Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands (2016)

 

When he hears the news that his adoptive father, Thane Hrothgar, has died, the warrior Beowulf returns to his home settlement of Herot.  Beowulf does not expect - and does not get - a warm welcome, but even he is not prepared for the conflict that the Thane's death unleashes.

Hrothgar, you see, was High Thane of all the human tribes of the Shieldlands.  His demise leaves the position empty, launching a host of schemes and counter-schemes from those who aspire to take his place on the throne.

These candidates include Hrothgar's widow, his son, and his brother, all of whom have a complicated relationship with each other, and an equally complicated history with Beowulf.  Their political machinations - as well as those of others with an interest in the struggle - leave the human tribes disunited and vulnerable.  And there could not be a worse time for this to happen, as the threat of the rapacious Wolflings and the inhuman creatures known as "mudbloods" has never been greater.

Though planned as the first season of an epic fantasy series, these thirteen episodes proved to be the entire run of Beowulf.  Having watched them, it's not hard to see why.

It's not the fault of the cast.  They're a generally talented bunch who do their best to make their characters compelling and relateable.

It's not even the fault of the CGI.  Yes, it frequently lacks a real sense of weight and substance, making obvious the unreality of the creatures depicted, but overall it's not too terrible for a 2016 TV show.  Particularly one that is operating on a much lower budget than something like Game of Thrones.

The fault lies with the writing.

The first big issue is that the title character is least interesting person in the show.  As noted above, this is nothing to do with the actor's performance, which is fine.  It's that Beowulf is just a bland man of action that we've seen a hundred times before.  He lacks any real development over the course of the season, and his basic lack of depth is highlighted by the fact that he is surrounded by more interesting characters that simply don't get as much screen time. The show would be much improved if his embittered adoptive brother Slean was the primary character.  Slean actually both a distinctive personality and a recognisable arc.

The second issue is that on numerous occasions, characters act in ways that so nothing to advance their own agendas, without any clear in character motivation for doing so.  One villainous character spends the first half of the season scheming nefarious schemes don't get them a single step closer to their actual goals.

Even more damning, characters often simply fail to act at all: I lost count of the number of times that characters stood around passively watching things go wrong for them, and made no effort to change them.

Clearly, in all these cases the writers are attempting to contrive tension and justify escalating risks that characters do take.  The thing is, while "My schemes have failed to help me so I must take a big gamble!" is reasonable enough as a plot point in principle, it feels very false and forced when the original scheme was never actually going to help them.

The writing and direction also fails in the smaller details.  We have monsters called "Sandworms" who explicitly never actually go into sand dunes, despite the fact that they travel through other kinds of sand.  Why?  Because the writing needs it to be that way.  What we see of mudblood society is inconsistent and incoherent.  Heck, what we see of human society is incoherent and inconsistent.  The wolflings are ragged raiders who live outside the civilised realms ... but who are somehow able to raise an army many times more numerous than Herot can.  How does that work?

The cast deserved better material.

Deepstar Six (1989)

 

DeepStar Six is an experimental deep-sea US Naval facility, with a crew of eleven people.  The team are in the final week of their tour of service, and bonuses are on the line if they don't complete their assigned tasks.  Head honcho John Van Gelder, therefore, has plenty of motivation to cut a few corners in order to get the work done on time.

Unfortunately for everyone aboard, one of those corners is his decision to use depth charges to collapse an underwater cavern, as its presence threatens their deployment schedule.  This releases an aggressive aquatic predator that soon makes its presence lethally known, threatening the lives of everyone on the mission.

Just like Leviathan, which I discussed last week, Deepstar Six is an "Alien, but underwater" movie that was not-so-coincidentally released in the same window as James Cameron's The Abyss.  As the the production with the lowest budget and the least well-known cast, it was deliberately targeted to be the first to cinemas, in the hope this would give it a commercial edge.  

It didn't really work out that way, for the record.  But the more important question for us, three decades later, is "is it entertaining?".

And the answer, within the very limited confines of "I want a schlocky low-budget creature feature that's Alien, but underwater", is that it's not bad.

It is helped by a solid cast.  They weren't well known at the time, but they're all solid performers.  Several have gone on to decent film and television careers, and should at least trigger a "I've seen this person before" level of recognition.

In contrast, the monster is something of a weakness.  In a 99 minute film - including start and end credits - the monster only turns up on screen in minute 64 (it does cause some damage before that, but it is not shown in those attacks) and is only actually in 4 scenes.  On the plus side, however, while the creature isn't on screen much and does looks a bit goofy when we do see it, it is at least more dynamic than the one in Leviathan.  It moves more rapidly and behaves with much more aggression.

Also in contrast to Leviathan, the script has a more positive expectation of the crew's employer: when things get dangerous, their request to evacuate is immediately approved.  Though of course it doesn't prove as easy to actually complete that evacuation as it is to approve it.  Venal, corrupt employers absolutely do exist, of course, but they're so common in media that it is nice to see one that acts reasonably decently.

Deepstar Six also has some nice little touches to its script.  For one thing, it does a solid job of selling the danger and isolation of working in the ocean depths.  As I was watching it, I found myself re-imagining the film without a monster - making it purely about facing the real life dangers of deep sea exploration.  For another, it has a clever visual juxtaposition between the introduction of two characters and a scene they share later in the decompression chamber.  I appreciated that little cute touch.

Deepstar Six is not a particularly ambitious or inventive film, but it does a decent job of being a budget-conscious monster film.  It's probably only one for fans of schlocky SF and horror, but for people in that group, it's probably worth a stream.

Upload, Season 2 (2022)

Life has got a lot more complicated for Nathan Brown since he died.  Uploaded to a digital afterlife where his quality of existence depends on the whims of his narcissistic and controlling - albeit genuinely passionate about him - girlfriend Ingrid, he's had to confront the reality of his own self-centred and selfish life, and the way that those characteristics hurt those he cared about, and probably also led to his own death.

Things are about to get a whole lot more complicated for Nathan.  First, Ingrid has apparently killed herself to be with him, so now she's an even more omnipresent part of his life.  Second, the woman he has genuinely come to care about, his still-living 'angel' Nora, has vanished after being targeted by nefarious persons unknown.

This second season of Upload builds strongly on the groundwork laid by the first.  Nathan and Nora are re-united (of course) and continue to work through the complications of their quasi-relationship.  Ingrid's controlling ways and tenuous concept of honesty continue to complicate matters for them.  Secrets about the digital afterlife and its future implications in the real world are revealed, while continuing technological innovations threaten to once again transform society's concepts of life and death.

My favourite thing about this show is that it rejects the usual simple morality of fictional media.  Most of the characters are much more multi-faceted than they first appear.  At first glance, Ingrid appears to be a generic 'evil ex' type who exists in the fiction only to be an adversary to overcome, but the writers aren't afraid to give her some redeeming features and good intentions.  She may be vain and self-centred ... but so was Nathan, and like him (if not to the same extent) she shows signs of growth.  Similarly, "good" characters are confronted with difficult choices where they must decide which of the things they claim to value are actually most important to them, or where they are tempted to sacrifice their morals for personal gain.  Unlike a lot of shows, it's not a guarantee that they will make the 'right' choice.

Upload is funny and breezy but it's also a surprisingly smart and well thought-out narrative.  The writers consider to think about the implications of 'life' after death and how it both change society merely by verifiably existing, and also how humans would try to use this new technology to deliberately influence the development of society.

If you liked season one, it's definitely worth returning for this second helping.

Leviathan (1989)

 

1989 saw the release of James Cameron's The Abyss, the director's first film since monster-smash Aliens.  The underwater adventure prompted a lot of media coverage, and - the film industry being the film industry - a couple of much lower budget imitators in the form of Deepstar Six and this movie.

As it turns out, both Leviathan and Deep Star Six are tonally rather different to the film they were obviously intended to trade off.  Possibly The Abyss was not quite the movie everyone expected.  They both take a much more "Alien, but underwater" approach than the film that prompted them.

And the Alien DNA in Leviathan's script is definitely strong.  The cast are a bunch of working class stiffs who stumble across a derelict vessel where none is expected, and in investigating it, unknowingly bring a monster back aboard their own craft.  Their employer is then complicit in their being trapped with the creature (though more in a callous 'cut our losses' way than an active 'deliberately seek it out' way). Heck, they even rig together flamethrowers as makeshift weapons to fight it.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but does it make for a good movie?  Well, I must admit that when I first saw them all on VHS, over 30 years ago, Leviathan was probably my favourite of 1989's three underwater adventures.  Re-watching it now, though, it hasn't stood up well at all.  Let's talk about how that can be.

In the film's favour, I think, is its cast.  They are a recognisable if budget conscious who's who of 80s science fiction.  Our primary leads are Robocop's Peter Weller, and Amanda Pays of The Flash and Max Headroom.  Supporting them we have Ernie Hudson from Ghostbusters; and Meg Foster from They Live and Masters of the Universe.  In terms of on-screen faces, the film feels like it is a reasonably high-profile effort.

I suspect that this recognisable cast, and particularly my late 1980s crush on Amanda Pays, probably contributed to teenage me being more upbeat about the film than it deserved.  Watching it now, I'm mostly aware that Amanda Pays is no Sigourney Weaver.  But then to be fair to her, her character is no Ripley.

A big problem with the film is that it lacks emotional consistency from the characters.  An example is with Pays's character, Williams.  After meeting the monster for the first time, Williams has an understandable freak out in the shower (a shower she takes while still wearing underwear - I guess Pays had a no nudity clause).  The scene has Williams sobbing as she desperately scrubs herself, deeply freaked out by what she just saw.  All of which is perfectly fine and reasonable ... but then two minutes later the script has her calmly fixing the lights, without any apparent concerns. It makes the earlier scene smack of the film-makers just wanting to get in a scene of Pays in a wet bra.

Another problem is the monster itself, which is a huge weakness in what is, after all, a monster movie.  The creature is very slow and lumbering, both  on screen and in script.  In terms of the on-screen depiction, this is likely a result of the heavy suit.  Clever editing might have concealed that, but the slowness is also true in fiction, which is a bigger issue.  It only ever seems to catch anyone from ambush.  A brisk stroll seems to enough to outrun it.  Heck, even when it does its claws on someone, half the time they manage to wriggle free anyway.  It's simply not very intimidating.

If you're absolutely desperate to watch "Alien, but underwater", Leviathan is ... honestly, it is probably going to disappoint, even then.

The Mysterious Cities of Gold (1982)

 

In 1532 a Spanish orphan named Esteban joins Mendoza, a navigator, and his associates Sancho and Pedro, in their journey to the New World.

Esteban joins the voyage because he hopes to find his father, who was lost at sea new the Americas.  The three adults have more mercenary aims.,  They hope to find one of the Seven Cities of Gold, which they believe will bring them untold riches.  Mendoza, having caught sight of an unusual amulet Esteban wears, believes the youngster might be of aid in completing this goal.

Once on the voyage, Esteban soon meets a young Inca woman named Zia, who has good reason to cynical about Mendoza's plans.  But there are far worse people looking for the Cities of Gold than Mendoza, so the three of them - as well as Sancho and Pedro, and another ally they will soon make - must learn to cooperate if they wish to stay alive long enough to unravel the mystery of the Cities' location.

Mysterious Cities of Gold was produced in the early 1980s, and I first saw it a few years later, while in my early teens.  Sometimes, revisiting a show from your younger days can be a painful awakening (teen me would be horrified by the news that Star Blazers is not good; not good at all), but I am pleased to say that this show actually holds up pretty well.  It's by no means flawless, but it's solid.

Lets start with the animation.  It is not overly complex, but it is competently executed throughout, and it is much more consistent in style and quality than many other animated shows of the era.  The characters all look like they're from the same show, and the designs of the various ancient devices of the lost Hiva Empire are cool.

The story, while perhaps a little drawn out at a whopping 39 episodes, also snakes along quite satisfyingly, with some characters (most notably Mendoza and his associates) having discernible arcs and growth over the length of the narrative.

There's also something of a real sense of threat to events.  Much of the threat is ultimately more apparent than real; this is a kids' show, after all; but - outside of the most central cast - this is not an entirely safe adventure.  Secondary characters, even sympathetic ones, can and do sometimes die.

If you have fond memories of the show, I don't think you will be disappointed by it.  Similarly, if you're in the mood for a pulp adventure animation that's fairly good about sympathetically depicting non-European cultures (though not terribly historically accurate, or good about gender diversity) it is worth a look.

If you do watch it, make sure you avoid the "next time" trailers at the end of each episode.  They often give away pretty much the whole plot of the following entry!

Greenland (2020)

 

When a new asteroid - dubbed "Clarke" - is detected within the solar system, most people don't pay it all that much attention.  Certainly structural engineer John Garrity has more important things on his mind: repairing his fractured marriage and ending his current separation from his wife and child.

Even when it becomes clear that some debris from Clarke will strike our planet, there is little alarm.  Projections indicate these small chunks will land harmlessly in the ocean.

One day someone might make a movie where the space rock doesn't threaten the planet and is just background to some personal drama, but as you may have already guessed, this is not that movie.  The 'harmless' chunk is much bigger than expected and lands not in the ocean but in Tampa, all but annihilating Florida in the process.

As it becomes more and more clear that Clarke is about the scour the Earth like an interplanetary shotgun blast, and panic rises as people realise that this will claim billions of lives, the Garrity family are offered a lifeline. John's profession has seen them selected for transfer to an underground facility in Greenland, where the US government hopes to gather enough people with the necessary skills to rebuild society once the danger is passed.

Of course, getting to safety is going to be easier said than done ...

"Big space rock smashes the Earth" has been a recurring scenario in films dating back at least 70 years (When Worlds Collide in 1951), and was the subject of two very different major releases in 1998.  That year, Deep Impact took a relatively downbeat and sober approach to the scenario, while Armageddon was a gonzo action romp that saw the world's hopes rest on a bunch of oil rig workers equipped with nukes and an Aerosmith power ballad.

Greenland hews much closer in tone to Deep Impact, with the Garrity family facing a difficult journey to try and reach safety as the authorities swing clumsily into action and the wider population sinks into panic. 

This film profits from a strong core cast who deliver good performances.  The desperation and regrets of the Garrity family feel real, and definitely help with the film's emotional weight.

On the other hand, I have mixed feelings about the film's narrative.  I thought the plans for the Greenland 'ark' seem poorly conceived and very poorly executed, obviously designed by the screenwriters to bring about maximum in-story drama rather than being an actual coherent plan to save people.  I sincerely hope that after decades of staring at nuclear devastation, the real US government has something a bit more refined in place to deal with the concept of relatively imminent annihilation.

That said, I've seen plenty of projects with far lower stakes that careered out of control due to poor planning and execution, so maybe the real thing would be this kind of shemozzle!

On the plus side for the script, I liked that it didn't just have the imminent disaster turn everyone into sociopaths.  Sure, the Garrity family runs into jerks during their efforts to survive, but they also meet plenty of ordinary people working together and helping each other however that can, whether that be in seeking survival or just coming to terms with impending death.  Too often media just assumes that co-operation goes out of the window in disasters, whereas the real life evidence shows that the reverse is often true.

If you're in the mood for a well-executed and disaster film that isn't just about the destructive spectacle, consider visiting Greenland.

Falling Skies, Season 2 (2012)

 

The men and women of the 2nd Massachusetts Militia continue the struggle to survive in a world now dominated by alien invaders.  They are at least learning more about their enemy.  Having long assumed the six-legged "Skitters" were behind the invaders, they have now learned that the Skitters are themselves a slave race, held in bondage by the same cybernetic "harness" devices they use on human teenagers.  Another species known as the "Overlords" are the real power, and some of the Skitters are just as keen to fight against them as the humans are.

Of course, trust doesn't come easily between such different species, particularly when the only means of communication is for a Skitter to speak through a previously-harnessed human.  That's a bit creepy.  And of course there are plenty of humans who don't know what the 2nd Mass knows, and wouldn't want to believe it even if they did.

Falling Skies is a show that frustrates me a little.  It has a decent cast and production values, and its heart seems to be more or less in the right place, but its a bit formulaic and too prone to taking the easy narrative option.  It continually sets itself up to examine the challenges of a desperate fight for survival, and the choices and compromises you might make in such a situation, but it's never quite convincing.  Main character Tom Weaver is always going to do The Right Thing, and it's always going to work out okay to do so.

It also continues to irritate me that for someone who is supposed to be a Professor of American History, Tom Weaver appears utterly blind to major elements of his own nation's past.  Specifically, anything that would make his nation look bad.  When the Overlords offer him a deal that is literally "How about you live on designated reservations like your government forced the native peoples to do?", he instead draws a comparison with Nazi death camps.  It's not a wholly inaccurate comparison, but it is far from the most accurate, and to be any good at his job, Weaver would know that.

Falling Skies is decent enough SF drama, but it plays it too safe and comes across a bit too smug, for me to recommend it.

Bhairava Dweepam (1994)

 

The Maharaja of the Chandraprabha Dynasty fathers an illegitimate son, but deserts his lover and casts her out into a cyclone.  The young woman loses the baby while trying to cross a swollen river, and sinks into depression over her son's apparent death.

The baby does not die, however.  He is instead swept downstream, where he is found by a friendly tribe whose chieftain adopts him, naming him Vijay.

Years later, Vijay is the greatest hunter, warrior and just all around swell guy in his tribe.  When his tribe needs the waters of the tree of immortality, Vijay sets off with his adopted brother to find it.

En route, however, he spies Princess Padma of the Bhupathi Dynasty, and falls instantly in love.  His dashing ways and sword-fighting skills soon have the princess swooning for him, as well, but of course her parents would never let her marry a tribal boy, even a chief's son.

Antics ensue, and grow more and more extravagant as it becomes clear that powerful magical forces are arrayed against the Bhupathi, and only Vijay's courage, skill and astonishingly convenient luck, can save them.

A big success in its native India on release, Bhairava Dweepam reminds me a great deal of the 1981 version of Clash of the Titans, though without the benefits of Ray Harryhausen stop motion effects.  Like the earlier film, it draws deeply on a variety of mythological tales and tropes, and also like the earlier film, it feels much more like a thin justification for a series of set piece sequences than a truly coherent narrative of its own.  When you add in a scene that resonates strongly of the Harpy sequence from Jason & the Argonauts, it does make me wonder if someone involved was a Harryhausen fan.

But perhaps they were just raiding similar mythological themes?  Well ... maybe.  But there are a lot of other scenes that resemble those of earlier English language films, up to and including a scene that is pretty much a direct copy of one from Conan the Destroyer.  Just like Conan in that film, Vijay finds himself in a hall of mirrors battling a hideous green humanoid in a red cape, and just like that movie, the key to defeating it is smashing the mirrors.

Other than playing "spot where they might have swiped this from" does the film have anything to offer?  Well, it's harmless fun on the whole.  Some of the action scenes, while utterly unconvincing, are fun in their over the top enthusiasm.  I was a bit disappointed by the musical numbers, though, which felt a bit tepid.

Overall, probably only one to check out if you're a fan of these kind of kitchen sink mythology mash-ups; particularly so if you want to play the "spot the swiped bits" game.

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 4 (2018)

 

Having defeated the demon Mallus and literally saved time itself, the Legends of Tomorrow could be forgiven for thinking that it would be pats on the back all around.  And for a brief window, that's true.  And they then happen to be at Woodstock when a unicorn turns up and impales someone.

Uh oh.

So it turns out that, thanks at least in part to the Legends' efforts to stop him, Mallus was not the only thing to escape supernatural prison.  All kinds of paranormal critters are now scattered across the timeline.  And while they aren't all deadly dangerous monsters, a substantial number very much are.  The Legends must scour through history in an attempt to contain the threat.  But perhaps all the magical chaos is a distraction from a more insidious threat ...

So the quirky team of "Legends" are back for their fourth season of "screwing things up for the better" here, and it is overall a pretty fun ride.   From year to year the writers do a good job of tinkering with the team's membership and dynamics just enough to keep things from getting stale, while still remaining familiar.  That's not always an easy balancing act, but it is carried off well, here.

On the other hand, I don't think the main plotline in this series is developed and concluded with anywhere near the same manic panache as was the previous season's.  The ultimate finale, in particular didn't hit the mark for me.  I can see that it is intended to depict a heart-warming moment of unity for the team, but I didn't feel convinced, in the moment, and just found it a bit schmaltzy.

Still, if you've enjoyed the team's antics over the previous 40 episodes or so, you should enjoy these 16 as well.