A ‘verse not big enough for Joss Whedon’s ideas.

Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!…Well, it’s kinda both. It’s a goose-shaped spaceship called Serenity.

Space cowboy and Gale Harold lookalike, Nathan Fillion, leads his hip crew of lovable space brigands, as they ricochet around the galaxy, avoiding government spooks, mutated killers and references to STAR WARS, onboard the Firefly-class spaceship called Serenity.

SERENITY is the big screen version of the small screen series FIREFLY (unfortunately cancelled after just one season). Written and directed by Joss Whedon, it’s bold and brash and throbbingly original even as it pulls every trope from the science fiction and action thriller handbook.

SERENITY is not exactly stand-alone. I find that every angle I come at it – as an objective observer, as a fan of good science fiction, as a fan of morally ambiguous characters – for SERENITY to work, there is that necessary connection to the bigger universe (nay ‘verse) of the television series which fleshed out these characters before we ever met them in Moviedom. If you’re coming to Whedon’s space opera blind, there is the tendency to ask: Just who are these people and what do they want with my willy?

Fly on, free goose, fly!

Movie opens at Exposition Central: a recap of Earth-That-Was and the global war that drove Earth into terraforming outer planets. Now if this movie had stayed with the theme of planetary conflict and played our outlaw heroes against that backdrop, subsisting on contractor guerilla jobs while serpentining across the galaxy to avoid capture, that would have continued the enjoyable dynamic established in FIREFLY. Instead – River Tam (Summer Glau).

River’s mind was a government experiment. She’s a psychic, or empath, or whatever the street cred term is now. Rescued by her brother Simon (Sean Maher), they are both passengers/fugitives onboard Serenity (he is also the ship’s doctor). Over the course of the TV series, Whedon had plans to gradually unveil River’s grand arc, and since the series was cancelled, he chose to use this 2-hour swashbuckler to finalize that arc, skewing the attention away from the other lovable characters. And it’s distracting. Because we realize all the characters’ motivations, actions and reactions are driven by River’s presence and ultimate “purpose,” whatever that is. (Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but we are definitely sacrificing other fun dynamics, that we relished in the series). The actual “heroes” are playing second fiddles! – Fillion as macho captain Malcolm Reynolds (Mal), Gina Torres as lethal first mate Zoe, Alan Tudyk as insouciant pilot Wash, Jewel Staite as cutie engineer Kaylee, Adam Baldwin as mercenary muscle Jayne. Even the sexual tension between the “companion” aka prostitute Inara (Morena Baccarin) and Mal, which had the tensile strength of Golden Gate bridge cables in the series, is downplayed in this movie so we don’t get tangled in subplot. Sure, all the characters get their time in the sun, but everything they do is predicated around River.

“I have commanded it! Now go – from my plastic set which screams Afternoon TV Series…”

Chiwetel Ejiofor is The Operative – great actor in a great role – chilling, eerie, emotionless, an assassin pursuing River for The Alliance (the evil gubmint, not the STAR WARS rebels). His fight choreography is cool aikido with katanas, and his stage patter is Bond Villain. But though he seems like an Orwellian cog in a system that he never questions, he is aware of his place in it: “I’m a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.” (Well, now we know why he later did 2012 and SALT.)

The little things separate SERENITY from its ilk; as Whedon notes, he really wanted to break with traditional space movie tropes, so there is a unique combining of 1800’s American Western vernacular with futuristic spacefaring dialect – the dialogue, costuming and environment all reflect this verisimilitude; there are no Cantina Sequence aliens to be found anywhere in the galaxy, everyone is human – except the Reavers, who are mutated humans; the DP is Jack Green (Clint Eastwood’s man!) so we know we’re getting quality avenger hero angles; and there is no sound in space! It’s the little things…

And the big things? Surprisingly, the space battles rival Georgie Lucas. SERENITY is not overloaded with sky traffic and zwooshing star fleets, but when it needs to take us into the vacuum, it does so in the most authentic fashion. The scene where Mal leads a horde of pursuing Reaver ships out of a stellar cloud straight toward the Operative’s fleet is a sight to behold. And Operative’s reaction is worth the bittersweet laugh, “Target the Reavers! Target everyone! Somebody FIRE!”

That scene notwithstanding, there is not much levity on this voyage. It is much darker than the TV series, and almost trips into a bottomless pit with the malicious murder of preacher Shepherd Book (Ron Glass, a character whom I considered redundant anyway), as Mal descends into a fatalistic funk that makes his crew doubt his leadership.

Mal’s search for answers (to the River question, of course) will lead Serenity to a planet named Miranda, which they surprisingly can’t find on any charts. (‘Surprisingly’ because even if they can’t find a current planet by that name, Miranda is one of the major moons of Jupiter! I’m sure it’s not so far into the future that they’ve forgotten the nomenclature of the original planets and moons from Earth-That-Was. Why couldn’t they at least find Jupiter’s moon in the files?) On Miranda, they discover the origins of the Reavers, and a secret that The Alliance will kill to keep. River is somehow tied to this secret (because River is tied to everything, so sayeth The High Lord Whedon from his BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER lair…)

Their task now is to publicize the damning secret. Gee, if only the future had internet. The closest dial-up service is with Mr. Universe (David Krumholtz), and Mal’s fuuuurious anger at The Alliance’s lies to the people (“Half of writing history is hiding the truth”) makes him vow to fight past the Operative to send the secret out through Mr. Universe’s social media, “I aim to misbehave.”

“Do you think we should shoot her now that we have these guns aiming at her and everything?”

River meanwhile, is falling in and out of cognizance as demanded by the level of trouble they’re in. When she’s “on” she is an unstoppable force. So to avoid being able to unleash this superhero killing machine at will, Whedon writes a Rain Man device into her character, where she is usually introverted and fetal-position, turning into a deus ex machina when our heroes are neck-deep or higher in shit.

Towards the climax, it feels like THE DIRTY DOZEN or THE WILD BUNCH or SEVEN SAMURAI, as each of the characters we’ve grown to love (or at least tolerate) is in actual jeopardy of being killed in a shootout (after all, this movie had no guarantee of continuing the series or making a sequel; it was a stroke of luck for fanboys that would never be repeated). Then the deus ex River happens, as she announces to her effete brother, “It’s my turn to take care of you now,” and becomes Uma Thurman against the Crazy 88s.

The last great rockstar battle is between Mal and the Operative, on a catwalk over a giant shaft with two giant spinning fans. Really? Was the set with the giant crushing iron things being used?

SERENITY closes with three grave markers. Sad. But on a note of outlaw hope, she rises into the overcast skies on Mal’s velvet leadership and the vapors of fandom. “I am a leaf on the wind. Watch me soar…”

END

The Donner Party.

“KNEEL BEFORE EDITING!”

It’s SUPERMAN II in Donner Vision! Released on DVD in 2006 on the strength of fan uproar, THE RICHARD DONNER CUT is better than the Richard Lester debacle. But not by much.

The overarching tale is the same: as Superman relinquishes his powers to play patticake with Lois Lane, three supervillains from Krypton terrorize Earth, led by General Zod, who has a pathological need for people to kneel before him. And Superman must save the day by talking to Marlon Brando in a dress.

Originally released in 1981, SUPERMAN II was completed by director Richard Lester after director Richard Donner was fired by the producers. It is well known that Donner had shot both SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE (1978) and SUPERMAN II simultaneously, so had much of II in the can by the time he was ousted. After many reshoots and restructures, comedy director Lester could not find a happy medium between the mythos and the madcap, thus delivering a patchwork quilt cheesefest.

Fan tumult over Donner’s mythic unreleased version reached such a tipping point that by 2006, studio heads commissioned Michael Thau (editor on SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE) to oversee assembling Donner’s original footage, which is packed with alternate and unused scenes, alternate takes and a slightly different order of events, that projects a more respectful, slightly darker vision than Lester’s. And John Williams‘s majestic music has been reinstated. Yet SUPERMAN II: THE RICHARD DONNER CUT still doesn’t exhibit the cohesion of a credible film.

It’s not like Donner had unlimited footage of a completed movie that he just didn’t get the chance to put together. It is still a patchwork quilt – except now it’s Donner’s patchwork quilt; not so much a Director’s Cut as a diluted vision of What Could Have Been.

But the mediocrity of both finished versions – Lester’s and Donner’s – should not be blamed all on the Richards.

Most of the blame is on Terence Stamp as General Zod and Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor. Because they are such incredible actors! Their commitment to these “comicbook” roles is stunning, their acting impeccable, their timing innate. And they show up all the other performers as the low rent wannabes they are. (In the DONNER CUT, there is much more Hackman, which does more for the comedy that Lester was supposedly aiming for by putting all that slapstick in his version.)

There is also Brando mincing about as Superman’s father, Jor-El, orating cheese in that Kryptonian/Shakespearean accent in many more spirit soliloquies than the Lester version, woiking his woman’s pants suit till it glows in the dark.

While veterans Ned Beatty (as Otis), Jackie Cooper (as Perry White), Sarah Douglas (as Ursa) and E.G. Marshall (as the President) don’t get the screentime to act much, the limp principals mill aimlessly in the foreground as if they’ve just missed the bus for a toothpaste commercial – Marc McClure (as Jimmy Olsen), Margot Kidder (as Lois Lane) and the Man of Steel himself (Christopher Reeve, whose Clark Kent/Cary Grant impression was not bad, but who definitively earned his epithet Man of Wood whenever he donned the cape and panties).

Stamp and Hackman bury these people alive with their chops.

Lois Lane’s romance with Clark Kent/Superman is still laughable; the barest of chemistry between the most famous paradoxical love triangle in the galaxy.

In this DONNER CUT, Lois now leaps out the Daily Planet window early in the film, to “prove” Clark is Superman, instead of into the Niagara Falls rapids. The whole Honeymoon Suite sequence is non-existent, replaced by a scene painstakingly reconstructed from screen tests, on a cheap hotel room set where Lois pulls a gun on Clark and unveils his identity; while Clark’s hairstyle noticeably changes between the two-shot and his closeup, from that of 70s Porn Actor to 80s Porn Actor. Not only are the performances here jaw-droppingly puerile, it is infuriating that salivating fans and commentators alike endorse this patched-together-with-the-seams-showing scene as passable in a supposedly epic saga.

In DONNER CUT, Superman actually shares a bed with Lois before he relinquishes his powers, and afterwards we see a quick shot of Lois wearing Supe’s blue top as a girlfriend wears her boyfriend’s outsize t-shirt after sex. It’s gross. (For the reasons why Superman can’t mate with a human female, I refer you to Larry Niven’s well-thought-out piece, Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.)

In DONNER CUT, Clark Kent spends a lot of time in badass 70s Porn Actor Mode (you know, those bellbottoms and that Studio 54 hairdo) conversing with a disembodied Jor-El, who becomes real at one tearjerking moment, as he touches Clark to restore his powers, whispering, “My son.”

To restore the Metropolis battlefield after he defeats the supervillains, and to erase Lois’s memory, Superman spins the Earth backwards in time. Before it was the climax to SUPERMAN, that plot point was the planned climax to this movie. And both movies suffer the same paradox – that in turning the Earth back, all the threats he wished to negate would still be threats (Luthor’s warheads, the earthquake, the three supervillains), only he would know how to avert them more judiciously. Yet both times when he turns the Earth back, all the threats have disappeared. Lois is fine and EVERYTHING is fine.

Ironically, turning the Earth back is probably the best deed Superman ever performs – but for the wrong reasons. You see, in SUPERMAN, when Glenn Ford told a young Clark he was “here for a reason – and it’s not to score touchdowns,” it implied Superman would concern himself with more than just petty crime; that he might address the sociological reasons that create crime in the first place. Think of what a super man might do with corporations, politicians, churches, oil congloms, pharm companies… Well, Superman went around anyway like a well-intentioned blockhead and stopped smalltime bank robbers and saved pussies.

But it dawns on me: When Superman spins the Earth back in time, he actually lives up to his potential and saves millions from catastrophe– But hang on!–[sound of needle scratching across record]

In SUPERMAN, he didn’t spin the Earth back necessarily to save millions. He let all of them die horrible deaths – even though, we see in retrospect, he had the power to save them – and only spun Earth back SO LOIS WOULD LIVE. And in II, he spins the Earth back not necessarily to undo the billions in damage Metropolis sustained, but to ERASE LOIS’S MEMORY!

Whipped much, Superladyboy?

The final coda scene is retained in DONNER CUT: Clark Kent gets revenge on the trucker who beat him up in front of his chick (which isn’t really honorable or righteous, because he’s got super powers again – how big of a man is he to pick on this powerless human?). I’ll say it again – as his Earth father said: “here for a reason – and it’s not to score touchdowns.” Meaning, while Clark is getting his petty revenge, 50,000 kids in Darfur are dying for want of a super man to bring them Real Justice.

As far as the fans are concerned, “Directed by Richard Donner” in the opening credits is the only real justice that matters.

END

The Last Gasp of the Last Son of Krypton.

It’s a Richard Pryor movie starring Superman. No, it’s a Superman movie starring Richard Pryor. Whatever it is, no one’s taking SUPERMAN III seriously.

Richard Pryor’s performance is the only credible meat in this debacle, which features the relatively new concept of “computers” being utilized for eeeevil, and with a subplot of Superman affected by hybrid kryptonite which doesn’t kill him but makes him do really bad things like get drunk and flick peanuts at mirrors. (See what I mean about taking it seriously?)

Though Pryor is surrounded by now-veteran SUPERMAN co-stars (Doug McClure as Jimmy Olsen, Margot Kidder as Lois Lane, Jackie Cooper as Perry White) and A-Listers Robert Vaughn (as the villain) and talented comedienne Pamela Stephenson (as the villain’s T&A, who does nothing more than minimally expose her T&A), he alone saves the movie from descending to the Ninth Level of Hell with his inimitable turn as a computer hacker patsy hired by Vaughn for evil ends.

Christopher Reeve is once again the Man of Steel and is given such an abominable script – coupled with the worst and cheapest flying effects you will ever see – that wearing his neon blue and red duds out in public is starting to look exceptionally gay.

Gone is the slick production value; gone is the tagline “You’ll believe a man can fly” because when you watch SUPERMAN III, you’re pretty sure a man can’t fly and that he’s being levitated by guy wires attached to a crane. Gone is the majestic music – Ken Thorne is only allowed minimal snatches of John Williams’s grand theme, the rest of the soundtrack consisting of slapstick toodles to accompany director Richard Lester’s supposedly uproarious slapstick action. To call the opening credit sequence a third grader’s idea of comedy is a compliment.

The references to “computers” (in their boxy housings with big qwerty keyboards and green text on black screens) will look especially dated to youngsters; the acting will make you want to kill your pet, the audio looping will make you want to slap your child, and when Superman “goes bad” we see that his idea of badness is as juvenile as his idea of goodness…

I’ve said this before: with the powers that Superman possesses, he shouldn’t even THINK about “bank robbers” or “people falling down and hurting themselves” – this guy should be dealing with crime at the highest corporate and government levels, the “white collar” crime that CREATES low level crime by creating economic social rifts.

But who is really paying attention when his undies are so bright and tight? By the mid-1980s, Superman comicbooks had been developing storylines and character over 50 years – yet this third modern SUPERMAN movie still retains the provincial mentality of the 1950s.

Superman is handed pseudo-kryptonite by Richard Pryor (doing his best General Patton – one of the films three great laughs) which doesn’t kill him, but makes him go bad: Supes straightens out the Leaning Tower of Pisa, blows out the Olympic torch, punctures an oil tanker, and gets drunk. You know, true evil. Oh, and he almost grows a three-day shadow, the universal stamp of sexy Euro villains. And when he has the opportunity to slam Pamela Stephenson atop the Statue of Liberty, he accedes to doing her a favor first in return for her sexual favors! Yeah, badness like Mister Rogers.

It takes an hour for the film to reach this semi-interesting point – and then it goes nowhere with the concept. Superman merely splits into two people – himself and Clark Kent – and battles soporifically with himself in a junkyard, raising the film almost to the level of boring. Clark Kent triumphs. Hooray for dorks!

Another subplot involves Clark Kent returning to Smallville for a school reunion and hitting the picnic blanket hard with Lana Lang (Annette O’Toole) and her son. A plot strand – like the factory fire or the dual personality bit or the fat couple vacationing in South America – that goes nowhere at super speed.

One would think that director Richard Lester, after making such a hash of SUPERMAN 2, would have been issued a restraining order against any Superman product. Instead, producer Alexander Salkind re-hires the insipid comedy director to make a hash of SUPERMAN III as well.

And Lester succeeds beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.

END

Skills you didn’t know Superman possessed:
throwing his chest logo, while riding an invisible chopper.

It’s a bird. It’s plain. It’s not super, man.

“KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!”

Could that possibly be the cheesiest line in cinematic history? Yes. Yes, it could; most certainly aided by the level of fruitage employed by Terence Stamp as the imperious General Zod, resplendent in black, pseudo-leather, thigh-high disco boots and heavier eyeliner than Avril Lavigne.

General Pod

Director Richard Donner filmed SUPERMAN (1978) and SUPERMAN II simultaneously for expediency. Creative differences between producers Ilya and Alexander Salkind and Donner caused Donner to jump ship before finishing II, leaving inferior director Richard Lester to salvage the shreds of two movies’ worth of footage into a cogent sequel.

Consequently, SUPERMAN II is two movies mashed together to make HALF a movie.

Badly scripted (by too many cooks – Mario Puzo, David Newman, Leslie Newman, Tom Mankiewicz), badly acted (by SUPERMAN’s principal cast: Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Valerie Perrine, Marc McClure, Gene Hackman – well, Hackman’s good in anything, but his scenes in II were shot with Donner, and he refused to do any more scenes for II, which resulted in stand-ins finishing his job from behind), badly directed (Lester’s forte was comedy), badly edited (by John Victor-Smith, with amateurish looping and unsalvageable scenes that had to be included because nothing else was shot), badly scored (by Ken Thorne, trying to augment the great John Williams’s music, but churning out a bombastic hash instead); were it not for Superman himself – that blue-clad icon with the red towel tied ’round his neck burned into our neo-cortexes since birth – this movie would be as unbearably ludicrous as E.G. Marshall‘s wig.

Superman hurls a nuclear bomb into space, which is so powerful it releases three Kryptonian supervillains from the previous Superman movie – Zod (Stamp), Ursa (Sarah Douglas, as some kind of sadomasochist dyke) and Non (Jack O’Halloran, as a big dumb galoot) – who, all possessing the same powers as Superman, decide to conquer Earth at the same time that Superman decides to conquer Lois Lane by inexplicably abdicating his powers to show his love for her. Smart move, puss.

(It would occur to us kids years later that Superman got rid of his powers so he wouldn’t tear Lois’s vagina a new asshole with his super-thrusting. Even though that aspect is never brought up in the movie or by the producers, we know this to be true, due to our dirty minds.)

Did Kal-El fail to consider that trailer-park Lois fell in lust with a SUPER man and that the loss of his powers would translate to a nine-to-fiver brain-fry existence, coming home to find Lois with a mudpack on her face watching Jerry Springer, ignoring the screaming kid? And having an affair with Green Lantern. After all, that’s what she “fell in love” with – super powers. “In brightest day, in blackest night / No evil shall escape my sight…” Whatever you say, Greeny; you had me at “Let’s fly to Paris for lunch…”

SUPERMAN II contains the iconic Honeymoon Suite scene: reporters Clark and Lois visit Niagara Falls, posing as a married couple to uncover a completely McGuffin “Niagara Falls racket” (that is never mentioned again after its exposition line). Lois, suspicious that Clark is Superman, throws herself into the river rapids, thinking to make Clark reveal himself when he saves her, but Clark manages to expend a minimal amount of super to pluck her from the raging torrent. Back at the suite, he accidentally reveals himself, whereby his desperation to pluck her with his raging torrent precipitates Superman flying Lois to his Fortress of Solitude, to consult his magic crystals on The Birds and The Bees.

Kal-El’s disembodied mother (Susannah York – because Brando wouldn’t) warns him that there will be Far Less Pussy once he avails himself of the Irreversible Anti-Super Effect and becomes human; nonetheless, Superman enters an anti-super chamber, gets irradiated with brothel-red lights and leaves the chamber in chic John Holmes threads and a really bad hairstyle. Cue 70’s porn music.

Meanwhile, General Zod is camping it up in Midwest Podunk with his dyke and galoot, orating cheese in High English vernacular, then kicking the badass American army in the groin and storming the White House to make the President (E.G. Marshall’s crooked wig) kneel before him.

The unthinking script has Ursa mock a helicopter, “Look! They need machines to fly!” (well, so did you on Krypton, honey!) and pick up a snake that bites and hurts her – even though she is a woman of steel.

The script continues to unthink… as Clark, driving a rental car back from the North Pole with Lois, gets his shiny new human ass whupped by a trucker and, to add insult to his injuries, also learns of the three supervillains who are stealing his thundercheese. (As a further insult, the trucker was probably Canadian.) Fearing it just might have been a mistake to go homo sapien (what gave it away – the internal bleeding?), he hikes back to the Pole to get his supermojo back (I guess three supervillains taking over the world wasn’t a big enough emergency for Lois to give him the RENTAL CAR – already treating him like a nutless puss).

And – like Final Notices, Final Destinations, Drop-Dead Deadlines, etc. – we find that the Irreversible Anti-Super Effect wasn’t that Irreversible after all, as Superman’s blue-groined hardbody is soon streaking through Metropolis skies to tangle with the three supervillains with stunningly mediocre special effects.

Lesson? Or worsen?

There is a coda scene that is quite disturbing. Clark, now with super powers again, goes back to that diner where the trucker beat him up when he was mortal. And beats up the trucker. As much as we are satisfied that the bully trucker got his comeuppance, it shouldn’t be like this. Because Clark has super powers! It’s a completely one-sided fight. It seems very petty of Clark to stoop to beating up this guy in a slapstick manner simply to get revenge laughs, when the idea of Superman should be to curb bad human behavior by example, at the least, to teach wrongdoers a lesson. (And doesn’t Clark have something more humanitarian he could be doing anyway?)

Simply beating the trucker and flippantly commenting to the surprised bar-folk that he’s “been lifting weights,” is not going to stop that bully absolutely whaling on the next wimp that walks in. (If Clark had actually trained as a mortal and returned to beat the trucker, that would have been commendable, but for a Superman to do it – psh!) What if Superman had flown that guy to a hospital or homeless shelter and educated that bully on how he could be the solution to the ills of the world rather than the problem? The message would have been infinitely more sobering than a simple beating.

It is a real pity that the SUPERMAN franchise is not better than it is, because there is something so inspiring and awesome about John Williams’s soundtrack, truly capturing the essence of thunderous power, a majestic, sweeping paean of an otherworldly being who can bend the world at will. We vicariously thrill to the possibilities of being a Superman, or of loving a Superman. It’s the lottery one-hundredfold.

Ironic that General Zod mincing, “KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!” was part of the reason the franchise was brought to its knees.

END