The Avengers: Age of Ultron Review (2015) - SPOILERS!!!

WARNING!
AS STATED IN THE TITLE THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW!!!!

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!

The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015;
Marvel Studios)

Going into the Avengers: Age of Ultron I had high hopes.  I think everyone did.  I made a point to not check out information on the movie.  I stayed away from online sources containing anything about the film and its cast and went in entirely objectively and unspoiled.  I begin the movie wanting to know two things: How did they pull of the Ultron storyline and how badass was Scarlet Witch?  I essentially satisfied in both respects.  That does not, however, mean Age of Ultron is a perfect movie.

The problem with making a sequel to a movie as big as the Avengers is it will be very hard to top it.  Initially, I was unsure about what they were going to do, but by the beginning of the third act, I was pretty certain I had guessed at exactly what was going to unfold by the film’s conclusion with around 60% accuracy.  The movie steps things up by having the swarms of enemies that were certainly meant to be more menacing than the Chitauri, and is successful in that… kind of.  Early in the movie, a struggle breaks out with a group of Stark’s automaton sentries that come off as would-be cannon fodder but there is a sense of menace with the team battling just a handful of Stark’s creations.  However, by the end we see the Avengers decimating hundreds of them with little-to-no effort.  Did they discover their weak points?

This is a recurring problem in Age of Ultron, too.  Action scenes are built up and are, for the most part, concluded and only briefly addressed until we get to the end and the lead characters find themselves facing off against Ultron’s hoards in the climactic battle.  However, each scene that has a strong start is often cut into with momentary lapses in tension.  A key character is killed and we get a few moments of sadness, followed by more explosions, then he’s never really addressed again.  A major event will occur, and will be negated or disregarded almost as quickly as it began.  This goes most notably for the film’s anti-climax.  It ends exactly how you expect it would by the start of the third act and it just sort of peters out.  It literally ends with a bang but hits like a shot from a Nerf gun, really.  Honestly, it feels like a step down from the New York set piece in the first movie.  This isn’t helped by the fact that it uses one of the most cliched and most often-horribly done evil-plan cliches and does it well, but only as well as this goofy, overused premise can be done.

Other major problems occur in the characters.  The first Avengers had a small team of characters and we are able to get a lot of characterization in their interactions.  However, Age of Ultron goes the sequel route of adding so many characters (nearly doubling the size of the team by the end of the movie) that most of their little moments end up lost in the shuffle.  I appreciate the attempts to flesh out some of the more overshadowed characters from the first movie (like Hawkeye, for instance) but this is still the Robert Downey, Jr. Show.  I do not blame Whedon for this, though.  RDJ’s magnetism is on full display, driving up the arrogance and intellectualism of Tony Stark much more than the first movie.  He’s still a wise-ass, but he comes off as more of the brilliant character he is in this outing.  Yet, the problem with having such a big cast and only a few characters dominating the foreground is you have a lot of questions, and a lot of characters that really just feel pointless.  Quicksilver suffers this in many respects, as he is mostly just relegated to “clean-up duty” while his much more prominent sister, Scarlet Witch is elevated to full-on goddess (even though, in-canon she is significantly more-powerful than almost all of the other Avengers).  She gets her big moment.  Quicksilver doesn’t.  Don Cheadle makes his appearance as War Machine which is welcome, but he is also given next to nothing to do, and just feels like a pointless addition in the end.

Now, with all of the negatives aside, this is still a good movie.  It isn’t complex.  It will not wreck your brain-area with convoluted exposition and over-blown pseudoscience.  It gives you just enough to lay the foundation for some truly well-done action scenes.  Like in the first film, Joss Whedon lines up wonderful moments of kineticism with smart, interspersed, and occasionally funny dialogue.  Sure, some of the action scenes go on a little long, but they never drift into Michael Bay/Roland Emmerich-Level CGI Porn.  Instead, each scene is clearly-lit, everything is vivid and easily discernable (with a few brief exceptions) and the layout of each scene is solid.  Whedon also employs his trademark single, long tracking shots that flow to each character nearly-seamlessly multiple times and it’s always a welcome technique, never coming off as exploited or poorly done here.

Acting is good all-around.  The only truly weak performance comes from Linda Cardellini, who I liked in ER and loved in Freaks and Geeks, but here, she just plays Worried Pregnant Housewife #2.  Despite having a direct association with one of the MAIN characters, she’s wasted.  We cut back to the occasional worried-wife-shot then back to the action.  The editing in that one cut to her is awkward, too.  It just felt… off.  That said, James Spader was immensely entertaining as the ultimate super-intelligence, Ultron, though his reasoning does fall squarely into Final Fantasy villain territory.  Aside from that, there really was no reason to have a big supporting cast.  This is the Avengers’ show and do you know what?  That’s okay.  That is exactly what we all went to see, and Joss Whedon seems to recognize that.  He didn’t flood the movie with too many pointless subplots (there are a few, but they aren’t too awfully intrusive) and, thanking all that is holy, no obnoxious comic relief characters that are so endemic in action movies these days.  

Now I’m going to touch on Ultron a little more as a villain here.  As I said, James Spader is awesome and I do not think I’ve ever disliked a performance from him.  Even when he’s in a bad movie, Spader still busts his butt to craft a memorable character for the audience.  His inflections work very well in the role as his subtle, personal touches on Ultron’s voice gives the entity life.  Lesser writers would have just made it a cold super-T-800-style-villain-bot.  However, Whedon knows how to write characters and its dialogue, mixed with Spader’s performance makes a nice blend.  That said, in all of his efforts, I think Whedon failed to really build Ultron up to be the force it really is.  Ultron’s a powerful dude here, for sure.  Is it menacing?  Yes.  Yet, by the end of the movie, one of the most powerful figures in comic book lore is dispatched in an anti-climax that has it fade away quicker than it appeared.  With the rest of the action scenes in this movie lasting in the 10-20 minute range, the fact that the final showdown that leads to the villain’s end lasts only about two minutes in total was just a big letdown.  Note that I’m only referring to the machine Ultron built for himself, disregarding his consciousness in the rest of the sentry bots because… well, so does the movie.  This was all an obvious hint at Ultron’s return.  Which, it seems, will certainly happen.

My final thought is as a big, loud, packed action movie.  This one is a lot of fun.  It’s accessible, there’s nothing in it that’s too disturbing for younger audiences, nor does it feel like a cartoon.  It is a well-balanced movie overall.  I would say it’s probably the lesser of Whedon’s most recent film projects factoring in the first Avengers movie AND Cabin in the Woods (which he co-wrote), but it’s not obnoxious outside of being about thirty minutes too long, and it has enough fun action moments and entertaining dialogue that I would give a whole-hearted recommendation.  It won’t be topping any “greatest action movies” lists, but it’s definitely better than most of what we get from Hollywood these days.  Given the chance, I’d see this again.  It’s a balanced movie and though I feel Joss Whedon is a much, MUCH better character writer than he is an action film director, I respect his choice to make an accessible movie that cuts the fat and delivers exactly what fans want.  The Avengers: Age of Ultron a pretty fun movie.

Generation Wars: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) vs. TMNT (2007)

Now, I know I’m not the first person to do this, but I would like to see how many of these classic series have evolved over the years and I decided to start this series with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  

Originally based on Mirage Comic’s violent cult series of the same name (created by the duo of Laird and Eastman), the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made their mainstream debut in the late 80’s.  Now, it’s important to note that this was a time where a lot of major companies were seeing great success with animated series based on toy tie-ins.  The two biggest ones before TMNT were G.I. Joe and Transformers.  These two series drew huge fans to the stores to buy every toy for everything they saw on the 30 minute TV series.  The fact was, these shows really didn’t have much in terms of plot.  They were really just toy advertisements.  The same goes for a lot of hit series from the time, including The Real Ghostbusters and Thundercats.  Then came 1987…

‘87 was a bad, BAAAAD year for movies, but on TV, things were changing.  Some of the biggest shows ever made their debuts in this year.  Three notable entries were Star Trek: The Next Generation, Duck Tales and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  The latter of the two did something very different.  Unlike a lot of their tie-in contemporaries, these two animated series attempted to craft short stories around existing characters with established relationships and arcs.  They weren’t Shakespeare, but they were smart, funny and entertaining.  These two shows were essentially responsible for the huge boom of Saturday Morning animation in the late-80’s and early 90’s, a genre that was starting to fade a little at the time.

Fast forward to 1990.  A series as big as Ninja Turtles was not going to escape the Hollywood treatment, and on March 30th, fans of the series were treated to a hard-edge, energetic, fun and somewhat edgy action flick.  This was NOT a kids movie, in spite of its rating.  It had pacing, action, and the characters that were mostly known by everyone at that point were treated well in terms of their nature and relationships.  It must be said, that if you did not grow up in this period, you likely have no idea just how massive this series was.  Compare it to anything big today, and you may be close, but just short.  TMNT was a phenomenon, and it was everywhere.  So much so that it never actually went away.  The series lasted well into the 90’s, running for nearly a decade (that was HUGE for an animated series), and other animated shows, comics, games, movies (to a lesser extent) and other spin-offs continued to come out.  Still, the question is, does the 90’s movie hold up?

Well, not too long before writing this article I went back and watched it and was astonished by how good it still is.  No, seriously.  The action was good, the characters were spot on, they stayed true to the overall story and, thanks to help from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, the Turtles themselves were amazing.  The movie hit the nail on the head, transporting the Turtles out of the realm of 2D and bringing them to life.  Naturally the movie was a big hit.  The sequels… not so good, though.  They didn’t hold up and tried too hard to be more kid-friendly, ultimately losing some of the momentum the first film built.  This was partially in-response to some backlash that the first film was “for kids” but was too violent and dark for a few parents to handle… Boy how times have changed.

As a sort of hiatus, the Turtles went back to the shadows and remained out of the mainstream for a short time until being revitalized in a new 2007 animated film.  TMNT debuted to mixed reviews.  It sits at a 37% on Rotten Tomatoes and was generally panned by critics.  Two things are wrong with this picture.  First, having watched the movie, it was not a bad film; not by any means.  It was certainly better than a 37%.  I have SEEN what a 37% looks like and it’s a Hell of a lot worse than this.  No, I think there was some backlash to the tone in some cases.  First, the new movie addresses some of the things that were just glossed over in the original film and series more directly, in-particularly, April O’Neil’s restlessness and Raphael’s rebelliousness.  The latter is a prominent plot point early in the movie as it is an established and ongoing trait of the character.  No complaints there.  

Another point of contention is the 2007 film’s plot.  The story revolves around an ancient immortal warrior who is able to resurrect his ancient generals when the stars align, and with the moment right, he can open a portal to conjure up monsters and take over the world.  It’s like something out of a Final Fantasy game, and it’s goofy, but it’s not the worst I’ve seen from that type of story.  The other subplots involve a barely glossed-over relationship between fellow-vigilante Casey Jones and April O’Neil and the returning theme of Raphael’s lone crime fighting ways.  What I liked about TMNT is how it addressed the latter.  Leonardo, who returns from a prolonged absence of self reflection, finds his family in disarray and is faced with bridging a severed relationship with Raph.  It turns out, another armored vigilante hero has been taking out thugs around New York and Leo, in an attempt to stop him, finds that this so-named Nightwatcher is actually Raphael.  This leads to the two brothers having a nearly-fatal brawl on the rooftop.  As a long-time fan of these characters, THIS was satisfying to me.  It was the obvious and inevitable result of their rough relationship and at that point I was sold.

As a standalone movie, TMNT is not a masterpiece, but it does what it set out to do: Make a fun and solid TMNT adventure.  The only real complaints I have about the movie is it has that odd, jagged CGI animation a lot of series do today, that has these 3D characters with Disney eyes that looks sort of odd in the high-detail world around them, and a few of the “chase” scenes are a little overlong and are basically just filler.  These long action scenes make the few more meaningful ones seem longer than necessary by association.  Lastly, the plot is nothing fresh or astonishing, but it sets the stage for some cool character design for the villains, and a few pretty solid fights.

Really, I do not see why this has such bad reviews.  It is NOT a bad movie.  It’s faithful, it was obviously made by people with a lot of love for the source material, it has a lot of quality animation (especially in the case of the Turtles) and the attention to detail in the production design is great.  I also like that they didn’t go overboard with references to the old series.  Sure they’re eating pizza, Splinter is watching soap operas and Casey Jones is donning his trademark hockey mask, but it isn’t abused and shoved in our faces like a lot of throwback remakes and reboots tend to try to do.  It’s respectful is what I’m saying.

So, which one is better.  Well, in this case it really isn’t a contest.  The 1990 film was engaging and had warmth as well as tension.  There is just something about seeing these characters in the “real world” that brings them to life.  Also, practical effects always look better than CGI and while at least the 2007 movie is entirely animated, the tangible Turtles from the earlier film are much more believable.  For anyone who didn’t grow up during Turtlemania, I would say watch the original movie.  It is not too dissimilar but definitely feels more real and, on the whole, is a much better movie.

My 40 Favorite Films of the 90's - 27 - Fight Club (1999)

Fight Club (1999; 20th Century Fox Pictures)

Director: David Fincher

Writer: Jim Uhls

Starring: Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter

Fight Club is the 1999 film adaptation of the novel of the same name from writer Chuck Palahniuk.  It is a funny indictment of unbridled consumerism, drawing comparisons to shopping from Ikea with enslavement and disease.  It is certainly an anti-establishment message shoved into a strange series of parallels and metaphors.  So, who better to put together a plot puzzle like this than the man who directed The Game and Seven?

Edward Norton plays a (sort of) unnamed narrator who is tormented by his endless fight with daily life and his sudden urge to buy increasingly-useless crap from the consumer catalog du jour.  Depressed and struggling with crippling insomnia, our narrator begins to attend various support groups for disease and addiction for things he does not even suffer from, only to feel… something.  This therapy works, until a woman named Marla (Carter) begins showing up for the same groups, becoming a plaguing distraction.  During a business trip, he meets an outgoing, fast-talking man named Tyler Durden (Pitt), who seems to have none of the same fears and worries he suffers from.  Essentially, he is the narrator’s polar opposite.  A freak disaster leads the narrator to contact Tyler and they meet up, becoming friends, and eventually, this leads to them fighting in an alley.  Over time, this one fight evolves into hundreds, all over the country, from multiple groups of Fight Clubs, and replaces any need for support groups and shoulders to cry on.  Things grow and grow, becoming even more desperate, and Marla is dragged back in with Tyler, with whom she begins a very, very loud sexual relationship.  With the narrator's own vision of what Fight Club becoming distorted into a movement that has grown far out of his control, the film’s tone becomes extremely dark and more than a little threatening, all leading to a climax that is surprising and kind of terrifying..

Fight Club is a brutal rejection of casual consumerism.  It mocks marketing, and even has the Club members use that marketing as a weapon against the system they feel has enslaved them.  The mood shifts from comic to thriller steadily throughout the film, but from the very beginning there is a sense of unease.  We are told early in the film that “With insomnia nothing’s real.  Everything’s far away.  Everything’s a copy of a copy of a copy…”, and that is exactly what much of the first act feels like.  Scenes are very dreamlike, full of strange imagery of floating catalog price information and CGI penguins.  There are subliminal images that flicker and disappear, almost like hallucinations, and the whole production has this very cold, artificial feel to its benefit.  The surrealist elements of the film never feel too out of place since we are meant to be seeing this world through the eyes of a troubled man.  

David Fincher was the perfect choice to direct this movie.  He is able to weave incredibly complex and layered narratives into a cohesive and captivating story.  He is probably better at this than just about any other director working in Hollywood today, with successes like Zodiac and The Social Network telling stories that span several years with a great deal of coherence, something that is very difficult to do without losing your audience.  Fight Club just may be one of the most ambitious film adaptations of all time.  Not because of thousands of fighting soldiers and castles that need to be modeled and CGI’d, but because it is a story told in first person, from the perspective of an individual who sees the world very differently from the way most people do.  Fincher’s ability to put you in the eyes of this one broken and desperate man is simply astounding.  

Now, I am trying to stay vague with this article because if you have not seen this movie yet, it is a must-watch.  It is violent, gritty, and even a little convicting.  You could have been doing something great, and you did nothing productive.  In a shocking and brutal, but funny scene, Tyler holds a young man at gunpoint for “wasting his life” and not pursuing his dream career, for which he lets the man live with the promise that he will pursue a better life.  It is mean, but it is also honest.  Fight Club certainly has a little bit of preachiness to it, which is usually a turn-off, but I never got the feeling that this was based on some schizophrenic’s insane ramblings like I did with tripe like The Day After Tomorrow or overwrought, heavy-handed ripoff material like Avatar.  I was entranced by the film’s fun visuals and darkly humorous tone.  The screenplay is freaking outstanding and every performance is damn good.  Brad Pitt gives what is probably my favorite performance of his career as Tyler Durden and Edward Norton is bringing his A-Game as an awkward, nerdy doormat who is transformed into a tough-as-nails, takes-no-crap badass over the course of the movie.

My 40 Favorite Films of the 90's - 34 - Jurassic Park (1993)

Jurassic Park (1993; Universal Pictures)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Writers Michael Crichton, David Koepp

Starring: Richard Attenborough, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum

Here is an obvious one!  Jurassic Park is Spielberg’s very well-made adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel.  Considered unmakable at the time, this movie was a tremendous undertaking.  The film had a massive budget, loaded with huge sets, large-scale animatronics, scientific advisors and some of the best computer animation the early 90’s could offer.  However, despite its lowered expectations due to skepticism given the scale of the production, the film nearly made its entire $63 million-dollar budget back on its opening weekend in June of 1993 (sources: imdb.com, the-numbers.com).

Jurassic Park tells the story of an eccentric billionaire named John Hammond (Attenborough) who opens a theme park populated by genetically-engineered dinosaurs.  A group of scientists and specialists, as well as Hammond’s grandchildren, arrive at the island park for its dry run, only they were not expecting a dangerous tropical storm and a slimy hacker to cause a lot of trouble for the awed visitors.  What transpires is a high-tension monster movie filmed with a lot of love for the material.  The money also shows on screen, with big sets and convincing effects.  One downside of the movie I would say is how Spielberg uses the night setting and the tropical storm to obscure some of the technical limitations, giving the movie a dark, occasionally colorless look.  It is a monster flick, though, but it is important to know that the dark imagery standard set in the 70’s was also to hide effects and makeup, so take from that what you will.

The acting is fair, with Ariana Richards giving a solid performance as the Hammond’s granddaughter, Lex.  However, she has not appeared in much outside of some B-movie material.  Laura Dern, Attenborough, and Jeff Goldblum are all quite good in their lead roles and Wayne Knight and Samuel L. Jackson give entertaining supporting performances in the few scenes they are in, and over all, there are no performances that come off as stilted or annoying, as is often the case with Spielberg's films, especially from the child actors who appear in his movies.  That said, Sam Neil is good with his lines but he really seems to be sleepwalking through the movie and his character Dr. Alan Grant only seems to exist to provide exposition about the dinosaurs.  

All-in-all, Jurassic Park is not a flawless movie, but it is an entertaining one.  It has some good effects work, some pretty tense moments and a few quotable lines.  There was effort here, and sometimes that is all you need to put something fun on screen, and despite all of the effort to make a big effects movie, Spielberg is usually pretty good about keeping the focus on the characters, which he does do here.  You never feel disconnected from the action and there is a sense of dread and fear for the lives of the park’s patrons.  You can not really go wrong with this material either, I mean it is a T-rex chasing a jeep in the rain.  That is so badass.

My 40 Favorite Films of the 90's - 36 - Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)

T2: Judgement Day (1991; Tristar Pictures)

Director: James Cameron

Writers: James Cameron, William Wisher, Jr.

Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick

I am pretty sure it is safe to call The Terminator one of the best thrillers of the 80’s.  It is a very simple movie in its story and structure, yet it was intensely explosive and entertaining.  In the film Linda Hamilton plays Sarah Connor, a waitress who becomes the target of a time-traveling killing machine called the T-800 sent from the future by a computer-controlled consciousness called Skynet.  She was to bear the child who would lead the resistance against the machines.  Her death would mark the end of the fight for man in the future, so a time travelling human named Kyle Reese was sent back to protect her, but inadvertently falls for her, and well-shot love scene marks a major turning point in the film.  In the end, Sarah successfully destroys the machine that pursued her and shortly after the events of the film, she finds that she was pregnant with Kyle’s child, who she named John, and this brings us to Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

The titular Judgement Day is in reference to a nuclear attack from Skynet that was its first strike in the war against mankind.  The sequel is set a few years before Judgement Day, this time the Terminator is reprogrammed and sent back by the human resistance to protect John Connor.  It is discovered that Skynet is making the first move on the teenage John’s life by sending back a deadly new type of Terminator called the T-1000, a cybernetic liquid metal alloy that can take any solid shape and even replicate the face and voice of humans.  It is Skynet’s deadliest weapon yet, and sending back a requisitioned terminator is the only hope to save John’s life.  

The film focuses on the T-1000’s pursuit of John Connor, and the T-800’s attempts to protect him.  Along the way John orders his protector to help him break his mother out of a mental institution where Sarah Connor was incarcerated after her traumatic encounter with the machine in 80’s had led her to warn of their coming threat and the authorities’ rejection of her warnings resulted in her becoming increasingly violent.  After a successful rescue, he three heroes meet with a weapons dealer, gather a small arsenal, and make an attempt to stop Judgement Day by finding the machines’ architect Miles Dyson and killing him, but ultimately they acquire his aid and attempt to stop the devastating nuclear attack that was only a few years away.

Judgement Day was a mix of ideas from the start.  It was part high-concept science fiction, part action blockbuster and it featured solid performances from everyone.  A big takeaway from this film is Robert Patrick as the T-1000, which is a seemingly-unstoppable juggernaut willing and able to kill anyone and do anything to accomplish its task.  Like the Terminator that tried to kill Sarah before, it is a terror that does not sleep, eat or even slow down.  Yet, the T-1000 is even more deadly as all weapons seem useless and all attempts at eliminating it are futile.  The villain is easily the best thing about this movie, but it still quite excellent as a whole.

I do want to take just a moment and talk about James Cameron as a director.  I will not go on too long here, but I do want to say that he is incredibly talented visual artist, able to weave together great action scenes and has always been ahead of the curve in his ability to harness the latest visual effects technology to its fullest potential.  That said, he has never really come across to me as a particularly capable storyteller.  The Terminator series has a pretty straightforward story as a whole, despite a few attempts to add depth.  Yet, it seems to me that, while Cameron can certainly write an action scene and a solid David vs. Goliath plot, he does not seem particularly good at handling human characters.  One major flaw with Terminator 2 is how Sarah is a normal working woman in the 80’s yet finds herself institutionalized then escapes this facility a trained tactical weapons expert.  There is also the fact that John Connor is a conveniently-skilled hacker, an ability that is necessary for the plot to work, but not fully utilized or expounded upon.  Lastly, there are the plot holes surrounding the Terminator himself.  If he was reprogrammed, how is he being controlled?.  For that matter, how is Skynet controlling him?  If he was assigned orders before he was sent back, then why is he able to deviate from these orders at all?  We see in the unbelievably-flawed Terminator 3 that the machine is more than capable of defying the orders of anyone that sent it back in order to accomplish its ultimate task.  How are the humans able to send anyone back at all?  All of this has been addressed to an extent by outside media like books, comics and (to a certain degree) the later films, but Terminator 2 seems to exist solely for the action.  There is not much of an attempt to expound upon the basic premise, there is only the effort to make everything big and pretty.  This is a problem I would continue to have with Cameron’s films even up until today.  There is simply so much that makes no sense in all of his films, yet these problems are readily dismissed.  I just cannot let him off the hook for his films’ issues, however, because there are just too many of them.

So, why then is Terminator 2 (or T2, as it is known from its early-90's marketing campaign) even on my list at all?  Well, that is a very easy question to answer.  Terminator 2 sits at number 36 because it is a loud, aggressive, fun action flick.  Nothing more, nothing less.  For the same reason Die Hard is held at such high regard, Terminator 2 is a movie I love because it is simply fun to watch.  The performances, while written in a hackneyed sort of way, are still acted well, and the action set pieces and effects scenes are all some of the best of the 90’s.  It is a driving, high-energy film with very little downtime, and that pace keeps me coming back to it every once in a while.

Revenge of Godfrey Ho Month - Ninja the Protector (1986)

Ninja the Protector (1986)

This is one of Ho’s more confusing, yet more comically-entertaining outings.  Released as Project Ninja Daredevils in 1986 (not to be confused with 1985’s Ninja Project Daredevils), this film was re-titled Ninja the Protector for distribution.  The movie is one of dozens of Ho’s that employs the cut-and-paste editing technique, and it is also one of his more famous entries, alongside Ninja Terminator (1985) and Undefeatable (1993).

There is not much that separates Ninja the Protector from Ho’s other outings, but the silly moments make this one worth watching.  The plot is more or less irrelevant, as usual, and is barely glossed over in the entirety of the film’s run time, which clocks in at under 70 minutes.  Still, for the sake of professionalism, I will do my very best to give an outline of this film’s “story”.

Warren and David are just trying to live normal lives.  They do what they can to survive but they share a secret: they are former ninjas.  As a crime syndicate specializing in counterfeiting rises, can Warren and David face their shared past in order to move beyond it?

Along with Warren and David’s plot, we have cut-and-paste footage to talk about too!  Here we have Godfrey Ho regular Richard Harrison as Ninja Master Gordon Anderson, who is now a high-ranking police official.  After two of his cops run across a wounded ninja, one Anderson himself actually bested, they inquire about ninjas to their boss to which Anderson replies “...they’re just a fairy tale.”  However, ninjas do exist, and there is a constant battle for power in their underground world.

Warren and David’s past finally catches up to them as events start to unravel their comfortable lives and the ninja empire attempts to clean up the past by assassinating Anderson but their multiple attempts fail.  Things become worse after Warren’s girlfriend Judy catches her lover cheating on her with a model, and then attempts suicide.  This is followed by Warren being abandoned by both Judy and his brother, David, then framed for murder by one of the criminal masterminds.

source: s3.amazonaws.com

The boss intends to trap David by ensuring he is informed of Warren’s murder charge, which he anticipated would motivate him.  David storms the gangster’s home and dispatches the charging goons but is eventually overpowered.  When the goons pull out a knife at the boss’s orders to kill David, the hero then brandishes a machete but is ultimately shot.  The boss takes David out easily.  Warren intervenes, seemingly out of nowhere, but is overpowered himself.  David then, severely injured from his wound, picks up a pistol and kills Warren’s attacker, but ultimately dies himself.  

Back in the new Godfrey Ho footage, Anderson receives a challenge from a rival ninja, one that is impossible to refuse.  The challenger is Bruce, the evil ninja overlord, and the ensuing fight begins with the two ninjas engaging each other whilst riding motorcycles and swinging weapons at each pass.  As the two warriors begin their fight on foot, we have a short but well-choreographed fight scene between Bruce, who fights dirty, and the honorable Anderson that ends really, really abruptly.  One of the highlights of this short scene is when Anderson fires smoke at Bruce from the hilt of his sword.  

As you can probably tell, Ninja the Protector does not make a hell of a lot of sense.  Like most of Ho’s films, it is all over the place and much of the film’s plot is lost to the forced and sloppy editing that permeates his work.  Even with a run time that barely clears and hour, this movie is padded with gratuitous sex and some very awkward ninja posing from Richard Harrison.  This padding alone is proof that there was little here to begin with.  So, why do I recommend this movie?

Ninja The Protector is an awesome mess.  The editing is awful, the camera work is hilariously inept, the acting is off and the dub is comedy gold.  This is one of the most riffable movies in Godfrey Ho’s collection, and all of the little “inadequacies” add up to one big successful failure.  Sure, it does not work as a ninja thriller, but it does work as a comedy, so, like most movies that are so-bad-they’re-good, Ninja the Protector is an anomalous “good” bad movie.  Watch this one for a laugh.

Revenge of Godfrey Ho Month - Undefeatable (1993)

By the turn of the 90’s, Godfrey Ho’s directorial career started to slow.  It was in 1993 that he decided to do a film starring a successful star in the martial arts circuit named Cynthia Rothrock.  Already an accomplished competitive martial artist, Cynthia Rothrock was still having trouble breaking out of the home video market.  She appeared in several failed straight-to-video films such as Rage and Honor and the exceptionally dull Fast Getaway starring a washed up, teenage Corey Haim.  She decided to do Undefeated, hoping, I assume, it would help her gain a wider audience stateside.  This, obviously, did not turn out as she had hoped, but that does not mean Cynthia Rothrock is bad.  Quite the opposite, actually.

I cannot blame Rothrock for her film choices, as a vast majority of martial arts themed movies of the late 80’s and early 90’s were severely lacking in the quality department, especially when they were made in the U.S.  However, in spite of most of her movies being pretty bad, she herself is a talented fighter with a surprisingly large influence on popular culture.  To video game fans out there, you may be surprised to know that there would be no Sonya Blade if it weren't for her inspiration, Ms. Rothrock herself.  Rothrock is presently in a sort of revival period in her career, starting to appear in frequent films and is working towards making the A-list in martial arts once again.  I cannot say that Undefeatable really hurt her career as she did appear in a number of action flicks in the 90’s after its release, but I honestly cannot help but think it had some negative effect on her ability to capture a wider audience.

Undefeatable is a movie that began to grow in popularity thanks to, of all things, a YouTube clip.  The final fight scene began to show up on YouTube under the title “Best Fight Scene Ever”, or something along those lines, and became a big hit.  This was around the point that Godfrey Ho’s films started to get a following from cult film enthusiasts such as myself, who wanted to know more about this man’s work.  Before the clip began to circulate, I had seen other scenes from his older films, where he would dress his actors up in comically-bad ninja costumes with headbands that had the word “Ninja” printed prominently across the forehead.  These clips were often mocked for bad dubbing and goofy acting, and the Undefeatable clip took notice thanks to the extremely goofy performance of Don Niam as Stingray and John Miller as Nick.  It was eyebrows vs. mullet in this epic martial arts showdown!

So, what is Undefeatable all about beyond the notorious final fight scene?  The story follows Kristi (Rothrock), who looks out for her sister Karen after their mother’s death, and participates in underground street fights to earn money to support her sibling’s college education.  She is part of a street fighting gang of sorts, though, the gang aspect of the film is more or less pointless.  Karen is concerned for her sister, knowing she may one day be severely hurt or even killed, so she urges her not to fight.  Kristi begins finding it hard to get away with the fights as a homicide detective named Nick seems to exist to interrupt her.

Meanwhile we are also introduced to Stingray, the villain of the movie, who’s bug eyed expression and grandfather of all mullets makes him fodder for some serious riffing.  After an illegal fight, where he kills his opponent, he returns home to his wife Anna whom he abuses and he rapes her.  This is the last straw for Anna, who promptly leaves him.  This enrages Stingray and he begins a deadly killing spree where he constantly calls every woman he sees “Anna”.  He starts targeting couples, killing the male and taking the woman (still calling her Anna) and ultimately killing her, removing her eyes in the process.

After the police start investigating, Nick takes the case and shortly thereafter, Stingray (who has not yet been identified) targets Karen and kills her.  Kristi, vengeful and enraged, begins to hunt down who is responsible by targeting local gang leaders, that is, until Nick stops her, and it is at this point where the investigation starts to lean towards Stingray.  They find out about Stingray through his fight promoter, who winds up dead after he discovers the villain’s killer ways.  Stingray makes a mistake, however, in kidnapping Anna’s shrink, who then uses his own psychosis against him while captive.  After sending Stingray to the store, pretending to be his mother who abandoned him, she uses her cell to contact Kristi, who leads the police to Stingray’s warehouse.

A two-on-one fight breaks out with Kristi and Nick taking on the maniacal Stingray, and ultimately, they manage to rescue his hostage but are unable to subdue Stingray himself.  Instead, they take the psychologist to the hospital, where Stingray, disguised as a doctor, promptly abducts her again, but Nick and Kristi are on the case, and they chase the madman down to the laundry room.  It is in this room where the legendary fight breaks out, and for that, just watch the clip.

With the evil Stingray dispatched, Kristi, at her sister’s grave, finally gives up her fighting side and everyone seemed to have enrolled everyone else into college.  No, I’m serious.  The credits roll right after an ending high five.  In most movies this high five would be a freeze frame, but not in Godfrey Ho Land, oh no!  No, this high five actually has the actors high five, then hold their places for a few seconds before the screen turns black.  This is, for some reason, is so funny to me, that it is just the cherry on top of an already goofy-as-hell sundae.

Untouchable is awesome!  It is so silly, so flat, so bizarre that you kind of have to respect it.  It stands out from many of Ho’s other films as it does not employ the cut-and-paste technique.  Instead, Ho filmed this entire movie from scratch, which for him is commendable.  This has the added benefit of making a fully comprehensible, if not occasionally silly and padded-out, action flick.  

There is nothing here that you haven’t seen before in similar films, but Ho’s direction, the hilarious script and Don Niam and John Miller’s epically terrible performances make this a fun watch.  The movie is derivative, sure, but it is also great fun.  There are a few points where the movie is brought to a complete halt so that an actor can give the audience a martial arts demonstration, and these scenes, while still entertaining are blatant padding.  This is a 90 minute film with about twenty minutes of fat on it.  Still, it’s obvious why it was padded out, otherwise it wouldn't really be feature-length.  

Cynthia Rothrock shows some chops here, thought a lot of that may be due to the comparatively-worse supporting cast.  Still, as is often the case with Godfrey Ho, the choreography is good, and Cynthia Rothrock is a badass here, coming off as significantly faster and more agile than her opponents, which is how you become a martial arts superstar.  I like her in general and in this movie you also get a funny series of “bad laughs” and some of Ho’s best quirks on full display.  Check Undefeatable out.  I must admit, I needed this after sitting through Catman 2, which just... sucked.

Revenge of Godfrey Ho Month - Catman in Boxer's Blow (1993)

Catman in Boxer's Blow (1993)
Image Source: numerocinqmagazine.com

Most of Godfrey Ho’s movies have a certain level of incomprehensibility, which is an inherent consequence of his cut-and-paste editing technique.  However, out of all of Ho’s movies that I have seen, I cannot think of one more confusing and outright perplexing as Catman in Boxer’s Blow.  The sequel to Catman in Lethal Track, the film continues the story of Catman, a special agent named Sam who gains superpowers after being scratched by a radioactive cat.  He’s in the movie all of five minutes.

The majority of the plot is simply confounding.  I honestly do not know where to begin here, but I will do my best.  An evil cult leader plots to use nuclear weapons to kill millions and hires a group of mercenaries to help him achieve this goal.  The crew is comprised of several men, each with their own specialties and skills, and they are all bad, except one.  A man named Bobby, who was recently broken out of prison, is coerced into helping the cult, who is holding his family hostage.  That is quite literally where I start to get confused.  

I assumed Catman intended to stop the cult, and I am guessing he did in the end fight, but characters run on into each other and the plot points seem so overlapped that they make zero sense.  I was able to decipher that Bobby was innocent of the crime he was imprisoned for... I think.  I also can tell that his father and siblings do not trust him because he is an escaped convict.  There is a female martial artist who just sort of seems... there.  She does not really do anything except help out in some of the film’s many fight scenes.

Rear of the VHS case.

The fight choreography is okay, and fights range from standard to occasionally entertaining.  The problem is, I spent half the time wondering which character was which, and who was fighting who.  In a few instances, I was not able to even decipher who the villains and heroes were, even after the fight subsided.  There was almost zero attempt to make a cohesive series of events.  I say almost, because they try to tie things together with some inserted dialogue scenes featuring Catman, his boss and his friend, but these do little to repair the damage done to this film by the horrible wrath of scissors!

Yes scissors.  No man, woman and child in any 80’s movie is safe when Godfrey Ho gets his greedy paws on scissors!  The editing here is so bad that it actually edits scenes into other scenes from the same movie.  This is not where Ho will cut in a dialogue scene from his new footage into the older movie to make it appear as though characters from the two films are speaking to one another.  No, these are two scenes spliced together out of order, from the same movie.  I only caught this when I saw one of the lead characters clothes change, then change back in the span of a few minutes.

A lot of movies can be heavily destroyed by poor editing.  Elaine May blamed Ishtar’s failures on poor editing and I can see it, even though what was left on screen sucked too.  Here, I honestly do not know what to think.  I would say that most of the fights are okay, but that doesn’t fix the fact that I have no idea who the heroes and villains of this movie were, besides Catman and the cult leader, who are barely mentioned at all in the movie.  The plotting is so bad here, that I had to read a plot synopsis AFTER WATCHING THE MOVIE, to know that it was a cult and not a terrorist group, because the movie makes no reference to the fact at all (except on the back of the VHS case, apparently).  It does make the fact that the villain’s name is Reverend Cheever make more sense, but other than that, it does not effect the movie at all.  

Character motivations are never established, character relationships are rarely explained, and actors are made up with the same hair styles, clothes styles and mustaches so that you cannot tell who is who in a fight.  That is until the camera does a close up and only then can you hope the close up will be of a character you have seen before because, in all honestly, half of the time it isn't.  A fight would end with a victor standing and I was forced to ask myself, “Who is this guy?”  This happened more than one time while watching this incomprehensible mess of a film.

This is one of Godfrey Ho’s last films, released in the early 90’s.  It definitely has a sort of inert blandness and lack of enthusiasm that could be found in his 80’s movies.  Even in Ho’s worst cut-and-paste work from ‘86 to ‘89 usually has some semblance of a story.  Here, there is literally nothing to hold anything together.  It’s like throwing a handful of random Scrabble tiles into the air, trying to read all of the letters as the fly up and form words out of them before they hit the floor.  So much is lost to the attempt to shoehorn Catman into the plot as well as make it seem as though he would be able to effect what is going on in the other movie at all, that I think Ho just sort of threw his hands up with this one.  

The only source of comedy here is occasional goofiness from the barely glossed-over Catman plot and some really bad dub work that left me laughing more than a few times.  The rest of this movie is so bad, so lost, so... sad, that it has achieved a new low.  On this blog I have discussed the Fat Spy, Birdemic, North, Chairman of the Board, the FREAKING Bounty Hunter and I may go so far as to say that Catman in Boxer’s Blow is the worst movie I have reviewed on this blog, and one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

There is hope just around the corner, however, as shortly after this film’s release, Godfrey Ho begin working with an American martial arts heroine and would make one of his most glorious films ever.  Next up on Godfrey Ho Appreciation month, we’re talking about Undefeatable.

The Revenge of Godfrey Ho Appreciation Month - An Introduction

Godfrey Ho; Image source: popmatters.com

One year ago, I dubbed August “Godfrey Ho Appreciation Month”, named for one of my favorite schlock directors of all time.  I love his over-the-top dub acting, the silly plot lines and, of course, his legendary cut-and-paste editing, which mixes two entirely unrelated films together.  At one point I actually really hated this director’s films, but over time they grew on me, and now I enjoy the insanity.  So, last year, I dedicated a series of articles to some of his films.  This year I will continue in that tradition.

There is something to be said about Godfrey Ho’s films.  They aren't exactly unique, as there are a ton of these poorly-dubbed, poorly edited, kung fu/ninja films out there from the 70’s and 80’s.  What makes Ho’s different, if not slightly so, is the way he would often film new footage, usually with white actors, to edit into the old footage, often attempting to change the context of the film entirely.  Sometimes this actually works.  As silly as it is, Ninja Terminator sort of works as a movie plot-wise.  Most of the time, however, it’s a mess; a beautiful, hilarious mess.

So how did Godfrey Ho make it in America?  Well, it all comes back to the home video market, which opened the doors for hundreds (if not thousands) of wannabe filmmakers and foreign veterans to begin inexpensively releasing their films in the U.S.  Early on (mostly in the 70’s) distribution of these films was pretty much chaotic, but generally easy, since there was no stranglehold on the home video market from larger studios, nor were there any strict laws about content (in the form of censorship; because that is what it is) from the government.  If you could make a movie, and the master could pass customs, you had a release.  

The rise of home video stores in the 80’s fed this push and ultimately, it collapsed as the studios began to crawl out of their fifteen-year-hole as the mid-to-late 80’s saw blockbuster after blockbuster begin to make huge sums of money.  They bought up most of the distributors they could, and, for the most part, the mostly-free home video market died in the early 90’s, leaving only a few of the original distributors (pretty much the ones who were already big enough to stand on their own two feet) to ultimately die a slightly slower death.

Godfrey Ho did continue to release films into the 90’s, thanks to revenue he earned in the 80’s, and is, I think, largely responsible for the rise in popularity of ninjas in pop culture, though you may not know it.  Yes, his movies were goofy, but they predated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and they followed an extremely popular kung-fu craze in the 70’s and early 80’s.  Godfrey Ho released dozens of ninja films in the 80’s, and yes, they made money.  So, it stands to reason his ubiquity would lead to influence somewhere.  Could Godfrey Ho be the reason for the massive popularity of ninjas in pop culture?  I dunno.  I just think it would have been one hell of a coincidence if he weren't.

So, I start this month with a very... special movie.  Ho’s attempt at making a Kaiju film.  Well, sort of a Kaiju film anyway.  It is a hilarious mix of a child’s pet story, mixed with an evil overlord trying to take over the world’s food supply.  I’d say that’s a perfect way to start things off this month, wouldn't you?

A little Late Movie Review - Kung Fu Girls Club (????)

Competent film making?  Proper equipment?  Cohesive storytelling?  Talented actors?  No longer do you need to deal with all of that superfluous crap!  Now, thanks to Robbie Ryan, you too can make a video, put it on YouTube, and call it an "Independently Distributed Film".  Boy, oh boy, do I wish I was being sarcastic there, but no, Kung Fu Girls Club (in all of its improper lack of titular punctuation) exists, and this makes me very happy.

I do not have anything against someone making a movie, putting themselves out there and trying to make a name for themselves in the industry.  Some of the greatest directors of the modern era got their careers started doing exactly that.  Hell, it is arguable that the entire movie industry would not exist if it were not for the race to innovation that occurred in the 1890's, where inventors copied each other's patents and short films in an effort to be the most acclaimed name in the new art of movie making.  That said, time has taught us that when some people get behind a camera, the result is not good, but still epic

I do not know much about the film maker Robbie Ryan.  He has a blog, a YouTube channel but little else really identifies him.  I can tell you he does have a strange sense of humor, and that this movie could be some sort of campy joke, but it is honestly difficult to tell.  Kung Fu Girls Club follows a teen named Tsunami (yep, I am pretty sure how they spell it too) who transfers to a high school where all ten of the other students are complete assholes (like real high school I guess).  When aliens disguised as humans (thus revealing this film's budget, as though the core production was not a dead giveaway) attack out of nowhere, paralyzing the rest of the student body, an Evanesence fan-girl named Sage informs Tsunami and her friend that they are bestowed with great power and they are destined to fight these shape-shifting creatures.  They give two more girls prop MacGuffins in the form of necklaces that give them powers also and the four of them proceed to fight the aliens.  There is almost zero build up to this, one second they are acting out a poor-man's Breakfast Club, the next they are fighting black-clad aliens, complete with lame after-effects!

The movie was filmed in what appears to be a single weekend at a school campus I can only assume the cast and crew broke into.  Even the hospital room set appears to be a low angle shot of a public restroom carefully framed to cut out all of the fixtures, leaving only the patient, the swinging door, the concerned student and a sketchy guy in a lab coat that I think also appears as a different character in the film (I cannot be certain of this though).  The otherwise empty halls of this building are reused over and over (I'm guessing in an attempt to avoid security cameras).  Okay, okay.  I kid.  I cannot accuse this production and those involved with any criminal activity legally, so I'll just say that this is a really, really bad movie that appears to have been filmed entirely in one location over a very short period of time.

Now, as for the action, it's bad.  Each fight scene is filmed clumsily and filled with goofy effects.  The one actor who seems to possess any actual martial arts ability seems out of place in this film too, playing a villain named Takahashi, he is also the only person on this project with an IMDB page with some pretty impressive stunt credits to his name.  Obviously attempting to mimic anime, the Girls Club members have transformation scenes for their "fighting modes" which come complete with fourth-wall-breaking, excessive poses, brightly-colored wigs and forced Japanese names.

Now, normally I would give a little detail and information about the film but, I can't find any.  As I said, the aforementioned Takahashi, played by Ilram Choi is the only credited actor in the film I could find any information on and even he does not credit this movie on his IMDB page, I just recognize him from the photos.  The filmmaker, Robbie Ryan, did not seem to do much to promote the movie either, as I can not find any online references to this film other than a few photos, mostly from the blog of Robbie Ryan himself (Where you can also watch the movie!).  Now, there are references to multiple "episodes", but these appear to be segmented parts of the film as a whole, probably its original format on YouTube.   I found this gem simply searching for fantasy Kung-Fu movies online and was very excited about this one by the five minute mark.

If it sounds like I'm bashing this film earlier in the article, know that I thoroughly enjoyed watching Kung Fu Girls Squad and strongly recommend everyone give it a shot.  This is the bad film bad film fans dream of.  It is filled with plot issues, bad editing, bad acting, bad effects, bad everything, and the end result is a glorious example of schlock fun.  The only thing that really grated on my nerves after a while was the buzzing, 8-bit techno soundtrack that sounds like a bee trapped in an old radiator.  The voices of some of the aliens are even layered with this buzzing, low-end sound and it is truly awful.  Still, there are so many laughs to be had with this film, and if you love flicks like the Room and Birdemic, you really, really need to watch this movie.  I found it posted in a number of locations online including YouTube and with the credits taken out, this one is less than an hour in length.  You will not regret this sit!