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...

"From Dan Dare to James Tiberius Kirk, Flash Gordon's DNA is shot through our notions of what a hero - and superhero - is like a jagged bolt of lightning," writes Adam Smith in Empire . Director Mike Hodges describes the role of Flash as "an all-American hunk, decent, honourable, but, most importantly, naive ." And, taking this film version, energetic and fun, and hardly capable of, let alone prone to, bouts of negativity. A nice birthplace for the 80s action hero, really. For example, Rambo had his angsty origins, but was all action and getting things done in the 80s. Not every 80s hero was angst-proof; Martin Riggs , for example, was essentially suicidal. But most were almost gleefully violent (and so, really, was Riggs, just for different reasons). Compare even Riggs to say, Paul Kersey from the Death Wish films, begun in 1974; or Harry Callahan, whose films began in 1971. Seventies violence may have been just as outlandish as the best moments of, say, Com...

We've been here before. day 612 - he'll save every one of us day 613 - this ming is a psycho day 614 - no one but the pure in heart Flash Gordon . Silly, stupid fun with a kickass soundtrack and score. With the unreal, murky red sky and Aquaman flying between Cyborg and the Batmobile, I wonder if someone working on Justice League didn't have some love for this film... Hell, given the likely ages of people working behind the scenes on a movie like Justice League , I wouldn't be surprised if they all had some love for Flash Gordon . But--not that I'm reviewing Justice League right now--they could have used a lot more of the sense of fun that Flash Gordon has. Seriously, even in its quietest, most serious moments, this movie can't help but be fun. From Ming's ridiculously labeled-in-English world-destroying computer to the "football" game to Aura kissing Flash while he's trying to communicate telepathically with Dale to that silly roc...

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...