a big one: the acting... Adrien Paul is tossing around a terrible accent, and the additional actors are, well, let's say they give off the vibe of a bunch of very enthousiastic rennaissance faire battlefield re-enactors.  With all respects to the re-enactors, they do it out of love, and these blokes actually do it as a profession...

 

 

Never the less, for an hour and a half of watching there have been far worse movies out there, so I personally don't think it a terrible waste of time in the end.  

 

 

National Treasure: Edge of History

 Time for some innocent adventuring with this Disney+ series, starring a still very good looking Catherina Zeta-Jones.

In the style of the movies of the same name or Indiana Jones movies when they didn't involve aliens or timetravel, this is just that, some good fun.

When a treasure hunter called Raphael Rios uncovers an artifact, he sends his family into hiding before a man called Salazar kills him in Mexico.  In the present day, his daughter Jess lives in Baton Rouge as someone still awaiting her citizen papers, with her friends Tasha, Oren and Ethan.  During a locker cleanup at her storage job, she comes along the belongings of former FBI agent and hero Peter Sadusky, and goes to visit him.  He notices her necklace and asks her to visit his estranged grandson Liam.  While a woman named Billie unsuccesfully send some fake agents to ask for the necklace, Jess and Tasha decipher the picture and find a puzzle box in Sadusky's Freemason lodge.

Oren is taken hostage by Billie, who wants the box, as it contains pieces of a map.  Meeting up with Liam again, he shows her a hidden office room in his grandfather's house, containing a paper written by Jess's mom.  It turns out that the story of La Malinche, a so called traitor working for Cortes, was actually the founder of a secret society called the Daughters of the Plumed Serpent.  They hid cultural treasures from the spaniards, and one box was kept by each of the Inca, Mayan and Aztec civilisations.  They go search for an audio clue in Graceland.

At Sadusky's wake, and with the help of famous archeology podcaster Riley Poole (linking the series to the movies), they find out the next clue is at the Louisiana governor's mansion, a diary of a dog, while an interested FBI agent in the case, a young agent called Ross, finds that Sadusky has been poisoned.  Billie and Jess team up, trying to convince her she was actual an acquintance of Jess's mother.  Jess sees through this though, and their journey brings them to the Alamo.  Here Jess deducts the Alamo well does not refer to the fortress, but to the original place in Mexico where the name came from.

Billie frames Jess for Sadusky's murder, but Ross isn't convinced, believing more is at hand.  Liam teams up with Myles, his grandfather's caretaker but actually an agent of Billie tasked with keeping an eye on the old man.  He can't live with the path Billie has taken, and as Jess finds out the man in a mexican jail called Salazar is actually her father, having avoided death.  Breaking him out, they set to the Devil's Swamp as they resolve the puzzle for being a star map.  Here all sides come to a confrontation, but it is Jess and her group that discovers the truth of Malinche, as Billie and the rest of her group working to destroy treasures to keep the now going without interference of discoveries from the past.

So this was a fun little treasure hunt series, though it had a bit of a dip of pace in the middle episodes focussing more on teenage relation issues.  Never the less, it's a bit of a pity the series got cancelled even with fine ratings, but that is something Disney+ just does for no apparent reason, just ask poor Willow...

The Adventurer: Curse of the Midas Box

Some good fashioned sunday afternoon television for me and Noshi with this adventure movie from 2014.

Based on the novel Mariah Mundi by GP Taylor (I should sniff out that book), this is some good old fashioned adventure like flicks as the Mummy, but on a lower production budget.

Mariah Mundi has no choice but to unite with the enigmatic Will Charity when his family is kidnapped by an unknown enemy. Their adventure leads them to the mysterious and majestic Prince Regent, a huge steam-powered hotel on a small island at the furthest reach of the Empire. Mariah, with the help of Sacha, must unravel the secrets of the island to find the truth behind the disappearance of his family, and prevent Otto Luger from getting his hands on the mystical and powerful Midas Box.

At the end, Will leaves to search for the boys’ parents, who are still missing. He promises to return for Mariah. A mid-credits scene reveals that their mother has been taken to Egypt by the villain Gormenberg — her husband, the boys’ father. 

Don't expect high level special effects and deep rooted mysteries in this movie, but as I said, just some good fun to watch.

Just a pity the franchise never took off as a series for young adults, because at times that is just all you want to watch after a heavy weekend...

2.11.0.0

Made in Abyss: Dawn of the Deep Soul

Technically the third movie in the series, but the first two where recap movies of the series, so this is the first one that continues the series storyline.

After a hiatus of about two years, we move into the next step of Reg, Riko and Nanachi's journey to the bottom of the Abyss, in search of Riko's mother Lyza.

Now, this movie is not for the feint of heart, even if it has that all cute drawing style and such.  Like the later part of the anime series, the story continues in a very hard way.  The children meet with one of the White Whistles, corrupted by the Abyss and experimenting on children to see how to circumvent the Curse.

And he is willing to go the whole way to do so.  Our heroes need to pass through his fortress in order to be able to descent to the next level, and this brings with it a lot of issues and dangers, forcing them to face off against the Cave Raider and his henchmen...

Another rockhard, confrontational part in the story, but even though they succeed, I cannot fathom how they could make a whole new series as the heroes have started the descend to the final level.  My guess will be either 2 or 3 OVA instalments or another theatrical movie like this one.

So let's hope the anime industry can pick up again after the whole Covid affair and tell the rest of the story!

Made in Abyss

Finally, Noshi and me completed this anime, which comes highly rated on all the specialised websites.

It's not that we didn`t like it, it's just that after episode 2 Noshi went in a sort of anime break and it lingered around for quite a while before being picked up again.

An orphaned girl named Riko lives in the Belchero Orphanage in the town of Orth. The town surrounds a strange, giant hole going deep into the earth, which is commonly called the Abyss. The Abyss harbors artifacts and remnants of a civilization long gone, and is therefore the popular hunting spot for so-called Cave Raiders, who undertake arduous and dangerous descents into the mist-filled pit to recover whatever relics they can find. Returning from the Abyss can be dangerous as "the Curse of the Abyss," a mysterious and potentially fatal malady, manifests upon ascension. The deeper one goes, the more acute the effects of the curse; few who have descended into the lower regions have returned to tell of their experiences. Some legendary Cave Raiders earn the title of White Whistle, one of them being Riko's mother, Lyza. 

Riko's longing in life is to follow in her mother's footsteps and become a White Whistle. One day she discovers a robot resembling a human boy in the Abyss and names him Reg. Riko and her friends sneak Reg into Belchero and quickly welcome him into their close-knit group. Some time later, a balloon reaches the surface from the depths of the Abyss containing pages of discoveries made by Lyza, as well as a message for Riko stating she is waiting at the bottom of the Abyss. Riko, determined to find her mother, bids farewell to her friends and departs to the Abyss with Reg as her companion. 

Inside the Abyss, they are quickly confronted by all the sorts of monsters and life that lives down there, becoming more deadly with every level they descend further on the route to the bottom at the sixth level.  During the journey, Riko learns the disturbing truth about herself, but they also befriend a survivor of the Curse, Nanachi.  

This is a very heavy anime to be honest, starting out as a seemingly innocent children adventure tale, but slowly transforming into a very heavy, and dark story that even caused Noshi to burst out in tears.  

Now to watch the movie that takes the story further onwards!