Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. It’s been a productive week over in my neck of the woods, as I’ve munched through movies, reader articles, and novel-writing with equally dogged determination. I’ve nearly broken the two hundred page mark on my current manuscript, and though it is indeed a piece of garbage with no redeeming features to speak of, I’ve grown quite fond of it all the same. My house’s eternal march through anime history has also continued in earnest, with the first third of Magic Knight Rayearth proving an enjoyable (if fairly formulaic) fantasy yarn. I’d prefer if it deviated a bit more from magical girl staples into less rigid fantasy drama, but the cast are fun and the look is great, so it’s tough to be too disappointed. I’ll likely have a final report on that one in short order, but for now, let’s burn down the week in films!
First up this week was Knightriders, an ‘81 drama directed by George A. Romero. The film centers on the titular troupe of renaissance fair performers, who compete in jousting and melee tournaments atop their motorcycle steeds. Beyond their performances, the troupe must reckon with hostile cops, reckless locals, and the ever-present question of money, as the ideals and personal bonds that connect them are tested by the uncaring realities of life on the road.
Knightriders is a rambling quasi-epic, a portrait of Arthurian-themed motorcycle jousters that proves itself far more intimate and melancholic than that description might imply. Starting with the almost religious conviction of their leader Billy (Ed Harris), the film slowly and compassionately digs into the complex web of relationships and values that tether each of the troupe’s dreamers, hustlers, and lost souls to their collective performance, which with time reveals itself not as a gimmick or con, but a genuine quest for family.
The film is both a poignant series of character studies and a eulogy for the free-spirited ‘60s and ‘70s, back when the idea of following a dream beyond the boundaries of capitalist society seemed just maybe possible. It feels sentimental and true in the way of much underdog-focused media, bringing to mind the battered but resilient dignity of heroes like Beat the Champ’s various characters, or the fearsome disco-centric defiance of Saturday Night Fever. Certainly messy in places (it doesn’t seem sure how to end, for one), but undeniably heartfelt – an odd passion project scattered with precious human moments.
Next up was The Frighteners, an early horror-comedy by Peter Jackson starring Michael J. Fox as a would-be architect with the ability to see ghosts. Naturally, he employs this faculty to set up a scam exorcism agency, by conscripting ectoplasmic partners to make like poltergeists, and then shooing them away when he heroically arrives to “banish” the invaders. This admittedly pathetic existence is interrupted when a spectral serial killer arrives in town, forcing Fox to become the hero he’d never dreamed of.
The Frighteners is certainly a novel feature, albeit also a tonally disjointed and too-frequently shrill one. Fox’s plucky young everyman routine works well for his character here; he’s likable even when he’s scamming folks, soulful even when he’s self-pitying, and generally an easy person to hang around with. On the other hand, his ghosts are decidedly less tolerable; they’re all loud one-note running gags, running from reheated sitcom archetypes to occasional appearances by Full Metal Jacket’s R. Lee Hermey doing his full “what is your major malfunction” routine.
Still, early Jackson and grating camp humor go hand-in-hand, and The Frighteners otherwise offers a reasonable mixture of investigative drama and inventive CGI spectacle. The film falls somewhere between Casper the Friendly Ghost and Evil Dead 2, with a score by Danny Elfman to remind you of Hollywood’s third ‘90s alt-weirdo. Wild to think that the eccentricities of both Raimi and Jackson would ultimately be channeled in such crowd-pleasing directions as the Spiderman and Lord of the Rings sagas.
We then continued our march through the Gamera catalogue into his new era revival, screening the ‘95 Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. This film dispenses with the confusing, alien-infested chronology of the original films, instead positing Gamera and Gyaos as fellow anomalies emerging simultaneously in the Philippines and Goto Islands. As both Gamera and Gyaos face off with the Japanese military, a group of scientists and a young girl with a strange connection to Gamera will ultimately prove our turtle buddy’s good intentions, leading to a climactic final battle between Gamera and his triangle-headed nemesis.
Gamera: Guardian of the Universe serves as a real change of pace in the Gamera chronology, offering the first entirely functional film of his film oeuvre. Gone are the cheap alien vessel interiors and repeated stock footage of Gamera’s past adventures, replaced with sturdy effects work, solid costuming, and cinematography that directly calls to mind Stephen Spielberg’s monster dramas. There are sequences in this film that pretty much directly lifted from Jurassic Park and Jaws, as well as a heavy dollop of inspiration from Godzilla’s Heisei era, and this is frankly all to the film’s good. Everyone steals, and the important thing is to steal wisely; by embracing the knowledge of thirty years of kaiju film development, Gamera: Guardian of the Universe demonstrates that all our turtle buddy really needed was a full aesthetic makeover. Go get ‘em, Gamera!
We then munched through the second season of the Avatar: The Last Airbender live-action adaptation. Echoing its predecessor, this season offered a much-condensed take of the original cartoon’s own second season, centering on Team Avatar’s march across the Earth Kingdom for first an earth-bending tutor, and then political allies to aid them against the approaching Fire Nation army. Meanwhile, Fire Nation prince Zuko finds his loyalties and morality consistently tested, while his bloodthirsty sister Azula takes her own stab at claiming the Avatar.
This season maintains its predecessor’s approach of generally intelligent condensing that somewhat inevitably drains the narrative of its freewheeling original appeal, turning an Inuyasha-style tramp through the wilderness into a propulsive yet somewhat narratively creaky prestige miniseries. Puberty has hit our Aang like a truck, making a number of his emotional turns feel more aggressively immature relative to the child-Aang appropriate tantrums of the original series, but Zuko and Iroh continue to demonstrate why they were the best things about Avatar in the first place, and the series’ take on Ba Sing Se leaves just enough time to let the characters breath a little.
The series continues to be hamstrung by its refusal to lean into martial arts in either casting or staging; Zuko’s actor does his best, and Ty Lee’s actress is a genuine acrobat, but the cast otherwise are only really capable of dramatically waving their arms around, making their confrontations mostly reliant on weightless CG effects (in pretty damning contrast with the One Piece adaptation’s generally excellent choreography). A competent but inherently lesser adaptation that pretty much only justifies itself on the strength of Zuko and Iroh’s material and delivery.
