the groundhog day project

Filmmakers steal ideas all the time. Even if not on purpose. Every storyteller does. George Lucas wanted to make a Flash Gordon film before he couldn't get the rights and went ahead with his own story-- Star Wars . It shouldn't be much of a surprise that his story, a space fantasy designed like an old serial would bear some resemblance to Flash Gordon (even if this film ended up taking long to get made, remember, characters in Flash Gordon. Which is another reason I'm still sad that Prince Thun was just a black guy with a big hat instead of a furry lion man. I mean, if Lucas could have Chewbacca, Hodges should have been able to have a more visually interesting Prince Thun. And, a Prince Thun with a bigger part of the story. And maybe he could be applauded at the end of the story, and Chewbacca could get a medal along with Luke and Han (or maybe every pilot who survived that assault on the Death Star should have gotten an award, not just the MVP(s)). We've got moons her...

I'd like to comment on the symbol Klytus wears (and that is on the wall here and there in Ming's palace in Mingo City)--like the Masonic symbol: There's probably something there, with Ming and Klytus not only representing a foreign (alien) menace but a subversive secret society (also probably something to Klytus being a bit effete), but there's something more important to talk about since this is my last day with Flash Gordon . (This 3-days-only system leaves very little room for rambling.) (I'd also like to write something about how Ming basically created the various tribes of Mongo as they are. He gave the Leonans of Ardentia their claws and fangs. He gave the Coralians their fins and gills. He gave the Avions their wings, the lizardmen (not sure what they're properly called) their scales. He is effectively a god, which could put a religious angle on the film.) I'm more concerned with an old standby--gender. And, I don't mean to diminish the ...

Let's move right on past the whole yellow peril angle of a villain like Ming the Merciless for a moment and focus on the real racist tragedy in Flash Gordon . There are no Lion Men from Ardentia in the film. Instead of the awesome Thun with the mane and the fangs, we get what amounts to a stereotypical African native type. And then, to add insult to injury, he gets killed by Ming after almost no screentime. Let's not even mention the lizard men, who we see not only in Ming's jail but also Arboria's jail. Plus, one is killed onscreen, to be mourned alongside King Thun, and he doesn't even get any dialogue. So then, there's Ming. In Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America , Cheng (2012) argues that Asian villains in science fiction brought "the otherness of advanced and degenerate civilization... Degeneracy justified conquest--exploration's coincidental and expeditious by-product--as redemptive reclamation" ...

(This month, I'm doing things a little differently; I will be watching 10 films--each recommended by someone else, each one for three days. Today starts the second of these 10 films. The first one was The Room .) To start, I must say, it's amazing that Ming's computer readout labels are written in English. I mean if we didn't see the label EARTH QUAKE, would we have been able to guess how his actions destroyed that building on his screen? Without VOLCANIC ERUPTION, would we have know that was a volcano erupting? And, without HOT HAIL, would we have... actually we probably would have been really confused because hot hail is not a thing. If Ming can make hot rocks fall out of space, out of nowhere basically, no football player is going to save us. The premise almost immediately plays as ridiculous. Plus, there's the whole racism angle with the character of Ming the Merciless (and many other characters in the old comics and serials), but I will be dealing with th...