“I do hope there’s more of them.”

There’s always more, buddy.

[Note: It was very difficult for me to find any pictures of this battle online. Therefore I'm going just going to share unrelated images from the movie which I find amusing.]

Here’s Raphael being comatose in a bathtub.

2) TMNT vs Foot Clan (rematch)

The Fighters:

• Leonardo. Leads. Played by David Forman and Brian Tochi.
• Raphael. Cool but rude. Played by Josh Pais.
• Michelangelo. A party dude. Played by Michelan Sisti and Robbie Rist.
• Donatello. Does machines. Played by Leif Tilden and Corey Feldman.
• The Foot Clan. Hapless conscripts in Shredder’s ninja-thief-army-family. Played by various stunt men in black clothes.

They’re all armed the same as before. As a side dish, Casey Jones (Elias Koteas) has a brief tangle with Master Tatsu (Toshishiro Obata) while rescuing Splinter.

The Setup: Fully recovered and filled with renewed purpose, the four turtles have come back from their rural retreat and reclaimed their home in preparation to hunt down the Foot. The Foot, of course, has been looking for them, and an impromptu visit from a conflicted Danny inadvertently tips off the Shredder that the Turtles are back in town. The Foot arrive in full force but their amphibian adversaries seems to have anticipated their arrival (when they woke up and saw that Danny was missing, I suppose? Even sewer-dwelling mutants know not to trust a ginger), and are ready to give their opponents a surprise.

Meanwhile, with nearly all of the official Foot soldiers cleared out of their warehouse headquarters, Danny and Casey Jones (who followed Danny out there) are left to free Splinter before his ordered execution.

The Fight: There’s a great build-up here with several shots of the Foot Clan streaming en masse into the sewers from multiple entrances. About a dozen of them converge on the turtles’ lair but find it seemingly empty, until the surrounding pipes mysteriously burst open and flood the area in steam. When it clears, the Foot are all knocked out and the four heroes are standing about, cockily– Raph in particular seems fittingly pleased to be turning the tables on his erstwhile tormentors. I like it because it’s a good reminder that the heroes are not just martial artists but ninjas, cleverly utilizing their environment and striking foes from the proverbial shadows.

The second wave arrives just as the scene cuts away to Casey and Danny freeing Splinter, and the musical score does a neat trick here where it dies down just as the scene changes, making you think that we’re cutting away from excitement… only to build back up again as Casey’s scene becomes more important, especially when he turns to find Tatsu waiting behind him with a whole crowd of punks (including a young Sam Rockwell!) as backup.

Here’s Donatello spitting water.

When we rejoin the sewer battle (not right where we left off; it’s clear some time has passed), it’s all over the place– in a good way. The turtles are having merry fun with their prey, and unlike what happened in April’s apartment, their confidence is warranted: here, they’re in control, the four fighting as one once again and on their home turf. They even take time to indulge and play some more, with antics including Michelangelo lining up one chump juuuuuust right so that April can give him a gratuitous conk on the head.

The action cuts again to Casey getting positively walloped by Tatsu– Jones is a good brawler, but he’s little match for a seasoned veteran like Tatsu. He gets beaten so badly (Koteas sells the pain as well as the comedy, acting alternately defiant and confused), but turns things around with two quick moves after he stumbles across a golf club. Bludgeon-ready sports equipment is to Casey Jones what spinach is to Popeye.

When the action revisits the turtles the fight has expanded to the tunnels outside the sewers, with the enemy scrambled and on the defensive. They have such control of the battle they’re even doing stupid stuff like having Don bash foes left & right while zooming along on a skateboard (I can only imagine how hard that was to film with that costume). There’s a brief switch back to the aftermath of the warehouse fight for a dramatic beat, and when we return the Foot are in full-fledged retreat, pouring out of the same entrances in panic that they had marched through confidently not so long ago. The music even switches up to the group’s main theme (it played early in the movie as they returned home), the tune’s casual nature underscoring just how effortless and fun this is for our heroes. The streets are oddly empty even for this time of night– isn’t New York supposed to be the city that never sleeps? I don’t think even Wilmington, North Carolina (where this was actually filmed; I’ve been there and it rules) is this empty in the early morning, but then I suppose it’s plausible anyone who was around when they saw a ninja army fighting four karate monsters quite wisely decided to leave the area. And, in a nice touch I hadn’t remembered/noticed earlier, the garbage truck that will play a role later in the climax can be seen pulling up in the background of one part of the scene.

Here’s Judith Hoag making a stupid face.

All that cutting back & forth between this fight and the Casey/Splinter/Tatsu stuff served a secondary purpose of masking geographical transitions. Every time we return to the turtles’ fight, they’re on different terrain: they steadily push back their enemy from their lair to the sewer tunnels to the surface streets and now finally to the roof of a nearby building. A very smart cinematic play that conveys once again how much the Turtles are in control, while also giving the sense of the battle going on for an unknown amount of time longer than what we see on screen. I wondered this time watching it if the Foot’s retreat was actually deliberate and part of a plan to lure the turtles to where Shredder was waiting, but based on how much of a whooping they all take there’s no reason to suspect the pushback isn’t exactly what it looks like. Shredder could have confronted them earlier if he’d wanted.

The gradual climb up the rooftop is fun too, showcasing the action now happening on separate planes as the turtles drive the Foot upwards via the fire escapes. Reuniting on the roof they finish off the last of the stragglers and seem actively disappointed that there’s not more misguided teens to beat up. Little do they know they’re in for the boss fight.

Although the stakes are low in this one it’s hard not to have a good time watching it. The heroes’ enthusiasm is infectious as they kick ass all multiple stories, the choreography is pretty sharp & creative, and the aforementioned cross-cutting works well.

Grade: B+

Coming Attractions: Shredding.

Here’s the world’s lamest Shredder costume.

Should have gained a few more levels before this one, boys.

3) TMNT vs Shredder

The Fighters:

• All four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who you’ve already had the rundown on twice.
• Splinter, their recently-freed master. He plays a small but critical role here. Voiced by Kevin Clash, who would later go on to be more famous as Sesame Street’s Elmo and also for allegedly having sex with underage teen boys.
  • Armed with: He comes with nothing, but he recovers and uses Michelangelo’s one of discarded nunchaku.
• The Shredder, aka Oroku Saki. Master ninja, the leader of the Foot Clan, and former rival to/murderer of Splinter’s former owner Hamato Yoshi. Great taste in clothing. Played by James Saito and voiced by David McCharen.
  • Armed with: A “yari,”– a metal staff that’s sharp on both ends (maybe he’s a Lord of the Flies fan). His wrists, shin guards and shoulder pads are covered in scary-looking spikes but those never really come into play.

The Setup: Picking up exactly where we left off last time, the turtles take out the last of the Foot chumps when Shredder leaps out in slow motion, telling them their time has come.

As an aside, I must say I remain impressed even today at this movie’s commitment to translating the Shredder of the comics/cartoon in a way that’s faithful while still remaining relatively believable. The Shredder’s outfit is garish & impractical– in real life if you saw this guy walking down the street, you’d laugh– yet director Steve Barron always shoots him with an air of intimidating theatricality; he’s usually accompanied by pounding drums and a mean guitar riff, and of course McCharen’s booming voice doesn’t hurt. The movie actually does a pretty good job of selling Shredder as the Darth Vader of ninjas.

Am I the only one being slowly hypnotized by watching this?

In another nice touch, the boys still react flippantly to Shredder, because (as it’s easy to forget) they have NO idea who he is, or even of his existence. They’ve had an arch-nemesis this whole time and they didn’t even know it.

The Fight: Of course they clue in pretty quickly that he’s the big cheese, because the first couple passes they make at him (one at a time, inexplicably) end with them being clearly outclassed. There’s a fun little moment before a cutaway where after Raph and Leo have been quickly dispatched, the two less action-thirsty turtles have a quick paper-rock-scissors match to see whose turn it will be to fight him; the mood quickly changes from “who gets to fight him next” to “who HAS to fight him next.”

After a brief scene of Casey, Danny, and Pippi Shortstocking arriving at the streets below with a whole gang of confused proto-Foot hoodlums in tow, when we shift back to the rooftop battle the four turtles are huddling together. Mike jokingly tries to talk tactics (“At exactly what point did we lose control here?”) and all four are panting hard, giving the impression of a drawn-out battle. When they figure out that their opponent must be the main villain and therefore knows what happened to Splinter, they set off after him with renewed determination.

The previously discussed issue of what to do with bladed weapons in a kid’s movie is more acute in this scene, since it’s hard not to notice just how many chances Shredder, considering his many sharp implements, has to kill the turtles which he completely passes up. It’s possible that he’s intentionally dragging out the fight as this is likely the closest thing to a challenge he’s had in years. But there’s only so many times you can see a guy use his double-edged spear to non-lethally flip, trip or bonk his opponents before you stop taking him seriously as a hardened killer.

Another cut back to Casey discovering that Splinter’s disappeared and then finishing off some leftover Foot stragglers (which gets the dump truck into position for later). When we return, the fight is even more intense, and Leo’s latest round in particular makes Shredder work for it: the villain ends up downing him just as before, but is visibly pained at the arm slice he received in the process. Perhaps realizing he can’t string these kids out for much longer, Shredder sinisterly implies that he killed their adoptive rat dad (neither he nor the turtles realize that Splinter is within spitting distance), and takes advantage of Leonardo’s blind rage to floor the poor kid and hold him at spear point. He gets the rest of the boys to toss their weapons over the roof (we see Mike’s chain sticks inadvertently catch on a ladder), but then he goes back on his unstated promise to release Leo in exchange for their disarming. Bad form!

Fortunately, the unexpected arrival of Splinter grants Leo a stay of execution. The rodent master unnerves Shredder with a monologue full of information the audience already knows: this old rat who resisted Shredder’s torture for interrogation for weeks is the same creature who scarred Oroku Saki for life many years ago. Removing his face plate to reveal the permanent claw marks, Shredder charges at Splinter in a blind fury, which the rat calmly turns aside using Mike’s discarded nunchaku. He briefly keeps Shredder from succumbing to the multi-story drop but Shredder, ever treacherous, throws a knife at Splinter… which only makes the latter lose his grip on Saki as he effortlessly catches the blade. The villain takes a painful-looking fall into the back of the garbage truck, and even if it wasn’t fatal Casey insures it is, by “accidentally” pulling the lever that activates the hydraulic press (Koteas’ purposefully hammy “OOPS!” is one of the all-time great Single Word Line Deliveries, right up there with Bill Murray’s baptism scene in Ed Wood). There’s blood stains and everything. Death without honor, indeed.

A lot to like here. For once in the movie the heroes aren’t facing off against a bunch of punching bags whose only advantage is numbers; they fight a losing battle here because the Shredder is just that good, and believably so. Good, but not invincible, as his penultimate tussle with Leo proves. And I hate to sound like a broken record about how difficult it must have been to do martial arts in those Muppet suits, but anybody who can make four guys in giant foam turtle outfits fighting a spiky glittering supervillain actually look more thrilling than silly… well, that guy’s a miracle worker, far as I’m concerned.

It may be slightly disappointing that when Shredder is finished, the turtles end up as spectators in their own fight scene, but when you think about it, it’s really Splinter’s score to settle– he’s the one who permanently lost family to the Shredder’s evil, not to mention those weeks he spent being chained up and beaten. Still, kinda silly that Shredder takes such a furious running charge at a guy standing on the edge of a roof– is he really THAT mad about his old mouth scratch? Ninja please, get over it.

In conclusion: Cowabunga.

Grade: B

Recommended Links: Ooh, I really shouldn’t have said “ninja” all those times. It’s not MY word.

Coming Attractions: What’s the word for something that’s not credible?

All in the family

The Incredibles is my favorite Pixar movie. This is not a title I bestow lightly.

Released in 2004 and directed by nerd hero Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, Ratatouille, the Mission Impossible movie where Tom Cruise is framed by bad guys and has to go rogue from his own organization– no, the other movie where he does that. No, the OTHER other one), The Incredibles is a joyful celebration of old school superheroics. It manages the strange feat of being deeply nerdy about its comic book inspirations but not self-consciously so; smart comic fans will spot the story’s roots in everything from the Fantastic Four to Watchmen but the movie never disappears up in its own butt with overtly winking geek references. It’s also surprisingly Randian but we’ll not get into that. Instead we’ll get into….

1) Mr. Incredible vs Omnidroid

The Fighters:

• Robert “Bob” Parr aka Mr. Incredible, a major-league superhero who’s been in forced retirement thanks to hyper-litigious American society. In the years since he’s become overweight and frustrated with his mundane life, yearning to exercise his full abilities once again. Voiced by Craig T. Nelson.
  • Armed with: Nothing but his supernatural physical strength and heightened durability.
• Omnidroid version 8.0. An autonomous robot with a learning A.I., built to kill superheroes and being molded through much trial & error into the ultimate war machine. It’s already on its eighth incarnation and is plenty dangerous, currently in the shape of a huge metal sphere walking on four tentacles.. I’m not sure of the overall practicality of that design but certainly its uniform roundness leaves it with few apparent weak spots.
  • Armed with: Its main weapons are its metal tentacles which are long, flexible, retractable and equipped with gripper claws. It’s also not shy about using its enormous size as a weapon.

The Setup: Fed up with hiding his true nature, Bob Parr is an easy mark for a weapons contractor who tracks him down & hires him to stop his “malfunctioning” Omnidroid. In time it will be revealed that this employment offer is actually a trap for Mr. Incredible: the robot’s owners have programmed it to kill him or, failing that, observe enough from its defeat in order to be made even stronger in its next iteration. But for now Bob, uncomfortably squeezed into his old outfit, goes along with the fake story, gets dropped on the lush jungle island of Nomanisan (get it?) and gets to tracking down his foe.

The Fight: Even at his prime Mr. Incredible was hardly the Dark Knight Detective so he spends a good deal of time searching aimlessly for the giant machine, and he stumbles onto the telltale signs of Omnidroid mere seconds before it arrives and attacks. Despite his girth, Bob’s uncanny agility is still intact, and each swipe from the robo-beast’s grasping tentacles is a near-miss. This isn’t a slugfest; the one good punch Incredible gets in on Omnidroid launches it far backward but it’s not much worse for wear when it lands.

A lot of fun stuff happens from here on. When Parr tries to vault over the approaching robot, it calculates (we keep getting brief views from Omnidroid’s internal HUD) the trajectory of his leap and swats him out of the air effortlessly. At one point it fully retracts all its metal limbs and rolls into a ball, chasing after Mr. Incredible in a way that would probably trigger Indiana Jones’ PTSD if he were watching. That also leads to a chase down a cliff side and Omnidroid hurling rocks at a distant Bob; there’s a kind of hypnotic grace to the fluid movements of the machine’s arms.

The fight gets a lot more serious when it moves into a nearby volcano and Bob finds himself with his back against a lake of lava. The superhero is able to jiu jitsu his grasping enemy into the lava and seemingly cut the fight short– he even enjoys some gloating victory laughs which throw out his already over-stressed back. Unfortunately the machine is apparently capable of withstanding even the most extreme of temperatures and it rises from the liquid hot magma looking rather ticked.

Omnidroid even demonstrates a new technique, holding two of its arms stretched out directly in front of it and spinning the claws into whirling propellers of death. Parr escapes getting pureed by jumping out of range but the machine still seizes and slams him to the ground (should have just dropped him into the lava, silly robot), but when it tries to finish him off by ripping him in half lengthwise, the pulling motion inadvertently repairs his back– instant chiropractor!– and gives him the burst of energy he needed to escape.

Mr. Incredible opts to use the big muscle in his head for once, and in the confusion he immediately gets directly underneath the robot– while Omnidroid has sensor cameras on both its top and bottom, they don’t have a full 360 degree view, and Bob exploits the blind spot. He then rips off the bottom sensor and climbs inside the machine. As it tries futilely to get at him, Omnidroid pokes several holes in itself, and finally Bob lures it into stabbing directly into its own power core. It sinks to the ground, inert.

Though there was all sorts of spiffy superhero antics in the movie’s delightful opening prologue, this is where The Incredibles really starts to flex its action muscles, and I’m very pleased with how it delivers. The fight’s staging covers quite a bit of ground, from a dense green jungle to rocky cliff to the inside of a volcano (shouldn’t being this close to the lava be too hot for Bob, even in his suit? And shouldn’t it take longer for Omnidroid to cool off after emerging from the lava? That stuff’s like a thousand degrees). Michael Giacchino’s masterful score is appropriately menacing in the early part of the fight, but quickly turns triumphant (the movie bucks expectations with deliberately retro music motifs that sound more appropriate to a 60s spy show than a modern superhero flick) when it’s clear that Bob is going to turn the tables.

Speaking of appropriately menacing, Bird does an excellent job of selling the threat presented by the Omnidroid. Mr. Incredible gets by with some clever moves and his fair share of luck, but after seeing that metal beast in action there’s no question the fight could just as easily have gone the other way. This is important because our pal Omni is going to come back in a big way.

Strange to think that this movie’s nearly ten years old. Superhero films have come a long way since then, but few have rivaled this shining gem. This fight that closes out the first act serves as a strong opening statement as to what the master storytellers at Pixar could do on the genre’s canvas. And it will get even better.

Grade: B+

Coming Attractions: Dash runs away with our hearts.

No, he can be cocky. He earned it.

In describing this fight scene to you, I am burdened with glorious purpose.

I know, I was overwhelmed too.

2) The Incredibles vs Syndrome’s Henchmen

[On the audio commentary, Brad Bird says that they called the bulk of this sequence "100-Mile Dash," because Brad Bird is awesome.]

The Fighters:

• Dashiell Robert “Dash” Parr, the ten-year-old son of Bob & Helen Parr. His brash and feisty nature fits in perfectly with his superpower; both elements have gotten him into trouble at home & school in the past. Early in the movie he vocalized some of the resentment that quietly gnawed at his parents, namely that for the family to deny their true greatness in order to spare the feelings of the “ordinary” is to do a disservice to everyone. Voiced by Spencer Fox.
  • Armed with: his superpower of blinding speed, not just at running but with his whole body. It’s something he’s grown up with but never truly unleashed, thanks to the restrictions placed upon him by his family’s secret exile.
• Violet “Vi” Parr, Bob & Helen’s older daughter (age not specified but probably 13-14). Violet is at that painfully awkward stage of adolescence, simultaneously yearning for and terrified of attention. Her power set is even more appropriate to her personality than her brother’s. Voiced by Sarah Vowell.
  • Armed with: the ability to make herself invisible and, more importantly from a tactical standpoint, the ability to generate force fields in her immediate vicinity (in this aspect she is more than any of the other family members clearly modeled on a member of the Fantastic Four– namely Invisible Woman, who has the exact same seemingly unrelated pair of powers). She’s had even less exercise of this power than Dash has, owing largely to a lack of self-confidence. This is about to change.
• Helen Parr aka Elastigirl, the matriarch of the Incredible clan. Like her husband, she’s a former professional superhero forced into retirement, though she’s worked harder to adjust to “normal” life. But this little expedition to Nomanisan proves she’s still got plenty of chops. Voiced by Holly Hunter.
  • Armed with: the power to greatly elongate her limbs, torso, neck, etc. Coupled with the speed & practice she has, the ability is amazing for offense, mobility, and stealth– though I’m not covering it for the blog, one of the movie’s underrated sequences has Helen using her rubbery skills to infiltrate Syndrome’s supervillain fortress.
• Bob Parr aka Mr. Incredible, needing to be rescued after his introduction to Syndrome and an ill-timed distress call got him captured. Same powers as before and still voiced by Craig T. Nelson.
• Syndrome’s henchmen, a bunch of particularly nasty goons.
  • Armed with: some are on foot and carry small arms, but most of them are piloting a nifty sci-fi vehicle of Syndrome’s own design. Shaped like a one-man flying saucer and surrounded by a spinning/gyrating blade (ideal for both offense and cutting through the dense jungle foliage), the machines are fast, agile and each equipped with twin machine guns. Though they’re never named in the film, the Internet tells me the devices are called “Velocipods.” Which… sure, okay.

Note that all four of the Incredibles are also wearing their spiffy new outfits, courtesy of master super-suit designer Edna Mode. Each one is highly durable, resistant to extreme temperatures, tailored specifically to match each individual’s power set, and outfitted with a distress beacon in the chest.

The Setup: Mr. Incredible has been called in for a rematch with Omnidroid on Nomanisan, culminating in his aforementioned capture and the discovery of Syndrome’s scheme. Helen, suspicious about her husband’s absence but ignorant of his captivity, used Edna’s tracking device to get Bob’s location and flew to the island on a borrowed plane. Dash and Violet had secretly stowed aboard, but before she could take them back, Syndrome sent missiles to blow the plane out of the sky. They escaped, but Mr. Incredible is left bound and thinking his family’s dead.

Having swam to the island, Helen hid the kids in a nearby cave while she ninja’d her way into the villain’s lair. Before leaving, she tried to communicate to them the enormity of the danger they’re in and how they’ll have to fight to protect themselves. It’s a really quiet & powerful scene, with a mother who doesn’t want her children to have to grow up so fast but resolving that she has no other choice under the circumstances, so no point whining about it. A nearby rocket taking off (long story) floods the cave with fire and flushes the children out of their hiding place and into the open. They sleep in the jungle and wake up to a robotic sentry detecting their presence and sounding the alarm, so shortly after, they’re quickly surrounded by Syndrome’s guards. Violet vanishes from sight and reminds her brother to follow mom’s advice (in Dash’s case, to run “as fast as you can,” a prospect that filled him with awe). The boy zooms off with goons in pursuit, one of them remaining behind to look for Violet.

The Fight: An embarrassment of riches. To try to describe it “blow by blow” style would be to do it a disservice, not to mention exhausting.

So much good stuff happens, mostly involving the pint-sized speedster. All of his antics are entertaining, but there’s a clever escalation to his scenes here– he gets not just faster as the scene goes on but also more crafty and confident. Early on he makes some mistakes and runs into a swarm of bugs, then later a swing on a vine sends him flying off a cliff only to be accidentally (and conveniently) saved by a Velocipod that was swooping by. Standing on the deck face-to-face with the pilot, Dash’s blinding speed lets him dodge all the adult’s punches, and when he first hits back with a quick punch he has a look of amazement that’s perfectly natural from any ten-year-old: “Did I just punch a grown-up and get away with it?” He increases his assault but when he’s distracted by the sight of the cliff the pod’s hurtling toward (the pilot’s back is turned from the flight path), he gets clocked right in the face, and the resulting fall saves him from the crash. Soon, however, he will get by less on luck and more on skill.

There’s no shortage of other fun beats & gorgeous animation: Dash bobbing & weaving to avoid machine gun strafes, Dash bending a tree to cause a pursuing pod to crash, Dash running upside down and all around a watery cave to get two bad guys to collide with each other, etc. But it all pales next to the film’s finest moment:

The kid finds three more pursuers on his tail at one point, and after it’s too late to change course he sees he’s heading out onto open water. Assuming he’s in for a painful splash, he flinches… only to look down and discover that he’s moving so fast, he’s skimming along the ocean’s surface rather than sinking. Finally encountering the reality of his unlocked potential, of seeing what he can do after ten long years of being told what he can’t, he just… laughs. He laughs for maybe a second before zipping off quicker than ever, but there’s so much packed into that one gleeful giggle. It’s the laugh of someone who’s truly, ridiculously, stupidly happy. If this were a different kind of Disney movie he would go into a five-minute musical number about this awesome new power he is (witness the songs about flying in Peter Pan and Aladdin, for example), but The Incredibles accomplishes more with one laugh than other films could with an entire opera of songs.

I know it’s subjective, but it’s hard for me to overstate just how indelibly wonderful this moment is. It’s up there with Quint telling the story of the USS Indianapolis, Michael Corleone closing the door on Kay, Kikuchiyo lecturing the other samurai about a farmer’s life, and “you’re all clear kid, now let’s blow this thing and go home.” It’s poetry, full stop.

Dash shaking off the last of his pursuers leads to a nice break where we see Helen arriving just as her husband’s being freed by Syndrome’s assistant Mirage (herself in the middle of a Heel Face Turn). They storm out to look for the kids, who are actually doing all right on their own. Dash reunites with Violet just in time to save her from a canny guard who threw dirt at her to detect where she’d been hiding, and she immediately repays the favor by asserting her ability to create force fields just before the guard was about to gun down Dash in retaliation. The two improvise a neat trick where Dash runs in place within Vi’s spherical field and turns the thing into a giant, invincible hamster ball. Some more pursuing Velocipods bounce off before they finally encounter (and non-fatally run over) their parents.

The brief reunion is interrupted by a few straggler guards, which the Incredible parents dispatch with ruthless, Papa & Mama Bear efficiency. The hilarious moment where they look at each other and simultaneously say “I love you” in front of an enormous explosion they just caused is priceless, even in a sequence filled with priceless moments. Another squad of goons arrive to spoil the fun, and while last time the kids looked on in awe at a whole new side of their parents, this time the whole family works together.

The next bit is as brief as it is spectacular. These four had never fought as one unit until now (heck, until ten minutes ago half of them had never fought a single bad guy at all), but to see the way they work together now you’d think they’d been practicing for years… and why wouldn’t they? They’re family.

Everybody contributes. Dash runs circles around the group in order to kick up a dust storm to limit the enemy’s visibility. Violet (her devilish grin signaling the definitive end of her “wallflower” phase) puts up a shield to block automatic fire, while Mom protects her against enemies sneaking up from behind. Dad starts to wreck one of the ships but, unfortunately, it all comes to an abrupt end when Syndrome arrives and instantly traps all four with his cool but narratively boring “zero-point energy” gauntlets, capturing the whole family. Grr.

Let’s take a moment to note here that this is not the old G.I. Joe cartoons, heck it’s not even the Ninja Turtles movie– people die in this fight scene. Several of them, in fact, and though it’s all done through bloodless explosions there’s no doubt what happened to the pilots. Causing the death of a human being, even in a justified self-defense context, can be a traumatic thing even for most adults, so on the one hand it’s odd to see Dash and Violet react so casually the first time they do it (maybe they went through some therapy after the credits rolled?). But on the other hand, it’s refreshing for a big movie to take such a no-nonsense approach to the issue of genuinely bad guys, and what happens when you’re up against them in a kill-or-be-killed situation.

This scene, though: like it, love it, and gotta have it. Dash is the breakout star but everybody gets something to do. The bad guys are generic but they and their implements are suitably intimidating. Giacchino’s music soars. The staging is fantastic and covers a wide range of terrain. Even in the relatively quiet break in Bob’s prison cell, the pacing never really slows down. And this remains the greatest depiction of a superhero speedster to ever grace a movie scene.

There are things to object to, if we’re being thorough. Again, the bad guys are nameless & generic, Dash is way luckier than he should be, and that wonderful final bit where the Incredibles fight together is over almost as soon as it starts, thanks to Syndrome and his Win Button of a weapon. But then again:

Grade: A+

Coming Attractions: A giant robot is attacking the city, as those are wont to do.

We’re gonna need a bigger boat.

Freakin’ robots, man.

3) The Incredibles and Frozone vs Omnidroid

The Fighters:

• The Incredibles: Bob/Mr. Incredible, Helen/Elastigirl, Dash and Violet. An ersatz Fantastic Four family that’s finally embraced their destiny as a crime-fighting team– an old job for the parents and a new one for the kids.
• Lucius Best aka Frozone, a close friend of the Parr family (he was best man at their wedding) and another superhero. Although retired and adjusted relatively well to civilian life, he’s been going on occasional covert vigilante outings with Bob, and is doesn’t hesitate to spring back into action when he sees the Omnidroid wreaking havoc in the city– there’s a very funny segment where he argues with his wife about where she put his old superhero gear.
  • Armed with: Roughly analogous to Marvel’s Iceman, Frozone’s powers are related to ice and cold. He can instantly freeze nearby water or even moisture straight out of the air, and failing that can use the moisture in his own body. The boots on his super suit can transform instantly into a sort of high-tech snowboard. Voiced by Samuel L Jackson, who’s clearly having fun.
• Omnidroid version 10.0, the biggest & baddest one yet.
  • Armed with: In addition to being the size of a large house, this Omnidroid has SIX weaponized tentacles (the claws of which can detach or be manually launched) and a swiveling laser cannon near its sensor.

The Setup: The end-stage of Syndrome’s plan with the perfected Omnidroid is to launch and then re-drop it from orbit into a populated area so that people will assume it’s an alien craft, then eventually have it attack everything in sight– it’s kind of the inverse of the plot of The Iron Giant, come to think of it. Syndrome will then show up and “defeat” his creation, passing himself off as a new superhero. It goes off pretty well at first, but the robot has actually grown sentient enough to rebel against Syndrome, and before knocking him out was able to separate the villain from the wrist-gauntlet he’d been using to control Omnidroid. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Syndrome, the Incredibles have escaped from captivity and made their way to the site of Omnidroid’s debut.

There’s a really beautiful moment between Bob & Helen, where the big guy shows his vulnerable side as he reluctantly reveals that he’s “not strong enough” to face the very idea of losing his family. Unfortunately this nice family discussion is interrupted by the arrival of a giant murder-bot. I hate when that happens.

What follows is something superhero fans had been waiting to see actualized on the big screen for decades: a team of superheroes fighting against an honest-to-gosh giant robot attacking the city. In 2004, that was a revelation. Heck, it hasn’t been re-attempted since, though Joss Whedon deserves credit for having a team of superheroes fight off an alien armada that had been attacking the city, even if it’s not fair to the aliens because they didn’t have a Hulk.

The Fight: The initial onslaught from Omnidroid scatters the family and leaves the kids too frazzled to react properly. Violet gets her wits about her in time to save herself and Dash from the robot with a shield. She can withstand several blows from the machine’s limbs, but the force of it dropping its entire body on the shield is too much for her, breaking the force field. Mr. Incredible then stops the robot from crushing the both of them by bench-pressing it with all four limbs, which gets him seized and thrown through a nearby office building. He responds by jumping out and knocking Omnidroid down with a flying tackle. He’s helped by the arrival of Frozone, whose ice attacks against the machine’s joints don’t seem to do more than annoy it.

When Bob finds and realizes the importance of Syndrome’s remote, the tenor of the scene changes. Omnidroid does everything it can to keep the Incredibles from holding on to and using the remote (before the fight ends, random button-mashing will knock off another whole limb from the robot, and launch it several hundred feet in the air), which necessitates its changing hands a lot. In a clever callback to an earlier scene which combined their respective powers (a superhero twist on the typical “Dad tossing the football” thing), Bob tells his son to “go long” and throws the remote so far only a speedster like Dash could catch it. Helen– seizing a manhole cover and bending her arm around a light pole to create enough momentum to launch it, a rather awesome move– knocks out Omnidroid’s cannon, which is kind of too bad because it was cool as heck to watch Dash dodge all those laser blasts.

pew pew pew

The robot is still dangerous enough even with its offensive capacity diminished and pursues Dash onto a body of water, but fortunately Frozone is there to skate to Dash’s rescue, creating ice walkways for them to slide around on. There’s another fun bit where Frozone insta-freezes a giant splash from Omnidroid to cushion everyone’s fall.

We learn that the machine is still projectile-capable when it launches a claw at Robert to keep him from seizing the remote, though the loss of that claw causes the robot to stumble on one of Lucius’ ice slicks. An invisible Violet finally seizes the remote, and that, combined with Bob’s recollection that the robot’s shell is not strong enough to withstand blows from its own limbs, leads to the family launching the forgotten claw straight at Omnidroid’s metal heart, ripping its power source right out. Thunk.

Really great work is done here. The city setting is a change of scenery, since the majority of the film’s action having been on varying parts of Nomanisan. As with the previous dynamite sequence, everybody gets at least a thing or two to contribute, scoring lots of little victories against Omnidroid while never undercutting just how nigh-unstoppable and relentless it is. Giacchino’s jazzy music is as fun as ever.

As good as the staging is, I think there might be one or two “last minute saves” too many in this scene– a temptation that’s hard to resist in scenes with multiple protagonists moving in & out of the action. And as noted, the nature of the scene changes greatly when the remote is introduced: away from being a “fight” to more of a chase/defensive/keep-away sequence. After that, aside from Helen’s sweet move taking out the blaster, there’s not much in the way of back & forth with Omnidroid, just a lot of looking for an opportunity to exploit its weak point with one fatal blow. Still, it’s superheroes vs a giant robot attacking the city– how much can you really quibble with that?

Grade: A-

Recommended Links: It appears that Brad Bird felt a disturbance in the Force, because while I was writing the drafts of these posts he happened to mention that he might get to work on making an Incredibles sequel after all. I rather think we should already have had like one or two of those already, but I won’t complain.

Coming Attractions: I’ve been too easy on myself for a while now, what with these positive examples and all. For the next series my disappointment will be…

Whoa 2.0.

This movie was released just a little over ten years ago, to the delight of some, the disappointment of others, and the confusion of many. I won’t get too deep into my feelings on the film overall, at least not at first, because I still don’t quite know what to think about it. It presents a lot of ideas that are really fascinating or just plain neat, such as the way physical keys act as a way to access “back doors” within the computer world. It’s so stylistically overblown and needlessly convoluted that at times I half-suspect it’s deliberately satirizing itself/messing with its audience*. Similarly, depending on my mood I can’t tell if all the sequels’ endless philosophical blather is the filmmakers going over my head or or up their own butts, though I usually lean towards the latter. Still, the attempt is… admirable.

[*I more than half-suspect the third movie does so. When the Merovingian ominously tells the heroes early on that he'll help them only if they provide him with "the eyes of the Oracle," Trinity snaps and declares "we don't have TIME for stupid fetch-quest crap like in the last movie!" in almost as many words.]

Whatever The Matrix Reloaded is, it is quite definitely, for good and for ill, not The Matrix. The film’s fight scenes, though largely technically well-done and reasonably entertaining, provide one very interesting metric in this regard. Let’s get to it.

1) Trinity vs Unfortunate Security Guards

The Fighters:

• Trinity, master kung fu hacker and girlfriend of the digital messiah. Played by Carrie-Ann Moss.
  • Armed with: I do believe she’s packing some serious guns, but here she sticks with using her motorcycle helmet to devastating effect. Come to think of it, the motorcycle itself gets rather weaponized, too.
• Security guards, five of them. A bunch of meatheads in the wrong place on the wrong shift. Played by stunt men.
  • Armed with: Batons.

The Setup: This fight and Trinity’s bad encounter with an Agent that follows are revealed to be part of a prophetic dream that Neo’s having, the meaning of which won’t be clear until later. But even though we don’t know the context, it’s clear enough that Trinity is storming whatever building this chumps are guarding, just as the opening action scene in the first movie made it clear that she was cornered and running from dangerous forces.

The Fight: Trinity makes a strong opening move by literally dropping in on her motorcycle from atop a neighboring building. The bike itself crashes and makes quite a fireball out of the guard shack, but of course not before our ninja gal had time to jump off and land in a self-consciously Super Cool pose in front of the explosion:

Filmed in super slow-motion, just in case you somehow missed how COOL it was.

The surviving guards come at Trinity in a rush, but she makes short work of them, using a combination of her limbs and her headgear. She does pull off a few neat moves, the first being a slow motion high flip (during which she kicks a guy while upside down), and the second being the “scorpion kick” (so called because she leans her torso so far forward her kicking loops around the back way like a scorpion’s tail) she uses as her finisher.

Curiously, she only seems to hit each guy about once or twice each, and once they go down they stay down. Paying close attention to the fight you’re actually surprised to see how quickly it’s over, and in more of a “wait, she already beat them all?” sense than a “wow, look how quick she beat them!” one. The impacts aren’t sold like they should be. This will be a recurring theme for this film.

Speaking of recurrence, this sequence is, as alluded to above, quite clearly intended to invite comparison to the first Matrix. They both open with a brief but attention-grabbing action sequence starring Trinity in a mysterious situation, though as noted here her role is offensive rather than defensive. Here, though, it just doesn’t carry the same weight; no one seeing this movie is a stranger to this world and we’ve seen what people like Trinity can do.

Still, it’s not bad as whistle-whetters go. The pace will pick up from here, but looking back it’s easy to see the writing on the wall for how things are going to be different.

Grade: B-

Recommended Links: To be fair, here’s a thoughtful piece defending what’s good about the Matrix sequels.

Coming Attractions: Neo knows even MORE kung fu!

And a new tailor!

“Brooks Brothers Team… ATTACK!”

2) Neo vs Agents

The Fighters:

• Neo, hero of the first film and savior of the human race finally having claimed his destiny… or so he thinks. Played by Keanu Reeves.
  • Armed with: Neo’s powers as the anagrammatical “One” grant him superior strength, speed, durability, reaction time, etc. That’s just counting what he uses in this fight and not getting into his powers of flight, limited telekinesis, “code vision” etc. More on that in a moment.
• Agent Johnson, Agent Thompson and Agent Jackson. The three new Agents (replacing the first film’s Smith, Jones and Brown) are briefly recognized by Neo as “upgrades” to the previous model, presumably as a handwave explanation for why it’s not even MORE easy for him to beat them. I once read a Matrix wiki editor’s explanation that the upgraded Agent model traded advanced power for diminished intelligence/situational awareness, but I suspect that’s fanwankery because I doubt the machine overlords operate on a system of limited “skill point” distribution like in a tabletop RPG. Anyway, they *are* all noticeably taller. Played by Daniel Bernhardt, Matt McColm and David Kilde.
  • Armed with: Presumably they have the standard-issue Agent handguns, but they don’t use them. After all, Neo can stop bullets… and only bullets. So punching & kicking would still work, in theory.

This leads into one of the main gripes I (and few others, it seems) have with the Matrix sequels: the furious backpedaling the Wachowskis did about what being “The One” means. At the end of the first movie, Neo pulls off several seemingly impossible feats as part of assuming his destiny and completely transgressing the boundaries of his digital prison: he stops bullets because he “knows” they’re not real, he effortlessly parries all of Smith’s blows because he can bypass all the Matrix’s limitations on speed, and he flies away at the end because the world’s gravity has no meaning to him.

All those things he did were mere manifestations of his overall cyber-deity status, but the sequels posit that The One actually has a very narrow power set, limited mostly to what we saw him do at the end of The Matrix. Now we “learn” that Neo stopped bullets, moved fast enough to block lots of punches and flew because… he has the very specific powers of stopping bullets, moving really fast and flying. It’s a maddeningly obtuse way of rewriting the films’ history. I understand why the Wachowskis did it: if Neo had been basically God rather than merely another “superhero,” there would be no believable physical challenges for him in the sequels… but then, if the only way you can make an interesting sequel is to lie about what happened at the end of your first film, maybe that’s a sign you shouldn’t be making that sequel. Sometimes I feel like Annie Wilkes: “He didn’t get out of the caca-doody car!”

Anyway.

The Setup: Neo, Morpheus, and many others are attending an in-Matrix meeting regarding some really troubling intelligence reports. Neo’s called out of it when he has a visitor at the door in the form of rogue Agent Smith, who left him a cryptic message in the form his old discarded earpiece. Neo misses Smith, but arrives in time to see through the door and realize that three different Agents are about to arrive. He warns off the rest of the redpills and faces off the new arrivals alone.

Neo’s faux-casual “Hiya, fellas” after they break the door down sounds a bit stilted, but the way the Agents talk amongst themselves in short, rapid-fire sentences– reminiscent of the way twins in kids’ movies finish each others’ sentences– is creepily amusing.

The Fight: Thompson first lunges out on his own with a few exploratory attacks, which Neo dodges & blocks with literally one hand behind his back. Many of Thompson’s moves seem unnecessarily fancy, in a way we never really saw the Agents behave during physical action scenes in the first movie– Smith came off as deadly and skilled, yes, but he was never ostentatious, at least not in terms of martial arts. Agents aren’t supposed to be badass martial artists, they’re supposed to be efficient killing machines. Some of that might be owed to the fact the power imbalance has changed, so it’s the Agents flailing desperately against the humans, but that only goes so far. Cool moves like spin kicks and so forth are all too human; it’s a bit incongruous to see an Agent using them. It’s one of many touches, both big and small, in these films that made audiences feel like the Wachowskis had lost their way.

How bored does the guy on the far left look?

Thompson finally grabs Neo’s wrist (the contact seems to be what clues him off to the trio’s “upgraded” nature) and the fight kicks off in earnest from there, with the other two joining the fray and Don Davis’ musical score kicking in.

Even against the superior models, the fight’s all too easy for Neo. He’s constantly one step ahead of them, avoiding their attacks and even using their few successful moves (mostly in terms of their throws & shoves giving him momentum; not once is he ever struck) against them. In fact, Neo’s SO successful that on closer examination of the fight, it’s harder to tell whether this is achieved by good he is or by how often his enemies seem to “coincidentally” happen to facilitate him. The most egregious example is also the most notable move of the fight, where Neo is launched in the air by an Agent but instead grabs a light fixture & swing around on it horizontally, using the momentum of the swing to kick an Agent who was jumping at him. Why was the Agent right there at that exact time in Neo’s brief airborne shenanigans, if not to line himself up perfectly to get kicked?

It’s all a bit over-choreographed, and self-consciously “cool.” This will be a running theme throughout the second and third movies: whereas the original drew strength from a seemingly effortless confidence, the sequels just seem arrogant or full of themselves– more like posers. Such a fine yet crucial distinction.

Also, as much as it works on a technical level (even when you can see the seams, the choreography still impresses), the fight feels a bit toothless, weightless, insubstantial. Neo’s out-maneuvering his adversaries and hitting them hard, but for some reason the impacts just don’t sell, they don’t look like they hurt. To a certain extent that’s understandable because the Agents are just computer programs and while they can be damaged they cannot feel pain, but you still find yourself missing a certain sense of punishment, of raw and visceral force being meted out. Paradoxically, the fight is disappointingly short AND boringly long; too brief to be a genuinely exciting struggle, but not brutal enough to be a gleeful beatdown.

Still, it is definitely a “Matrix” fight. Gravity is selectively defied via some well-applied wire work, slow-motion abounds, and plenty of kung is fu’d. It’s just not enough.

Grade: C+

Recommended Links: Long-time fans of the actor will remember that Keanu IS secretly an “agent,” himself.

Coming Attractions: Seraph apologizes to Neo. He ought to apologize to the audience.

Don’t act all confused. You know what you did.

Sound and fury, signifying nothing.

“Nice to meet you. I’m in this movie for no reason. You?”

3) Neo vs Seraph

The Fighters:

• Neo, the prophesied savior and so forth. Played by Keanu Reeves.
• Seraph, another sentient program within the Matrix. His responsibility is to protect the Oracle, though it’s hinted at that that’s not what he was originally designed for or what he’s always done. One of the few named, non-Agent character who’s not dressed like a goth teenager’s wet dream. Played by Collin Chou, though originally the role was intended for Michelle Yeoh, and later Jet Li.

Nobody’s armed with anything here, it’s all hand-to-hand.

The Setup: Neo’s been looking for the Oracle, who he hasn’t seen since before his embracing his One-ness. Receiving a summons from her, he arrives alone at this small tea shop, finding only Seraph (a class of angel mentioned in the Bible), who appears in his “Matrix vision” as a lot of shining white code. After brief introductions, Seraph offers up a pre-emptive apology for the “fight” (read: brief inconvenience) he’s about to cause.

The Fight: The previous fight was relatively toothless, but that one at least had people getting hit. This one doesn’t even have that much.

Oh, it’s all very well-choreographed. There is all manner of fancy swinging, dodging, countering and elaborate footwork. Early on, Seraph does a neat trick where he gradually circles around Neo as they clash, which eventually forces them to both take the fight upward to the small tables in the room, where it stays for the duration. Unnecessary, but kind of neat how they maintain their balance.

And whatever else, the Wachowski still knew how to film a fight scene at this point. They know when to make their shots close-ups, long, medium, overhead, profile, static, moving, etc., and always with the well-applied spice of slow-motion. Don Davis’ fast-paced Asian drums are fun, a sort of a callback to the cheesy riffs that opened up the first movie’s dojo scene. There’s definite skill on display both with the combatants and the filmmaking.

However, it’s still a big nothing. As complex as it is, it’s over in less than a minute, and the closest thing to a genuine connecting blow is Neo palming Seraph on a chest, and Seraph only uses the momentum to launch himself into a backflip anyway. The skill level of Neo’s angelic opponent is unclear, because even though they fight to a virtual standstill it’s likely that Neo was holding back in order to not hurt someone he thinks is an ally… but then Seraph may have been holding back as well, because he was only fighting hard enough to test Neo.

Yes, “test.” When Seraph cuts the fight short, he explains that the tangle was necessary in order to verify Neo’s identity. When Neo snarks that Seraph could have just asked, he replies with deadpan sincerity “You cannot truly know someone, until you fight them.” Which, uh… lolwhut?

This fight’s existence makes no sense. The Oracle has this super kung fu guy as her 24-7 protection who insists upon engaging in sophisticated authentication procedures (to sniff out shape-shifters?), even though she can literally see the future? And where was this guy in the first movie? I distinctly remember that the Oracle used to have an apartment that pretty much anyone was able to walk in & out of. Did all those weird bald kids have to get their asses kicked by Seraph before they were allowed to come in and bend spoons in the living room? Maybe this is a new security procedure on account of Agent Smith’s recent antics, but his powers distinctly do not include impersonating other people, so….

Doesn’t make much point from a pacing standpoint, either. It has indeed been a long time since this movie flexed its action muscles, and audiences were itching for a fight after being forced to sit through an interminable scenes of a slow-motion cave rave, Keanu’s buttcrack, and meandering discussions with Anthony Zerbe about “choice.” But the audience is due for one doozy of a fight– arguably its centerpiece– less than ten minutes after this one ends, so….

I just don’t understand the Wachowskis. Does that mean I have to fight them?

Grade: C

Coming Attractions: Let’s get Burly.

Like this, but more realistic. Mostly.

In which we find out that Agent Smith is not just the president of the Agent Smith Fan Club…

… he’s also EVERY member

4) Neo vs Agent Smith(s)

The Fighters:

• Neo, who you know by now. Played by Keanu Reeves.
  • Armed with: Nothing at first, but eventually he seizes a metal pole to use as a club/staff.
• Agent Smith, the chief antagonist of the first film, now turned rogue and able to reproduce at will by over-writing himself onto other humans and programs. Played by Hugo Weaving with his signature awkward-cool.

The Setup: Fresh off the useless fight with Seraph, Neo has found his way to the Oracle and “talked” with her for a few minutes on a mostly empty playground. The most direct help she provides involves pointing him toward the Merovingian, but much of what she says is arguably a lot of papered-over psychobabble about “choice” and various techno-jargon that is only saved by the smooth delivery of the late Gloria Foster, a fine actress. I have a friend who actually walked out of the theater during this conversation when he heard Keanu say the line “programs hacking programs,” which I still laugh about to this day.

Anyway, it’s not spelled out but it’s pretty clear the Oracle and Seraph know that The Smiths (heh) are coming, because he ushers her out of there with visible urgency. Indeed their exit door barely closes when the old villain belts out his now-famous “Miiiiiister Anderson” from off-screen and is revealed in a slow-motion shot amongst a flock of scattering black birds.

Screw John Woo and his doves; crows are where it’s at.

The two have a bit of a macho staredown and discussion, though once again Neo is left mostly reacting for his half of the conversation. Reeves comes off a bit stiff but Weaving deliciously chews through his share of the dialogue, drawling out his lines in a way that’s so fun you almost don’t mind that the exposition about his new state raises more questions than it answers. The Wachowskis would have fit in quite well with the writers’ room on Lost.

“ahm in ur matrix, overwritin ur codes”

As Smith starts in on a mini-monologue about “purpose,” he reveals the presence of all his cloned selves, who move in on Neo one at a time and take turns picking up lines from the speech. When there’s enough of them surrounding Neo, they seize the hero and attempt to assimilate him, but for once, resistance is not futile; Neo, it seems, is uniquely able to counter the virus’ infection process. As soon as he finishes with that, things get physical.

[I'll note that this is the FOURTH fight in the movie, with the previous three basically amounting to different arrangements of Nothingburger. An action audience oughtn't have to wait so long for a genuine setpiece.]

The Fight: We go from zero to Fight Scene in no time flat. Don Davis’ unique and frantic musical accompaniment for the sequence (known to the production crew as “the Burly Brawl”) kicks in immediately, as does the crazy-intricate choreography.

It’s hard to provide an accurate blow-by-blow because there are just so many blows. The fight almost never stops moving, and neither does Neo: every Smith he defends against leaves him open to another, every hole he opens up is instantly filled, and every new bit of ground he goes to only gets him re-surrounded. It’s brutal.

But in a way, it’s not. As with some of the previous fights, Neo never looks like he’s all that hurt by this, just stymied. Certainly this can be partly attributed to the fact that Neo is easily more powerful than any one (or any dozen) of his adversaries here so all they can do is chip away at him slowly, but still, a bit of that visceral thrill is lost. Neo’s blows don’t seem to really hurt Smith either, but of course that makes sense and was already the norm in the first movie.

So what you have here is a fight with a million unhurtable guys teaming up against one super guy whom they can barely  hurt. What the fight loses in viscerality it has to make up for in technical complexity, which it largely does– with a few outrageous exceptions, but we’ll get there.

As stated earlier, it’s chaotic. Neo’s constant motion and even his taking of the occasional blow never convey that he’s anything less than a powerful & brilliant fighter. No matter how close they get to him he always seems to be ready with a clever counter or reversal; it looks as if he’s planning his attacks when he actually should be entirely reactive to the army of bad guys around him. Smiths get kicked, punched, bashed into the scenery and thrown into each other. It’s like a big, silly, intricate ballet. All the while, ever more Smiths are streaming in; the fight starts with about a dozen and finishes with nearly a hundred.

It’s not perfect, though. Some of the wire work is a bit floaty and obvious, many times the various Smiths seem more intent on simply grabbing Neo rather than actually hitting him, and throughout the entire fight you never once see a bunch of Smith corpses lying about. Do they flicker away like defeated foes in a video game?

There’s a nice little interlude early on where a bystander comes through and, registering the impossible scene, is immediately transformed into a regular Agent. The Agent is immediately accosted by an arriving Smith, and the dialogue that ensues is just so cheesily memorable, again largely thanks to Hugo Weaving’s delightful arrogance:

Agent: “You!”

Smith: “Yes, me!” [punches into Agent and assimilates him] “Me, me, me….”

New Smith: “Me too!”

As more reinforcements arrive things start to get a bit desperate for Neo, and he is able to temporarily even the odds a bit by ripping a tetherball pole from the ground and using it as a makeshift weapon. It’s quite effective, especially when he does this thing where he shoves it back into the ground and kicks all the surrounding Smiths as he spins along it horizontally, turning himself into a sprinkler of violence:

The pole, however, brings about the scene’s most crippling flaw: awful CGI. As soon as Neo jumps into the crowd with his new whoop-ass stick, both he and all his adversaries are rendered into computer-generated simulacra. It’s the kind of thing that works well enough in brief doses and especially for shots like the aforementioned spinning move that would have been near-impossible to pull off in live action, but inexplicably, the filmmakers choose to KEEP using it even for things they could have had the actors do on their own.

So while Neo and the Smiths are merely jumping around and kicking each other, they’re bouncing around unrealistically like something out of a Gamecube cut scene/Polar Express movie/Gumby cartoon. It was pathetically unconvincing ten years ago and is even more so today. There are several instances where the action nearly grinds to a halt in the Wachowskis’ trademark super slow-motion, almost like it’s deliberately rubbing in how fake this all is.

Oof.

The filmmaking goes back to live-action eventually, but insists on diving right back into that Uncanny Valley repeatedly– in fact, after Neo grabs his makeshift staff, the remainder of the fight is more CGI than real. More machine now than man, twisted & evil.

Through all this, Neo puts up a good fight with his staff but eventually loses it to the ever-increasing attack of the clones. Unarmed, he’s quickly overwhelmed and attempts to escape, but is stymied by the fiendishly simple tactic of all the Smiths dogpiling him at once. In a deliberate recall of the first film, one of the Smith legion speaks a little bit about the “inevitability” of Neo’s defeat, but he’s as wrong this time as he was last time. In a rather cartoon-like burst of strength Neo repels all his adversaries at once, and even tosses a lingering clinger into his fellows with an accompanying “bowling ball hitting the pins” sound. It’s so overtly silly you can’t help but love it.

Neo takes advantage of the brief respite to summon enough energy to launch into the air and fly away, leaving the army of Smiths to sulk on the ground quietly. Close one.

The fight’s a strange mix of awesome and infuriating. In certain ways the scene is a special effects marvel, because (as far as the non-CGI scenes are concerned anyway) not once do you ever doubt that every single one of the Smiths is Hugo Weaving, even though you know intellectually that there is only ONE Hugo Weaving and he can’t have been in all those places at the same time. Often, the best type of special effect is the one you can’t even tell is a special effect, and the face-swapping techniques &  camera tricks the production team pulled off are that kind of perfect (eat your heart out, Parent Trap). But they shouldn’t have been so proud of the technological terror they constructed here, because the full-body simulation CGI is as obtrusive as the face-swapping isn’t. It’s one of those decisions that’s such a colossal miscalculation you can’t believe it showed up in a major motion picture.

Bloodless yet beautiful chaos, painfully marred by a hubristic faith in their tech. It averages out to…

Grade: B

Coming Attractions: Good times with weapons.

In which Neo is a very messy house guest.

You won’t be grinning for long, Frenchie

5) Neo vs Merovingian’s Henchmen

The Fighters:

• Neo, again. Played by Keanu Reeves.
  • Armed with: nothing to start with, but eventually employs several weapons including dual sais, a broadsword, and a spear that gets broken in half and he subsequently uses the two halves as short clubs (or Eskrima).
• The Merovingian’s henchmen, six of them. One of them, Cain (he was partnered with a guy named Abel. They’re named after the famous Biblical brothers because of no good darn reason I can think of) was in an earlier scene heavily implied to be a vampire, or perhaps a werewolf. The others are also refugee programs from previous versions of the Matrix, most likely encoded as other supernatural creatures. Though they’re no match for Neo they seem to be superior to even the upgraded Agents, even if the Agents dress better. The Merovingian himself is there but he just hangs back and acts snooty. Played by stunt men, with Lambert Wilson hamming it up as the Big M.
  • Armed with: They enter with automatic weapons, but discard those for hand-to-hand combat and, soon enough, a variety of short-range weapons including swords, a trident, a spear, a flail, a staff, dual hooks, a spiked club, etc.

These weirdos.

The Setup: Neo and his crew came to the Merovingian’s hideout asking for the Keymaker, for reasons that make this movie sound more & more like a video game the longer you get into it. He refused and sent them off, but was betrayed by his wife Persephone (Monica Belluci aka the Platonic Ideal of sexuality) because she’s sick of how much of a dick he is. In a story development that literally not one single audience member thought was a good idea, Persephone exchanged the Keymaker’s whereabouts for a “loving” kiss from Neo, but before all of them could leave the chateau they’re confronted by a furious Merovingian and half a dozen men. In a spacious foyer conveniently decorated with a couple dozen weapons, of course.

Neo volunteers to hold off the bad guys while Trinity & Morpheus run the other way with the Keymaker, a decision I always questioned. Instead of Neo staying behind to fight out a protracted but ultimately easy battle against these Rodeo Drive rejects, why not have Neo fly off with the Keymaker (after all, Neo is their strongest asset and the Keymaker’s help is paramount) while Morpheus and Trinity struggle desperately in a frantic 2-on-6 battle? Don’t know how it would have affected the following freeway sequence, but ah, what might have been.

Speaking of which, you know who gets left out of this battle entirely? These guys:

They arrive with the rest of Merovingian’s gang, but are immediately dispatched to float after the Keymaker. Presumably some sort of ghost programs, the Twins have one of the most fascinating powers out of anybody in the movie: they can “phase” back and forth out of intangibility. Although as a superpower it’s hardly original, it definitely would have been a game-changer for this series’ fight scenes (and was teased as such in the trailers)– a way to give Neo trouble that didn’t involve “slightly stronger enemies” or just “lots of enemies.” Instead the Wachowskis opted to pretty much leave these guys out of fight scenes altogether: they trade a couple blows with Morpheus in the garage and have some shenanigans with a razor blade inside a cramped automobile, but the majority of this pair’s screen time is spent on a car chase, of all things. Hey, we all like a good car chase, but using a power like this in a car chase is like putting Wolverine in your movie and making his primary weapon be a gun. Matrix Reloaded wastes so much potential I can never decide if it does so recklessly or willfully.

Anyway, once Neo’s alone the Merovingian has his goons open fire. Which doesn’t work because, once again, Neo has the ability to telekinetically stop bullets. Not punches, kicks, swords, or anything else– just bullets.

In fairness, he can stop a LOT of bullets.

With that failing, they all try to take him on physically. Which they also fail at, only slower.

The Fight: Whereas the previous setpiece was chaotic, this one’s actually more dynamic, graceful even. While still as (not literally) bloodless as the rest of the film’s punchifying, there’s a certain smoothness to the movement that the Burly Brawl lacks. (A smoothness reflected in Don Davis’ music, of course.)

Neo and everyone else starts out unarmed, but the goons start picking up weapons pretty quickly. Neo holds out as long as he can trying to go on his own (pride?), but taking a nasty a cut on his hand after using it to block a sword (the moment creates a nice little pause in the action) is more than enough inspiration to follow his new friends’ example.

The gang explores the chateau space here in a way that would make Bruce Dickinson proud. Everyone’s constantly dancing around each other, going back & forth between the two floors (sometimes by stairs, sometimes by jumping), getting knocked into things or even hitting each other inadvertently. As always, the camerawork of the Wachowskis and cinematographer Bill Pope is more than dynamic enough to match, with no shortage of stylistic and well-staged shots. Except for the two goons who die early on, nobody gets stuck with one single weapon, as the implements are constantly getting broken, knocked aside, thrown or just plain left in corpses.

It’s not entirely perfect. Cain, the one goon we actually recognize due to his prior scene with Persephone (and who had a larger role in the contemporary, glitch-filled companion video game Enter The Matrix), doesn’t just exit the fight scene early on but does so puzzlingly: Neo knocks him through a stone statue in slow-mo, and after he hits the ground you don’t see him again. The injury doesn’t look fatal, especially considering the punishment Cain’s buddies absorb here and how a few minutes ago we heard Persephone talk about how incredibly hard to kill he is. A later death, caused by a baddie getting stuck with a trident Neo dodged, is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. And one guy gets a sword slice to the back of his neck that doesn’t seem to do more than bother him.

Still, that kind of sloppiness is the exception rather than the norm; the majority of the fight is meticulously staged and filled with a number of small, clever moments.

Neo pinning the weirdly androgynous henchperson to the wall, his fun little pose after summoning two sais from either end of the room (the hero’s single act of non-bullet-stopping telekinesis), the way the hero controls the movement around the space and turns his opponents’ weapons against each other. Probably the best moment is the last, when Neo faces off against the final goon, Eskrima against long club, and uses his sticks to throw the opponent’s weapon into the air. While it’s up there, Neo kicks the guy (girl?) down onto the ground, catches the falling club, and smashes it in his/her face (said smashing is directly preceded by a funny yet muted “oh crap” look).

The final, static shot of Neo standing victorious amongst the mess he made is a nice little beat as well.

In a way, the chateau fight is less ambitious than the Burly Brawl, but in others it’s more so. The environment (multiple floors) is a more interesting one, and the presence of everyone using short-range weapons is a new element for Matrix fight scenes. The unique weapons combined with the six unique characters presents a much different logistical hurdle than did a hundred identically-dressed Hugo Weavings.

As with that previous brawl, the excitement is technical rather than dramatic; at no point do we really sense Neo is in danger (either of getting hurt or of losing); sure, it takes him a while to kill all these guys, but just because it takes me a while to finally hit a fly with a flyswatter doesn’t make us evenly-matched. There are also the aforementioned nagging issues, and of course the wasted potential, but you can only fault a movie so much for what it doesn’t do. This fight genuinely was experimental for the franchise, and escapes the typical sequel-itis problem of “the same thing, only more so.” Effort counts.

Grade: A-

Recommended Links: The entry on this fight (as well as the entry for the last one) over at the Matrix Wiki have been very helpful in reminding me of details even my extensive notes didn’t cover.

Coming Attractions: “Morpheus is fightin’ a boring guy!”

He already lost the battle against the Green Filter, unfortunately

It’s not as cool as this.

6) Morpheus vs Agent Johnson

(I wonder if he’s related to either of the other Agents Johnson?)

The Fighters:

• Morpheus, who’s been critically under-served in this movie as far as action scenes go. He’s still a major resistance figure and captain of the Nebuchadnezzar, but this movie has a sly reveal that rather than more or less representing the entire resistance (as the audience had assumed), he’s a respected & powerful yet controversial figure, viewed by many other humans as a reckless ideologue. Played by Laurence Fishburne.
  • Armed with: a gun, but it gets knocked away early. A katana sword he lifted from the Merovingian’s place comes in handy about halfway through.
• Agent Johnson, one of the three upgraded Agents we saw earlier in the movie. Efficient & menacing, but nowhere near Weaving’s iconic antagonist. Played by Daniel Bernhardt.
  • Armed with: again, presumably he has a firearm, but he doesn’t use it.

The Setup: With Neo stranded in a distant mountain range after staying to fight with the Merovingian’s freak squad, it’s up to Morpheus & Trinity to get the Keymaker to safety via a busy freeway. After finally dispatching the ghostly Twins who’d been pursuing them, the heroes still have to contend with Agents, who have spotted them and are quite keen on “deleting” the exiled Keymaker.

Through various action-movie shenanigans, Morpheus and the Keymaker have found themselves on top of a moving tractor-trailer attached to a semi-truck. Before they can get a moment to breathe, however, they’re joined by Agent Johnson. Morpheus sees no option except for a direct confrontation.

The Fight: Well, Morpheus certainly does a lot better here than he did against an Agent last time around, even if he’s still clearly inferior ( “only human”), fighting a losing battle while still not getting really brutalized. It makes sense, of course: given the context of the fight, Johnson doesn’t need to beat Morpheus into submission as Smith did, he merely needs to knock him out of the “ring.”

That environment– on top of a narrow trailer speeding down a crowded freeway– actually does a lot of the heavy lifting for the fight’s excitement, because the Agent can’t really be hurt, Morpheus doesn’t get pwned as bad as before, and, frankly, Lawrence Fishburne doesn’t come off too well in this scene. He’s an excellent actor and kicked ass superbly in the original film, but his fighting here looks awkward and ungainly, less like a true kung fu warrior than an overweight 40-year-old playing one. Reports claim that along with the other actors (including Jada Pinkett-Smith, who fights even less), Fishburne underwent about eight months of additional martial arts training for the sequels; I’d call that a waste because this brief fight is by far the most kung fu-ing that Morpheus does, and it’s quite underwhelming.

It’s not without its merit, or memorable moments. Some excitement is wrung out of Morpheus nearly taking a fall several times (though the sight of him teetering on the edge is sometimes inadvertently comical), and once again our hero tries out some inventive moves to surprise his superior foe.

Johnson looks like Alec Baldwin there, doesn’t he?

Probably the most fun part is when Morpheus, knocked face down near the edge of the trailer, spies the samurai sword he’d previously stabbed into the vehicle’s side in order to make a stepping stone, and some adrenaline surges into the fight when the audience sees that he’s found a way to even the odds. It’s not as raucous a moment as the similar introduction of a katana in Pulp Fiction, but it’s neat. Weirdly (or fittingly if you buy into the theory that this movie is into deliberately disappointing its audience), the discovery of the sword is much more exciting than actually putting it to use: aside from a surprise move that slices the Agent’s tie (“that was a Father’s Day gift!”) and later his cheek, the katana ends up not being much help at all, let alone a game-changer. Morpheus loses it pretty quickly and gets fully knocked off the truck soon after.

Fortunately he’s saved by the timely arrival of Niobe (the aforementioned Mrs. Pinkett-Smith), another resistance captain and Morpheus’ ex-girlfriend, who had been tracking the group on the freeway and “catches” him on the hood of her car. Johnson thinks Morpheus is done for, which allows Morpheus and Niobe the perfect opportunity to get into position for a sneak attack. “Go kick his ass!” Jada approvingly growls; disappointingly, she doesn’t add “tell him my husband said ‘Welcome to Earth!’” but hey, we can’t have everything.

Morpheus’ surprise jump kick knocks Agent Johnson (or more appropriately, his unfortunate human host) onto the asphalt. A dubious victory, perhaps, but the best one he could hope for under the circumstances. Besides, it was only a temporary win, as Morph and the Keymaker are still in a vulnerable position and surrounded by Agents (and many more potential Agents) behind the wheels of two-ton death machines. It’s only thanks to the in-the-nick-of-time arrival of Neo that the pair finally escape from their predicament. Remember all those old Superfriends cartoons where the writers kept thinking up goofy reasons to separate Superman from the other heroes so he couldn’t be around to solve every problem instantly?

As mentioned, it’s underwhelming, but serviceable. The choreography is inventive even if sometimes awkwardly executed, and Don Davis’ music (a repeat/reprise of his previous “fight against the Agents” tune) is also adequate. Not much to truly hate or love, so it’s a shame that while there’s still a good chunk of this movie left, this is the last true fight it has. There’s some light skirmishing in the hallway of “back doors” against The Smiths and a few fragments of Trinity getting beat up by an Agent, but they’re too brief and scattered to really dive into. Also, I’m tired.

Grade: B-

Coming Attractions: The evolution of a legend.

I’m trying something new here today, an idea I’ve been kicking around.

A lot of great fights happen in movies that have just a handful (or even less) of actual fight scenes. But many movies are positively packed with fights, in fact often existing as little more than vehicles for them. In that case, going the usual route of breaking down every single last fight scene for this blog would get repetitive, tedious and exhausting– I can tell you that six entries apiece for both Crouching Tiger and Matrix Reloaded (at three entries each week, that’s two full weeks on just one subject) have already been quite a slog by the end.

If I did something like The Raid in that manner, we’d be here for a month. For such subjects I think it would be better to put away the microscope and take a more macro view, just a couple hundred words on each fight and move on.

However, that’s not what we’re doing today. Today we’ll be adding an extra twist, and reviewing an entire franchise that way. It sounds daunting, but given topics like the one here where each individual film is only built around one or two signature fights of a similar nature, it’s actually quite appropriate.

The Rocky movies are among the more celebrated and recognized in American popular culture, paradoxically symbolizing both a plucky underdog spirit and gluttonous self-indulgence. That’s largely due to how the series itself evolved over time, but throughout all the changes, each film still climaxes with Sylvester Stallone’s signature creation scoring a moral and/or practical victory over an implacable foe. While each fight is worthy of examination in its own right, they’re even more interesting in relation to each other.

[Note that we're only covering each movie's "main event," or climactic battle. In an entry already covering six different bouts, we don't need to pile on with run-ups like Rocky's early routing by Clubber Lang or Apollo getting murderlized by Ivan Drago. I'll also note that I know very little about actual professional boxing, but I do know enough to realize that anyone who absorbed as many head shots as Balboa did would have been reduced to eating crayons by 1982.]

1) Rocky Balboa vs Apollo Creed

“He doesn’t think it’s a damn show. He thinks it’s a damn fight!”

Rocky’s Foe: Apollo Creed, a fast-talking and financially shrewd champion, based loosely on Muhammad Ali. He picks Rocky, an obscure “ham & egger” fighter, for an exhibition bout in the Bicentennial as a sort of gag, after his slated opponent’s injury left an opening in Creed’s schedule. Played by Carl Weathers.

The Setup: The original Rocky is a different film than many remember. It is certainly cheesy and earnest, but it’s also not afraid to be raw, awkward and resfreshingly free of vanity. The title character’s low intelligence is alternately endearing & winceworthy, and the other characters have varying degrees of alarming emotional un-healthiness; tellingly, perhaps the most stable & responsible person Rocky knows is the loan shark he beats guys up for. Because the movie works so hard to find the good in characters you might not have otherwise noticed, their “victory” at the end is all the more touching and earned.

Rocky’s fight against Apollo Creed is, he comes to realize, not something he could genuinely win. Balboa decides to make his dignity where he can, and famously decides that if he can “go the distance” against Creed– last all 15 rounds, which no one has every done with the champ– then maybe he’s not such a nobody after all.

Adrian Watches From: She just stays in the locker room and listens, right up until the last round when she emerges in the hallway.

The Fight: It’s clear that Apollo isn’t taking this seriously at the start, dancing around and trash-talking Rocky. But the Italian Stallion puts him on notice soon enough with an uppercut that downs the champ for the first time in his career. He turns serious quite quickly and pummels the challenger about for the next two rounds, and although Rocky is mostly on the defensive he occasionally rallies back. It’s not until the end of round two that the music kicks in (this will be a running tactic for the series), signifying, as Martin Lawrence and/or Simon Pegg would say, that “stuff” just got real.

This movie does a weird gag with time, perhaps as another signal that it’s not the straight sports movie that the sequels would become: it pretty much cuts out the middle. After Round Two ends, the camera cuts to a series of shots of ring girls holding up cards to let us know time’s passing, and in the space of a few seconds we go from Round 3 to Round 5 to Round 9. Then a very brief scene as the fight continues, then we’re in the closing seconds of Round 13. Quite the whirlwind tour through the fight we waited the whole movie for.

Still, Rounds 14 and 15 play out beautifully. Both boxers are believably exhausted but still absorbing and dishing out brutal punishment. Rocky goes down for a nine-count in the fourteenth, getting up even against the advice of his own corner and to the very visible frustration of Apollo (Creed’s exasperated body language is perfect), still ready to throw some more fists. The Stallion’s eye is so swollen (both fighters are wearing enough physical trauma makeup to pass for the Toxic Avenger) that it has to be cut open so he can see, a procedure that’s more gruesome in concept than execution.

The fight ends as the clock runs out, both contenders on their feet but with Rocky throwing the final punches. Bill Conti’s signature music kicks in, and between it and the tearful reunion with Rocky and his ladylove Adrian, the announcer saying that the split decision went to Creed is nearly drowned out. And why not? Rocky already won his battle.

2) Rocky Balboa vs Apollo Creed (rematch)

“You’re goin’ down.”

“No way.”

Rocky’s Foe: Apollo Creed, once again. Embarrassed by his narrow victory over the “chump” Balboa, the image-conscious Apollo is determined to get a decisive victory over Rocky, even though the newly-married Italian Stallion would rather just retire. Still played by Carl Weathers, who might have won this fight if he’d remembered it’s all in the hips.

The Setup: Rocky II is a strange point in the franchise’s evolution. It’s not serious enough to be legitimately dramatic, yet it’s not silly enough to be genuinely entertaining. The very existence of the film can be chalked up to Stallone wanting to have his cake and eat it too, adding a physical victory to Rocky’s moral one.

Having been goaded into the rematch by Creed, Rocky and his manager Mickey (Burgess Meredith) undertook a more focused training mission this time around: in order to both protect his diminished right eye and throw the champ off his balance, Rocky has learned to fight right-handed rather than as his typical southpaw self. But will it be enough?

Adrian Watches From: Home, via television.

The Fight: In true sequel tradition, it’s like the first but more so. There are many smaller changes, however, like Apollo’s initial aggressiveness and vindictive fighting style (he begins loudly taunting Rocky and even winding up overly-telegraphed punches in order to embarrass Balboa), and the way Rocky is generally more on the losing end this time out. But the bare bones are still the same: Rocky is constantly soaking up damage while occasionally giving some spirited counters, the beginning & ending get the most focus, and by the finish both boxers are lumbering about exhausted– once again it’s Weathers with the more expressive body language, his arms flopping around like big wet noodles.

Thankfully there are some more stylistic changes (courtesy of Stallone, who picked up directorial duties from John G Avildsen for most of the remainder of the franchise), the most major one being that we actually get to see more of the middle of the fight. It still gets the least focus, naturally, but it’s much less rushed than before. Once the music kicks in at the end of Round Two (Conti’s score sounds heavily inspired by Holst’s “Mars”), the middle of the fight becomes a focused montage, with some nice POV and slow-motion shots. As this segment fades out, Rocky starts to put more of a dent in his opponent just before we return to the more “straight” filmmaking of the last two rounds.

Perhaps fittingly given he’s named after a Greek god, it’s Apollo’s hubris that causes his loss here. If he’d just pulled the ol’ stick-and-move for the last round, Creed’s general dominance of the fight would have made him a surefire winner by decision, but he didn’t want to win by decision– he wanted to destroy Rocky, the man who’d hurt him so badly. His insistence on trying to KO this immovable Italian leaves him open to devastating blows from the challenger, and one such punch sends Creed to the mat… along with Rocky, who trips and falls himself after putting so much strength into his final lunge.

There’s a gloriously cheesy slow-motion sequence as the two behemoths struggle to return to a standing position, knowing that whoever gets up is the winner. Just at the count of nine, Rocky is able pick himself up just as Apollo’s strength gives out and he stumbles back down. It’s corny, but on the other hand, it’s an admirably unorthodox way to end the fight, and hammers home (if a bit unsubtly) that Rocky’s main asset is his indomitable willpower and determination. Balboa gets up because he simply wants it more.

3) Rocky Balboa vs Clubber Lang

“I don’t hate Balboa. I pity the fool.”

Rocky’s Foe: James “Clubber” Lang, a vicious fighter with a wild personality. Played by the one and only Mr. T, in his film debut.

The Setup: In the years since winning the belt from Apollo, Rocky had gone soft as a fighter, leaving him easy pickings for the young & hungry contender Clubber Lang. In less than two rounds Lang delivered Rocky a humiliating defeat, and even worse, Lang’s rough-housing backstage induced a heart attack in the already-weakened Mickey, who died shortly after. Fortunately, the now-retired Apollo Creed (who also hates Lang) tracked down Rocky to help him get “the eye of the tiger” back.

Even more strategy than before is put into Rocky’s prep this time, as Creed’s training of Rocky emphasizes building his speed and agility. Creed also realizes that even Rocky’s stubborn durability is no match for Lang’s raw power, and he knows that Clubber has to be put down early. Curiously, the blind spot in Rocky’s right eye, discussed so much in the second film, is not mentioned here at all or ever again.

Adrian Watches From: The front row, finally.

The Fight: It’s most certainly different. Not only is the middle not skipped, but the fight is shown in its entirety, from beginning to end– a first (and last, basically) for the franchise. Aesthetically this also marks a new direction for the series in the way punches sound: before, they sounded more or less realistic, but here they sound more like “movie punches”– audible wallops like out of something like Indiana Jones.

Rocky’s new tactics are evident immediately. He’s faster and more aggressive, practically bouncy– Stallone, as always quite physically committed, really sells the character’s legwork. Rocky’s new agility is a great boon in the first round, as he dodges, ducks, dips, dives and dodges many of the new champ’s blows and keeps chipping away at Lang with many quick strikes of his own. Clubber is so infuriated at Rocky’s deft maneuvering that he has to be physically restrained (by several people) from attacking Rocky in-between rounds.

When Round Two begins things go bad for Rocky as he falls prey to several of the champ’s haymakers, but near the end he rallies, and intuits something that wasn’t part of Apollo’s plan: Lang’s bestial rage can be turned against him. Rocky continually taunts Lang in the third round, either ducking or absorbing many attempted knockout blows in a sort of modified rope-a-dope strategy until Clubber is worn out in a way he’s not used to. When the mohawked fighter is vulnerable enough, Rocky moves in for the kill and just deconstructs Lang with a flurry of blows that finally put him down for the count.

The Rocky III fight plays out very atypically for the series. It’s a sprint rather than a marathon, and makes Rocky use his brain in addition to his strength and willpower. It’s not the best of the series but it’s a refreshing change of pace.

(We never hear from Clubber Lang ever again after the end of this movie. A guy like that, I’m thinking there’s no way he doesn’t try to burn down Rocky’s house as revenge.)

4) Rocky Balboa vs Ivan Drago

“I must break you.”

Rocky’s Foe: Ivan Drago, a young Russian fighter sponsored by the Soviet Union, out to crush the decadent American fighters. Despite or perhaps because of his simplicity, Drago is an amazing character; with his toned physique, imposing size and rigid blonde hair, he’s more Super Saiyan than boxer. Played by Dolph Lundgren, who in reality is far more intelligent than the quiet beast he played.

The Setup: Rocky IV is arguably the culmination of the direction the franchise had taken, up until the fifth film anyway. Almost all internal conflict and character growth has been stripped away, resulting in a story of almost admirably primitive form. The film is almost nothing but bombast and emotions, wasting very little time between setpieces and gags. It also has a rep for being “propagandistic,” being a movie with a bad guy Russian at the height of the Cold War. And it certainly is, but not in the way many people think; the movie ends with some surprisingly optimistic messages about finding commonality with, and not pre-judging, our enemies. Even the cold-blooded villain is ultimately shown to have a form of honor, being exploited by his devious rulers.

For his first professional fight, Drago entered into an exhibition match with Apollo Creed, Rocky’s nemesis-turned-friend. Entering the match cocky about his chances against the Russian “amateur,” Apollo is ultimately beaten so bad within two rounds that he dies in the ring. Drago literally kills Rocky’s friend, so of course the Italian Stallion won’t let that stand. He flies to Russia himself and trains under harsh and simple conditions; the film goes out of its way to contrast Rocky’s mountain man regimen against Ivan’s closely-regulated training to sell a self-flattering message about Americans being more natural & humble whereas the Soviets rely on high-powered technology… which is funny, because the real-life Cold War was much closer to the opposite. Regardless, when Rocky shows up at the climactic fight, Stallone is clearly in the best shape of his life.

Adrian Watches From: Once again, she’s there at ringside, having flown all the way to Russia to be with her man.

The Fight: Insane. If anything it more closely resembles Rocky’s first fight or two in its barest structure, but with everything turned up to eleven. No semblance of strategy is apparent, nor was any ever discussed beforehand; this is nothing but force against unrelenting force, two chiseled gods dishing out more on-screen damage than anything outside of a Godzilla flick.

As with before we see the entirety of the first two rounds, with Rocky mostly just helpless until the end of Round Two (Ivan’s superior reach is another advantage over the Stallion), when he gets his first good blow in and cuts the Russian’s eye. Rocky even matches He-Man’s feats of strength with one of his own, ending one of the pair’s shoving matches by physically lifting up Drago and slamming him to the ground (good thing he practiced in the last movie against Hulk Hogan).

And also as before this is the part where the music kicks in, and all the “middle” rounds become an extended montage. A glorious montage: cinematically speaking this is probably the best match of the series. There’s slow-motion shots of the fighters withstanding devastating head blows, fade-ins of the fight over panning shots of the crowd, even split-screens showing the combatants staring each other down between rounds. And the punching sound effects seem twice as loud as they did in Rocky III. It’s over the top, bombastic and beautiful. More than in any other Rocky fight we get a real sense of the passage of time and the outright war these two titans are engaged in.

And over the course of things the crowd, admiring Rocky’s tenacity, improbably begins to cheer for him; even Drago is impressed, famously uttering, “He is not human. He is like a piece of iron.” The failure of the unstoppable force to crush the immovable object leads to Drago getting chewed out by his Soviet handlers just before the final round, and helps him re-discover his pride as a man who fights to win, not for others’ approval.

In the last moments Rocky takes some more abuse but comes back strong, hitting Drago with a series of blows that resemble nothing so much as cutting down an enormous tree. For the first time ever, the Russian colossus goes down, and goes down so hard he stumbles out of the ring while trying to get up. U-S-A! U-S-A!

[Pondering: all those Russians in the crowd who cheered for the American... it's pretty much guaranteed that the secret police dragged them out of their bed and shot them later, right? Ah, well, you know communism: can't make an omelet without breaking a few million peasants.]

5) Rocky Balboa vs Tommy Gunn

“My ring’s outside.”

Rocky’s Foe: Tommy, “The Machine” Gunn, a hotshot young boxer with a gratuitous nickname. Talented and full of potential, but also hotheaded, petty and short-sighted. Played by Tommy “The Duke” Morrison, a real-life boxer.

The Setup: Rocky V is the black sheep of the franchise, despised by nearly everyone including Stallone himself (who didn’t direct, returning the reins to Avildsen). It’s an ambitious attempt to settle the series; indeed, it’s possible a good movie could have been made off a story where Rocky retires for good, is forced to live under humble circumstances, and his family life suffers while he tries to live vicariously through a protege… and the whole thing ends not in a ring but in a gritty street fight. But the execution is thoroughly lousy, and painful to watch.

A brain-damaged (turns out Drago rang his clock but good) and impoverished Rocky spent a good chunk of the film tutoring Gunn, but Gunn eventually falls under the sway of George W Duke, an amoral fight promoter based loosely on Don King (who himself is more nasty than most Hollywood villains). Duke turns Gunn against Rocky and soon gets him a shot at the Heavyweight Championship. Gunn wins the title but finds himself still not being taken seriously, due to the public’s remaining goodwill for Balboa and the fact that Gunn only won against an inferior champion. Also, he has the most hateable face this side of Fred Durst:

Seeing that the only way to win respect is to get a match against a returning Rocky, Gunn and Duke confront and harass Rocky at his favorite bar, accompanied by a video crew. Balboa tries to be the bigger man and brush it off, but when Gunn roughs up Paulie, Rocky takes it personally, and challenges him to a fight right there.

Adrian Watches From: She’s at home when it starts actually, but when the fight somehow makes the TV news (?), their son Robert pulls her out to watch in person.

The Fight: Like much of Rocky V, it’s definitely different… but not all that great.

The staging is technically good, with a lot of nice flourishes to indicate that this really is a street fight, not just bare-knuckle boxing that happens to take place on a street. The two combatants knock each other into things, trip each other, grab each other’s arms and generally behave in ways that would be illegal and/or impossible in a genuine boxing match.

However, it’s written terribly. Tommy is portrayed as such an unworthy opponent that nearly every time he hits Rocky, it’s either a sucker punch (Rocky turns his back and walks away twice because he doesn’t want to hurt Tommy, who he still cares about, any more), or a follow-up to a sucker punch; it’s not until the very end, when they’re both simply trading blows, does Tommy score a hit that’s not a complete cheap shot. All of Rocky’s rivals thus far had been varying degrees of villainous, but the movie still respected their abilities. Here, Tommy is portrayed as the ultimate sniveling dirtbag, presumably as an effort to puff up the character of Rocky.

It’s hard to find images from this fight, so I used a better one from Rocky IV. You’re welcome.

And the Rocky himself does come off fairly well, he being the one that pulls off most the fancier moves. It’s Stallone’s physicality that sells the fight to be as exciting as it is. But that excitement doesn’t save it from Gunn’s aforementioned dickishness, and definitely not from the colossal miscalculation of the moment where Rocky, coming from a seemingly final beating at Tommy’s dishonorable hands (inspired by a brain-damage-induced vision of Mickey’s ghost!), rises to his feet to the tune of the opening notes of Bill Conti’s iconic “Gonna Fly Now.” It’s very corny and cynically so, not in a way at all appropriate to the series. It’s a wonder test audiences didn’t laugh it out of existence.

Anyway, Rocky finally rallies and puts Tommy down for the count. He even punches a sneering Duke for good measure, despite the latter’s repeated warning of “touch me and I’ll sue!” to which finally replies “sue me for what?” after decking him. To which you’re tempted to answer “uh, for assault?” but I suppose Rocky means he has no money for Duke to take. I… really don’t think it works that way. Anyway, the exchange is definitely a poor man’s “Diplomatic immunity!”/”It’s been revoked.”

6) Rocky Balboa vs Mason Dixon

“You’re one crazy old man.”

“You’ll get there.”

Rocky’s Foe: Mason “The Line” Dixon, a young champion who always KOs his opponents quickly, causing many to suspect he doesn’t have the staying power to last in a sustained fight; this creates an interesting contrast to the original film, because his own struggle is the question of whether or not he can “go the distance.” Dixon probably received more screen time than any of Rocky’s other rivals did, to the point where he’s practically a co-protagonist in the film. Played by Antonio Tarver, another real-life boxing champion.

The Setup: Rocky Balboa (the movie, not the character) basically amounts to Stallone giving himself a Mulligan on ending his signature franchise. Surprisingly, the public at large was generally receptive to it, possibly because they were almost as eager to a better sendoff than Rocky V as he was. This one is more like the original than any film since Rocky II, returning the character to a position of more genuine humility. But it’s modern, too, and cognizant of its own mythology in a way that’s rarely annoying.

The impetus for the film’s unlikely fight is that boxing number-crunchers have concluded that the current champ Dixon would lose out to the legendary Balboa, if the two had ever fought under equitable conditions. A retired fighter against one in his prime is hardly “equitable,” but nonetheless the conclusion hurts Dixon’s besieged pride and similarly gives Rocky, who is stable yet adrift a few years after Adrian’s death, a renewed sense of purpose. An exhibition match between the two provides Mason an opportunity to prove he can handle the long slog, and Rocky a way to exorcise his personal demons. It’s absurd, but the movie plays things in such a way that you actually believe it.

The training sequence, overseen by series mainstay Tony “Duke” Evers (Tony Burton), explicitly acknowledges that Rocky’s age handicaps his speed and agility, so he’ll have to focus mainly into improving the strength of his punches. “Let’s start buildin’ some hurtin’ bombs,” Burton rasps out, awesomely.

Adrian Watches From: Heaven.

The Fight: Fitting in with the movie as a whole, the fight is a mix of the old with the new. Right off the bat you can see plenty of modern touches: everything is brighter & sharper, the fight’s timer occasionally appears on the screen, the announcers occasionally count the punches in their commentary. Stylistically, Stallone throws in a few curveballs as well, the most notable being the occasional and striking, if somewhat inexplicable, switches to black & white (with a few lone highlighted colors) cinematography. During the now-expected “middle montage” Rocky flashes back briefly to memories of Adrian and Mickey. Notably, the crushing audio accompaniment of the fighters’ punches has been dialed way back from the Rocky III/IV levels.

But much is the same as before, too. As per tradition, we see the first two rounds in full before the music perks up as Rocky re-asserts himself at the end of Round Two, and then gliding on that stylized journey to the fight’s last legs. There’s perhaps more suspense than usual this time, with a few minutes in the second round almost coming off like what would really happen in a situation like this, but Rocky’s resilience plus Dixon injuring his dominant hand on Rocky’s hip (Stallone seemed to realize that even Rocky would need an inadvertent handicap, considering his age) let the Stallion slowly climb his way out of the hole, even scoring an early knockdown against his opponent.

As we approach that last round (ten this time, not fifteen like before), the “last round of your life!” Paulie calls out from the corner, the two acknowledge some respect for each other before finishing their battle. In the ensuing struggle, Rocky is knocked down to one knee and, in another break from tradition, time slows from his perspective and we hear a brief internal monologue from this legendary character, urging himself to finish on his own terms the journey he began decades ago:

It ain’t about how hard you hit, it’s about how you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. GET UP!

Rocky wills himself to stand and trades more blows with Dixon. As the final bell rings, both fighters are on their feet, with Rocky having gotten in the last punch. In the ensuing pandemonium Dixon hears the one thing he needed to hear, from the only man who could say it, when Rocky tells him “you’re a great champion.”

Things have come full circle because it’s a split decision again, with Rocky narrowly losing. But as before, it doesn’t matter to him because he’s won his own victory, and the Italian Stallion leaves the arena for the last time, to the screams of adoring fans. No regrets.

Series Overview: Phew, that was quite an undertaking. Alas I couldn’t find an appropriate place to fit in this image, so I’ll do so now.

They just look so happy!

You may have noticed there are no grades at the end of any fights, as I did not feel it would be useful or appropriate. With the exception of Rocky V most of them would be in the “A” range anyway, and besides many of them are going for different effects; the fights of the first and fourth movies (not to mention the films themselves) are practically in different universes. So I’ve decided that when faced with a conundrum like this in a retrospective, the best thing is to rank the fights in order of personal preference. In which case:

• Rocky
• Rocky IV
• Rocky Balboa
• Rocky III
• Rocky II
• Rocky V

It took over 4500 words, but yo Adrian, I did it.

Recommended Links: Fun fact about Rocky IV: literally one-third of it is montages. Speaking of Rocky IV, check the first entry on this list for an amazing story about one of its stars.

Imagine what it would be like if Mr. T were on Twitter– in fact, imagine the best possible version of that. You will be pleased to find that that’s EXACTLY what it’s like. Go ahead and follow good old Sylvester himself while you’re at it.

You know which other big star is on Twitter and was deeply connected to the Rocky franchise? You guessed it: Frank Stallone.

Coming Attractions: A different type of highlander.

You’re welcome, ladies.

Taking a brief break for the rest of this week, partly because that epic Rocky post took so much out of me. If you’re bored you can pass the time by just watching this over & over & over again:

Grade: A++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Oh, I’m ready for the fun part.

Ready for Love?

3) Zorro vs Captain Love, Don Rafael, and Soldiers

The Fighters:

• Alejandro Murrieta aka Zorro 2.0. After finding vital intel on Montero’s plans, Alejandro receives Diego’s blessing to don (heh) the full Zorro regalia: mask, hat, sword, whip and sexy Spanish ninja outfit. His training complete and his passion forged into a focused determination, Alejandro– and Zorro– are cooler than ever. Played by Antonio Banderas.
• Captain Harrison Love, the professional soldier (and real person) who leads Montero’s men. A real sadistic SOB with whom Alejandro has a personal score to settle. Quite a skilled fighter, too; Love is a battlefield, after all. Played by Matt Letscher.
• Don Rafael Montero, the film’s main villain, who you remember from before. Twenty years older but no less deadly or determined. Played by Stuart Wilson.
• Montero’s men, about six or so of them. Again here as ballast. The enormous one is missing; presumably because he’s at the dentist.

All are armed with rapiers or sabers. Some of the soldiers have single-shot rifles that prove useless against the speedy fox, and Captain Love carries a pistol but he is immediately deprived of it.

The Setup: Alejandro has just returned from an extended undercover mission, impersonating a young nobleman in order to get in Montero’s good graces and find out his plan: he plans to buy California from Santa Anna, using gold from a secret Mexican mine run by slave labor. Though his performance was impeccable, Alejandro still had to suffer through a few tense confrontations with the man who hunted down his brother: Captain Love, an amoral mercenary with the face of a date rapist:

His mercenary business’ slogan: “Money CAN buy you Love!”

Frustrated at having had to restrain his bloodlust, Alejandro is encouraged by Diego to hide his rage behind the mask of Zorro. On the eve of the would-be California Purchase, the determined hero sneaks into Montero’s home to abscond with the map to his hidden mine. Meanwhile, Diego, in a distant but visible field, puts the fear of God into the villains with some not-so-subtle imagery:

After effortlessly stealing the map, Zorro surprises Love in a hallway. Holding him at sword-point, he deprives Love of his weapons, and when two guards approach, he holds their captain hostage and forces them to let him kick them out the window. He doesn’t want to deal with them; all he needs is Love. Once they’re alone, Zorro steps back and returns the captain’s sword so that they can duel, and he can give Love a bad name.

The Fight:

Who’s holding the other sword? Love, actually.

This Love has taken its toll on the hero, so he clearly relishes the opportunity to defeat and embarrass him. They start out tentatively at first, with Zorro almost teasing the villain with tiny little gestures. But soon the fight begins in earnest and it’s wonderful to behold. Love, being a many-splendored fighter, is quite good, but the power of Love is no match for Zorro. The hero easily dominates the captain and finally sends him sprawling to the ground with a brutal punch. But before Zorro can finish the job and become a murderer of Love, our old pal Don Rafael comes rushing out to the hallway, ready to fight.

Even though the apparent return of his old bete noir surely rattled Montero’s nerves, he hasn’t missed a step in the fencing department, putting up a worthy fight for Zorro.

“Rafael, without your Love, you are nothing!”

Things get even trickier when we’re reminded that despite a good decking Love is all around, and the captain rejoins the fray. Even outnumbered Zorro is still deadly, picking up a second sword and driving his opponents back. That’s a bad long-term strategy, though, so the fox escapes from the hallway and out into a larger courtyard/foyer area, pursued by his two adversaries and with yet more soldiers streaming in.

It gets even more fun from there. Zorro outfences and outmaneuvers the faceless goons even more easily than he did the main villains (who also join the battle). Even more before, Alejandro is always in motion, always in control, always too cool for school. If he’s ever anxious at all during the fight, he doesn’t show it; on the contrary, the look on his face betrays that this new hero is having the time of his life. Swashbuckling hasn’t looked this good since Errol’s days.

The fight is packed with all sorts of delightful incident. Zorro controls the terrain by jumping off & on a large table and bringing the fight up there, he clocks Love again after being momentarily disarmed, he duels Montero from the other side of a huge candle stand, he does Olympic-level gymnastics on a series of tree branches. It’s not until the fight’s end that he’s even briefly put out, when he’s literally up against the wall with all the surviving soldiers ready to close in.

But just as they charge, Zorro sidesteps from the wall and cuts loose the enormous hanging map behind him so that it falls on top of his pursuers, leaving them in a state of confused chaos so he can escape with the goods. (There’s bit of poor staging here: Banderas steps away from his foes a few seconds too early, and the careful viewer can see the soldiers would have had ample time to stop or change course on their blind charge. Ah, well.)

Zorro is quite rightfully pleased with himself, but he doesn’t see that his escape has been witnessed by Rafael’s “daughter,” Elena….

Except for the most minor of errors, very little not to love here. The choreography is fantastic, James Horner’s music soars, Banderas’ devilish charm dazzles, and the pacing is perfect– like many of the great fight scenes, it goes on long enough that you don’t feel cheated but short enough that want more. Plus there’s some excellent comic timing at work in the moments before the fight, as Zorro dispatches of Love’s would-be rescuers. If you’re not cheering for the movie now, you’re in a coma.

Grade: A

Recommended Links: Antonio Banderas hung on to his sword prop from this movie, and once used it to scare off a burglar. It’s not quite as cool as burglars being scared off by the very IDEA of Dolph Lundgren, but still.

Coming Attractions: Best. First. Date. Ever.

And here I am, fresh out of “love” puns.

HEY GIRL

4) Zorro vs Elena

The Fighters:

• Alejandro de la Vega aka Zorro, who you know by now. He has already secretly met her multiple times: first in his proto-Zorro outfit just before stealing Tornado, again while hiding from Love’s men in a confessional booth (in a gut-busting scene, he pretends to be a priest), and again during his undercover mission as a wealthy Spanish nobleman. In that last guise the two shared a very sexy flamenco dance at her father’s party, but what they’re about to do now is even sexier. Played by Antonio Banderas.
• Elena Montero, born Elena de la Vega. Diego’s real daughter, stolen as an infant and raised by his adversary. To her adopted dad’s frustration, she has the untameable passion of her mother and the righteousness of her real father. She’s frustrated by her feelings for Alejandro (he sent her necessarily mixed messages, being torn between his attraction to her and his mission to suck up to Rafael) and has doubts about her father’s behavior, being torn between her justice and loyalty. Played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, in a star-making performance.

Both are armed with rapiers, as usual.

The Setup: About ready to make his escape, Zorro returns to Montero’s stables to fetch Tornado but is intercepted by Elena, who holds him at swordpoint and demands he return whatever it is he stole. He keeps trying to give her the brush-off but she’s persistent; when he condescendingly tells her (or “mansplains,” to use a hilarious new expression) that he “doesn’t have time to give [her] the proper instruction,” she smirks and tells him that she’s been trained in fencing since she was four.

Even though she’s giving him some (reciprocated) flirtatious vibes– Daddy’s cooped this bird up for waaaaaay too long and she’s totally down to, ahem, fence– Zorro can tell he’s not walking away from this… not that he entirely wants to. She waits while he removes his sword (not a euphemism), and they begin.

Here’s as good a place as anyway to point out what seems to be a deliberate effort (it may just be my perception) on the part of Bob Anderson and all the principal actors: even though they all use the same type of fencing with the same type of weapon, each main character seems to have his or her own trademark fighting style– or at the very least different approaches and attitudes to the same style. Each one’s body language identifies them like a signature.

Alejandro is all limber flash and pizzazz, whereas Diego (especially towards the end) is fluid, effortless, almost lazy. Montero’s style is plain but strong, aggressive and relentless. Captain Love fights more formally & rigidly; you constantly see him with one hand firmly planted behind his back. Elena is somewhat more formal as well, but in more of a dramatic way: during the fight that’s about to ensue, she keeps re-assuming similar exaggerated starting poses, and generally moves about in a florid way.

It’s an excellent little touch that adds richness to the film, even if the audience doesn’t consciously notice it. Anyway, en garde!

The Fight: Paced and staged differently than anything that’s come before, but certainly no less fun.

Elena’s skill is evident early on, as at the end of their first exchange she ends up slashing Zorro on the shoulder… but only his clothing, she doesn’t actually seem to break the skin. He regards the non-wound with a sort of amused frustration, and by unspoken mutual consent they take a quick breather as they both slip into something more comfortable remove their more obstructive layers of clothing: Zorro his hat & cape, Elena the robe she was wearing over her nightgown.

Actually, the amount of humor/sexiness they each put behind small little dialogue exchanges and body language throughout the fight… well, it’s hard to accurately convey it into print, but it’s perfect. Both actors are absolutely on the same wavelength with each other and with what was needed out of the scene, and the resulting chemistry is impeccable. They pull if off so well you’d almost think they were an item in real life as well– and hey, who knows. Both later admitted being genuinely turned on while filming the scene. Don’t tell Michael or Melanie.

Once they begin again without encumbrance, Zorro’s superior skill comes into play, and he repays his torn shirt by ripping her dress to reveal a generous amount of thigh. “Not bad,” she says nonchalantly. “Not bad at all,” he replies as he outmaneuvers her and leans in for a surprise kiss. She gets visibly (and sexily) angry, flustered enough so that in the next exchange he slices off one of her shoulder straps, resulting in her being dangerously close to toplessness. So of course he kisses her again, getting her even more worked up.

She ends up disarming him, but without missing a beat, he outwits her by diving into a nearby pile of hay and blocking her thrusts with a horse bridle. This also allows Zorro to seize her sword, and even though she runs to grab his where it fell, he beats her there, makes her rise slowly, and tells her not to move as the camera focuses on the hero making several rapid but delicate sword swipes. He steps back looking enormously pleased with himself, and when the shot moves back to her, we see why: he’s cut her gown in just enough places so that it will fall apart on its own within seconds, leaving her stripped to the waist, save for some strategically placed hair.

I’ll just leave this here, gentlemen.

She uses his hat to cover her indecency, and after a bit more banter they embrace for their third and most passionate kiss. He disappears to collect his things just as Elena, eyes closed, leans in for more as if entranced. He says goodbye to the señorita and leaves just ahead of Don Rafael and his men. But not before popping back for his hat.

There’s a hilarious little denouement as Elena has to explain to her flustered father what happened while (not) concealing her obvious attraction to him. When she shouts “he LEFT!” it’s clear that she’s more angry that he didn’t stick around for more smooching than she is about having lost the fight. But really, in a fight like this, everyone’s a winner– especially the audience. Don’t you think?

If this scene commits any sin (besides that one from the Seven Deadlies, I mean), it’s that it’s too short, ending not too long after it starts. But that’s a bit of a necessity, given that the two could only plausibly be in there so long before somebody  thought to check the stables. Plus it’s stretched out fairly well as it is with the flirtatious material in-between exchanges of blades.

It really is perfectly paced and staged. There’s an energy to it that would be hard to convey in the script, so kudos to not just the actors but also director Campbell for understanding what was needed. James Horner’s score switches to a steady beat of maracas (I think) throughout, helping enormously with the playful tone.

It’s a bit ridiculous that Alejandro, a man who’s only studied for a few weeks (months?) could stand a chance against Elena, who received 16 years of the best instruction. But that’s the kind of silly universe this movie inhabits– one where no one recognizes you if you put a bandana on your head, or where a masked man in dark black can successfully sneak around in broad daylight. It works.

Is it a bit sexist? Well, it features a woman being turned on by multiple unwanted kisses from a criminal who’s (kind of) physically assaulting her, who then humiliates her by stripping off half her clothes, so… okay, technically it is. But, I must mansplain, you shouldn’t take that any more seriously than the idea that the novice fencer can beat the expert, and so forth. It’s willfully silly, so have some fun with it. It’s still less sexist than literally anything that happens in the Twilight books.

Grade: A

Coming Attractions: The, ahem, climax.

Zorro’s been looking for Love in all the RIGHT places.

In which we go to a mine and the bad guys get the shaft.

… I’m sorry.

5) Zorro vs Captain Love/Diego vs Montero

The Fighters:

• Alejandro Murrietta aka Zorro, here to foil the bad guys’ evil plan. Played Antonio Banderas.
• Don Diego de la Vega aka the swashbuckler formerly known as Zorro. Still long-haired and decadent, he had planned to leave this fight to his successor in order to personally reclaim his daughter, but after she frees him from captivity (long story), he shows up to pitch in as well. Played by Anthony Hopkins.
• Captain Love, the sadistic soldier who’s going to fight Alejandro. Played by Matt Letscher.
• Don Rafael Montero, the bad guy. Played by Stuart Wilson.

All armed with rapiers, as usual. The bad guys have guns, though they don’t see much use. Elena is also there but her main contribution is to screw things up, sadly.

The Setup: Knowing that Team Zorro has the map to their secret mine, Love and Montero have decided to destroy the area and kill its workers, in order to prevent Santa Anna from finding out that California was sold to him using Mexican gold. Thankfully Zorro arrives to put a sword-shaped kibosh on that. After dispatching of a few henchmen, the hero is nearly shot in the back by Montero, but he’s saved when Diego and Elena make an unexpected appearance. Diego finally gets his grudge match against Rafael, and soon Zorro finds himself squaring off against Captain Love.

The buildup to the latter confrontation is oddly the more dramatic, playing out like the prelude to an Old West shootout. Zorro slowly unsheathes his sword and lets the sun glint off it menacingly– an idea apparently thought up by Banderas himself, and achieved by natural lighting.

Love chooses to pull a reverse Indy-from-Raiders: he removes his sidearm with the same exaggerated care as Zorro did his sword, then tosses it aside voluntarily so the two can have a real duel. Which they do!

(There’s a bit of a ticking clock here on the gunpowder trails set to blow up the mine with all the slave workers trapped inside, but honestly it’s a bit difficult to follow.)

(And yes, I am lumping two fights into one. They occur nearly simultaneously, with the same weapons, in fairly close geographical proximity. To divide them up into separate entries would be repetitive and tiresome and repetitive.)

The Fight: Much as they do with breakfast time at the Country Buffet, the old folks get moving first. After getting the drop on Rafael and punching him good in order to strip him of his rifle, Diego allows his old enemy to draw his sword so they can have a proper fight.

After a bit of cross-cutting the elder Zorro has him on the ropes, and verbally relishes the pleasure he’s soon to take in killing the evil don. But gentle-hearted Elena can’t stand to watch her adopted father get run through, so she stops her real dad from doing the deed… and unfortunately Montero uses the diversion to suddenly grab ahold of her, and threaten to kill her if Diego doesn’t stand down. Unwilling to risk his rediscovered daughter’s life, Diego complies. Rafael then confirms that he was bluffing– even he wouldn’t be so awful as to kill his own daughter. But not so un-awful as to refrain from shooting a defenseless Diego, which he does. Elena pushes the gun aside just in time so that Rafael’s shot is not fatal, at least not immediately; the wounded old fox picks up his sword and the fight is back on.

Unfortunately the gunshot wound severely degrades de la Vega’s fencing abilities, as gunshot wounds tend to do, and the remainder of his battle is a losing one. Eventually the good guy is disarmed, but just as Montero prepares to slice him open, Diego notices that his adversary’s foot is conveniently placed in a pile of leather straps attached to the wagon used for hauling up the gold. At the last moment, Diego ducks out of the way and hits… something so that the wagon comes loose from its moorings, sliding down the cliff and dragging Don Rafael with it. Adios, amigo.

While the older men’s fight gets to handle the majority of this sequence’s dramatic load, that leaves us with the Zorro/Love battle to pick up the pace in terms of excitement and fun– although not entirely without dramatic beats, since Alejandro has some emotional payback for the captain, as well. (Actually, going after Joaquin is the one lawful and “good” thing Captain Love did in the movie, seeing as how Joaquin actually was a notorious bandit and wanted criminal, so….)

Anyway, after their too-cool little standoff, the fellows waste no time getting down to clanging blades, with Alejandro tossing a pointed barb about how Love “would like [his] remains displayed,” in reference to the villain parading Joaquin’s be-jarred ahead in front of his brother earlier in the film.

Being the “fun” pairing, Z&L get more of the dynamic beats in the fight. Zorro kicks Love down a small ravine and goes chasing after him by surfing on a shovel (!); when he goes looking for him in a boiler room, Zorro realizes that his opponent set the whole place to explode and escapes just in time. Love tries to follow up by hiding around a nearby corner to get the drop on Zorro, but the hero gets the literal drop on him by jumping from out of nowhere behind the captain, happily chirping “did you miss me?” Alejandro even one-ups his mentors signature move, at one point slicing a tell-tale “M” into his opponent’s cheek (“for Murrieta!” he explains, gratuitously).

The battle finally spills out onto a suspended platform, the two fighting frantically in closer and more dangerous quarters. Zorro is at one point disarmed, but once again he doesn’t miss a beat– quickly punching his opponent in the gut, Alejandro then knocks the stunned Love’s sword out from under his hands hard enough to launch it in the air, then snatches it from above the platform’s head bar, and runs the villain through with it. A straightforward kill executed with some unexpected panache.

Love-kebab.

Although his “secret” identity is known to the villains by this point, Alejandro nonetheless removes his mask immediately after the finishing move, his true face staring into his nemesis’ dying eyes. Shortly after, the wagon and shipload of gold bars comes tumbling down on the platform, which Zorro narrowly escapes.

The prisoners are saved and the three protagonists are reunited, but Diego dies a few minutes later (boo!), barely living to see his daughter returned to her identity and finding love (yay!).

The whole endeavor can’t help but feel a bit anti-climactic after the amazing one-two punch of the previous two fight scenes (a one-two-three punch if you count the horse chase scene that follows Zorro’s duel with Elena, which isn’t quite a genuine fight but is still plenty fun). If anything, the Z-man’s performance in the preceding material makes it hard to believe that he’d face a genuine threat from Love alone, but the movie tries valiantly to sell the danger and the stakes. It’s also unfortunate that Elena’s main role here is reduced to a meddlesome hostage who inadvertently gets her dad killed, after the earlier duel set her up so well as an Action Girl. She does eventually find usefulness in freeing the trapped prisoners before the inevitable explosion, so there’s that. And at least this movie doesn’t abuse her as bad as the sequel does.

But for the most part, the whole thing works. The staging is inventive, and as mentioned before the cross-cutting between two different fights makes the entire thing more diverse and dynamic. And while still maintaining a spirit of fun, there’s definitely an undercurrent of menace and real stakes here, unlike the more breezy tone of what’s come before.

Grade: B+

Coming Attractions: Not the hero you deserve, but the hero you NEED.

You were expecting someone else?

Yep, you probably thought I’d do the brand-new, ostensibly action-heavy cinematic reboot Man of Steel, but [cue record scratch noise]:

Tricked ya.

Without getting overly fanboy-ish (… yet), let’s just say I have major problems with the treatment Snyder, Nolan and Goyer gave The Man of Steel’s title character. Even putting aside from a lot of narrative problems and logical head-bangers, the Superman in the film is not really recognizable as Superman in several very crucial ways (to the extent he is at all it is largely thanks to the absolutely fantastic performance by Henry Cavill).

Superman Vs The Elite (an admittedly cheesy and bland title, but less unwieldy than that of the comic issue it was based on, Joe Kelly’s “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?”), is not a great movie, even if it is one of the better examples of DC Entertainment’s many straight-to-DVD one-offs; the animation aesthetic is a little off-putting if still smoothly done, the PG-13 language is gratuitous, and the voice acting doesn’t always click.

It does, however, have a great Superman. One who is recognizably the Superman that has endured for 70+ years while still retaining vulnerability and the ability to kick some ass. It’s a Superman who is definitely about something– he has a specific meaning to the people he protects, he’s not just an action figure. This, and some other things we’ll get to, will put him into stark contrast against the caped Kryptonian you can currently see in theaters. And while this movie has of course been seen much less, it’s currently available on Netflix Streaming, so I’d advise you to check it out.

I’ll note here that the comic book story this was specifically based on came out in March of 2001, which demonstrates that all these hand-wringing “is Superman still relevant?” essays you’ve seen over the past year or so are hardly anything new; the question was an old one back when Kelly penned this issue. It was also a response to certain comic book trends in early 21st century, and the film’s ultimate villains (spoiler), the Elite, are a blatant pastiche of the Authority– one of Warren Ellis’ abandoned projects, the Authority were a pointedly proactive team from the Wildstorm label who upended their world’s status quo and took life & death into their own hands.

1) Superman vs Atomic Skull

The Fighters:

• Superman, aka Clark Kent aka Kal-El. He’s… look, I’m not going to explain Superman’s powers to you. This is not an origin story; Superman is already a well-established hero in this film, and married to Lois Lane. Voiced by George Newbern, already a veteran at voicing the Man of Steel thanks to five seasons of the animated Justice League series.
• The Atomic Skull, aka Joseph Martin. His powers are based on being exposed to some kind of “gene bomb,” which in the comics was courtesy of an alien race, but his origin is only obliquely referred to here. He can discharge powerful blasts of radioactive energy (often strong enough to turn non-powered humans to ash on contact), and has advanced strength & durability somewhere in the neighborhood of Superman’s own. Voiced by Dee Bradley Baker.

The Setup: Refreshingly simple. Atomic Skull has escaped from custody somehow, and he literally goes looking for a fight, specifically for one with the last son of Krypton. He starts killing bystanders in Metropolis left & right so as to goad Superman into showing up. It’s not spelled out whether the villain is just spoiling for violence or if he wants payback against Superman specifically (it’s clear from dialogue that they’ve tangled before), but when the hero expresses shock at how callous he would be, the Skull simply replies “you do what you do, I do what I do.” Indeed.

Kinda hard NOT to be a villain when you look like this.

And just before Atomic Skull can do what he does to a mother and her screaming baby, Superman flies in and clocks him g0od.

The Fight: The Man of Steel wastes no time following up with a tackle that takes them both farther away from civilians. Superman quite notably does use the terrain against his adversary here, but (and this is important), ONLY in minimal ways. He drags the Skull up the side of a building but only causes surface damage to its wall, he smacks him into other buildings but again only in glancing ways that cause superficial damage. This of course means that Atomic Skull is likewise not caused maximum harm, but that’s the price Superman pays for being cautious and conscientious. The hero’s deliberate restraint is not spelled out here, but it will become clear much later on just how damage a more careless Superman could cause.

After some more blows, the Skull gains the upper hand when he’s able to get a grip on Superman– direct contact increases the damage his powers can dish out, apparently. Superman frees himself by using his super-shout to bellow “LET GO!” with a shockwave that shatters nearby windows (more property damage), and creates some distance from his opponent’s deadly reach by seizing a telephone pole (one of Skull’s blasts had tore it from its moorings) and smacking the villain around with it for a while.

Eventually the whole thing ends when a blow from the Kryptonian sends the airborne Atomic Skull into a pond in a nearby park, which for some science or comic book “science” reason foams up around the villain and renders him unconscious. To the cheers of bystanders, Superman flies the villain away into custody.

Like many opening fights, it’s fairly brief and not particularly impressive but it does set the right tone. The movie establishes a proper “superhero” aesthetic early on, roughly demonstrating the scale these kind of players operate at.

The setup is also deceptively simple: the villain shows up spoiling for a fight and gets one, right in the middle of a crowded urban area. That’s the kind of thing that’s entertaining for us to watch on screen (or read on a page) but what would it be like to live in a world like that, where your loved ones could end up dead or your business trashed just as collateral damage to a grudge match between two superpowered weirdos? Wouldn’t you want that to be solved once and for all via drastic means? How many times do these freaks have to escape from an inefficient system before someone puts them down for good?

We’ll see.

Grade: B

Coming Attractions: We meet the new guys.

Elite, but not beat agents.

In which we meet monsters.

(SUBTLE DOUBLE MEANING)

2) Superman and the Elite vs Pokolistan monsters

The Fighters:

• Superman, duh. Prior to this event he hasn’t met or heard of the Elite before; this is where they make their debut. Voiced by George Newbern.
• Manchester Black (sometimes shortened to “Chester”), leader of the Elite and a lower-class Brit with a punk look. Gifted with inherent psychic abilities. Black’s telepathy lets him read (most) people’s minds, project his thoughts to others, and launch mental attacks directly at the victim’s brain. His telekinesis allows him to lift objects and people with his own mind, as well as project waves of raw force (portrayed in the film as a glowing green energy). Quick-talking and humorous, but also crude and more than a little shady. Mostly an analogue of the Authority’s Jenny Sparks. Voiced by Robin Atkin Downes.
• Coldcast aka Nathan Jones (real name never said in the film). An American and the Elite’s bruiser, Coldcast’s powers are electromagnetic in nature. He can absorb and discharge many different types of energy, an ability which also seems to enhance his physical strength and durability greatly. Voiced by Catero Colbert.
• Menagerie, aka Pam– unlike Coldcast, her superhero name is the one never used in the film; everyone seems particularly chummy with her. The team’s lone woman, she has a reptilian appearance, with leathery bat wings that allow her to fly with surprising speed and dexterity. Her real value, though, comes from the seemingly unlimited number of deadly slugs she can generate from her body and control remotely. The slugs (apparently the result of bonding her to an alien weapons cache) have a surprising number of offensive capabilities, and she can even use them to briefly enhance her senses. She’s supposedly Puerto Rican, which I don’t buy because not ONCE does she have a hilariously dramatic outburst of anger. Mostly an analogue of the Authority’s Swift. Voiced by Melissa Disney (yep, from those Disneys).
• The Hat, an Asian man (Japanese in the comic but implied to be Chinese here, and he speaks perfect American English anyway) with mystical powers seemingly centered in his normal-looking hat. The hat’s powers are vague but vast; he generally uses it to summon enormous creatures but it can produce other effects as well. The Hat’s body is also said later to be protected by a magical field, thus minimizing his potential for injury. Clearly an analogue of the Authority’s Doctor, with whom he shares not just similar magical powers but also a substance abuse problem– the Hat is clearly an alcoholic. Voiced by Andrew Kishino.
• An enormous monster. The product of Pokolistan’s biological weapons division. Resembling nothing so much as a giant, weird, weaponized cockroach, the monster walks on four enormous legs and has an extra limb in its mouth, as well as dual retractable laser cannons on its back. Incredibly strong and durable. Apparently capable of multiplying itself at will. It’s… well, it’s like something a child would design. Voiced by a bunch of inarticulate sound effects.

“rarr,” etc

The Setup: In the aftermath of the previous tussle with Atomic Skull, Superman showed up in person at the United Nations in order to attend to some sort of debate/lecture about the role of superheroes in society (because that’s the sort of thing the UN does, I guess?). Superman admirer Professor Efrain Baxter plays devil’s advocate for the crowd, pondering if these repetitive battles (the previous one cost millions of dollars in property damage, apparently), marked by restraint are really the best way to defend against evildoers. Should those with power not be more proactive and seek more definitive solutions? Is it time to take the kid gloves off? Superman answers in the negative and says that his ideals are worth sticking to, even when things get difficult.

The event is interrupted by news that violence between Pokolistan and Bialya (two fictional Middle Eastern countries; presumably the writers made up fake ones so as to avoid offending any *actual* Middle Eastern countries by suggesting they’re constantly locked in pointless wars) has flared up again. Superman flies off to the war zone, seeking to do what he can to minimize damage. Instead, he arrives to find that rumors of one side deploying WMD in the conflict are true, except that in Pokolistan the “M” stands for “monster,” as Gamera’s retarded cousin is tearing things up left and right.

The Fight: Superman gets some Bialyan regulars (their weapons are no match for the creature’s thick hide) away from the thick of things, and is surprised to find that Coldcast is already blasting away at one of the beasts, albeit ineffectually. Menagerie flies by and lodges about a dozen slugs along the back of the creature’s spine, which causes it to split in half right down the middle. This apparent victory is short-lived, however, as each half grows another new half, forming two monsters each the size of the previous.

Whoops. Superman is able to fly in and knock one monster on its back, but it recovers and cheap shots him through a building just as he goes to town on the other one. It seems like a stalemate, but the hero is soon contacted telepathically by Manchester Black, who, while watching from a distance, tells him that the monsters are brainless and technically not even alive (which he confirms with X-ray vision), so he’s free to use extreme force. A few passes with super breath freezes one monster solid, leaving Superman free to shatter it in a thousand frozen chunks with a single blow.

The second creature is dispatched when it’s swallowed by an enormous magical dragon, which then shrinks down to hand-held size and returns to its summoner, the Hat. The battle finished, Superman approaches the Elite as a friend and they, for all their too-cool attitude, are actually a bit star-struck. The conversation doesn’t last long, however, as they soon teleport out. (Transportation provided, it will later be revealed, by the team’s dimension-hopping sentient ship– another nod to the Authority.)

This one’s a bit underwhelming, and more than a bit silly. Giant bug-monsters as a form of warfare is a kind of bonkers-fun idea, but the creatures themselves are, for all their strength, a bit underwhelming. Not to mention they’d probably be inefficient in traditional combat. Plus they present all sorts of logical/science Fails: if they don’t have brains, how are they controlled? If they can multiply at will, why not send in two (or more) to begin with? And when they multiply, where does all that extra mass come from?

They’re dispatched a little perfunctorily as well. The freeze/smash thing is a nice, but the Hat’s swallowing act is a  abrupt, and this, the first combat use of his power, is shockingly broad: if he can simply absorb anything he wants into his magical hat, you wonder why he doesn’t just do that every time.

The fight does a handy enough job of introducing the Elite one by one, with a nice if hardly thorough demonstration of their abilities. Too bad it’s short and a touch on the goofy side. Fortunately there’s better to come.

Grade: C+

Coming Attractions: Your second-favorite flaming skeleton returns.

Your first favorite damn well better be this guy.

An Atomic rematch.

Who NEEDS Kryptonite?

3) Superman and the Elite vs Atomic Skull

The Fighters:

• Superman, who’s been running hot & then cold with the new team. Voiced by George Newbern.
• The Elite: Manchester Black, Coldcast, Menagerie/Pam, and The Hat, who’ve risen in popularity lately. Voiced by Robin Atkin Downes, Catero Colbert, Melissa Disney, and Andrew Kishino, respectively.
• The Atomic Skull, the radiation-powered supervillain. Although basically still the same, he’s quite obviously bigger (possibly eight feet tall or more), badder and a whole lot more dangerous, not to mention pissed off.

The Setup: During Atomic Skull’s incarceration he’s been hooked up to a reactor, siphoning off his unlimited energy supply and using it to generate free electricity for, apparently, a sizable portion of Metropolis. Unfortunately some sort of power outage/surge brings the whole system down (seems flimsy) and he’s escaped, looking for blood.

Meanwhile, since their initial meeting, Superman and the Elite’s relationship has deepened. He sought them out and received a brief history from Black, then the five were brought together in an impromptu rescue mission as they worked together to save the victims of a terrorist attack on the Chunnel. After that, however, Superman has been increasingly troubled by the group’s methods, not to mention their attitude– they’ve already fatally intervened during the most recent flare-up in the Middle East. Superman is out in Smallville, grousing with Pa Kent, when Lois calls with the word that the Skull is stomping around Metropolis.

The Fight: Although Superman speeds off, it’s the Elite who arrive first– just in time to save Lois & Jimmy from getting crushed by a falling car, actually. Seeing on the news that his new heroes the Elite are in town, Efrain Baxter’s rebellious son, Terence, runs off to see the action in person, with dad in pursuit.

The Elite’s cocky attitude fails to impress Atomic Skull– he dismisses them as “the interns” before scattering them with a major blast. He easily shrugs off Menagerie’s counter-attack and beats on Coldcast pretty hard. Black catches him with a telekinetic surge and gets assisted by an arriving Superman. The two rivals slug it out pretty hard, but Skull’s time away has improved his power so much he’s able to uppercut Superman into the sky and through several buildings.

Manchester is left alone with Skull, and when they go head to head, Black’s telekinesis against Skull’s radioactive energy, the Brit is no match, and gets knocked back pretty hard. He’s saved by a returning Superman, but when Skull gets the upper hand again and unleashes another devastating blast on the hero, the resulting shockwave kills several people in the nearby area… including Efrain Baxter, absorbing the pulse that would have hit his son. He’s turned into a statue of dead ash right before Terence’s eyes.

Superman recovers and, buying some time by blasting Atomic Skull with his heat vision, orders the Hat to form a perimeter and prevent further collateral damage. The Hat– whose vast abilities are apparently only useful under close supervision, because he’s been sitting around uselessly up to this point– complies by summoning up a bunch of huge terracotta warriors to scare away pedestrians. He also asks if Coldcast can absorb energy as well as direct it, which he can.

Though Black bristles at Superman taking charge of his team, everyone sort of silently agrees to a loose plan where four of them take turns hitting the Skull with harassing attacks while Coldcast finds an opening to get in close. This is probably the best part of the fight, with each superpowered titan having a quick skirmish with the villain before getting batted away, only to get replaced by another hero. The Skull is one heck of a blunt instrument, but he’s quickly outclassed by a coordinated effort. And when Coldcast lunges in and lays hands on the beast, there’s little he can do (thanks to Superman and Pam holding down his limbs) to resist as his excess energy is leeched out, leaving him shrunken and helpless on the ground.

The aftermath, however, is what’s important. Black wants to execute Skull on the spot, which Superman naturally resists. But it’s Terence Baxter who turns the whole crowd against the rule of law, as he urges Black on and blames Superman for his father’s death, saying that this wouldn’t have happened if the hero had put down the Skull for good last time. With the mob’s approval, Manchester sends a point-black psychic pulse that explodes Atomic Skull’s skeletal head– Superman just barely fails to stop him, as he’d stepped away from Black to console Terence. The vigilante group quickly teleports out, leaving Superman to cover up the corpse of the person he’d failed to save.

A lot of improvement here. The Skull’s dramatic change in appearance and his casual murder of even more innocents– notably Baxter, who we’ve gotten to know a bit by this point– really raise the stakes. This isn’t fun & games, people’s lives are on the line. Things get ugly and desperate enough here that it’s less like a superpowered romp and more like a war.

Unlike the previous tussle with Skull, it’s set at night, which is a rather simple but effective way to accompany the thematic with a literal one. And the staging is subtly different: unlike the city-spanning and building-hopping antics of last time, this all goes down on, basically, one street, making for a more tight and intimate feel. The music score (by Robert J Kral) is exciting but plays out in a slow, moody, rhythmic and low-key way, conveying an ever-growing dread.

By the end of the fight, you yourself hate the Skull and rather feel like killing him– when Superman cries out for restraint you see it being almost as pathetic and ineffectual as the crowd in the movie does… yet simultaneously, you pity him. You know the deck is stacked against him, that this is the time when principles are tough to hold onto. We’ve all been there.

Superman is left alone in many senses of the word. Pretty dark.

Grade: B+

Coming Attractions: It gets darker.

THIS dark.

“Is that… Superman?”

“Not anymore.”

4) Superman vs The Elite

The Fighters:

• Superman, voiced by George Newbern.
• The Elite: Manchester Black, Coldcast, Menagerie/Pam, and The Hat. Voiced by Robin Atkin Downes, Catero Colbert, Melissa Disney, and Andrew Kishino, respectively.

The Setup: Since their last tango, the Elite have decided that Superman is yesterday’s news, and declared themselves to be the new world police. They announced they’d settle the Bialya/Pokolistan conflict once & for all, which Superman tried to head off by (in an excellent sequence) non-lethally destroying a squadron of jets that had been sent to attack a civilian population center… only to discover that while he’d been doing so, the Elite had assassinated the bloodthirsty leaders of each nation. An enraged Superman decked Manchester Black over this, which resulted in the miffed Brit issuing a grudge match between the two forces, tomorrow.

Superman spends an anxious night pondering his options– even Lois thinks he might not be able to win– and leaves at dawn to face them. They arrive on the streets of Metropolis but, at his request, the fight is moved to a less-populated area. Flashy as ever, the Elite teleport all five combatants to the moon (Alice), in which the Hat’s magic has thankfully created an artificial atmosphere. But the group has brought along several floating cameras, which they use to broadcast the  conflict to the entire world.

Superman tries one last time to reason with the Elite, but they laugh it off and get right to business.

The Fight: Really, Superman fights against only three of the Elite, while Black hangs back and monologues. Addressing the watching world via camera (and implicitly the viewer, since the speech mostly plays over our view of the battle), Manchester lectures about how the time of old-fashioned “capes” like Superman is over, it’s the 21st century and the world is more complicated than dropping off bank robbers at the police station and getting kittens out of trees. The Elite are an authority (ahem) unto themselves, and they’ll punish as they see fit. “He who has the power makes the rules,” and so forth.

Superman performs well against the other three but like Atomic Skull was in the last fight, he’s overwhelmed by sustained, alternating attacks from multiple opponents– not to mention visibly hamstrung by his moral restraint.

And crazy reptile chicks on his back.

The staging here is probably the most viscerally exciting portion of the whole fight: incredibly smooth animation does a great job with cool stuff like Coldcast smashing away at the hero’s face, Pam straddling him and trying to bite his head off with a giant slug, the Hat summoning rock formations out of the ground to crush him and missiles for him to dodge.The music here is different than anything that’s come before: exciting, but filled with a sense of desperation and sadness. There’s an overwhelming sense of wrongness to seeing these smug punks pound on the Man of Steel.

Finally a tired but determined Superman makes a lunge at Black, who halts his narcissistic speech to hit the Kryptonian’s mind. Superman has adequate mental defenses to keep his mind from being read, but he seems helpless against a direct psychic attack. Manchester induces a stroke that gives him Superman a major nosebleed and sends him to the ground, shouting in pain.

He’s just defenseless enough to be seized Coldcast, who unleashes a full-force, all-out blast of power (it’s unstated but safe to assume he’s stronger than ever after stealing the Skull’s energy) right in Superman’s face. A massive explosion (visible from space) rents the ground, and when the smoke clears there’s nothing left of Superman except the tattered end of his cape.

Smug about their apparent victory, the four re-unite (Black’s telekinetic shield protected them from the area of effect on Coldcast’s blast) and prepare to leave, when suddenly they hear their enemy’s voice. He sounds… different, unlike he has this whole time. He doesn’t even sound angry; he merely speaks with a steady and terrible calmness.

“I finally get it. Thank you… I made the mistake of treating you people like… people. Now, I understand better… I understand now what the world wants, what it NEEDS. The world needs people in charge, willing to put the animals DOWN.”

As he speaks there’s a slow pan around the Elite as their dread mounts. Not only are they thrown off-guard by the fact that they failed to kill their enemy, they also have a palpable sense that the rules have changed. The worst kind of bullies are the ones who derive their advantage from their targets’ innate decency, and it’s clearly no more Mr Nice Superman.

Out of nowhere, Menagerie gets hit by a dart, with Superman’s Kryptonian crest on it. The effects are immediate: she howls in pain and falls to the ground as her slug symbiotes forcibly come out of her. Coldcast picks her up and he can’t tell if she’s breathing. The truth hits home for the rest that they might not get out of this alive (“He’s playing it our way!” Black frets), and suddenly a whirlwind forms on the moon’s surface, courtesy of Superman’s incredible speed. He briefly appears in the center of it, a dark silhouette with glowing red eyes.

As the tornado approaches, the Hat cockily levitates higher and begins a spell to undo it, but suddenly chokes off in mid-word, clasping his throat. As he’s carried off into space, the others deduce that magic barrier or no, the Hat still needs to breathe, and Superman’s vortex sucked the air right out of his lungs.

Black and Coldcast teleport back down to Metropolis, thinking that Superman won’t be so destructive in the midst of his favorite town. Black plans to “flatten the whole city” (some protector!) the moment their opponent shows up, but his team’s numbers dwindle yet again when a red & blue blur collides with Coldcast and sends him out of view in the blink of an eye.

Crashing to the ground like a meteor (and sending debris flying everywhere, including apparently on people), Superman informs Black where his teammate went. “Orbit. He went into orbit at Mach 7. If you had super-hearing, any second now you’d hear the… pop.” Superman shows his face for the first time since “dying” and the beating he took has only made him MORE intimidating. He’s streaked with blood, his costume is torn up, and a burst blood vessel has made one eye go red. He looks– and acts– more than a little deranged.

Above: WAY better than how they handled this in Superman III.

Black bellows about Superman having killed his whole team, to which he calmly replies “Your team of killers. Now they won’t be killing anyone else.” As he does so, Black uses telekinesis to throw piles of debris at Superman, which the hero casually sidesteps, so fast that his actual motion can’t be seen, only the still moments in-between. It’s super cool in a way that’s hard to convey in words, so:

Manchester puts up a green force field that Superman wears down with repeated blows, the last one knocking him backward. He summons up debris from all over and tries to crush Superman in the middle of it, but the Kryptonian calmly frees himself and sends several tons of car and concrete out into the crowded area around him… one batch of rubble actually seems to land on Lois, which Superman doesn’t even notice. Or care about.

As Superman slowly walks through a sustained psychic pulse that Black lashes out with, he asks the Brit how it feels to be deconstructed, to be the victim, to watch his dreams die. Manchester responds with an enormous telekinetic blast that pushes Superman farther away, so the hero plays his trump card. His eyes glow briefly, and although Black thinks he was attempting to melt his face off, Superman had actually launched a microscopic ray of heat straight through Black’s eyes, found the abnormality in his brain that’s responsible for his psychic abilities, and cut it out. “Instant lobotomy.”

Black is now utterly helpless, a fact which Superman underscores by calmly approaching and slapping him around. Literally slapping.

Super Pimp.

The fourth and final slap knocks some blood and probably a few teeth loose from Black’s mouth. In tears, he snuffles out “This isn’t you, you don’t do this!” to which Superman replies “I do now.”

It’s ugly and it’s mean. Everyone sees it and is distressed. Even Terence Baxter, the pissed off little urchin who was so enamored of lethal vigilantism earlier (and is nearby this fight too, in an odd coincidence), begs Superman to stand down and not stoop to his opponents’ level. But the hero lets it sink in– the fact that he’s giving them what they think they wanted, and showing them what it would really look like.

Superman can move at the speed of thought, he can level mountains with a blow, he can count the molecules in the air, he has a whole fortress full of advanced alien technology, and he’s nearly impossible to kill. If he abandons his principles, if he believes that life is cheap, if he arbitrates rather than enforces justice, if he decides that his might makes him right, then he’s no longer a protector or a hero. He’s an angry god. And this is what he was actively arguing and fighting against the whole story, if anyone had cared to listen. They’re listening now.

But fortunately for all involved (especially current crybaby Manchester Black), Superman didn’t give up the fight against his dark nature. With a deservedly smug grin, he reveals to all how he’d planned this show right from the beginning, with more than a little help from the Kryptonian robots he has stashed in his fortress. His helpers were always there to sneakily protect bystanders so that it looked like he was being reckless with collateral damage, and they’ve similarly whisked off the  remaining members of the Elite– they’re all chilling in the fortress as he speaks, imprisoned and unconscious but alive. Superman’s helpers had even enlisted the Elite’s bio-ship, Bonnie, by promising that they’d free it from the team’s enslavement.

It was hard work, just like the difficulties Superman faces every day when he clings to his principles in an ever-harsher world. Meanwhile, hatred and violence are easy, but worse for everyone in the end. So Superman threaded the needle and maintained his code while still getting everyone real familiar with what they’d see if he didn’t… and what they’d probably see from the Elite, after enough time of unchallenged rule.

Black tells Superman if he thinks this is over, he’s living in a dream world. To which, corny as ever but still right, Superman replies:

“Good. Dreams save us. Dreams lift us up and transform us into something better. And on my soul, I swear that until my dream of a world where dignity, honor and justice are the reality we all share, I’ll never stop fighting. Ever.”

The people cheer. Superman wins, and more importantly, his dream does.

So it’s not perfect. The genuinely exciting portions of the fight are over by the halfway mark, and while the second half keeps up plenty of narrative excitement to make up for it, upon re-watch you find yourself wanting to see Superman take just a bit longer to dismantle the Elite. Though of course that’s probably the primitive lizard-brain part of you talking, the part heroes like Superman want you to overcome. Also, that “heat vision surgery” thing doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Newbern plays it terrifically here, especially interesting after years of hearing him as such a boy scout in Justice League (even the “bad” alternate version of him from one episode sounded pretty cheery). Parts of his performance are even better when you re-watch the film in light of the final revelation: when he lets loose an over-the-top melodramatic laugh during the tornado scene, it’s not because Newbern is hamming it up, Superman is.

And of course all praise due to the writing of Joe Kelly, adapting his own story here. Kelly is somewhat notorious for inserting overt and clumsy political messages into his comics (he even shoehorns them in this film a few times, retroactively applying a War on Terror angle to a March 2001 story), but his dialogue here shines. And he gets Superman.

This is the Superman I love, and the one the world loved for roughly 70 or so years of comic history. If, as the navel-gazers like to say, the old kind of Superman is no longer “relevant” in today’s world, then that’s the world’s problem, not Superman’s. He’s not a reflective figure but an aspirational one.

And this is not, Henry Cavill’s dazzling performance aside, the Superman we got in Man of Steel. (SPOILER WARNING for next sentence). That’s a Superman who not only kills his adversary at the finish, but also causes untold thousands of deaths in collateral damage as he callously tosses his foe through a surprising amount of buildings, taking down whole city blocks just so the filmmakers can aesthetically highlight the scale of superpowers involved. A Superman who exists not to protect or inspire but only to fight… and as the absolute last person on the Internet who should have to demonstrate his affection for fight scenes, I can safely say that I want something a little more from Superman. Something better. Man of Steel’s Superman resembles nothing so much as the act Superman puts on in this movie, in order to fool the Elite and prove a point.

(Not to dump on the movie relentlessly, but… speaking of those fight scenes–you know, the fight scenes that the movie sacrifices so much to portray and are supposed to be its major saving grace? Man of Steel basically has a whopping two fight scenes. Superman vs the Elite has, in case you missed the title cards here, four fight scenes of varying quality, plus a few neat sequences of Superman saving people and the like. And it does all that in half the time.)

Grade: A

Coming Attractions: You & I have unfinished business.