Movie Review: VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS (2017)

While I was at Videodrome renting a copy of The Abyss for a future Myopia Movies podcast episode, I saw a copy of the film Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets, which I thought about seeing in theaters back in 2017, dawdled, and ended up missing. Like my father says, if you wait long enough, "I don't know," becomes "no." I eventually got around to renting the film, and now it's time to review it.

The Plot

In the distant future, humanity is one of a vast number alien species coexisting throughout the galaxy and what was once the International Space Station has grown into a galaxy-traveling city of millions. It's also the base of operations for an interstellar police force, two agents of which are Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and his partner Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevingne). Although they both clearly have romantic feelings for each other, she isn't content to be one of his many sexual conquests and he's commitment-phobic.

Into this drops a mission to retrieve a rare "Mul Converter" from a gang of black marketeers. The two officers stumble into a conspiracy involving a planet officially erased from the records and a high-level military cover-up.

The Good

*The acting and characterization are very good. I really liked DeHaan and Delevingne playing their characters as essentially Harry Potter's Ron and Hermione, if Ron were James Bond in terms of martial capability and libido and Hermione were much more sarcastic and rebellious and had a shorter temper and more explicitly traditional views about sex and family. The two have really good chemistry and are fun to watch.

*Writer and director Luc Besson, the mastermind behind The Fifth Element, is clearly having a blast adapting one of his favorite comics to the screen. It's clearly a labor of love and very well-done. This shows in the casting--Besson put in the effort to cast well-known performers like Clive Owen and Rihanna and the costuming, art, etc. are all awesome. Owing to the obscurity of its source material, it's a hell of a lot more interesting than the endless remakes and sequels of more well-known films that dominate today's market.

*The overall plot is a lot more thoughtful than a lot of sci-fi films.

*There are some good uses of "show, don't tell," like a scene early on when Laureline uses the ship's computers to make a point about Valerian's love life.

*There are a lot of fun action sequences.

*The opening montage in which the International Space Station grows to include more and more Earth nations as well as increasing numbers of alien species to the point it becomes a city in space is very well-done, and even includes some cool science bits like how artificial gravity is introduced.

*Although this is hundreds of years in the future, religion--touched on however briefly when Valerian and Laureline are about to go on a mission and during a conspiracy flashback--is something that still exists and is respected, even by a lothario like Valerian. Valerian's offer to find a priest specifically is also a nice tie-in with Laureline from the comics--she was a medieval French peasant who was brought into the future and thus likely to be an actual Catholic.

The Bad

*The movie is about thirty minutes too long. This wouldn't be a problem if an entire subplot involving Laureline getting kidnapped--something that shouldn't be possible if her armor and martial skill are half that of Valerian's--got cut down or excised completely. Seriously, it basically came off as an excuse to have a Rihanna dance number, plus it also relies on a section of the titular space station essentially being off-limits to federal law enforcement agents. That makes no sense.

*There's a sequence at the end where a character introduces some elements that would make the overall situation much more morally gray, but it isn't handled well. And Valerian and Laureline make some ludicrous deductive leaps to figure out parts of it. More details about the war we see before we meet Valerian and Laureline would have been nice, as it would explain a villain's actions.

*There are some Chekov's guns that are put on the mantle but not fired. Valerian's promiscuity could have caused problems during the main plot--perhaps he's betrayed by a bitter ex-lover--but it doesn't really come up.

*There's also a major suspension-of-disbelief problem with a group of aliens who play a key role in the climax of the film.

*Early on some people our heroes are supposed to be close to get killed, but they don't seem to care.

The Verdict

It's definitely good and I hope that Besson eventually gets his way and produces a sequel, but it's got some flaws. Worth a rental, or buying cheap. 7.5 out of 10.

Movie Review: ENOLA HOLMES (2020)

In that long-lost year of 2019, I decided to enter the 21st Century and get Netflix streaming. Although the main shows I watched--The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and V-Wars--weren't renewed, there was other fun content to be found. The Netflix production I ended up enjoying the most was Enola Holmes, so much so that I wrote a review of it for my Mailchimp newsletter and wrote an earlier post about the casting of an Indian actor to play Inspector Lestrade.

Now that a sequel has officially been announced, I figured I'd share my review with a broader audience.

The Plot

Britain's greatest detective Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill) didn't have just one sibling, older brother Mycroft (Sam Claflin), but a much, much younger sister Enola (Millie Bobby Brown). Sherlock and Mycroft were adults (or nearly so) when she was born and their father died soon after, leaving her to be raised by her eccentric mother Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter). Eudoria taught her all sorts of things that Victorian society wouldn't approve upper-class young ladies knowing (i.e. martial arts, explosive chemistry, etc.) and Enola is as extraordinarily intelligent and perceptive as her brother.

Then Eudoria disappears. Mycroft and Sherlock  investigate and Mycroft, vexed that Enola isn't by his standards particularly "ladylike," sends her to a ladies' finishing school run by the domineering Miss Harrison (Fiona Shaw). Enola runs away, seeking clues her mother left behind and stumbling across a conspiracy to kill the young Viscount Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge) that's connected to legislation that would expand voting rights in Britain. Meanwhile her two brothers are looking for her...

The Good

*Millie Bobby Brown does an absolutely amazing job as Enola. Seriously, she's the best part of the movie. She puts so much emotion into the part, both positive and negative, and she's so entertaining to watch. Her facial expressions in particular are often hilarious. Cavill and Claflin are good in their parts as well--although they're much less entertaining than Enola is, Cavil projects Holmes' intelligence and Claflin is downright hissable as Mycroft (more on that later). Although she's not in the movie very much, Carter's very good as well and the scenes between her and Enola have real poignance.

*The script is generally well-written. Enola has a running commentary on everything (including at times breaking the fourth wall) that made me laugh out loud several times. I'm sure the people near me at the gym (I watch a lot of Netflix on my Kindle on the elliptical or the bike) really appreciated that. :)

*The movie moves along at a quick clip and is rarely dull. It make running on the elliptical and ironing clothes so much more tolerable.

*The film gets a lot more political than I remember the Holmes stories being. The stories I've read seem to focus on him solving crimes and what-not, but during the time Sherlock would have lived (the last story is set at the start of WWI and he's a very old man), British society was rapidly changing. A major plot point are the Reform Bills (based on the time period I'm guessing The Representation of the People Act of 1884) and there was also a lot of agitation by women for the right to vote. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might not have been interested in making his stories about "issues" (and in-universe Holmes might be too monomaniacal about solving crimes to care about politics), but this is a pretty interesting vein to mine.

*The importance of women being able to control their own money is a major plot point. To quote TVTropes, Some Anvils Need To Be Dropped.

The Bad

The characterization of Enola and Sherlock's older brother Mycroft is grossly unsubtle. The filmmakers needed a villain and apparently the people involved in a plot to murder a teenage boy weren't good enough. So they depicted a man characterized in the original books as being as smart as Sherlock but just too lazy to do anything with it into a cranky, snide reactionary (he's clearly disdainful of the Reform Bill) who's downright mean to Enola and is explicitly depicted as not having either of his siblings' intelligence. That last part is just really petty on the filmmakers' part, especially given what I said a minute ago about how in the source material he's as smart as Sherlock, just lazy and hidebound.

Yes, I imagine most Victorian men of their social class would find her exasperating and embarrassing, but she's still his younger sister. He can want to send her to a mind-numbing ladies' finishing school against her wishes and pull rank as her older brother (and legal guardian in the absence of her parents) without being that nasty. He also doesn't seem particularly concerned for well-being--a pretty young woman without much real-life experience on the run in Victorian Britain is probably in great danger and that should worry both him and Sherlock, but he seems more vexed that she's gotten out from under his control than concerned about her not getting raped, killed, etc. And as I mentioned earlier, just to make sure we know he's Bad, he thinks letting more people in Britain vote will be the downfall of the nation.

If the goal is to critique Victorian society as a whole rather than a few bad apples, he could still love his sister and mean well but still plan to to shove Enola's square peg into society's round hole because He's A Man And He Knows What's Best. It is possible for good people to make bad and even downright cruel decisions thinking it's The Right Thing To Do, so there was no need to make Mycroft into such a spiteful, mean-spirited jerk.

The Verdict

An absolutely delightful film and I hope there's a sequel. After all, the film is based on a book series. 9.0 out of 10. Oh and by the way, Netflix came up with a clever way to promote it.

Movie Review: SHADOW IN THE CLOUD (2020)

Owing to COVID, most theaters are closed, the ones remaining aren't playing a lot of new movies, and a lot of movies that would otherwise have been released to theaters are getting sent to streaming. One such movie was the WWII horror film Shadow in the Cloud. The initial streaming price was $20, so I waited until the price dropped to $5.99 before I rented it. Here goes...

The Plot

It's 1943 in New Zealand and the war against Japan is full swing. Maude Garrett (Chloe Grace Moretz), a women's auxiliary carrying a mysterious package, unexpectedly boards an outbound bomber for Samoa. The all-male bomber crew are generally not pleased with her being there (and make this very obvious), but orders are orders. Relations between the crew and their new passenger continue to degrade, made worse by threats from Japanese raiders and a mysterious evil force menacing Garrett in the ball turret where the men have stashed her.

What exactly is going on? Stay tuned to find out...

The Good

*The movie is short and fast-moving. It don't think there's ever a moment where it's boring, which is more than I can say for a lot of movies.

*The movie has a pretty original concept. The only WWII horror film that's come out in recent years that I can think of is Overlord. And military folklore of the war was replete with gremlins as the cause of things going wrong, so as a period piece that kind of works. Furthermore, the Pacific Theater gets much less pop-culture attention than the European Theater and the contributions of non-American Allied nations like New Zealand even less, so remedying that is a good idea. And based on the credits sequence, the movie seemed like it was intended to pay tribute to the contribution of women to the Allied war effort. That's something else I can get behind.

*Moretz is a good actor who does a good job with her role, conveying Maude's physical prowess and the horrors of her back story and current situation. When she's alone in the ball turret there are some truly squick-inducing moments that she really sells.

*The film realistically depicts the arbitrary violence of war. One minute someone is talking and the next minute they're shredded.

The Bad

*For the first third of the movie, none of the characters are likeable. The men are largely misogynist jerks who treat Garrett with absolutely grotesque levels of sexualized disrespect and one is racist toward another crew member on top of that. Meanwhile, Garrett herself is a shriek who is clearly trying too hard. Captain America: The First Avenger handled it much better with Peggy Carter's remark about how she knows what it's like to "have every door shut in [her] face." Although to be fair I don't recall Carter ever facing the absolutely ridiculous degree of disrespect Garrett gets, she handled odious men much more competently.

*Garrett seems to be good at absolutely everything. As I mentioned earlier the film seems like it was intended as a tribute to the WWII women's auxiliaries and so she clearly has to be competent, but she overshadows the men a lot of the time. I could imagine her being very skilled at one or two things (i.e. a mechanic or a pilot who's had weapon/combat training), but everything? This goes overkill into "girl power" territory. I won't say "Mary Sue" because she's too flawed a personality and has too much horrible stuff happen to her to be a perfect self-insert who never suffers, but it's getting there.

*The male characters aren't well-developed. Obviously one can't do too much with a movie this short, but still. None of them have bad delivery and all seem to play their parts, but none of the characters or the actors who play them really stick out enough for me to comment on them.

*Although we meet a few of the individual crew early on, there's a scene where they introduce themselves one by one to Garrett over the radio (after they put her in the ball turret for takeoff) and they're depicted individually against a dark background in what seems like the introduction of game show contestants. That was kind of lame, plus it made it harder to keep track of who was who when, for most of the film, we hear rather than see them. It would have been better if the film had cut from Garrett in the ball turret to the men above passing the microphone around or started the movie by introducing the crew and then having Maude show up. And then there's a scene where the men are all fighting among themselves that's shot in almost freeze-frame sequence against black that could also be shot more conventionally.

*After the big reveal about Garrett's mysterious package, the plot takes a turn for the ridiculous. We're talking about "climbing around on the outside of an airplane in the middle of a dogfight" level of ridiculous. And then there's that ridiculous moment you probably saw in the trailer. No more discussion for reasons of spoilers.

*The ending has a last-minute scare sequence that gets into even more unsubtle "girl power" territory. I might've been more forgiving of the earlier stuff (maybe she's just a quick study and a good listener who's running on adrenaline) if it weren't for the very end.

The Verdict

I waited a month or two for the price to drop from the new-release price of $20 to $5.99. If you must see this, wait until the price drops further and in the meantime watch Overlord. Never boring and a good concept, but from halfway through the movie on an increasingly ridiculous execution. 6.0 out of 10, barely, and that's because it's exciting.

The World Between Worlds, THE MANDALORIAN, and Rebooting STAR WARS Without Nuking Sequel Trilogy

The following post contains massive spoilers for The Mandalorian, Star Wars: Rebels, the Star Wars sequel trilogy, etc. so if you don't want that, go away.

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As many of you know, the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy--The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker--were quite divisive among fans. Many (including me) thought TFA was too derivative of the original film, while others disliked what The Last Jedi did to the character of Luke Skywalker. The Rise of Skywalker tried to stitch both competing narratives together, questionably. But recently there's the appearance of Luke in the Season Two finale of The Mandalorian, in which he recruits Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) for his new Jedi Order. There are even rumors of a Luke Skywalker series, either using younger Mark Hamill's image on a body double as a continuous "deepfake" or a new actor (like Sebastian Stan). Given what ends up happening to Luke's new Jedi Order before the new trilogy begins, not only is Grogu in grave danger, but if there's a Luke Skywalker series covering the new-canon events after Return of the Jedi, we know how this is going to end. The shadow of inevitable doom would be hanging over the entire concept and one wonders how viable such a TV series would be.

That said, there might be a way to avoid this--and to reboot the entire Star Wars universe while we're at it. Jack Conner, an independent fantasy and steampunk writer who blurbed my novel Battle for the Wastelands and hosted my alternative take on Rey on his blog posted on Facebook that there is an in-universe mechanism for time travel revealed in Rebels--the World Between Worlds. In Rebels, Jedi Padawan Ezra uses it to rescue Ahsoka Tano from Darth Vader. The World Between Worlds could be used on a much grander scale than that to create an entirely new timeline.

Hear me out. In the aftermath of the events of The Rise of Skywalker, Rey and one of the new Jedi she's trained (the broader SW canon states she eventually became a Jedi Master, meaning she trained a Jedi to knighthood), discover the World Between Worlds. They attempt to use it to stop all the horrors of the sequel trilogy--the Hosnian Cataclysm, the First Order takeover of most of the galaxy, the Sith cultists blowing up a planet, etc. To accomplish this, she decides the best way is to stop Palpatine's soul from escaping his body and fleeing to Exegol, where he was revived (something the Rise of Skywalker novelization describes). Although this would probably erase her from existence--she's the daughter of a clone of Palpatine created through the project--she's a Jedi and the path of the Jedi is selflessness. Or to quote Spock, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.

And in this effort she succeeds. Palpatine is permanently destroyed on the Death Star (maybe she materializes in the reactor shaft and stabs him before his soul can flee his body through the Force to Exegol) and the Sith Order is wiped out. Rey might be able to return to her own (changed) future via the World Between Worlds like Ezra did with Ahsoka, or could be killed when Palpatine's body explodes. Either way, this is a prologue to the new Luke Skywalker TV series--the next scene reveals that this is young Luke having a Force vision in which he realizes this mysterious stranger has averted a terrible calamity.

(It might also clue him into the World Between Worlds, setting the stage for future events.)

However, even though some fanboys would love this as an excuse to bring back the old Expanded Universe, there are still complicating factors. The Sith Eternal's operation on Exegol is still there, plus Palpatine being really dead as opposed to "mostly dead" won't affect the events immediately after Return of Jedi. We'll probably still have Ben Solo, Imperial die-hards embedded in the New Republic and various large corporations, etc. And, as The Mandalorian reveals, Thrawn is still out there plotting against the New Republic as of nine years after the Battle of Yavin and five years after Palpatine's fall. Without Palpatine being ultimately in control, Thrawn can seize the remaining Imperial assets in the Unknown Regions (creating a new-canon version of The Empire of the Hand), with the head of the Sith Eternal on Exegol standing in as this timeline's version of the insane Jedi clone Joruus C'Baoth.

And that in turn allows for a nice tie-in with the sequel trilogy--Dark Rey. One of the Kylo Ren comics strongly implies Palpatine's involvement in the events that ended Luke's Jedi Academy, so Luke's attempted murder of his nephew and his nephew's consequent attack on the Jedi Temple could be the result of his malevolent spiritual influence. This doesn't happen and so Ben stays good, Luke's new Jedi Order survives, etc. But the Sith Eternal cult on Exegol still plots to resurrect Palpatine and this timeline's Rey is born as a result. The Sith cultists decide that she'll do and she's raised as a Dark Jedi and groomed to be possible future leader. We can still have Reylo, only instead of canon's Good Girl Saves Bad Boy (a cultural meme that has hurt far more good girls than saved bad boys), we could potentially have Good Boy Saves Bad Girl.

(Hmm...if Rey survives going back in time to finish Palpatine and returns to neo-EU future, a love triangle between herself, Dark Rey, and Good Ben? Could be mined for laughs, especially if for whatever reason one ends up impersonating the other.)

And on that note, I'll end this with a fan film I found that seems to take place after The Force Awakens but was released before The Last Jedi.

Enjoy!

The Politics of BATTLE FOR THE WASTELANDS, Or Putting "Punk" In Steampunk

As most of my regular readers know, I officially became a steampunk writer with my novel Battle for the Wastelands and its companion novella "Son of Grendel." Although those two books came out relatively recently, I'd been tinkering with them and pitching them for years (I completed the first Battle draft sometime in 2012) and I'd attended the Atlanta steampunk convention AnachroCon in 2014. One common concern I've heard re: steampunk over the years was that it was becoming too focused on aesthetics of parasols and dirigibles, with the "punk" angle (subversion of norms, challenges to authority, etc) neglected. In particular, the late 19th Century on which steampunk is based involved a lot of labor/class unrest that was supposed getting ignored in favor of fashion.

Between those comments I'd seen around and reading Killing For Coal in graduate school, I decided to make labor issues part of the worldbuilding in the Wastelands world. If you haven't read Killing For Coal, it's a fascinating look at the 1913-14 "Colorado Coalfield War" and its aftermath. Although it's mostly remembered for the Ludlow Massacre, in the aftermath of the massacre the striking miners proceeded to hammer the state militia (what would soon become the National Guard) for several days and workers in other trades began holding military drills and the like. That and the Battle of Blair Mountain were the closest incidents to outright socialist revolution in the United States I can think of. This is referenced in Battle when, in a meeting with his warlords, the villain Grendel talks about putting down strikes and the various commanders keeping forces at war footing--despite the vast expense--to avoid dumping hundreds of thousands of young men who know how to use weapons into the labor market. One reason the striking Colorado miners were such effective fighters is that many were veterans of wars in Europe. Although the first lord of the Northlands doesn't know about the coalfield war (I'm keeping it very vague as to whether this is our future, the future of a similar world, or something else entirely--think Stephen King's Dark Tower), he doesn't want similar incidents breaking out across his empire.

(Not only are Grendel and his cronies afraid of strikers being effectively able to resist the local police, the armies of lesser lords, or even Grendel's elite Obsidian Guard, but they're also concerned about their own soldiers following orders in the event they're sent against former comrades. The first Russian Revolution broke out when the soldiers refused to suppress food riots in St. Petersburg, after all. The film In Pursuit of Honor begins with a group of cavalrymen refusing to attack the Bonus Army outside of Washington D.C. because they'd served with those men in France, although I'm not entirely sure if that incident actually happened.)

Another plot plot in Battle is a small-scale war between two of Grendel's warlords that starts out over a labor dispute. One of Grendel's warlords is a straight-up mutant cyborg who breeds armies of mutants in the shadow of an "Old World" nuclear reactor. As part of a trade deal, he'd offered another warlord some to work in mines alongside more "normal" workers. The other workers went on strike and took to the hills with guns rather than work alongside "freaks," much like how racial violence accompanied labor disputes when black workers were brought in to replace striking white ones. The film Matawan covers one such incident, while I remember reading about a number of such instances in Making A New Deal. This ultimately escalated into a war between the two that sets Grendel looking for an outside enemy to keep everybody busy, something that will have consequences throughout the entire series.

Another "punk" element that's worked into the Wastelands world is the Jim Crow practice of convict leasing, chronicled in Slavery By Another Name. When Grendel united his homeland of Sejera through a dynastic marriage (and jackbooting those who objected), he made a very big deal about formally ending chattel slavery. But what dictator doesn't have forced labor? In addition to the usual labor camps and mines for political troublemakers and common criminals, both Grendel's overarching regime and private companies also lease convicts from lesser governments for forced labor. Convict leasing began after Reconstruction and continued all the way through World War II, a nice bit of period-appropriate dystopia. And considering how convicts under Jim Crow were viewed as more expendable than slaves (and in-universe there are references to convict laborers dying at high rates on certain projects), I imagine there'll be rebellions and the like should the opportunity arise.

Finally, part of the backstory for the defeat of the Merrill family--the last major independent power in the Northlands--was labor disputes. James Merrill, who was leader at the time, was preoccupied with mediating the concerns of business owners and workers and paid little heed to Grendel's growing military threat until it was too late. It's an underground labor movement that keeps his son Alonzo and his rebels supplied with equipment and trying to find a way to fairly deal with both capital and labor will become a problem for the son as much as the father in the second book.

The historical steampunk era was not just known for labor and class problems, but also an increasing push for women's rights. The first country to allow women to vote nationwide was New Zealand in 1893, while women won voting rights state by state throughout the 19th Century in the U.S. until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 guaranteed the right nationwide. This is touched on a bit when our oblivious hero Andrew Sutter, son of a prior mayor in his hometown, wonders why nobody asks his twin sister Sarah's opinion on anything the way they ask him and Sarah points out this should be rather obvious. 

(Although I didn't go into a lot of detail about how government in Andrew's town works, there aren't any women attending the town meeting on how to deal with the coming assault on the town by the extortionate Flesh-Eating Legion. This would strongly suggest women were either legally not allowed to participate in formal politics or it was Simply Not Done, since the town has been broadly self-governing since the Merrill dynasty fell but must provide tribute and conscripts to the Flesh-Eaters when asked. This might not be universal, since the surviving Merrill armies do field female soldiers and nobody seems to view that as particularly remarkable. To cite Eowyn's conversation with Aragorn in The Two Towers, those without swords can still die upon them.)

However, the main feminist plot point (so far) is the deconstruction of "it's good to be the king" in regards to the harem Grendel started up after the death of his wife. One of his concubines is Catalina Merrill, daughter of James and sister of Alonzo, who really, really doesn't like it. She exhibits some fairly overt symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder from Grendel's attentions. Meanwhile, there's constant catfighting between the women and rival sons of different mothers plotting against each other, something that polygamous societies like the Ottoman Empire or ancient Israel were known for. This will only get worse later in the series. Although none of Grendel's women could be credibly described as 19th Century feminists, this does show how incredibly destructive this situation is. King Conan and his "luscious concubines" this is NOT.

Movie Review: LOVE AND MONSTERS (2020)

Although COVID has prompted most movie theater chains to close their doors, there are still a few small theaters in and around Atlanta showing movies and still a few smaller movies coming out. One such film is called Love and Monsters and based on the trailer I saw online, it looked pretty cool. So having the whole week of Thanksgiving off (teacher life FTW), I decided to go check it out...

The Plot

When an asteroid threatens to destroy Earth, the nations of the world unite to destroy the oncoming death rock with nuclear missiles...which works. The problem is, the fuel from all these rockets falls back to Earth and starts mutating insects, reptiles, amphibians, etc. into gigantic and predatory forms. Humanity is knocked off the top of the food chain, with only a few survivors hiding in underground bunkers seven years later.

One of these survivors is Joel Dawson (Dylan O'Brien), an artistic young man whose tendency to freeze in the face of danger relegates him to boring and safe duties in a California colony. Communicating with another colony via CB radio, he discovers his high-school girlfriend Aimee (Jessica Henwick) is alive about 85 miles away. Tired of essentially being the ninth wheel in a colony of several couples--who don't even bother trying to hide all the sex they're having that he's not--he sets off on what his friends believe to be a suicide mission to reunite with Aimee. Along the way he encounters survivalist Clyde Dutton (Michael Rook) and child survivor Minnow (Ariana Greenblatt) that he's kind of adopted, who teach him how to survive in this dangerous new world.

The Good

*In a world of remakes, sequels decades in the making, reimaginings, etc., it's good to see something totally original. That was one reason I made sure to go see it, and in a conventional theater as well, to ensure the film makes at least some money that's not streaming-based and harder to quantify. Hollywood is so damn risk-averse these days it's annoying.

*Although the overall plot is a bit derivative (more on that later), the story itself is well-constructed with foreshadowing, Chekov's guns being on the mantle before they're fired, etc.

*Although our hero starts out as kind of a wimp who needs to Man Up To Survive In A Dangerous World (TM), the film doesn't depict his other talents as useless, unmanly, etc. His talents with cooking and art and his good memory come in handy at different times through the story. It's fairly well-balanced in that regard--rather than devaluing Joel's "beta" interests or alternatively blowing them up to be more important than being able to survive in a monster-infested wilderness, the film shows the importance of being well-rounded.

*The film both deconstructs and reconstructs the tropes of men making grand romantic gestures to impress a love interest, although to be fair Joel and Aimee were already dating before the apocalypse happened. Not going to go into more detail for reasons of spoilers.

*The overall message of (informed) courage in the face of fear is especially important in these COVID-wracked days. Seriously there's being cautious and listening to medical advice and then there's the paranoid nuttery I've seen on social media. Although again no details for reasons of spoilers.

*I liked some of the critter designs.

The Bad

*My earlier comments about originality only go so far. Dutton is pretty obviously a second-rate version of Tallahassee, Woody Harrelson's tough survivor from Zombieland. One review I've seen basically describes this film as what happens when somebody sees Zombieland and decides to do something like it. Given how many of my writing projects emerge similarly I can't be too judgmental, but they could have differentiated it a bit more.

*There were several times, especially later in the film, that I was looking at my watch or even got my phone out because it had gotten boring. The film isn't bad per se, but it could definitely be tightened up.

The Verdict

I saw one of the last Love and Monsters showings in Atlanta at an actual theater for $7-ish. I would wait until it becomes available for rental on Amazon or whatever video-streaming service you prefer if seeing it in theaters isn't an option. Rent it, don't buy it, especially not for the $20+ it's selling for online in late November 2020. 7.0 out of 10.

Missed Opportunities For The Women In FROM DUSK TIL DAWN

As part of our Halloween vampire month, the merry crew of misfits at Myopia Movies decided to do From Dusk Til Dawn, a Quentin Tarantino hybrid of Natural Born Killers and a Mexican vampire movie. Here's the episode itself. The following discussion elaborates on some thoughts I had during the podcast. Spoilers for the canonical film coming...

Although I hadn't seen the movie before, I'd seen some discussion online that made vampire stripper Santanico Pandemonium (Salma Hayek) seem much more important than she turned out to be in the film. At least one person claimed the vampires at the strip club Titty Twister were a matriarchal society that preys on the vices of men, the television series based on the film develops this whole mythology about the vampires and other evil supernatural forces, and Pandemonium herself even had a prequel movie dedicated to her origin. However, Pandemonium and the other major vampire characters get killed off three-fourths of the way through the movie and the rest of the film consists of the surviving humans trying to survive against the zombie-horde of vampire reinforcements gathered outside.

Meanwhile, although we see preacher's daughter Kate Fuller (Juliette Lewis) grow from being this nice, timid girl who can't bring herself to stake a corpse to being a hard-core vampire fighter willing to kill her vampirized adopted brother Scott (Ernest Liu), the film ends with her out of nowhere asking to stay with the other survivor, bank robber Seth Gecko (George Clooney) in Mexico. To his credit, he turns her down, saying he's not that bad, and flat-out tells her to go home. He goes off to retirement in El Rey with the proceeds from his last robbery, while it's implied Kate takes the money that Seth gives her and returns to the United States in the family RV.

Put these two together and there's some serious missed opportunities for both Santanico and Kate.

*Kate and Scott are on a road trip with their father Jacob (Harvey Keitel), a pastor who is losing his faith after the prolonged and ugly death of his wife in a car accident. Although Kate does love her father and brother, she's also a teenage girl who's realistically going to want more independence from her family. This would especially be the case if her father and brother default to relying on her to fulfill her late mother's responsibilities. We see her going swimming by herself at the hotel pool rather than hanging out with the folks and perhaps we could throw in that she really doesn't want to be on the trip in the first place. If we see friction before the Fullers get taken hostage by the Gecko brothers, well, that's a thread that can be followed.

*Seth's brother Richie (Quentin Tarantino), who broke him out of prison before the story begins, is mentally unstable and sexually perverse. He kills several people unnecessarily, rapes a bank teller he and his brother had taken hostage before killing her, and he clearly lusts after Kate. He hallucinates that she'd propositioned him and later he leers at her (particularly her feet). Seth uses the possibility he might try to rape Kate to intimidate her father, but he has enough moral sense that when Jacob tells him that he'll kill Richie if he touches Kate, Seth's response is "fair enough." Kate manages to deflect an early attempt by Richie to perv on her, but she has to be aware he's dangerous beyond the fact he's a twitchy kidnapper. Even though she likely doesn't know about the bank teller, the man reeks of creepy.

*Kate's alienation from her family can be combined with improving Santanico's role if, rather than being killed by Seth during the vampires' opening attack that kills most of the Titty Twister's patrons and all but a few of the original vampires, Santanico leads the survivors in a retreat deeper into the club (which the credits reveal is actually the top of an enormous Aztec-style temple). The vampire reinforcements massing outside break in earlier, forcing the human survivors to retreat in the same direction. Santanico, seeing Kate as the lone woman among the survivors, tries to cultivate her as a traitor. At this point Richie is dead, but since she knew he was Seth's brother (got his memories by drinking his blood?), she might know about his creeping on Kate. 

She could use this as a lever to get her to betray the others and join Santanico's matriarchal vampire society that preys on immoral men rather than living in fear of them. Christopher Moore's vampire trilogy, although it's primarily comic, very seriously touches on the same theme with the character Jody. She comes to enjoy being a vampire because she realizes that as a woman she'd lived in a low-level state of fear her entire life before becoming a vampire--now she can effortlessly annihilate any man who bothers her. Although Kate is too nice and too Christian (despite his perversity, she warns Richie about an attacking vampire and later uses her cross necklace to kill another) to fall for it, she might be tempted. This would especially be the case if the human survivors include another male character who'd behaved sexually aggressively toward her. Per TVTropes in the television version the sleazy Sex Machine (Tom Savini) hit on her, so he might be an option.

(To get this to work, the film would have to depict those killed by vampires as staying dead rather than rising again as new vampires as the canonical film does. Perhaps only Santanico, being the vampire queen, can make new vampires. You could also emphasize the Christ-perverting nature of the vampires by emphasizing becoming a vampire as a parody of Communion--like in Interview With A Vampire, "drink from me and live forever." As a Christian, Kate might take particular offense at that.)

*Although she might have offered to join Seth in Mexico because her whole family is dead and she's vulnerable in a foreign country without a strong protector (when the Geckos bring the Fullers into the club, the comically-gross hype man says some very ungentlemanly things), as I said earlier that came out of nowhere. It would make more sense if she had some idea--even if it's a completely wrongheaded one--that Seth would be interested in having her around. That Kate has any friendly feeling toward Seth could be chalked up to Stockholm Syndrome (he's a gentleman in comparison to his sicko brother and has some, in TVTropes terms, Pet The Dog moments), his notion that vampires existing means there must be a God and therefore her father has spiritual power as a preacher she might interpret as a conversion to (or at least interest in) Christianity, the two are the last ones standing against the vampires, and she might further sympathize with him upon seeing the demonic Santanico's infamous threat to enslave him, but what's going on with Seth?

*Well here's an idea. When Santanico threatens to enslave Seth and make him "lick the dog shit from my boot heel," his response in the canonical film is to tell her he's been married before. Perhaps he has a daughter Kate's age and when Richie starts getting pervy, he tells Richie that he wouldn't act that way toward his niece (Seth's daughter) and shouldn't act that way toward Kate. Given how Seth had been in prison for years before Richie broke him out (and was likely divorced before that, given how he compares marriage to slavery), he probably hasn't seen his daughter in some time and might start using Kate as a substitute.

(Per the almighty TVTropes, in the TV series when Kate tells her father that Sex Machine hit on her, Seth pulls a gun on him as well. I would expect a father to be protective of his daughter, but why does a career criminal like Seth care?)

This could especially apply once Jacob is vampirized, since now her actual father is out of the way. Psychologically there's also something called Lima Syndrome, where a captor starts to feel sorry for their prisoner and that can be a factor too. The fact the robbers and the hostages both have a common enemy in the vampires likely helps.

*This all comes to a head in the final battle where the humans realize dawn is near and try to make a break for the exit, fighting both the vampires between them and the sun and a counterattack by Santanico and her minions. One by one the human survivors fall until only Seth and Kate are left to face Santanico and the last vampires. Santanico makes another recruitment pitch aimed at Kate, who when faced with the alternative of simply being killed, is tempted again, but it's Seth who convinces her it's better to die fighting. Then Seth's criminal friend Carlos arrives, smashing open the doors and frying the vampires en masse with the sun. Santanico, stronger than her minions, manages to make one last attack on Kate and Seth, but together they finish her off and meet with Carlos in the parking lot. After all this, it makes a lot more sense that Kate would want to stay with Seth, but Seth knows how bad an idea this is and sends her home.

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Another "Bittersweet" Alternate Ending for GAME OF THRONES

The other day I had another idea for a "bittersweet" (per George RR Martin's stated plan) ending for the Game of Thrones television series that draws on the scripts of Alice Shipwise. In one of her "Battle of Winterfell" episodes, she depicts the Northerners--who had earlier been skeptical of Danaerys Targaryen due to her foreignness--converting hard-core for her after seeing the dragons in action against the White Walkers. This seems a lot more realistic than what happens in the actual show where the Northerners hail Jon Snow as "a madman...OR A KING" for riding a dragon, much to the ignored Danaerys' irritation.

(Seriously, she's been doing this for years and much more effectively, yet Jon who I don't think was very successful at commanding Rhaegal in battle is the one getting all the glory. Yes, they know him better than her, but still.)

Things broadly follow the television series until the attack on King's Landing. The city begins ringing its bells in surrender, but the Lannister die-hards continue firing on Danaerys from the Red Keep. Danaerys goes full dracarys on the Red Keep itself (not on the hundreds of thousands of non-combatants trying to surrender), only to accidentally trigger the wildfire stashes her father Aerys had stashed throughout the city. This leads to King's Landing going up like in the show, only with Danaerys watching in horror from atop Drogon as Jon, Grey Worm, Arya, etc. flee the city in a panic rather than her gratuitously murdering hundreds of thousand of helpless civilians and then making a megalomaniac speech about conquering the world afterward.

(I came up with a similar scenario around the time of the series finale and Twitterati Jacob Budz came up with a more detailed version and created a meme for it, which you can see here. Or just see below.)

Danaerys and her allies come together afterward and realize they have a massive mess on their hands. Not only do they have an enormous humanitarian crisis to deal with, but word is rapidly spreading in the South of the "Mad Queen" who murdered King's Landing, on top of the xenophobic nonsense Cersei had already been spreading earlier. Even though they all know that this isn't what happened, what matters is what people will believe. Danaerys isn't going to be accepted as a liberator from the White Walkers (most of Westerosi doubt they actually exist) or Cersei "I blew up the equivalent of the Vatican" Lannister. She will have to conquer most of Westeros with fire and blood. Although earlier in the series she'd made all sorts of threats to do exactly that (as people who defended her evil turn at the end of the series love to point out), seeing firsthand what this will entail on top of the losses she'd taken earlier (both personally and in dead soldiers) have soured her on the whole proposition. Bonus points if it turns out that, as Jon Snow pointed out earlier in the series, that witch wasn't a reliable source and Danaerys is pregnant with Jon's child.

(This is perhaps where Bran can come in, as Danaerys might not know she's pregnant at this point. This is another idea I borrowed from Ms. Shipwise, as it might make Jon agree to a political marriage even if he finds the idea of sleeping with his aunt gross.)

So what ends up happening is that Tyrion Lannister, who is once described as standing "as tall as a king" despite his dwarfism, ends up succeeding his sister Cersei as the king of everything south of the Neck. Jon retains his title as King in the North with Danaerys--whom the Northerners now adore even though people in the South view her as a monster--as his queen. To secure peace between the now-sundered halves of Westeros, Sansa's marriage to Tyrion is re-instituted.

(EDIT: A friend pointed out this could potentially undo Sansa's character development from a prince-obsessed bimbo into Littlefinger 2.0. This would need to be handled carefully--perhaps it's her idea, to immediately terminate the war rather than risk the rise of an anti-Targaryen leader in the South? The fact she and Tyrion both worship the Seven while Jon follows the Old Gods and Danaerys is irreligious might be helpful in heading off a Faith-inspired holy war against the pagan and the atheist. You could have Jon find it horrifying but ultimately agree to it.)

Like my scenarios earlier, this would meet Martin's goal of a "bittersweet" ending:

*The war ends with the victory of good over both supernatural and human evil, but enormous numbers of innocent people die anyway. Shades of Hiroshima.

*Danaerys wins the war but loses the peace purely by accident (as opposed to the contrived "everything goes wrong and she goes crazy" scenario we got in the show) due to other people's ignorance and bigotry. She gets to marry the man she honest-to-God loves, but it's a shotgun marriage with Jon's enthusiasm rather lacking given the revelation she's actually his biological aunt. Danaerys might not be bothered by the incest part, but she only has one-eighth (two-eighths if Yara Greyjoy and the Iron Islands come along) of what she sailed west to fight for--and it's the poorest and most backward section too. And although the fact she brings the world's only living dragon with her and Jon is a fairly mild personality means she's not going to be mistreated and will realistically have a large say in things, she's still a consort to a less-talented man rather than ruling queen.

*Although Sansa does get her childhood wish to be queen, it's to a man that, although she trusted him enough to spill the beans about Jon being a Targaryen and respected him due to his unwillingness to consummate their forced marriage, she has no romantic feelings or even physical attraction to whatsoever. And who is probably twice her age to boot. Of course, Tyrion does respect her intelligence and this would likely be some kind of Rule of Two situation rather than some kind of "unattractive nerd power fantasy," but still.

(My original idea featured Sansa remaining in the North, which means a future of catfighting with Danaerys, but this wouldn't be much fun either and it would give her even less opportunity to show off her intelligence and political savvy.)

A Less Lame Fate for John Connor in TERMINATOR: DARK FATE

When Terminator: Dark Fate was slated for release, I really wanted to see it. They were bringing back Linda Hamilton for Sarah Connor and Edward Furlong for John Connor, which was pretty cool. Of the Terminator films I've seen, Terminator and Terminator II: Judgement Day were the best ones, with Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Salvation being kind of meh. I didn't even bother with Terminator: Genisys due to awful reviews and the whole "John Connor gets turned into a robot" part, even though the idea of a Terminator raising Sarah Connor to be a bad-ass after an evil Terminator tried to kill her as a child seemed kind of cool.

Then I learned that in Dark Fate they basically kill off John pretty early on and the future leader of the resistance against the machines--this time a new being called Legion instead of SkyNet--is a Mexican woman named Dani Ramos. I can understand the desire by many in the entertainment industry to appeal to more diverse audiences and make it so not every hero of every story is a white male, but killing off John Connor to make way for a Mexican female leader of the resistance is about as subtle as hitting the audience in the head with a sledgehammer.

So here's an idea I had that would allow for a younger, more diverse cast to take the stage without showing contempt for John Connor, who it turns out wasn't that important after all. It's based on this deleted scene from a special director's cut of T2:



In a world where Judgement Day never happened, John Connor is now a U.S. Senator and as such has access to all sorts of classified information, which he passes onto his mother, who uses it to fight SkyNet incursions. This is similar to how the "Carl" Terminator that killed John Connor but ultimately learned to love and fight for humanity secretly sends Sarah information to help her fight other SkyNet incursions. Perhaps in defeating one such attack, Sarah captures a Terminator and reprograms it to help her fight other Terminators, thus leading to this world's version of "Carl."

Ultimately, like in the canonical film, SkyNet and its future are ultimately erased, leaving "Carl" stranded in our world as the last of his kind. However, the new evil AI Legion emerges later and the whole "time-traveling machine war" starts up again, with Dani as the prophesied leader of this new resistance much like John Connor was the prophesied leader of the old one.

This solution seems like it would please everybody--it keeps the more diverse and female-centric cast that many people liked about Dark Fate (John doesn't even need to be physically present for the action--he could send Sarah information that allows her to find Dani and Grace before the new Rev-9 Terminator kills them) while at the same time avoiding a rather bone-headed attempt at being "woke."

HELLRAISER as...a Lifetime Original Movie

In mid-October I watched Clive Barker's horror film Hellraiser for the first time in several years for the podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood. Here's the podcast for your listening pleasure.

Although I saw the film as an adult rather than a child or teen like most of the movies we've done, it didn't hold up as well as I'd thought. One of the big problems was pacing--the film could really stand to use a trimming. And then podcast host Nic made a comment that I can't really refute--Hellraiser came off like a Lifetime Original Movie.

(For those of you who aren't Americans or aren't super into television, Lifetime is a television network aimed at a female audience. It has a reputation for overdramatic low-budget movies focusing on women in peril from the latest in-the-news danger and/or dramatizing real-life incidents like the woman who killed her child's molester in court. Here's an article discussing the phenomenon; it even has an amusing TVTropes page.)

And if you stripped out the supernatural elements, it would seriously look like a "teen girl in peril" film more appropriate for Lifetime than, say, the horror streaming channel Shudder. Seriously, Kirsty could be an older teen (in the original script she's only twenty and she could easily be 18-19) who moves with her father Larry and disliked stepmother Julia to a new town and finds the situation so intolerable she rents an apartment of her own and gets a job she doesn't particularly like to pay for it. She finds a new boyfriend and things seem tolerable at least...until she learns that Frank her pervert uncle has escaped from prison. He's hiding in the attic of the family home and is canoodling with Julia, encouraging her to commit crimes to get money so they can run away together.

Furthermore, some of her uncle's criminal associates are looking for him (Frank in the book and film is referenced as owing people money) and if they can't have him, they'll gladly recoup their losses by taking Kirsty away for sex trafficking (with human trafficking being a major news topic I could definitely imagine a Lifetime movie about it--and I'm pretty sure they've covered this before) instead. She bargains with them by offering to give them her uncle (whom she discovered and who attacked and injured her) instead. This they go along with, arriving at the family home to find her stepmother and uncle have already murdered her father. The criminals kill both of them (or, like in the film, Frank kills Julia by accident before the criminals kill him), then renege on their deal and try to kidnap her anyway. Fortunately she's found her father's gun or managed to steal one from one of the criminals and disposes of them all like a Final Girl in a slasher film.

What do you all think? All of these elements generally line up with what happened in Hellraiser, minus the whole "resurrected by blood from sadomasochistic Hell," "evil Rubik's Cube that opens dimensional gateways,"  and "leather demons" parts. And given the greater awareness of sexual assault (Frank's rampant perving on the teen Kirsty and the very rapey flashbacks with Julia) and human trafficking, this would definitely include Lifetime movies' "ripped from the headlines" tendencies.

Furthermore, Kirsty would be a good protagonist for a film intended for female audiences. She isn't reliant on or obedient to any male character (she gently disregards her father's wish that she live with him and Julia and chooses to support herself), she fights off the rapey Frank by herself upon their first encounter, she's able to bargain with the Cenobites (or in this case a bunch of human criminals) when she can't physically overpower them, and although the film never explicitly depicts her having sex with boyfriend Steve, one of them is definitely staying over at the other's home and yet she doesn't suffer Death By (Possible) Sex like many female characters in slasher films do.

Movie Review: Fire and Ice (1983)

One of my favorite fantasy artists is Frank Frazetta, who was known for painting a lot of the Conan book covers. I even own one of his art books Icon, which I snagged at a library book sale for $1 when it would have cost much more on Amazon. In Icon, they discuss the film Fire and Ice, whose animation Frazetta was heavily involved with but unfortunately didn't do too well at the box office. Although I'm a fan of traditional animation (Don Bluth stuff like The Secret of NIMH, The Land Before Time, and even Titan A.E. are particular favorites), I never actually got around to watching the movie.

Well, T.S. Dann (author of Nightmarescape and a regular convention table partner) mentioned that he had seen it recently and that made me curious. Many years after hearing about it, I decided to give it a spin. Here goes...

The Plot

At the end of the Ice Age, the evil sorceress-queen Juliana (Eileen O'Neill) and her son Nekron (Sean Hannon) attempt to conquer the world, driving southward in a fortress atop a mighty glacier that Nekron can move using magic. Human refugees flee their armies of Neanderthal-esque savages toward the equator, where King Jarol (Leo Gordon) rules a volcanic realm from Fire Keep. Juliana and Nekron's agents kidnap Jarol's daughter Teegra (Cynthia Leake), but they fail to reckon with Larn (Randy Norton), a survivor of a tribe thought exterminated, and the mysterious warrior Darkwolf (Steve Sandor).

The Good

*Western animation is generally seen as the preserve of children, so there's little realistic violence and heroes don't kill or seriously hurt villains (often winning through contrived circumstances), but Fire and Ice clearly doesn't have that problem. There's plenty of bloodshed going on around here. It's good to see an animated movie intended for more mature audiences in the same way Titan A.E. was. All the action means the film is never boring, which is a big plus.

*There are some impressive set-pieces, like a diplomatic delegation entering Nekron's fortress with his hooting and howling Neanderthal minions watching from the cliffs overhead. There's also an air raid using "dragon hawks" (pteranodons) that's pretty cool. Generally speaking I liked the concept and ideas behind it.

*Although the animation comes off as a bit dated (it reminds me a lot of late-1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoons like Mightor or even Herculoids as well as the Disney movie The Black Cauldron released two years later) and the colors dull, it's good to see old-school cell-drawn animation. I'm less interested in the Pixar-type stuff that has dominated the field since The Princess and the Frog. And I'm a big fan of Frazetta's overall style. The landscapes, the monsters, the ominous ancient ruins, etc. are all a lot of fun. A pity this movie bombed because I would have loved to see more films like it.

*I liked some of the characterization. Teegra is pretty clever and puts her brain to use at critical times, including one scene early on where she uses her looks to manipulate a bunch of Nekron and Juliana's Neanderthal minions. She's also not a passive damsel-in-distress type at all--although she gets captured a lot, watch out if she can get hold of a knife. And Nekron and Juliana's dynamic suggests a strong-willed son rebelling against an overbearing mother and Nekron's petulance shows that on some level he knows her wisdom is superior (i.e. she wants him to marry Teegra to father a dynasty and cement an alliance with Fire Keep) and just doesn't want to admit it. And although Darkwolf is underused, he's pretty cool when he does show up.

The Bad

*Larn is supposed to be the male lead of the movie, but he doesn't seem to have much personality to speak of. I found Darkwolf to be much more interesting, but he's only in a few scenes despite his prominent appearance in the poster.

*Has the concept of armor ever occurred to anybody in this world? All this world's cultures have metallurgy (swords, axes, etc), but nobody wears armor. Even animal skins would be an improvement over going into battle wearing only a loincloth. Yes, I know Frank Frazetta liked to show off his anatomical skills at every opportunity, but how pretty much everybody's standard outfit was a loincloth if not a straight-up thong was just ridiculous. Even in the Neolithic Era where this supposedly takes place people probably knew they needed protection from the sun and elements. This is especially blatant in the last third or so of the film that takes place in Nekron's glacial fortress where people are running around semi-nude even though it's got to be incredibly cold.

*Per my remarks about clothing, everybody is wearing what looks like animal skins and yet Teegra is wearing essentially modern lingerie? Hell her bottom is so sheer in the back she might as well not be wearing it. At least the "sexy cave-girl" outfits in One Million Years B.C. and When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth were made of the right materials and more useful as clothing.

*The animation for the facial expressions, especially Teegra's, could stand some improvement. Her kidnapping early in the film is not well-drawn, especially her supposedly-terrified screaming.

*The character naming conventions are just bizarre. You have all this garbled fantasy names like Teegra and Larn, you have English animal names like Darkwolf, and then you have Jarol (which I initially thought was "Gerald") and Juliana. It's kind of grating, even though it's so common there's even a TVTrope for it.

*I'm not sure if it's Leake's voice or the script, but Teegra's dialogue is often rather annoying.

*Nekron and Juliana's minions are all darker-skinned and the one female of the group has what looks like an Afro. They're explicitly referred to as "the sub-humans" despite their having metallurgy and spoken language. Meanwhile, the heroic characters are all white. Seriously, either provide the minions with more development beyond them being childlike and violent goons who speak in gibberish (Lord of the Rings had Sam wondering if one of the Haradrim was truly evil or had been deceived or outright coerced into fighting for Sauron and the Haradrim language is very impressive to listen to) or diversify their appearances. And nix "sub-human" for people whose main difference between the heroic character is their skin color, teeth, and apparent intelligence. As-is the villains come off as a mother-son Goth duo sending out dull-witted and sadistic black cavemen to kill or abduct white people and given how this was a movie kids would have likely seen (due to it being animated), that's not cool.

*The world's technology level is rather inconsistent--both Nekron's and Jarol's coalitions seem to be at roughly Bronze Age levels, but there's one city that looks like ancient Rome or Arabia during the Islamic golden age. If it turns out the battle between Nekron and Jarol is a tribal sideshow that wealthier and stronger civilizations view in the same way as Americans view a conflict in the Third World that's one thing, but the opening narration of the film makes it seems like this is the Apocalypse.

*So many shirtless men but nobody seems to have nipples. That's weird.

The Verdict

If the description "the world's most violent Hanna-Barbera cartoon" appeals to you or if you're a Frazetta fan you should definitely check it out. It's not as campy and ridiculous as I expected from watching the trailer, but it's still pretty up there. Worth a rental at best. 6.0 out of 10.