Flash!!! AH AHHHHH! Flash Gordon (TV) Review
Posted on
Monday, August 13, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
The last iteration of the Flash Gordon serial adventures was the Sam Jones/Max Von Sydow cheesefest in the late '70's, a movie so full of eye-gouging color and strained camp that watching it was akin to eating spicy barbecue with mouth ulcers. It hurt so bad but tastes so good. As a child, I watched that version in awe, amazed by the four-color violence and cheesy lines. It was everything an adaptation of the old Flash Gordon serials should be, never taking itself too seriously while providing plenty of goofy action, sex appeal and schlock. It was the kind of terrible B-movie that achieves its own cultish infamy, becoming an instant classic like Clash of the Titans. Fans of bad cinema can't help but love Flash Gordon. How could a modernized version of the classic characters in the Scif-Fi Channel's new series go wrong?
Unfortunately, the series can go very, very wrong. While none of the updates seem all that bad on the surface, the whole stew becomes one great big mess of mediocrity. Flash Gordon is now a marathon runner, Dale Arden a television reporter, and their romantic relationship was over years before the series begins. Flash lives with his mother, and runs a auto shop of some kind with his friend Neil. Flash's father was a physicist who is presumed dead after an accident many years earlier, but the appearance of Dr. Zarkov throws doubt upon the father's death. Zarkov, in perhaps the second-worst change from the established mythos, is a sniveling worm, an assistant to Flash's father who has carried on his research into dimensional portals. Ming, however, suffers the worst in translation, transitioning from a menacing Asian-featured tyrant to a blonde cardboard cutout with no menace whatsoever. Ming's floating assistant and head torturer provides more menace than Ming. Throughout the first episode, Ming is attempting to find the "Imex," a device Flash's father was supposed to be in possession of. Though it is later revealed just what the Imex is, its importance to Ming and thus his pursuit of it is left to the viewer's imagination.
The show has a number of problems besides the changes made to the traditional characters. It takes some amazingly hard to swallow leaps of logic to get from point A to point B, and it does this repeatedly. Characters act in service to the story whether it makes sense for them to do so or not. The characters themselves aren't particularly interesting, especially Dale Arden. The addition of Flash's father provides unnecessary angst to the character. In all, many of the story beats fall flat precisely because it's so obvious they are plot devices manufactured to get Flash to Mongo. And rather than make Mongo accessible via rocket ship or some other form of space travel, it becomes accessible only through dimensional rifts, a science-fiction device that feels all too much like Stargate. Mongo itself is painfully generic, a series of over-dark drab hallways, orange-lit forests, and shadowed dullness. Even worse, less than half-an-hour of the pilot's 90-minute running time is set on the alien planet. Rather than being trapped on an alien planet like other versions of the stories, Flash, Dale and Zarkov end the show back in their hometown, with previews showing the trio going back and forth between Earth and Mongo often, making the Stargate comparison even more apt.
The show suffers from being not enough of one thing or the other. Rather than go for over-the-top cheesiness, they steer too far towards the serious, while trying to inject some humor. Instead of making the show interesting, it just causes the show to be devoid of fun. The story, settings, characters and costumes all feel so generic, with only the names and the theme song having any connection with the Flash Gordon mythos. The actors lack any sort of chemistry together, making their performances feel wooden and forced. It's almost as if the writers were uncomfortable taking too many risks on the side of seriousness or silly, choosing a path that meandered into painful mediocrity. The show wasn't bad enough to be execrable, but it wasn't engrossing enough to be entertaining. Though I'll likely watch another episode to be sure, I don't have high hopes for the series. That's a damn shame, because my expectations for the series based on the movie couldn't have been lower, yet even that low bar was not met. I'd give the show 1.5 stars out of 5, with points deducted for the silly ending and lack of Mongo.
Unfortunately, the series can go very, very wrong. While none of the updates seem all that bad on the surface, the whole stew becomes one great big mess of mediocrity. Flash Gordon is now a marathon runner, Dale Arden a television reporter, and their romantic relationship was over years before the series begins. Flash lives with his mother, and runs a auto shop of some kind with his friend Neil. Flash's father was a physicist who is presumed dead after an accident many years earlier, but the appearance of Dr. Zarkov throws doubt upon the father's death. Zarkov, in perhaps the second-worst change from the established mythos, is a sniveling worm, an assistant to Flash's father who has carried on his research into dimensional portals. Ming, however, suffers the worst in translation, transitioning from a menacing Asian-featured tyrant to a blonde cardboard cutout with no menace whatsoever. Ming's floating assistant and head torturer provides more menace than Ming. Throughout the first episode, Ming is attempting to find the "Imex," a device Flash's father was supposed to be in possession of. Though it is later revealed just what the Imex is, its importance to Ming and thus his pursuit of it is left to the viewer's imagination.
The show has a number of problems besides the changes made to the traditional characters. It takes some amazingly hard to swallow leaps of logic to get from point A to point B, and it does this repeatedly. Characters act in service to the story whether it makes sense for them to do so or not. The characters themselves aren't particularly interesting, especially Dale Arden. The addition of Flash's father provides unnecessary angst to the character. In all, many of the story beats fall flat precisely because it's so obvious they are plot devices manufactured to get Flash to Mongo. And rather than make Mongo accessible via rocket ship or some other form of space travel, it becomes accessible only through dimensional rifts, a science-fiction device that feels all too much like Stargate. Mongo itself is painfully generic, a series of over-dark drab hallways, orange-lit forests, and shadowed dullness. Even worse, less than half-an-hour of the pilot's 90-minute running time is set on the alien planet. Rather than being trapped on an alien planet like other versions of the stories, Flash, Dale and Zarkov end the show back in their hometown, with previews showing the trio going back and forth between Earth and Mongo often, making the Stargate comparison even more apt.
The show suffers from being not enough of one thing or the other. Rather than go for over-the-top cheesiness, they steer too far towards the serious, while trying to inject some humor. Instead of making the show interesting, it just causes the show to be devoid of fun. The story, settings, characters and costumes all feel so generic, with only the names and the theme song having any connection with the Flash Gordon mythos. The actors lack any sort of chemistry together, making their performances feel wooden and forced. It's almost as if the writers were uncomfortable taking too many risks on the side of seriousness or silly, choosing a path that meandered into painful mediocrity. The show wasn't bad enough to be execrable, but it wasn't engrossing enough to be entertaining. Though I'll likely watch another episode to be sure, I don't have high hopes for the series. That's a damn shame, because my expectations for the series based on the movie couldn't have been lower, yet even that low bar was not met. I'd give the show 1.5 stars out of 5, with points deducted for the silly ending and lack of Mongo.
Labels: Sciece-Fiction, Television
posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:09 AM
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