Short Rounds vol. 12 - retro geek
The Incredible Hulk Returns/The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk
I remember the Incredible Hulk television programme vaguely from childhood. What stuck with me most was the theme, or so I thought. The theme I was actively remembering was the cartoon theme song from the early '80's leading into an awful show narrated awesomely by Stan Lee. But upon loading the first post-series Incredible Hulk TV movie into the DVD player, it came flooding back, including the opening credits montage, the transformation sequence and all that.
The first movie finds David Bruce Banner working under a pseudonym in a science lab, just about to figure himself out a cure. He's found love with a co-worker but still fears the monster inside of him. Just as he's about to "cure" himself, an old student of his, Donald Blake shows up and interferes. Donald needs David's help (though it's never clear why he turned to David), as on a recent archaeological expedition Donald came across a mysterious tomb, and now he's saddled with the ability to summon the Mighty Thor! Yadda yadda yadda, Thor and Hulk fight, yadda yadda yadda, Thor and Hulk need to team up to save Banner's girlfriend yadda yadda yadda, David is exposed and his cure destroyed he must venture on. As awful as it is, it's actually quite fun, especially the Thor character who enjoys his women, his ale, and his violence.
I had actually seen the second movie, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, when it first aired. I get the details of it confused with the final movie, the Death of the Incredible Hulk, but I do remember Daredevil, moreover how lame I found him. That impression didn't change upon second viewing. In what looks like Salt Lake City (certainly not Hell's Kitchen), the Kingpin has taken over. Blind attorney Matt Murdock is on a crusade to legally take the Kingpin and his goons down, while at night he's the man without fear, crusading vigilante-style to break Kingpin's empire. When David, once again a nomad, get involved with an attempted assault on the subway, he intervenes, but gets charged with the crime, and naturally Murdock comes on as his lawyer. Yadda yadda yadda, they figure out each other's secrets and they help take down the Kingpin's empire, but the big bad John Rhys Davies manages to escape in a hovercar. It's wicked awfulness, with horrid fight choreography, dreadfully dull plot, and a Daredevil that makes Ben Affleck look credible.
Return - 3/5
Trial - 1.5/5
Transformers: The Movie
Oh my. Oh... oh my. I was never a Transformers fan as a child. I obsessed over He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Star Wars, Superfriends, and to a lesser degree G.I. Joe (I did watch Beast Wars fairly regularly in the 90's, though). I know of Optimus Prime, Megatron, Starscream and Bumblebee are, but beyond them I'm not really aware of the characters or the reasoning behind the eternal struggle between the Autobots and the Decepticons. Transformers: The Movie, wildly loved by Transformers fans, does, well, nothing to explain this. You can't really enter T:TM cold, it's not newbie friendly, but at the same time I doubt it makes a whole lot of sense even in context within the Transformers cartoon canon (but I can't really say). The movie begins with wholesale slaughter of dozens of Transformers, whom I imagine were of the older line, and since Hasbro had some new toys to sell, a whole bunch of new characters are introduced 20 minutes into the film. Not long after, Optimus Prime kicks the bucket (I recall friends saying that this scene made them cry, but upon watching there's actually not a lot of sentimentality put into the death scene). The subsequent adventure is convoluted, with seemingly random asides involving the planet-sized, Orson Welles-voiced Transformer, Unicron, who speaks obtusely about... something... whatever. The overbearing '80's-hair-metal soundtrack (with a very strange incursion by Weird Al Yankovic) borders on painful, as does much of the movie. It's of the so absurdly bad it's funny quality (with the exception of the quite phenomenal animation), but after the first 40 minutes it just begins to grate.
If you're a Transformers fan and love this, more power to you. If you've never or rarely watched the 80's Transformers cartoon, there's not much point to viewing the film.
-1/5-
X-Files: Fight The Future
Oh, I liked the X-Files something fierce in the 90's. It felt pretty innovative: alien conspiracies, government conspiracies, monster hunting, ghost hunting, the scary, the weird, the peculiar, the funny, the absurd, the nerdy... it was a show that had much going for it with the exception of a master plan. I gave up on the X-Files somewhere during the 6th season, checking in on it from time to time, but for some reason after the post-movie switch from Vancouver to Los Angeles the show lost all it's charm. I think visually the show was different, but at the same time the fact that the movie did nothing but return the show to square 1, advancing none of the plot, none of the characters (Scully was rescued from an alien space craft, leaving a huge crater in the Antarctic, and still she doesn't believe in anything what science can prove? GAH!). The movie has a great kickoff, with Mulder and Scully working as regular FBI agents, investigating a reported bomb threat. Through happenstance Mulder stumbles upon the bomb and from there a greater conspiracy unfolds. The plot, as a stand alone, is actually quite tight and intriguing, a mystery that spirals out, getting bigger and bigger involving larger and bigger mysteries. Where the film fails the viewer and itself is by tying itself into the larger X-Files continuity, as this aspect leaves many unfulfilling threads dangling and a few character and story moments that only make sense in the greater context of the series. Director Rob Bowman directs and immeasurably pretty movie, if Fight the Future has anything going for it, it's how damn pretty it is.
Watching this movie (or any X-Files for that matter) is a difficult experience, as I did genuinely like the show, but knowing that all of the various aspects of intrigue and all the little clues (plus the big ones too) were never intended to amount to anything... it's angering. The stand-alone episodes stand on their own fine, and it's only too bad that Fight the Future couldn't be the ultimate stand-alone X-Files story.
-2.5/5-