Transformers, No. 2 - Transformers (2007)

Where’d the idea of doing a live action Transformers movie come from? Well, nostalgia, the ongoing sense that every revered 1980s property could (nay, should) be brought back for the old audience with a filter of maturity, while also appealing to younger, newer audiences. Filmically, the same rough 2007/8 period renewed Die Hard by Living Free, gave us a Rambo actually called Rambo, and then there was that Indiana Jones movie we shan’t speak of again.

Plus, movie producers are always looking for the latest untapped lode (uh heh heh) from which to pilfer. Within the larger post-millennial period which Transformers defines, they’ve gone to theme park rides (Pirates of the Caribbean), comic strips (Garfield), and soon enough we’ll get an influx of board game movies (Battleship, et al). (Comic book movies barely count, as they are genuinely respectable.) Of course, earlier periods produced occasional “odd source” movies, like Clue or Mars Attacks! (both of them awesome), but without the prominent ubiquity of the ‘00s.

And Transformers represents the “toy line” side of that thought process, though to say this ignores the Hasbro’s innumerable TV and comic manifestations – to say nothing of The Transformers: The Movie. Any promising source is worth doing repeatedly – hence Hasbro also created the live action G.I. Joe, initially switched out for Transformers thanks to goddamned Saddam Hussein. In a similar(ish) vein, there would’ve been the now-scrapped Thundercats flick, plus one only assumes “My Little Pony,” “Candyland,” and in ten years we’ll all be even the wiser.


Ah, but Transformers…Doing this property in live action is indeed a good idea – I say, willfully ignoring what’s been done. To begin with, the allure of specifically a live action film (as opposed to more animation, likely for TV or DTV or HDTV) is the sense that it is the official story – Obviously no pragmatic adaptation can be perfect, but more people will know it, give it more credence, and thus the Transformers characters enter the mainstream consciousness as never before. It’s a sort of pinnacle, or tent pole, to increase awareness of lesser “Transformers” entities – as a Hasbro business decision, with no question as to artistry, this is a sound choice.

Plus, live action demands discipline in a way animation doesn’t – even with a budget as permissive as Transformers’. With limited resources, and the need for relative realism, bombast becomes grounded. A strange thing to say, I know, about any Michael Bay movie – for now I point out what everyone knows going in, that Michael Bay directed Transformers. And while Bay’s approach is the furthest from disciplined, the medium does it for him. The Movie, for its hallowed position amongst nostalgists, is just as hyperkinetic and sugar-rushed, in its 1980s way, so Bay is actually a good choice to update and modify what seems to be the franchise’s main mode – for better or worse.


Helping out Transformers the most, conceptually, is its need to go mainstream. I know, hear me out! With an excessive budget, Transformers cannot just appeal to pre-initiates as The Movie does; it must balance that sort of hardcore fan with the absolute ignorantsia. Thus Transformers, under the guidance of executive producer Steven Spielberg (it’s perpetually odd to think he and Bay aligned), focuses upon humans – It’s Blockbuster 101: Devise an outrageous premise (in this case, space-faring giant robots that have evolved naturally to turn into 20th century Earth vehicles), and present it normally. Transformers then eliminates a lot of the zanier “Transformers” baggage, such as a space setting, or the Transformer sub-groups (Insecticons, Dinobots, most anything post-Generation 1). Instead Transformers takes place on Earth. In the present day. Humans are the main characters.

That last part is a major sticking point for many “Transformers” faithful, for whom Optimus Prime is Jesus Christ. But this is the sort of necessary trade off one makes in adapting “Transformers” to live action, since the title characters are expensive: CGI behemoths whose rendering process is known to blow up computers (because Michael Bay needs explosions everywhere).


Though this is…an avoidable problem…The Transformer redesigns are hideous, a fallout of Bay’s insistence (back when he was surprisingly reticent to shepherd a “stupid toy movie,” he being so mature and all) that the Transformers be believable. By “believable” he means technically so, thus an undue amount of effort was put into making robots which could actually transform – and then squelching that effort anyway, by making the transformations superfast and totally incomprehensible. The result is a bunch of visual diarrhea, a baroque spiky nightmare which (honestly) is a lot more coherent on my television than it was in the theater. Anyway, these complex, complex designs are harder to render, so the Transformers are given less screen time as a result – no time to make a dramatic impact (in keeping, frankly, with The Movie).

(Complexity-for-believability is Bay’s chief contribution, and it doesn’t work. It especially jibes poorly with how he shoots the frequent – but not frequent enough – robot fights, as though from a puny human’s point of view. It’s simply difficult to parse out. On the big screen, this technique gave me the single worst headache of my life. Yes, Transformers is literally the most painful movie I’ve ever seen – though my choice to drink a yard of Blue Moon and sit in the front row didn’t help.)

Oh wait, I’m nitpicking fundamentally flawed character design, when perhaps we ought to take a step back and consider the larger concept of Transformers. If we accept the need to stick with humans, a new narrative must be devised. While Transformers still tells of Autobots and Decepticons, we take a human perspective. How would humans perceive two warring robot factions?


There are two approaches. The Spielberg approach does like E.T., and tells of a boy’s first car – a universal (enough) story. Then the car turns out to be alive and, unlike in Christine, it’s good, leading the boy into an ever-expanding universe. It just happens to be “Transformers.” It also just happens to be a narrative which celebrates blind consumerism, which is in Hasbro’s interest.

The Bay approach highlights military hardware, because he has a nine-hour erection for the U.S.’s military industrial complex, and an unquestioning faithfulness to our recent the icky imperialistic politics. So he shows soldiers in Qatar (further subtitled as “the Middle East,” because we have the IQs of lobsters) fighting an alien invasion – of robots.

Neither of these approaches really meshes with the other, so naturally Transformers does both of them…at once. The military angle affords Bay an opening action sequence, but at the expense of further wonder or discovery (though the preview trailers have already sabotaged that emotion to begin with). His tale of warfare, entirely independent of the other plot threads until well over halfway through, also grants Bay the chance to cut away whenever Spielberg’s domestic suburban tale isn’t hypermacho enough (i.e., “not enough military”). Considering Bay’s exclusive marketing agreement with the armed forces (essentially), lotsa pointless military porn was probably inevitable. ‘Merica – FUCK YEAH! Of course it has nothing to do with “Transformers.”


Meanwhile, in Los Angeles of course, Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf , a stuttering young Jewish actor who reminds Spielberg of a falsely “manly” version of his younger self, and does nothing for anyone else) wants a car. He gets a car. Fascinating! Specifically, he gets Bumblebee, now a Camaro because of an unavoidable GM tie-in – this is consumerist hagiography, and “better” than The Movie simply by being a more sophisticated commercial, for more products. In the long run, Sam does learn that his car lives, and seeks a mystical space MacGuffin (the All Spark, available now at Pep Boys). Meanwhile, Sam romances Mikaela (Megan Fox – no comment), which doesn’t feel like the usual tacked-on blockbuster romance because A) Sam is clearly just filmmaker wish fulfillment, and B) Mikaela gets us as close to pornography as the PG-13 rating will allow.


There is the promise of…some sort of movie in Sam’s antics. One can see the Spielbergian heart buried deep under all the chrome, and wonders how J.J. Abrams might’ve handled this same basic movie. Bay, who is clearly embarrassed by the need to dwell upon a normal teenager, rather dudes up even Transformers’ baseline reality with all sorts of strangeness.

Every time some past event is referenced (an Arctic expedition, football tryouts, the Mars rover), it is shown, for upwards to 10 seconds each – which seems like a very frivolous use of budget. Some of Sam’s tale is told with an attempt at humor, a sort of American Beauty for mouth-breathers. That’s when the movie isn’t randomly attempting, for all of several seconds, to ape Kill Bill – mostly by “borrowing” musical cues.

And the whole movie boasts the same sort of whiggerism I’d identified in Scary Movie 3, the clear product of a white man accidentally misreading “urban” culture. Sam’s comic relief parents (who intermittently shatter whatever “reality” Bay goes for) refer to “bling” and whatnot with utter ignorance; the movie as a whole does similarly, slopping on the surface details of hipness everyplace – e.g. Sam’s love of faded faux-retro T-shirts, which is totally not in keeping with his ostensible “nerdy” persona. Also, his spray-on douche tan. Plus, Bay casts Anthony Anderson, which is automatically evil – especially since he gets a completely isolated “super kewl exxxtreme ballz” hacker subplot.


Actually, to limit myself to the human details, there are a lot of individually indefensible decisions in Transformers:

Bernie Mac (rest his soul) appears as a used car dealer, and forces laffs in, in a way which reflects Bays’ prison shower gang rape conception of komedy. He calls his mother a bitch, berates a Puerto Rican for being a Puerto Rican (or some sort of non-black ethnic). It’s all very ugly.

Anthony Anderson gets largely the same routine with his grandmother, minus the racism. This is the modern equivalent of sambo dancing, a tone-deaf parody of hood rats that somehow is meant to appeal directly to said hood rats.

A U.S. soldier is ridiculed for speaking Spanish, because that’s not a language that is spoken by American citizens. Another soldier is lambasted for having slightly irregular culinary tastes. This is in the film’s first Earth-bound scene, setting the stage for our species as a whole!

Sam has an extended-wannabe-Jeff-Goldblum-stutter-off with a drug-obsessed cop, who likewise exists in some skewed comic reality unrelated to any other scene.

White people, for the most part, are frat boys, a lifestyle which is celebrated. Sam is weaker because he hasn’t fully embraced douchiness yet. His conquest of Mikaela is just one crucial step in his arc towards embracing assholism, Bay-style.

Also, Bumblebee “upgrades’’ from a 1976 Camaro to a 2007 (probably) Camaro, which seems equally distasteful – but maybe that’s just me.


It’s a complete tonal mess! This is what Transformers does. Nothing which happens has any emotional relevance to anything else. Nor plot relevance. For instance, it appears Bay wanted to film a scene of a gremlin-sized Decepticon (that’s Gremlins gremlins, not car Gremlins) – it transforms into a boom box, because that’s “gangsta.” This beast, whose name I dunno, raids Air Force One, simple because. Because Bay wanted to film an Air Force One scene, why not, and toss in an utterly spineless “caricature” of George W. Bush too – The man wants ding-dongs, oh the political commentary!

Then the Transformer robots get sorta halfway almost kinda involved in their own story, and come across badly. Bay doesn’t seem to “get” robots (at least when they’re not military hardware). Despite their transformation camouflage, the Autobots physically hide behind puny hedges. A Transformer is mistaken for the tooth fairy, something which makes zero sense. A Transformer urinates on John Turturro’s head – you don’t fuck with the Jesus! A dog (a Chihuahua, which affords a Taco Bell reference and $) urinates on a Transformer. Assorted childhoods are raped.


This isn’t necessarily what a live action Transformers should’ve been like. Surely, there’s a lot of stupid, stupid stuff in the older series, but that isn’t what’s perpetuated the brand. Nostalgia-wise, memory upgrades the Transformers into something more effective than they really were, and it’s that notion which Transformers should’ve aimed for. For all the “detail as realism” misdirection, Transformers needn’t be this reductive. Raiders of the Lost Ark still stands as what should be done with properties like this – realize the potential of silly old genres, elevate them.

That all being said, revisiting Transformers has been far less painful than I’d anticipated. In light of The Transformers: The Movie, Bay’s magnum Optimus really does feel a little calmer. For newbies it’s approachable, which is surely something can’t be said for other “Transformers” products. As for a lot of the genuine miscalculation, well, that is “Transformers,” only here in its 2007 guise – hip hop and Bush worship and bad comedy, in place of cock rock and Reagan worship and bad comedy.

Maciste, No. 1 - Maciste in the Valley of the Kings (1960)

We now return to the pepla of the 1960s, to see the long term fallout of the silent Maciste series. For the movie which started this particular Italian sword-and-sandals craze, 1958’s Hercules, is greatly indebted to the Maciste movies of old. Cabiria particularly inspired Intolerance, which led to The Ten Commandments (both versions), and any other number of serious-minded antiquity-set epics (which all just happened to showcase ripped dudes endlessly flexing). And now, one generation later, the cycle has gone around again and such “Macistean” efforts were popular again. What better than to return to the character who started it all?

So it happened in Italy, that the Maciste character (basically, a generic half-Hercules strongman applicable to any peplum topic) made his triumphant return, ushering in a second prolific franchise. Since 1914, Maciste had grown in Italian stature into a veritable folk legend, despite his purely cinematic origins, meaning this name would have enormous immediate meaning to those homegrown audiences most in love with the Hercules movies.

For all the history behind Maciste, such a name wouldn’t travel well. Hence the U.S., already proven to be a major factor behind the sword-and-sandals’ successes, instead got retitled Maciste efforts, the character rechristened alternatively as Samson, Goliath, Atlas or Colossus. Not that it’d make any noticeable difference, as there’s not much in Maciste himself which distinguishes him from the general horde of muscular beach bullies – Credit even Maciste’s meta-narrative ability to switch settings with the greatest of ease. Hence the premier second generation Maciste, Maciste in the Valley of the Kings, comes to my attention as Son of Samson (aka Samsonson). (At least Maciste retains the name “Maciste.”) There is an unrelated Samson franchise I’ll get to at some stage, for us to presently disregard.

In starting a new peplum series, the greatest way to lend it credence is to hire the genre’s greatest star. With Steve Reeves, the original Hercules, already having moved on to lesser pepla efforts in an ill-advised effort to make a name for himself, we’ll have to settle for the second Hercules, Mark Forest, of The Revenge of Hercules. Second time’s the charm, in both senses, for Forest would attain greater fame and prolificacy as Maciste than he ever would in his one-time Hercules stint. Though his performance remains the same as ever, lest you think Hercules and Maciste might somehow be distinguished.

Lending further Macistean credence is director Carlo Campogalliani, who’d already by 1960 done a goodly number of pepla, such as Fountain of Trevi and Goliath and the Barbarians. He’d immediately go on to jumpstart yet another sword-and-sandals series (Ursus, which we’ll get to in like a few weeks), then vanished from the scene altogether. Still, in this artistically impoverished realm, a Campogalliani is a reasonably impressive “get” – though he’s still no Mario Bava…


Given how loosey-goosey this Maciste concept already is, this franchise can start wherever it damn well pleases. It starts in Egypt. Hercules doesn’t have that much freedom. But it’s all so much surface adornment, for the story remains as ever: A kingdom in peril, masterminded by an evil seductress. Even with this, the peplum is such a regimented genre that any change renders things distinct. And formulaic genres like this work for audiences much like sequels do; concerns about story, character, such complications, all are gone, letting viewers to focus instead upon the more decorative elements.

By such standards, Maciste in the Valley of the Kings is a remarkably impressive peplum. Its massive sets and scenes of extras recall the more ambitious sword-and-sandals epics produced by non-Italian studios. Crediting this as a reboot of the old silent Macistes, there is even a little Cabiria visible here, even if there is nothing on hand which explicitly recalls that silent classic. Nonetheless, Maciste in the Valley of the Kings is no doubt a low budget movie. All the pepla are. Hell, damn well all of Italian cinema is! But these guys can work with those limitations, and make product which feels far lusher.

Think of the non-Italian epics which too sprung up in the wake of The Ten Commandments. One of the grandest, most successful of those is Ben-Hur, whose chariot race is not so much recalled in Maciste in the Valley of the Kings as it is completely plagiarized. That is the best part of Ben-Hur, of this there is no doubt. But here’s the thing. Despite that film’s American origins, the chariot race was a second unit shoot…done by Italians. Rumor has it Sergio Leone, the great Spaghetti Western auteur, directed that sequence!

Leone barely had an impact upon the pepla, having only done The Colossus of Rhodes before reinventing his nation’s major obsession. And he doesn’t have anything personally to do with Maciste in the Valley of the Kings. But much of the rest of Ben-Hur’s second unit did. Oh, and those sets are largely recycled as well, because far be it for Italian genre artists to let a massive, artificial palace set get used but once.

And what they couldn’t accomplish with old, preexisting Ben-Hur sets, they obtained with the actual Egyptian ruins, making the effort seem far mightier than it is. Which is valuable, since the juvenile pleasures of a peplum are rather more niche than a really huge budget movie could risk. And with those freedoms to create questionable entertainment on a large scale, Maciste in the Valley of the Kings has the freedom to bask in an early example of Italian ultra-violence, which is reportedly even grander in the non-English cut.


Enough of that, what of Maciste? Well, the peplum he-man is a type with very little variation – they’re all roided-out, bearded, and mostly clothesless. What Forest lacks in charisma (which is a lot), he substitutes with simple flexing. Got an emotional moment you just cannot act out? Flex! Angry? Flex! Sad? Flex! Sure, this is what the sword-and-sandal is based upon, but such Muscle Beach moments are also where this Maciste seems most anachronistic. Whatever giggles to be gotten come in these moments.

Maciste has come to Egypt from…um, elsewhere. Maybe Judea, though these Italian epics (founded upon a pagan myth – Hercules) are loathe to embrace the Judeo-Christian thing like their American counterparts. And for all the occasional attributions to classical texts, Maciste in the Valley of the Kings refuses to credit “Exodus” or anything else for its story, for as much as it may resemble it. It’s still a story of slaves versus overlords, only now it’s the Egyptians who are the slaves, and the Persians the overlords, because in B.C. the Persians are like ze Germans today – an automatic, acceptable villain when no other suffices.

Despite an Egyptian Pharaoh, somehow the Persians have wrested control of Egypt like so many puppet masters – so a helpful narrator informs us wherever the edit is otherwise vague. Representing these invaders, and fulfilling the film’s MVP role as the evil seductress, is Queen Smedes (Chelo Alonso’s curves). Apart from a few token archers (with whom she murders the original Pharaoh), it seems Smedes’ only claim to power is her sultriness. She hopes to seduce the newly-appointed Pharaoh, Kenamun (Angelo Zanolli), except…except he doesn’t reciprocate. Because he’s in love with a comparatively less sexy peasant named Nofret (Federica Ranchi) – this development, in how it’s communicated, helps to confuse just how this new Pharaoh was been romancing a plebe.


Bless Smedes, she acts quickly before the viewer can question just how tenuous her grasp to the Nile throne is. When Kenamun’s natural hormones fail her, she instead forces upon him the Necklace of Forgetfulness, obtained from the Chest of Plot Convenience. I love how shameless these pepla are in manipulating characters’ emotions, memories, personalities, you name it, all for the sake of narrative necessity. (See also Hercules Unchained.) At least unlike that Hercules entry, Kenamun’s subsequent turn towards evil isn’t played for stagnant dramatics. Instead, it’s just the filmmakers’ way of letting Kenamun act all villainous for the majority of the piece, then still claim at the end that he and all the other Egyptians were just good guys anyway.

Which makes one question Maciste’s motives. First of all, he’s arrived in Egypt for damn well no reason. But when an exposition-happy blind prophet (is there any other kind?) informs him about all today’s tiresome political intrigue, Maciste strives to raise a rebellion of clothed Egyptian peasants and topple the regime. This’ll result in the deaths of many Egyptian soldiers, who are just following Kenamun’s orders, and Kenamun lost all rational faculties under Smedes’ bosoms. Like in The Matrix, lotsa innocent-yet-ignorant sods have to die at our hero’s hand ere all become free. But surely there’s no deeper intent behind Maciste in the Valley of the Kings, not when we can just see a burly dude pose stiffly and kill dudes. With such genre entertainment, any consideration beyond the mere surface jollies isn’t worth, er, considering.


And what genre jollies there are! Getting back to the question of mere “epicness,” Maciste in the Valley of the Kings provides massive scenes of antiquated splendor to rival many a Hollywood production, and without the bloat or pretension which dull such joys. Consider a scene, which for 9/10ths of its existence seems like something straight out of Cleopatra, where slaves are ordered to erect (heh heh!) a ginormous obelisk in Kenamun’s honor. I believe I’ve actually seen this image (below) used in those metaphorical stock footage sex scenes, like in Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear. No doubt, then, that it’s all being lifted up as a stand-in for Kenamun’s own penis.


In proper keeping, then, with the metaphor, Kenamun’s slaves have difficulty getting it up. Along comes Maciste [fanfare!], breaking his brilliant disguise of wearing clothing to lift up the obelisk as it crushes several innocents, and getting it vertical all on his own. Now, the penile subtext here is almost too overt, comparing Maciste’s manhood to Kenamun’s. And here is where this Maciste parts ways with historical fiction like Spartacus, for such a comic bookish celebration of pure, exaggerated strength would never pass muster in those “serious” efforts.

Such feats of strength were the bread-and-butter of the sword-and-sandal, forever treading the line between amazing and simply ridiculous. To go all weird and propose a “cinema verité” motive to pepla, one could say these are staged, fictionalized variations on true “World’s Strongest Man” events. Behold! The man moves a rock! The man lifts a pillar! The man bends steel! The man holds a team of horses in place

So…Maciste undergoes a few set pieces against Kenamun’s soldiers, kills altogether too many of them. He then passes through a dungeon straight out of a “Prince of Persia” video game, or Temple of Doom. And he gets to take a part in that chariot race we knew was coming – And check out the set! These guys could stretch a lira!


Anyway, that last one earns Maciste the attention of Smedes, all Gladiator like. Even though she knows him to be the enemy of all evil, still she invites him to the palace – for Smedes trusts her powers of seduction can best a pure pile of penis like Maciste. She pretty much rejects Kenamun outright at this stage, the portent of that obelisk bit coming to bear. And to ensure Maciste’s sexual complicity, Smedes provides Maciste in the Valley of the Kings with its greatest set piece. Not an action sequence, not a feat of strength, but a belly dance in all its kitschy glory!


Any doubts as to these films’ true motives?

Ignoring plot reasoning, from a meta perspective they’ve now run through just about everything a peplum demands. Everything except for the massive, all-extras climactic battle scene – which Maciste in the Valley of the Kings handles a bit better than most, as it most resembles a proper blockbuster. Apart from the number of guys on view here, there’s not much to separate this staged warfare from most any pre-Braveheart. Guys just sorta smack at each other with props. Occasionally, we are shocked by an uncharacteristic gore effect, as though the Italian horror genre was just itching to be born. Kenamun oh so conveniently loses his necklace, and remembers – Hey, I’m a good guy! And with that little turnaround, Maciste can now hold off from heedlessly slaughtering the soldiers, who’ve also just remembered they are good.


That leaves just Smedes. Like many of her sister seductresses, she refuses to reject her evil even while embracing stupidity. She runs off into the Temple of Doom set, and gets et up by a crocodile. (Possibility for a “Nile” pun ignored.)

Then things end with a heartwarming, Star Wars-esque medal ceremony, and – Oh sweet Anubis, I do believe we’ve found another of George Lucas’ ancestors!

As far as sword-and-sandals epics go (and I’m only talking those of Italian origin here), Maciste in the Valley of the Kings is streets ahead of most. That boils down almost entirely to the lushness and splendor and scale, which fool you into thinking this is somehow a more important film. On the flip side, the other greatest asset is Chelo Alonso, not just for her physical attraction, but for her self-aware approach to the silliness. While Mark Forest is content to be an expressionless, chiseled slab of biology, Alonso plays up the camp inherent in these pepla, which many hadn’t come to embrace yet. And as a franchise starter, Maciste in the Valley of the Kings is certainly good enough to compete with the better Herculeses.


RELATED POSTS
• The Silent Maciste Franchise (1914 - 1927)
• No. 2 Maciste vs. the Headhunters (1960)
• No. 3 Maciste in the Land of the Cyclops (1961)
• No. 6 Maciste, the Strongest Man in the World (1961)
• No. 7 Maciste Against Hercules in the Vale of Woe (1961)
• Nos. 8 - 20 (1962 - 1964)
• No. 21 Maciste vs. the Mongols (1963)
• No. 22 Maciste in Genghis Khan's Hell (1964)
• No. 23 Maciste and the Queen of Samar (1964)
• No. 24 Hercules, Samson, Maciste and Ursus (1964)

The Pink Panther, No. 4 - Return of the Pink Panther (1975)

Over a long enough timeline, even a so-called “franchise killer” entry doesn’t necessarily put an end to sequels. On the contrary, ending on a terrible effort merely redoubles efforts (eventually), because you can’t end like that. Surely someone could do better, surely there was more creative juice in the engine than that!

So it was for the Pink Panther franchise, whose abortive third entry, Inspector Clouseau, was an abysmal mess of a comedy, featuring a quasi Clouseau, a pseudo Sellers, an ersatz Edwards, a Panther that could only be classified as Pinkish. The only question was how to resolve the most glaring problem with that cinematic abortion: Getting back original series auteurs Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers.

Both had finked on Pink in the mid ‘60s, life and career looking up for them. Both men married improbably attractive women…Edwards wed Julie Andrews. Sellers married, then divorced, Bond girl Britt Ekland, then did likewise with future countess Miranda Quarry. And for Sellers there was the artistic triumph of Dr. Strangelove; for Edwards, Darling Lili (eh, that’s a bit more obscure).

The 1970s weren’t as kind to either man, as each individually got labeled “box office poison.” In such a condition, and owing to a needlessly complex debate on Pink Panther film rights, both declared a personal truce on their former hatred and reunited to bring back Pink Panthers – It guarantees steady, successful work, at least, even if it’s not the height of creativity. Initially, the notion was simply to refashion the material into a TV series, which Edwards plotted out with an atoning Inspector Clouseau screenwriter Frank Waldman. So when he decided instead to aim higher and do a movie, it was an easy enough thing to refashion one planned TV episode into longer form.

The return of The Pink Panther, called The Return of the Pink Panther (see what I did there?), is in many respects an apology for the Sellersless Alan Arkin effort. It specifically combines favored elements from the two good former entries, The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark, and even announces its intent of rejuvenation in the title. Most importantly, Sellers’ return was trumpeted to the hills.


Sellers’ involvement was at great personal cost. He was in poor health, and also seriously questioned his own skills as an actor. More bluntly, Sellers was a ragged, soulless husk of a human being, a veritable philosophical zombie, a personality-deprived semi-being who exists only through playing other characters on screen. For such a transparent spirit, an unquenchable chameleon, purgatory is being denied the chance to create new and interesting personalities. Purgatory is Inspector Clouseau.

But even trapped in this same perpetual role, with its now-familiar physical bumbling and ever-exaggerated French accent (in three films we’ve gone from “room” to “rieum” to “rreiueoommmm”), Sellers found ways to stretch at least a little. A newly highlighted facet in the character of Inspector Clouseau is a love for disguises – It is this obsession which affords Return much of its humor. Here, Sellers allows Clouseau to become a would-be chameleon himself, a sort of Sellers-in-training, which then grants Sellers the unique chance to impersonate a man trying (and oft failing) to impersonate others. It’s all rather involved, conceptually, but one expects no less of Peter Sellers.

Even with this actorly notion, Return plays it safe (as it perhaps should in its shaky reboot status). Edwards’ plotting and direction drops the experimental formalism of his earlier years, rendering Return the baseline for the franchise. Clouseau’s bumbling is the source of, say, 98% of the comedy now, forgoing The Pink Panther’s complex farcical plotting or A Shot in the Dark’s meticulous running gag machinery. What remains is almost pure slapstick, with no other comedic forms introduced. To a casual viewer, it’s not hugely noticeable, but it leaves Return a shallower (yet still hugely funny) version of its predecessors.


Consider, the storyline in no way informs the comedy. It is simply an amalgamation of former elements, the first genuine sequel in the series, in that it heavily references past events. Justifying the title, the Pink Panther diamond has indeed “returned,” in that it remains in the possession of Lugash, a fictional nation now unmistakably a part of the Middle East. This MacGuffin – and religious symbol for Lugash’s made-up faith (how does that work?!) – is again the object of all characters’ desire. But really, it’s just there because titles are anal things, and you cannot say “Pink Panther” unless the Pink Panther is there, even though “Pink Panther” is only in the title to indicate a reconfirmation of franchise duties. Or something.

Or the title (from here on out in the series) could refer to the animated Pink Panther character, meaning…The Pink Panther is the only film series to be named after the credit sequences. (Now done by Richard “Roger Rabbit” Williams in place of Friz “Bugs Bunny” Freleng.)

It takes Return a whopping quarter of an hour for that damned diamond to be reintroduced, then burgled in a mite predicable cat burglar sequence – you know, lasers and booby-trapped switches and whatnot. And the felon in question is never even revealed (yet), so that gives us no characters for a mighty chunk of time. This sort of casual pacing is an ongoing Edwards problem. It’s also evidence of this movie’s TV origin, how events are stretched out to 2 hours when a quarter of that might’ve sufficed.

Then we again meet Inspector Clouseau, and all is well. Acting for now as a Parisian patrolman, Clouseau fails to notice a bank robbery, so concerned is he with a blind man’s “minkey.” It is instructive to compare the serenity of Sellers’ approach to Arkin’s previous flailing desperation, to savor how sure Sellers is of himself, then forget about that misbegotten former entry entirely.

In light of the Pink Panther’s purloining, the Lugashian officials have specifically requested Clouseau’s involvement – because he stopped the jewel-thieving Phantom last time (1963). To accept this, one needs a remarkably liberal interpretation of the events of Part One, along with a healthy dose of retconning. I mean, at the time twas Clouseau who was convicted of the Panther’s previous pickpocketing, but it no longer matters. Clouseau has become franchise hero since those dark, early days, and besides, no one was over-examining franchises in 1975. (No mention ever of Clouseau’s ex-wife Simone, to show how loosely these movies consider their continuity.)


Anyway, Clouseau rushes off to Lugash, leaving Chief Inspector (as opposed to Commissioner) Charles Dreyfus (a returning Herbert Lom) in much psychological anguish. Yes, Dreyfus is one of those Shot in the Dark elements grafted onto The Pink Panther’s repurposed plot framework (along with Burt Kwouk’s Cato, providing short bursts of most exceptional slapstick). Dreyfus is used here no differently than prior: exasperation as Clouseau’s presumed errors, hence Dreyfus’ deteriorating mental state. It’s mostly done independently of the rest of the story, and without even much Closeauian provocation – leading one to question how Dreyfus maintained his dignity in the interim decade. Wait, hold up, why am I applying logic to a Pink Panther sequel?! Just accept Lom’s performance as the lone non-Sellers bit of guaranteed joviality, and move on.


This we do, since a Pink Panther-based story must necessarily involve the, er, involvement of Sir Charles Lytton, the notorious Phantom from before. One-time star David Niven is out, perhaps owing to his remaining resentment at Sellers’ stealing the 1963 show, so The Sound of Music’s Christopher Plummer takes the plum role. Hope ya recognize the significance of the name “Lytton,” ‘cause the scant Edwardsian exposition ain’t gonna clue you into this guy – Hell, a memory from 10 years hence is needed for much of this (Cato included), which seems an odd thing.

Okay, so Lytton is the obvious suspect in this Ford-era diamond snatching, meaning Clouseau is off to his estate in Nice shortly after a mostly purposeless detour in Lugash. (His visit there is simply a capping of, say, 3 slapstick pratfalls it took Edwards 15 minutes in the intro to set up. He used to be a more efficient filmmaker than this.) But there’s one thing Clouseau doesn’t know – okay, there’s a lot Clouseau doesn’t know, but bear with me – Sir Charles Lytton did not steal the Pink Panther!...Er, this time, at least.

Yup, the plot rather gets in the way of the film’s sole purpose, to place Clouseau in random events and let the fumbling commence. Charles Lytton is innocent, a result of the fact he was the good guy in Part One. This creates a challenge, considering Clouseau’s interim promotion to good guy himself. Now these two rivals are each the hero, and so cannot combat each other. Rather, Charles goes off on his own joke-free subplot over to Lugash, to clear his name. This results in something of a muted Casablanca parody, with a little James Bond tossed in for spice. Blake Edwards is of the old guard when it comes to cinematic comedy, so he’s not one to push a movie parody to the forefront. In light of that, and his continued obsession with not making a fool of Lytton, all we’re left with in the occasional Lugashian detours is a sub-Errol Flynn sorta swashbuckler, when we all want a slapsticker.


More plot! Charles has a wife now, someone we’ve not met before: Lady Claudine Lytton (Catherine Schell). (It didn’t help me that everything in my notes is an abbreviated C or L or CL or LC!) She opts to lead Clouseau on a wild panther chase. For reasons left buried in the murky brain of Blake Edwards, she leads him to Gstaad, Switzerland, where both characters separately proceed to simply lounge about a ritzy hotel and not interact with anyone else. For most of the remaining runtime we’re unaware of Lady Claudine’s motivations (or Edwards’), so plot gives way entirely to “Clouseau tries ineptly to search a hotel room.” Story has never been a primary Pink Panther concern, but this is so minimalist we might as well have simply had “A day in the life of Inspector Clouseau” with the same result.

Skipping ahead, SPOILER: Lady Claudine stole the Pink Panther. Her reasoning: The retired Sir Charles was suffering from desperate ennui – That’s what you get for settling down in France! Hence she sought out the nearest MacGuffin, for fun. Thus when Sir Charles returns from nearly dying like 58 times in Lugash, he and his wife can have a hearty laugh over such tomfoolery, while Clouseau looks on and forgives all/doesn’t understand anything. Because even Claudine is a good guy, it all proves a big waste of time.

But there’s gotta be a villain, right? You know, ‘cause it’s a simplistic movie, now aimed at a family audience (Dreyfus’ maniacal murders aside, we’ve none of the first films’ risquéness). Pulling one out of pink air, Edwards assigns that role in the final 10 minutes to the Colonel of Lugash (Peter Arne, soon to be a reoccurring Pink Panther villain actor – though his character here does die). That’s because – somehow – the Pink Panther (diamond, that is, not series or, er, panther) allows Lugash to commit confusing international crimes and…

Look, whatever! The Colonel wants to kill Charles, and Claudine, and Clouseau, just because. Villainy and all. But ol’ Dreyfus is back to his usual “repeatedly try and fail to murder Clouseau, leaving heaps of collateral damage in his wake” routine, meaning…Clouseau bends down to check his fly or some such thing, and Dreyfus mistakenly murders the Colonel. Then Cato leaps in (so many Cs!). The plot resolves itself without any direct involvement on Clouseau’s part, and in a gag we’ve seen in a previous entry.

In fact, a great number of jokes repeat themselves from before: Much of Clouseau’s klutzy door-fu, his linguistic inadequacies, hell, he even gets shat upon by a bird again (though now it’s a parrot, so “new”). It’s the comfort in the familiar, and 11 years after Sellers’ last effort one can forgive the filmmakers from repeating themselves somewhat. And with a larger child audience than before, these gags are fresh(ish).


But most of this is a formalistic plot concern, in a movie where that doesn’t matter. The comedy of The Return of the Pink Panther is inorganic, owing rather to whatever arbitrary scenario Edwards cooks up for Clouseau next – half of this directly owing to his latest disguise. One such sequence sees our inept inspector impersonate a telephone repairman, in order to enter the Lytton estate. Others (seen below) include disguises as a vacuum operator and a swingin’ disco hepcat (!!!!).

In most of these roles (not so much the hepcat), Clouseau struggles with common household machinery, and in all respects blows his cover (literally so with the vacuum). Conceptually, these moments are purest silent comedy, echoing the films of Buster Keaton with their concern about the eternal struggle between man and machine. This is one avenue of formalistic experimentation left open to Edwards and Sellers, and they make the most of it.


One moment which stands out most clearly as an inspired bit of physical comedy is Clouseau vs. a revolving door. Again, no point to toss it in, but why not, eh? The only issue with Return is a drop in comedic density, as all jokes must now come directly from Clouseau. Credit Edwards the formalist again, who cannot throw in a tossed-off one liner if it doesn’t directly connect to the film’s stated comic premise – and Return features a narrower comic premise than Edwards’ earlier efforts.

There is a lot of down time between Clouseau’s great, bumbling moments. His antics do not need particular setup, making the result simply uneven. Nonetheless, when ridiculousness comes, it is some of the best the Edwards/Sellers partnership has produced. This comes partly of a 10-year gap, allowing for refinement in Sellers’ approach.

That is sadly tempered by a reduction in artistic play on Edwards’ part, as it feels the overall product is for the $ more than anything. There are even times when the slapstick is watered down from before. Consider the relative…bravery of A Shot in the Dark actively eviscerating its characters with semi-realistic results (I’m thinking mostly of Dreyfus’ severed thumb).


By Return, that has turned into something of a genuine live action cartoon – Dreyfus now shoots himself and others point blank in the face, and the results are pure “Looney Tunes” smoke and coughing except for when the plot demands a death. The power of pain-based slapstick is potentially undercut by this reduction in associated danger. The edge is gone, as we now laugh solely at Dreyfus’ stupidity.

But there are still moments where the early, perverse Edwards peeks through. Even at the end of a light and spineless comic romp, he is willing to utterly destroy the mental existence of Charles Dreyfus, all for our amusement. In a way, having Dreyfus insanely screech “Kill!” in an asylum straightjacket is far more cynical and cruel than any mere physical mutilation could ever be. That’s a good way to go out, and it gives The Pink Panther series its kick.




Related posts:
• No. 1 The Pink Panther (1963)
• No. 2 A Shot in the Dark (1964)
• No. 3 Inspector Clouseau (1968)
• No. 5 The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
• No. 6 Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978)
• No. 7 Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)
• No. 8 Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)
• No. 9 Son of the Pink Panther (1993)
• No. 10 The Pink Panther (2006)
• No. 11 The Pink Panther (2009)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, No. 4 - TMNT (2007)

The “Turtles” never disappeared in the Twenty-First Century, though they’ve never been quite as ubiquitous as around 1990. So a second animated program ran from 2003 to 2009, hewing closer than the first to the comics’ dark tone, due to control from the Eastman/Laird-owned Mirage Studios. Of course the “Turtles” remain a kids’ property, with a wholly new fandom now. There’s always been enough interest to keep the franchise active, but never again huge.

Then all of a sudden in 2007, a new theatrical “Turtle” movie came into being, TMNT, an all-CGI animated tale from Imagi studios and writer/director Kevin Munroe. This was earlier in the same year as Michael Bay’s Transformers, a live action reinvigoration of a different ‘80s toy/cartoon line. But that made sense at the time, it having been roughly 20 years since the previous “Transformers” theatrical picture, The Transformers: The Movie. That’s enough time to maximize the nostalgia value for that property, for Bay’s effort to appeal to the broadest spectrum of grown “Transformers” fans and new youngsters. The timing was absolutely perfect.

Whereas with TMNT, my immediate 2007 response was, “What, already?!” It’d been a mere 14 years since Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, the franchise killer, and only 17 since the high point, the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. As one of the “Turtle” faithful from the early ‘90s, I can attest my nostalgic fondness for the reptiles hadn’t yet fully formed, that the franchise was jumping the ‘80s nostalgia reboot trend a tad early. (Today, however…)

The resulting TMNT feels a little minor, especially compared to what the not-great Transformers accomplished. Not to mention, the whole CGI thing when Transformers was moving to live action…It all feels a little regressive.

It’s likely, however, that TMNT’s existence owes more to the vagaries of film right laws than anything resembling cultural demand. In 2004, Golden Harvest’s claim to theatrical “Turtles” movies expired, opening the property up to the Weinstein Company. Almost as if to stake a theatrical claim, for legal reasons, they resolved to make a feature – and CGI offers the perfect combination of cost effectiveness and freedom (plus it distances TMNT from III). Like the upcoming Spider-Man reboot really exists in response to Disney’s acquisition of Marvel, TMNT is very likely a movie that had to happen, to keep the film rights active.

Not too say Kevin Munroe doesn’t do all he can with TMNT. The man seems to be a genuine “Turtles” fan, even while this purse-of-a-pig’s-ear is verifiably an in-continuity sequel with III. (Artifacts from the movie franchise are clearly shown in the Turtles’ lair.) Like any good quasi-reboot, TMNT goes Darker and Edgier, meaning it makes sense that the film follows the comics’ tenor over the now long-defunct ‘90s cartoon show. That means once again we’re denied the joys of a big movie Technodrome, and Krang, and all attendant goodies and – Okay, maybe I’m the only one who wants all that stuff. Still, TMNT is “Less cowabunga” at a time when that’s likely essential – it must distance itself from the perceived “surfer dude” problems of old, as it’s too soon to capitalize on those silly elements.


So without the Shredder, and with a continued aversion to the show’s rogues gallery, who are the Turtles to face off against? Why, a totally new character, who is thus strangely the least original part of TMNT. That would be multibillionaire businessman Max Winters (Patrick Stewart’s authoritative voice), a man who…

Okay, his arguably-evil plan is not very clear, but here’s what can be parsed out from a Lord of the Rings-esque opening battle/Lawrence Fishburne narration: Three-thousand years ago, the evil warlord Yoatl (now Winters) led his evil army of evil generals evil rampant blah blah blah…Using a “once every 3,000 years” alignment of the “Stars of Kikan” constellation, Yoatl wins his evil war of evilness, but not before – turning himself immortal, turning his generals to stone, and unleashing 13 monsters upon the world. …Um…okay…

This dump of arbitrary, random, new-yet-clichéd plotting assaults the audience mere seconds after an even more desultory narration tries to justify the presence of, well, teenage, mutant, ninja turtles in New York City. (It’s probably only one year now since III in film, hence they’re still technically teenagers thank God – though I calculate 19-years-old.)


Anyway, back to Winters: Conveniently, the next Kikan alignment is coming up (how lucky for mankind this happens while the Turtles exist). Longing to break his accursed immortality, Winters…Okay, deep breath…revives his stone generals, who now live but are still made of stone (like something out of one of the Frasier Mummy movies). He has also hired the still-existent Foot Clan, headed by comic character Karai (Zhang Ziyi’s breathy purr), to capture those 13 monsters – who are all randomly rampaging unknown throughout New York City, sans property damage or death. If Winters can amass those monsters, or collect ‘em all, within his central Manhattan Ghostbusters-esque metaphysical-reactor-by-way-of-architecture, all on the precise every-3,000-years moment, and only with his stone generals there, then…Winters will no longer be immortal. Or something. And somehow the bad guy becoming suddenly killable is “bad,” because maybe (it ain’t too clear) by doing so he shall release monsters upon this world. Or more monsters, at any rate. Or…okay, whatever, bad guy exists, must be stopped, let’s leave it at that.

This is a danged lot of info for something so generic, and the least successful thing about TMNT. In fact, all the human elements, such as Winters, are the most awkward. This extends to character design, which renders people as angular abstractions, but as least never comes anywhere near the Uncanny Valley.

The Turtles’ designs, of course, are far more appealing, which is as it should be. Their story, such as it is, is better too, for this is where Munroe’s desire to recreate his memory of the old “Turtles” serves him the strongest. Just too bad they can’t be proactive about the Winters nonsense until well into the finale.

The Turtles’ glory days are over, the Shredder shredded, and Leonardo (James Arnold Taylor) has been sent by Master Splinter (Mako, voice for “Samurai Jack” and “Avatar: The Last Airbender”) to Central America (nation never specified) to “train to be a better leader.” Just how Splinter thinks sending Leo alone into the wilderness will improve his ability to lead his turtle brothers, I cannot say. If anything, it makes relations more strained once Leo returns, especially with hothead Raph (Nolan North)…

Actually, TMNT reinvigorates the lost notion of Raphael as the most interesting Turtle, giving him angst and vigilantism to spare. Hence Raph spends his nights in secret as the Nightwatcher, a Batman-style superhero dedicated to fighting crime even when the Turtles won’t (they’ve gone into hiding at Splinter’s request, for some strange commandment that they no longer fight). This whole Nightwatcher subplot is another thread to follow, along with Leo’s return, and Winters’ assorted unclear villainies. There’s a lot to pay attention to.


Leaving Mike and Donny (Mikey Kelly and Mitchell Whitfield) largely with nothing to do. Like the first film, these Turtles are largely forgotten, as their comic relief and tech knowhow serves little purpose in such a relatively gritty tale. Mike is the biggest victim of Munroe’s “no cowabungas” dictate, with his dated surfer idioms now a self-conscious joke more than anything. (Late in the film, when Mike makes an old-style joke, Raph responds: “Mikey, remember our talk.”) And while Raph’s been off alone playing hero, Mike is a party performer, and Donny an IT tech support guy. Otherwise, they just sleep and eat pizza. Not very interesting.


For even more time is taken up with Raph’s human buddies, especially Casey Jones (Chris Evans – aka Captain America), a fellow partner in crime-fighting. Naturally, there’s also April O’Neil (the ostensibly “sexy” American tones of Sarah Michelle Gellar), though they’re kind of running out of movie to do anything with her. She doesn’t even report.

Okay, so TMNT is kind of overstuffed with plot, thanks to an over-complicated villain plot, and an independent Turtle schism told while having to reestablish all these characters. It’s overambitious, and never coalesces, which is a good example of why Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles benefited so much from a streamlined story. Otherwise, TMNT is easily the best Turtles movie since the first.

One major advantage is how it presents the action sequences. No longer beholden to the sickening pabulum of “no fighting in a kids’ movie” which dogged the Turtles sequels, this PG-rated movie can do pretty much anything it likes with its CGI characters. It’s not violent, per se, but we do get to see the use of katanas and sais and whatnot in a non-lethal context. (Secret of the Ooze didn’t even let its Turtles handle their trademark weapons!) So on those oddly rare moments where the Turtles battle the Foot Clan, or a monster (the monster stuff is mostly an unrelated montage), things are at a blissfully simple level, like…like –

Like a video game! Indeed, the animation style of TMNT resembles nothing so much as a really long, rather well done cut scene. (There is some cut scene experience in this film’s crew.) Consider the whole of Manhattan feels small, like a model set, the Turtles no larger than the action figures we all hopefully had as children, conscientious consumers that we are. But when you use CGI as a cost-cutting tool, that’s the result. This is an inexpensive movie, less costly by far than the cheapo-looking III – this in an era when Pixar movies are amongst the most expensive to produce. The thing does look independent (or at least as independent as all-CGI can), but that frees ‘em up to do as they will with the Turtles.


And while TMNT may rarely cohere as the perfect Turtles movie – most of the Turtles are too forgotten for that to happen – there are moments which must count as the greatest Turtle moments yet. Consider, after a comic slapstick fight between Raph and a tiny monster (one I’m too embarrassed to even explore much), Raph faces off against Leo on a rooftop. At two-thirds through, this is the simmering conflict coming to a head, Raph’s rage against Leo’s intended leadership. And the two actually duke it out, Leo at first fighting simply “Nightwatcher,” then even egged on to duel once he knows it’s his own brother.

Amazing, that in a film filled with toy-ready monsters, and stone Mayan generals of yore, and all sorts of other pandemonium, it’s a scene between the two pre-established characters which works best. It’s in the fine Asian tradition of the fight as the musical number, emotions worked out physically. And the emotions in this fight are to 11, Raph even getting as least once big “Nooooooooooooo!” to the heavens. Of course, with the rain and ninjitsu and neon lighting and so forth, it’s derivative…derivative of The Matrix, mostly, but what action film of the ‘00s can claim different? (The Bourne series.) But TMNT is mostly geared towards a younger audience, not nostalgia hounds (too soon, man!), so it’s somewhat understandable to give ‘em a “My First Matrix Rip-Off.” For Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was just giving us the action films of the ‘80s watered down anyway. It’s nothing new!


Ultimately Leo is captured by the stone generals, taken as a substitute for the 13th monster (which is not that Gremlins-lite monstrosity Raph was just battling, which is apparently seized by the Foot at some later point off screen). And here’s the thing: the stoners don’t want to be made mortal, as Winters does – and tricking him is as simple as not capturing a raging, drooling monster. So Winters’ ceremony shall not commence…which is a “good” thing, right?

Nah! Donny’s one moment of pure technobabble explains how monsters will soon overrun the Earth anyway. For the stone generals have surpassed Winters in villainy, rather sending him retroactively into the ranks of the good guys (as it does the Foot Clan – say what?!). And with that great, ridiculous, cosmic Kikan constellation lightshow going on in Winters’ summer home, it’s up to the Turtles to…uh…to…

Well, they have to stop the stone generals. Who are immortal. But the only way to mortalize ‘em is by delivering the 13th monster (which sounds like a great William Castle title!). But doing that will release monsters. But not doing it will also release monsters, apparently, so…


Okay, here’s the reason for all this confusion, really (beyond doing a generic ‘00s-style fantasy epic for the young uns): The generals and Winters are brothers, and they cannot get along. See, it’s all a parallel to the Turtles’ story, who do like each other (Raph and Leo have made up – it was very heartwarming). Cowabunga, it’s symbolic, dude! Too bad making this point was so danged complicated, rendering the surface plot a metaphysical shambles.

But at any rate the 13th monster is delivered, sacrificed with the rest, and the stone generals are banished to the great non-Dimension X dimension in the sky. And monsters do not suddenly run rampage, but quite the opposite, for now it is “good” to do as Winters originally wanted. Because he is now the good guy. And he’s ascending off to wherever himself, newly a mortal and newly a lightshow (there’s a lot of those).


Oddly, it is Casey Jones who’s most responsible for this victory, meaning in every entry Casey is in, he delivers the final blow to the villain. (Oh, sure, in III it was just Casey’s actor, in a different era, but I’ll allow it.) But the Turtles (and Splinter) still get the biggest action sequence, and that’s what really counts. (It’s like how Gordon saved the day in Batman Begins – exactly like that.)

So the moments in TMNT that work the best are the simplest – the Turtles being Turtles, Leo vs. Raph. It becomes a muddle in the larger story, which struggles to do something fantastical without summoning apparently “taboo” cartoon show elements (Krang, etc.). That paradoxically makes TMNT harder for a newcomer to enjoy than a true “Turtle” outing would be. But 2007 was a tough time to be a Turtle, and credit to TMNT for shedding the more inane elements of its predecessors. For its troubles, TMNT was a moderate success, certainly better off than III at $95 million (and hell, it knocked 300 from # 1), but no place near the Turtles’ former zenith.

Of course, the time wasn’t right for a Turtle reboot (they were about 4 years early, methinks). And the thing is compromised, by the need to work in continuity with its lesser predecessors (II and III), something no one ever asked for. Which leaves TMNT as the Incredible Hulk to III’s Hulk – that is, it is better, but still such a general mediocrity that it seems a letdown. All this when the series needs its Casino Royale, its total fresh break.

CGI was never the real answer, though it makes for an entertaining one-off. No, the future of the Turtles, whether you like it or not, is likely to follow in the successful nostalgia reboot footsteps of Transformers. Disgustingly, that means “Turtles” allying with the dreaded Michael Bay himself, and worse, his Platinum Dunes label, where media properties go to die. All this in spite of Munroe’s stated desire (even hinted at in-film) to do a TMNT sequel with the Shredder returning. (If that was always the case, why didn’t he just go that for TMNT!?) But if live action it must be, so be it. One only hopes whatever comes of the “Turtles” next, it somehow matches our memories of the ‘80s, that it works artistically as well as commercially.


Related posts:
• No. 1 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)
• No. 2 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991)
• No. 3 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993)

Predator, No. 5 - Predators (2010)

For as much as I might complain about some modern movie tastes, largely in regards to the Transformers movies, I will say this for modern audiences: We are far more sophisticated when it comes to strange franchise concepts. In the past (say, the 40s), a movie like Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem would have been the absolute final nail in the coffin for both the Alien and Predator franchises. But here we are, three years after that crime upon culture, with Predators, a movie that acts for all the world as if AVP: R never existed. It’s a fantastic thing – following two awful crossovers, the Predator franchise could return entirely sans xenomorphs, in a form so pure you’d have to go back to 1987 to make comparisons.

In the development of Predators, those cancerous, leprous, all-around diseased AVP movies were never even an issue, for the original draft of Predators was written long, long before they were even an abortion waiting to happen. Let us travel back to those halcyon days of 1994, when Predator 2 was four years old, and Fox was desperate to then revive their dead-in-the-water franchise. Enter Robert Rodriguez, still in the first act of his nutbars career of awesome B-grade Mexsploitation. Like James Cameron penning his Aliens screenplay whilst developing The Terminator, Rodriguez put together an early version of Predators whilst developing Desperado. And the Aliens comparison is apt (and it is intentionally invoked in the pluralized title) for Predators hopes to be to Predator what Aliens was to Alien. That is, the title is a statement of purpose – we’re gonna expand logically upon the titular species, up the stakes, and (most importantly) make a worthy sequel.

For whatever unholy reason, Fox, that Satanic demon personified in movie studio form, decided to neglect Rodriguez’s script. The reason given was “budget,” which is odd considering the actual 2010 Predators is a relatively cheap beast. Perhaps those bozos didn’t understand Rodriguez’s skills at stretching a budget mightily (consider the semi-apocryphal tales of his $1,000 El Mariachi). Oh no, Fox knew in their black, soulless hearts the thing to do was to instead crash two franchises with a bunch of AVP nonsense instead, and to also eventually cancel “Futurama.” (Complete side note – God bless Comedy Central!)

Come the years following 2007, and Requiem’s cinematic affront to just about any value I could name. Only then realizing how much they’d screwed their beloved, dreadlocked pooch, Fox sought to “reboot” Predator. Consider how much the 00s have played host to this noble trend – Batman Begins, Casino Royale, horror film remakes up the wazoo. I mean, a potential franchise that was started in the 00s was later rebooted in the 00s (that’s Hulk and The Incredible Hulk). So Fox was just gonna do what moviegoers themselves had already done, and pretend as if the Alien vs. Predator “series” never happened.

As per Rodriguez’s telling, Fox then dredged up his old Predators script from whatever dank dungeon it was rotting in, and decided some damn 15 years later to make that beast. For whatever reason, the existent script itself wouldn’t do, so instead a new draft was commissioned from writers Michael Finch and Alex Litvak. Predators was given wholly over to Robert Rodriguez as producer, giving his truly independent and drunk mind creative control in place of the brainless drones who thought Requiem was “okay,” and that AVP “drew you in, it drew you in.”

So now in theaters there is a new Predator movie, something I still cannot believe, even though I just saw it. Thus I shall avoid obvious spoilers (though I spoiled the hell out of the pre-spoiled 2007 Requiem – I promise I’ll try to stop referencing that pile so much).

The audience and characters are instantly dropped right into the thick of things, oh so literally, as our cast of characters is randomly parachuted into a strange and unfamiliar jungle. Using Predator as a major departure point, Predators does a good job of getting things rolling and invoking absolutely no more subplots than is absolutely necessary. Something both entries are phenomenal at (this is a genuine compliment) is avoiding subtext altogether, and sometimes even text. These are stripped down and basic – dudes in a jungle against killer monster(s).

Between the Alien and Predator franchises, no characters have ever been written as more developed than the barest traits needed (except Ripley got her development over time). What makes the franchises’ genuine classics work (those being Alien, Aliens and Predator) are good casts. (Yes, I’m calling a Schwarzenegger-headlined pile of testosterone a “good cast.”) This is the sort of sneaky little cinematic trick which completely evaded those Yahweh-awful AVP pictures. And you know what? Predators’ cast is just as damn good as those other movies. Who cares if they’re ciphers, they’re well played.

Headlining our assembly of mercenaries this time around is Adrian Brody, Best Actor winner for The Pianist and regular media whore in 7-Up ads. So we’ve replaced Schwarzenegger, best known for having basketball-sized biceps, with Adrian Brody, best known for having a monumental proboscis, and an Oscar. I’ve been punished in the past for thinking Brody might make for a convincing action hero in Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake. But damned if I’m not convinced here! For you see, there’s just no way to compete with Schwarzenegger in the all-important testosterone competition, so why even bother? Hell, it pretty much bombed spectacularly when they tried to tell us Danny Glover was an adequate successor. But Brody, relatively bulked up but still of eminently normal proportions, comes across as a real world mercenary, lithe and agile and smart instead of hulking. And I am accursed, because I’m praising a Predator sequel for seeming more “real world.”

The whole cast is like that. They make for believable killers without acting hard to impress like the Predator cast did. I don’t recognize most of these people, but I salute them.

Eight specialist killers have been amassed together in this strange jungle. (Well, nine, but one’s chute never opened – get that body count started!) They do not yet know each other, having been assembled from all over the world. I’d make a “Lost” reference, except I do not know any. Instead, I’ll do like I did with Alien and Predator, and devote a paragraph to each of these figures, in the order they plummet from the sky:

First up after Brody is Rodriguez regular and the awesomest Mexican on Earth, Danny Trejo. Yes, this is Machete himself, and yes, a trailer before Predators confirms that Machete will soon be more than a mere movie trailer parody! (A sad trailer side note – there’s gonna be a fourth Resident Evil movie, so I’m afraid I’ll have to watch those things…Just when I’d thought I’d escaped you, Paul W. S. Anderson!) Anyway, Trejo plays an enforcer for a Tijuana drug cartel (that is, Trejo plays a character in a movie). His character has a name, as do they all, but it’s never uttered in the movie – hence, I’ll simply call Trejo “the Mexican,” just as I often do in real life.

Next is “the Russian” (Oleg Taktarov), first seen doing his best Jesse Ventura impression, unloading some sort of minigun or another all over the jungle. He is a commando straight from the Chechen Wars – in fact, those danged Predators beamed him straight out of combat right then and there, as they did with all our buddies. I applaud these Predators for running an efficient operation.

Then we meet our lone woman, “the Israeli” (Brazilian Alice Braga). She is a black ops sniper, and acts as the conscience for this group. She also possesses knowledge of the Predators, in the form of a call back to the first movie and first movie alone. And as the lone female, I am glad to say Predators has the good sense to forego romantic distractions altogether.

My personal favorite member of the group is “the Yakuza” (Louis Ozawa Changchien). The rest are clad in functional and unappealing battle gear; he has on a snazzy jacket and vest combo. And later on he gets his hands on a Samurai sword. It rules!

There is “the Sierra Leonean” (the unspellable Mahershalalhashbaz Ali). I have little else to say about this guy. He is the black guy in a horror film.

There is “the Convict” (Walton Goggins, best known from “The Shield”). Of course this group had to have someone from San Quentin, and I guess Danny Trejo himself doesn’t count. And pity the poor, sexually hyper-deviant Convict, for while everyone else gets some sort of mofo gun, all he’s armed with is his homemade shiv.

Finally there is “the Doctor” (Topher Grace, further escaping the shadow of “That '70s Show”), the lone “unskilled” member of the party. He is entirely unarmed, save for a nearly useless scalpel, and alone entirely unfamiliar with combat. At first this seems to be an enormous oversight on the Predators’ part, but secrets do come up later. I won’t say what, but I will say that Topher Grace rather reminds me of Elijah Wood. Remember how Rodriguez used him in Sin City?

Our group sets off into the mysterious jungle. It may seem unoriginal to just plop the Predators back in the jungle (it is), but this is their home. And Hawaii, in place of Predator’s Mexico, is distinct enough filming location to warrant visual interest. As settings go, this is familiar, but still distinct enough to be good. Actually, that just pretty much sums up Predators as a whole.

More on the setting: This ain’t Earth! Yeah, they learn it pretty early on, it’s kinda the premise. But neither is it the Predator home world. Nah, it’s a Predator hunting reserve, where they ship in all sorts of dangerous beasties for their hunting pleasure. And considering they regularly mine our planet of its best hunters and killers, I like to imagine what the Predators’ selection process is like. I picture them huddled over some sufficiently “otherworldly” PowerPoint presentation, growling and chirping in that distinct way of theirs (like I do when I wake up), claiming that “Indeed, let’s kidnap Topher Grace…Ooh, and that guy from Spy Kids 3-D!”

Now, the Predator movies never really expounded upon the species quite as successfully as the Alien films did. Beyond the original Predator itself, all the new info we got concerning the Predators is this: There are several of them, they have spaceships, and they live on a planet…Ooh, it took three awful movies to set that up! Predators, at last, develops the species a bit. We get different varieties of Predators, but without sacrificing the classic original Predator design. We get new variations on their hunting methods – building up on that franchise-wide theme, they have their versions of fox hunting, falconry, seeding, and so forth. There are even different “breeds” of Predators, described as the distinction between dogs and wolves. And guess what, our beloved Predator of yore is the “dog” variety. This puts various Predators at opposition, makes one of them the “hero” (an inexplicable preoccupation of the AVP series), and allows for the first time ever a Predator on Predator fight (Requiem only got half way there). And I do like how the Predator is modeled on higher predatory mammals, in contrast to the xenomorphs’ bug and parasite influence.

I’ve called Predators a reboot, but at the same time it is a genuine sequel to Predator. There are degrees of reboot severity, the highest being a complete continuity break, and Predators goes for the lighter end of the reboot camp. And as a Predator sequel, it is full of parallels. Whole scenes and sequences mirror events from the original Predator, such as a recreation of Billy’s last stand with the Yakuza – this scene rocks!


Some might find fault in Predators’ never-ending faithfulness in mimicking the original, but I do not. See, if Predators really is the Aliens of another franchise, we have to remember that Aliens itself employed a truly heavy amount of parallelism, but found new ways of phrasing the events. Predators works in the same way, such as in the aforementioned Yakuza scene, but also in the use of booby traps, waterfall escape, and final mud-drenched mano-a-claw. It’s not as good as Aliens, oh no, but Predator isn’t as good as Alien. But we judge them by totally different standards. The Alien franchise at its best is horrifying, momentous moviemaking. The Predator franchise at its best (meaning this and Predator) is fun. They’re action flicks, totally lacking in pretentions, and eminently minimalist.

And the soundtrack is similar to the first too. It is by John Debney, and heavily references Alan Silvestri’s earlier work. This is appropriate, and for someone likely to fall into fanboy reveries like I am, it is wonderfully nostalgic to hear such strings wafting through a theater.

I actually haven’t mentioned the director yet, somehow. It is Nimród Antal, responsible for movies such as Kontroll, Vacancy and Armored – genre flicks I haven’t seen, but I am assured are respectable. For as much as I credited the cast above as being intensely responsible, the director is as much if not more responsible. From the classic films we have Ridley Scott, James Cameron and John McTiernan (he did Die Hard, he’s on par). I cannot say if Antal might someday reach those ranks, though surely when each prior director made his franchise entry he hadn’t. This aside, I’ll say Antel’s direction here is assured and capable – technically, this is the rare modern action movie that makes geographical sense. And somehow, the lengthy lead up to the Predators’ reveal works, even though the fifth time out (or is it third?) we know what’s coming. It ain’t ever quite scary or suspenseful, but was Predator? Nah, it was awesome! Predators isn’t perhaps as fist-pumpingly nutbars as that was (here it fails the Aliens upgrade test), but it’s surely a more than respectable heir to McTiernan’s gooey throne.

It’s always hard to say without retrospect just how absolutely good this movie is. Many are looking upon Predators favorably, though there’s some sentiment that it’s getting decent reviews because of the recent slapdash AVP atrocities. If that’s true for other reviewers, it goes doubly true for me, seeing as I’ve spent my last days weaned on those fecal turds. Compared to them, Predators is absolute gold, and with the entire franchise(s) now under my belt, I can say unequivocally that this is a welcome member to the species.


Related posts:
• No. 1 Predator (1987)
• No. 2 Predator 2 (1990)
• No. 3 Alien vs. Predator (2004)
• No. 4 Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)