Re: Flash Gordon TV series flopped...so they're making a theatrical mo
IMO, what was... right with Skiffy version was:
Flash as the heroic everyman
Dale and Flash realizing their love / friendship
Princess Aura's relationship with Ming
Ming's right hand man, can't remember his name right now.
The Frigians
I agree with those, except I'm not sure why you rate the Frigians so highly. They were a nice bit of FG worldbuilding, and the only Mongo culture that were shown under their original name, but other than that...?
And Ming's chief scientist (I hesitate to call him a right-hand man because he was secretly against Ming) was Rankol.
What went wrong:
...
1. Ming is the archetypal mustache twirling villain, not a city-planner. He's a tyrant, and he's overt about it. He's also a genius.
I liked their attempt to make it more sophisticated by making Ming a subtler kind of evil. I mean, it makes sense. An overt cackling evil villain isn't going to win much loyalty from the people. It's more plausible if he's got charisma, if he's able to convince the people that he's the good guy and they're better off following him. That also makes it more challenging for the heroes to convince the masses that he's the bad guy.
Besides, I liked the nuanced backstory of this Ming -- the fact that he actually did help the people of Mongo through an extremely harsh time, that he really
earned their loyalty. I liked how his draconian measures were necessary for survival in the past, but now that things are better, he refuses to let go of power and is abusing it for personal gain. I felt it had a lot of resonance with real-world issues.
The one problem was that John Ralston wasn't really as charismatic an actor as the role called for. The flaw was more in the execution than the concept. But as the series progressed and Ming became more overtly cruel and maniacal, Ralston did become pretty interesting, especially in his scenes with Aura.
And yeah, the Ming-Aura relationship was another thing that wouldn't have been nearly as interesting with a classic, one-dimensional, moustache-twirling Ming. This "kinder, gentler" Ming allowed for a subtler relationship between him and Aura. You could understand why she could be fooled into loving him and being loyal to him despite his lack of respect for her. If Aura had been that devoted to an obvious, villainous Ming, she would've just seemed deluded or evil herself. As it was, she was able to be a strong and sympathetic character yet still feel a credible affection toward her father. And that became the most fascinating relationship in the show.
2. Hawkmen aren't a bunch of uncivilized brutish guys - they are literally men with wings, who fly like birds and having a flying city in the sky and live with high technology - not leathermen with a bird fetish who jump off cliffs. The Hawkmen's city rivals that of Ming. That's one reason Ming tried to keep the peoples divided - to eliminate any single threat by keeping them all off balance
3. The Arborians aren't simple village dwellers - they live in a civilized province and in the trees, literally. The closest the new series came with getting that sort of thing right was with Frigia.
Both of these come down to budget, and probably to credibility. The producers were trying to keep the fantasy fairly grounded. And I think that reinterpreting the Hawkmen into the Dactyls was an intriguing idea in concept; portraying them as a distinct and exotic
culture, a tribe with hawk-inspired rituals and talismans, was potentially more fascinating than just sticking bird wings on people. Again, the failure was in the execution, mainly the really, really bad and unconvincing costume design (and costumes were usually something this show consistently did well). Also Vultan was poorly cast. If executed a little better, this could've been quite good.
4. There is a certain amount of camp in FG. It just goes with the territory. If you don't like the camp as a set of writers, then substitute it with real threats - not quite plots - but real murderous action.
Rather than old-style camp, they were going for a more contemporary style of humor in the
Stargate vein. Or perhaps the vein of
Charmed, since one or two of FG's producers were veterans of that show.
After all, no show or movie ever succeeds by targeting itself solely at the pre-existing audience for the property. You have to draw in the broader audience. The key is to succeed at making something that satisfies both newcomers and veteran fans. Unfortunately, FG tried too hard at the beginning to cater to the broader audience and downplayed the classic elements too much until later in the season. I think they found the right balance by the last third of the season, but by then it was too late.
The Ming of old wouldn't ask people do something nicely and the wait, he'd murder you in cold blood himself. He's a cross between Lex Luthor and the Joker - you're never really sure which aspect will come out when you're with him.
And later in the season, we definitely saw that kind of unpredictable cruelty and madness emerge in Ming. He became quite chilling, and more so because he'd seemed so banal and reasonable at first; it was a shock to see the true horror that lurked beneath that charming facade.
5. On the one hand in the overall trajectory of the plot, it is necessary to unite the people groups to defeat Ming. However, Ming doesn't keep the people at bay by making them depend on him for resources like water. Rather, he keeps them off balance politically by manipulating them and creating rivalries between them to create mutual distrust - that's what gives Ming access to Mongo's resources while at the same time keeping any single party from challenging him. That's what makes Ming really dangerous. He's playing several steps ahead of them all.
And this Ming did that as well -- but having control of their lifeblood made him far more dangerous, because they depended on him for their very
existence. It wasn't just that they hated Ming but were too busy fighting each other; it was that they couldn't survive without Ming. I find that a whole lot scarier.
It's also prophetic. It's been said that the wars of the next century will be largely fought over control of Earth's increasingly scarce fresh water supplies.
This series "reinvented" the mythology too much.
Reinvention isn't intrinsically bad.
Battlestar Galactica is a drastic reinvention, and people love it.
Smallville is a drastic reinvention of the Superman mythos, and it's been quite successful (though it really should've ended a year or two ago). The key is how well the reinvention is done. There were a lot of ideas here that could've been quite compelling if handled better from the get-go.
Me being worried about their ability was never mypoint, I have seen Q+PR and I loved what they were doing.
