I prefer my TV super-positive. I have difficulty watching things I know to be violent, dark, depressing, etc.
And yet, I am endlessly sucked in by LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT.
SVU, as it’s commonly known, is currently in its 15th season of busting rapists, pedophiles and miscellaneous, vaguely-sexually-related criminals. It has hung onto its original cast for a remarkably long time, though it finally seems to be moving on — co-lead Christopher Meloni departed three seasons back (possibly because he realized he had busted every pervert in New York — the state, not the city), while Richard Belzer’s oft-crossed-over Detective Munch recently retired and Dann Florek’s Capt. Cragen from the original L&O (“the mothership”) is following suit.
Ice-T will still likely be around to express disbelief at whatever commonly-known perverse act they’ve encountered this week:
SVU’s run continuously on NBC since 1999, but its greatest contribution to the public consciousness is the reruns on USA, one of the few cable channels I still get. There are, to my counting, an average of four SVU marathons per week, not counting how a marathon from the earlier part of the day will get rerun in late night. As John Mulaney points out in the above stand-up act, this provides an excuse for all manner of horrifying violent sex acts to be described at three in the afternoon. Occasionally, USA blanks out some saucier language, but overall, it’s okay because we’re only TOLD about the horrific acts, not SHOWN them, and the bad guys either get caught or shot to death or something.
The network seems vaguely aware of how absurd it is that such a violent, horrifying show is practically their flagship, particularly now that they need to use it to plug more holes in their schedule with MONK and BURN NOTICE having concluded their runs. Marathons are based around the most random themes possible (the most recent one was “What would B.D. do?” after the exposition-providing shrink played by B.D. Wong), and commercials have taken on a self-referential air, with the announcer pointing out that the most important thing in SVU is to “never crack a smile” or tourists to NYC getting directions from locals who recall locations based on where a dismembered corpse was found in a particular episode.
With USA recently acquiring reruns of MODERN FAMILY, there have been a series of commercials joking about how those shows have plenty in common. I’m more worried about young viewers who tune in for a mini-marathon about to start and get the end of some episode with a blood-covered stab-victim. A recent marathon featured all guest stars who went on to be on MODERN FAMILY, which could have resulted in even more confusion.
As you can tell, I’ve been sucked into these marathons. An episode ends, and another one literally begins right after — they reduce the credits to near-microscopic size during the thrilling finale of each ep, so once you see “EXECUTIVE PRODUCER DICK WOLF” and hear the NBC/Universal tone, you immediately hear a new, “In the criminal justice system, sexually-based offenses are considered especially heinous…”
It’s gotten to where I see a rerun of THE OFFICE or 30 ROCK and hear that tone at the end, I have the Pavlovian reaction of starting to utter, “in the criminal justice system…”
The self-contained nature of each episode makes it easy to get sucked in. There’s almost always a bizarre, recognizable guest star: Zack Morris from SAVED BY THE BELL! Jerry Lewis (not playing a rapist, thank god)! Luke Perry! Melissa Joan Hart! Ludacris, who actually did a pretty good job! It’s enough to get your attention and carry you through to the end of the episode, at which point, as I’ve said, another begins.
Wikipedia episode guides have let me place most of the USA-rerun episodes in a period from seasons 6-12. That’s a run longer than most “regular” shows, but there’s enough turnover in the writing styles of SVU that this period is particularly notable for the sheer number of gonzo plotlines.
The first season of SVU was an attempt to do a slightly-more-personal version of the “mothership” show, with more inter-office subplots and such. By season 2, they’d retooled, added Ice-T and glasses-wearing ADA Stephanie March, and made it more of a bizarre, twisty procedural.
There were some crazed eps in that run — I’ll never forget, no matter how hard I try, the one that starts with a Michael Jackson-esque toy shop owner and somehow ends with Cindy Williams from LAVERNE & SHIRLEY faking her granddaughter’s cancer with mercury poisoning — but by those later seasons, there was a distinct sense that the writers were out of ideas, not only for the overall show, but within individual episodes.
While earlier episodes have a weirdly compelling quality as you start to realize just how awful the secrets of the guest stars of the week are (there’s a reason possible killer Chad Lowe is so terrified of mother Margot Kidder!), later episodes have the quality of, “This isn’t shocking enough, so let’s throw in a TWIST!” This TWIST! factor has the unique quality of causing the episodes to forget what they’re about, sometimes within the first few minutes.
The example I keep using is “Avatar,” from Season 9. Cold open: A woman is sexually assaulted by her sister/roommate’s finance. But wait! It turns out he has a sleep disorder and doesn’t remember doing it!
This plot is then completely forgotten as it turns out the sister is missing, and she had a secret life in a Second Life online community analogue, and then it turns out she was stalked by a convicted kidnapper (Kevin Tighe, Locke’s dad on LOST!) whose victim was never found, and then they figure out where she is when they realize the kidnapper has a cabin in his virtual world, and they can triangulate the location based on the angle of the sun, and you have Det. Benson literally yelling at the community’s webmaster, “A woman’s LIFE IS AT STAKE! TURN ON THE SUN!”
ACTUAL SEQUENCE.
For good measure, it turns out the original kidnapping victim was still alive and in love with the kidnapper and hiding out at the cabin, so to end the ep on a maximum down note, he sees her again at the end and goes, horrified, “You got OLD.”
Holy God, you cannot believe how disgusted I am with myself for not only watching but remembering this, now that I’ve recapped it.
The show has, during these years, a real tendency to take something vaguely realistic and twist it into…something else. The infamous crime where a fake cop called in to a fast-food restaurant and convinced the manager to torment an employee was turned into a riveting, skin-crawling drama in the film COMPLIANCE. A few years before, SVU did an ep on it…which somehow turned into being about Robin Williams as an anti-authority mastermind who puts Det. Benson in a morality-questioning deathtrap.
The original point was somewhat blurred, though Williams did get an Emmy nod out of it. I Googled.
Aside from procrastination and living alone, why on Earth do I keep getting sucked into SVU episodes? It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times.
Here’s how I’ve broken it down:
1) There aren’t many other scripted shows on during the day. Whether it’s morning, noon or late at night, it’s at least something that has a plot.
2) There’s a brisk pace — from the constantly-moving camera during the scenes where one cop after another provides needed exposition to the L&O trademark “CHUNG! CHUNG!” blackout title cards from scene to scene, the show moves. You rarely have time to get bored before some new lurid detail comes to the surface.
3) And as I’ve said above: Morbid curiosity. Where is this going to go? What insane TWIST! will occur next? And can you randomly figure out which season this episode is from based on such factors as the ADA, the storytelling style, or just the length of Marsika Hargitay’s hair? (It’s shoulder-length Season One, short and butch for most of the middle seasons, then gradually gets longer again starting at about Season 11).
More recently, I’ve found myself increasingly wary of the the show’s “reality,” TWIST!s aside. The cartoonist Dean Trippe did an excellent comic called “Something Terrible” (you can download it here) that deals with his own sexual assault as a child. Almost as horrific as the event was that Trippe had, from constant plots on TV shows, been convinced that because of this, he would become like his attacker as an adult, and was afraid to be around children for years as an adult. He later found out this wasn’t the case.
You’d get a different impression if you watched SVU. The closest I’d seen to their explaining that victims of childhood sexual abused DON’T grow up to become pedophiles was one episode with Michael Shannon (who’s been the creepy guy in pretty much everything else he’s been in), who’s been afraid of being around his baby son because of that fear, the result of his being molested by his coach as a child…and it’s later explained that the coach was himself molested, and another of the kids DID become a pedo himself as an adult.
It ends with Shannon realizing he is a good person and finally able to let himself be with his son, but how many inaccurate, manipulative stereotypes have been put forth because of that story?
Yes, I need to ween myself off this.
The show has, in its post Meloni/Stabler years, been run by Warren Leight, an L&O veteran who more recently ran the excellent cable dramas IN TREATMENT and LIGHTS OUT. Leight is an intelligent, cerebral writer, and the episodes under his reign the show has toned down the insane twists to tell relatively straightforward tales of professional men and women who battle human monsters, and the toll it takes on them.
It’s not nearly as much fun. And immediately after typing that, I realize I’ve just used “fun” to describe a show about rapists and pedophiles.
Still — they had Cybill Shepherd in a story that basically redid the Trayvon Martin case with Paula Deen as the shooter! And it was played straight! If you’re going to do some ridiculous mash-up of a distasteful celebrity story and one of the most tragic miscarriages of American justice in recent years, how can you expect people to take it seriously?
(Though to their credit: The brilliant stage actor Raul Esparza is the current ADA, and his dry, irate presence is worth tuning in for, even when he’s in a deathly-contrived take on the Anthony Wiener scandal.)
As with most bits of junk TV, the easiest way to detox is to spend the time wasted watching it doing things that are productive and pro-social. I might have to resort to that for SVU, particularly with a new year coming up and not much TV on during those winter months.
Still, it’ll take a long time for those words to get out of my head: “In the criminal justice system…”
My recent giving-up of soda and most sugars has reminded me of this short story I did with artist Thomas Boatwright for a local anthology of coffee-themed comics a few years back.
Here’s the tale for free — a little rushed by me at the end (page limit!) but I think it still has some charm and the art is ROCK.
1) Yes, Part One ran two months ago in issue #20. No, I don’t know why it didn’t run on consecutive months. The story WAS finished when we turned it in, but there are a limited number of pages for backups and it can be very tricky to figure out how to use the space. I appreciate KaBOOM! letting us do this story and have no ill will over this.
2) No, I probably won’t be doing more AT stories in the future. KaBOOM! has made it clear they have a large number of writers and artists doing such tales and don’t have room for more material at this time. I have some more pitches to them being considered by Cartoon Network for approval, but it could be a while before there’s room for any of them. Again, it was a great opportunity and I have no bad feelings — it’s just how the business works.
Additionally, Brad McGinty ALSO has a story in REGULAR SHOW #6, which is out today. He is a brilliant, brilliant artist and we’re working on a creator-owned miniseries pitch for another publisher. At this point, I’m trying to deliver a polished full script for the first issue along with a full miniseries pitch, and Brad’s finishing up a few other projects before doing character designs, so it’s going to be a while before it can even be CONSIDERED for publication. But I truly hope to get this or another project together, not just for the career boost (no shame in my game), but for the excitement of seeing my weird ideas being brought to con’sid’ra’ble life by Brad’s Brobdingnaggian talents (look it up, I was tired of saying “Herculean”).
A few notes on the story, though this is more of a “What NOT to do” when writing a script.
1) Out of all the pitches I sent KaBOOM!/Cartoon Network, this was the one they took, and once I sat down to write it, I realized I’d hosed myself, as I had to introduce new characters, new settings, a plot with a beginning/middle/end AND an action sequence in a mere seven pages (they gave me eight, bless them). So is this story rushed, and did I take a few shortcuts? You bet your bippy I did.
2) So first, it was great fun writing the fight sequence. Fight/action scenes are just about trying to find unique ways for the characters to act and react, and Brad did a very fun job pitting Billy against the Ham-Pire. I had fun thinking of things the Ham-Pire could do, but I wish I’d thought of more unique ways for Billy to fight back using the materials of the Grocery Kingdom.
3) I also feel great, great shame for resorting to the cheapest dues ex machina in the book — the hero finds a MAGICAL REMOTE CONTROL to take over the evil robots. Now, if you read both parts of the story in one sitting, I did try to establish this back on Pg.3 by introducing the cereal box display, but man, I wish I’d thought of something better to get to the denouement. I ran this by a number of friends, including a few cartoonist who work on ADVENTURE TIME, and they said to stop worrying, but I NEVER STOP WORRYING.
4) In a random bit, the Royal Tart Toter is a check-out clerk in the Grocery Kingdom, because I keep encountering tragically old, sometimes demented old people as greeters at big-box stores whenever I go there. Brad wanted a few more clerks for the background, so we went with the Squeez-E-Mart clerk and Choose Goose, who presumably had a slow season in his trading business or needed health insurance.
5) The last page is PACKED, which is a sure sign of a novice comic book writer. Kelly Sue DeConnick had a semi-seminar at a comic shop earlier this year where she made a point that you should try to wrap as much as possible up BEFORE the last page, so you have some room. Given the hole I’d dug myself with this script, there wasn’t a lot of room. I tried to have a short story type twist for Billy’s quest, but it got MORE cramped by the final-final image…
6) So the story ends with the revelation that it’s a tale being read to Baby Finn and Baby Jake by Joshua the Dog-Dad. I wanted to do this to give the story a cute moment amidst all the silliness and propose an addition to the show’s mythology — Finn and Jake learned about Billy because Joshua read them stories as kids, and this probably helped inspire them to grow up to be heroes themselves.
Acknowledging the page was already cramped in the script, I initially wrote this scene as optional, but regular AT comic writer Ryan North said that as the writer, I should say whether something was in the story or not, and that the scene was good and deserved to be in there. I still like it, but wish that I’d found a way to give it more room to breathe and sink in. I did like having a nice, placid moment to end all the craziness of the story.
Brad wanted an extra panel to contain Joshua’s final rant and suggested an exterior shot of the house. In the episode “Memory of a Memory,” Finn’s childhood home is depicted as a different place, but there’s no exterior shots of it. We figured that since “Dad’s Dungeon” showed that Joshua had built a dungeon near the Tree Fort and hid a holo-viewer in its attic, perhaps the Dog family had moved there or leased it from previous owner Marceline (that’d be a fun story to tell). It’s a cheat, but the story does play fast and loose with AT mythology in the interest of including cameos anyway.
So now you know…too much of the story. Hope you liked it, and hopefully I’ll have a few more comics finished in 2014, with both Brad and others among the Finest Artists Known to Man!
I’ve watched this film like a half-dozen times, and clips from it even more.
It just makes me SO HAPPY.
Why? Because it’s all full of crazy errors and bad acting and writing, but it’s completely sincere.
It’s like if you and your friends just decided to make a kung-fu movie on your own. It has that joy of hanging out with your friends and trying to tell a nice, straightforward story about being action heroes.
But I feel the awesomeness of this film has to be CONVEYED. So I’m going to do something insane.
I am going to do is watch the movie again and write down EVERY SINGLE THING I love about this.
It’s going to take a while to finish this post.
1) The opening (“SOMEWHERE IN MIAMI”) involves biker ninjas stealing a cocaine shipment. They are biker ninjas because “a very mobile way for the ninjas to get around during the day” according to commentary.
2) This is actually explained during the song that plays during the opening credits, which has the lyrics “Biker by day, ninja by night, steal all your cocaine, and also your life.” That is a very specific subject matter.
3) The coke dealers both wear white Panama hats.
4) Their coke is hidden inside a case full of Japanese candy, which looks pretty good.
5) The ninjas are somehow sneaking up on them in the middle of Florida.
6) I’m reasonably certain some of the gang members here for the drug dealers will be in a completely different gang in a crowd scene later in the movie.
7) The classic “cut the cocaine packet and taste it to make sure it’s good” bit you see in EVERY DRUG MOVIE.
8) NINJA STAR TO THE NECK! Like most scenes of violence in the movie, it involves huge amounts of blood and the victim screaming/grabbing at the weapon.
9) The drug dealer escapes from the ninjas by leaping off a warehouse ledge, and clearly falls on his face as he hits the ground, based on the sound effects.
10) NINJA SWORD SLASH TO THE HEAD!
11) NINJAS TAKE OUT SEMIAUTOMATIC WEAPONS WITH ARCHERY!
12) After multiple drug goons are assassinated, one rushes in with a pipe video-game style, and puts up a surprisingly good fight before getting HIS ARM CHOPPED OFF WITH A SWORD (followed by several seconds of screaming while grabbing at the stump).
13) One of the drug dealers tries blocking the ninja with a couple pieces of metal, then just gets kicked off-camera with a video game death scream.
14) The biker ninjas all have a dojo somewhere in the middle of Florida.
15) Master biker ninja Yashito (introduced with a thunderclap), explains to them the most important flaw in their plan: They got the cocaine, but “YOU FORGOT THE MONEY!” The scene then goes to the credits practically mid-sentence.
16) When he’s not being a ninja, Biker Yashito wears an ascot. As a ninja, he smashes flaming bricks. THIS IS A MAN.
17) We meet Dragon Sound, who have keyboards, hexagon drums, red T-shirts with their band’s name, a girl who looks like Pat Benatar, Tae Kwon Do moves in their act, and most importantly, A LEAD SINGER WHO LOOKS LIKE HALL AND OATES.
18) They’re clearly not playing their own instruments, and THEY DON’T CARE.
19) Yashito’s “connection” Jeff has an awesome beard, plus a different awesome outfit and awesome earring for almost every scene.
20) Despite the film’s title, we’re informed it actually takes place in Orlando.
21) Jeff’s gang includes a Kid Rock look alike and several guys who do nothing but mumble. We’ll get to them later.
22) The first of many, many ADR-dubbed rapid-fire dialogue exchanges.
23) “Good news. I got a new shipment of coke for you.” “You got a taste?” “It’s the best. You can move a lot of coke in Orlando.”
24) By the film includes characters named John, Jane, Jim, Jack and Jeff. Try to keep them straight.
25) An awkward, overweight club owner in a white suit tells us this is “Park Avenue, Central Florida’s Hottest Nightclub.”
26) The club owner’s microphone feeds back horribly as he introduces the band Dragon Sound as “a new dimension in rock n’ roll.”
27) Dragon Sound’s hit song “Friends,” the best thing ever.
28) In the first of many instances, the male members of the band are mostly shirtless for their big number.
29) Is there anything happier than Jeri-Curled keyboardist Jim?
30) The crowd clapping along to the song clearly does not know the beat to the song they’re supposed to be clapping along to.
31) And the lip-syncing is horribly off as well.
32) Star/co-writer/uncredited co-director Grandmaster Y.K. Kim is clearly just playing air guitar, but who cares, he’s having an awesome time!
33) Yashito and Jeff are horribly perturbed that Jeff’s sister Jane is singing songs about loyalty and friendship with Dragon Sound’s John (see what I mean about keeping it straight?) Their confusion is expressed with some deeply heartfelt line readings.
34) Jane has pretty much nothing to do during this number except…attempt…to dance around.
35) At this point, Jane starts trying to clap along to the beat, and Grandmaster Y.K. Kim…sorry, “Mark” notices and tries to clap along a moment later.
36) During Hall and Oates’…sorry “Tom’s” guitar solo, Kim/Mark is in the background air-guitaring and apparently realizes he doesn’t have his guitar strap on, prompting him to stop to put it over his shoulder.
You know what? Bump this noise. For the rest of this awesomeness recap, he’s just “Grandmaster Y.K. Kim.” SO SPEAKETH THE ZACK.
37) Yashito and Jeff end the song by toasting with girly drinks filled with fruit, ’cause they are BROS.
38) We then see how our crew attends the University of Central Florida, which clearly allowed them to film there through generous, generous product placement.
39) Jane is in computer class, where her professor goes on about how the university’s team came in fourth in an international programming contest. Fourth?
40) He then compliments Jane with, “Good circle! Great!”
41) John attempts to non-verbally flirt with Jane for a good 30 seconds.
42) John randomly asks the girl he’s dating about her family . Jane nonchalantly says she has a brother, Jeff, “but there’s just one thing — I don’t really like him.” This is elaborated with, “Well, I can’t really explain it — I just don’t like him.” She further goes into product placement by explaining that “if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be going to this nice school and staying in the nice dorm I’m staying in.” She gives a rather elaborate reading of her backstory with all the conviction of a shopping list.
43) More ADR-dubbing as Jane explains Jeff is in with “some shady characters” as she takes John to meet him.
Now, this next sequence contains so much awesomeness that recapping will take a while. So here you can go ahead and watch it first.
44) Jeff is so cold he brings five cars worth of thugs to assault his sister’s boyfriend and DOUBLE-PARKS ACROSS A HANDICAPPED SPOT.
45) Plus he’s got army fatigues and a SINGLE SHARK TOOTH EARRING.
46) We have the first, though not last, moment where one of Jeff’s runnin’ crew vaguely insults our heroes with what are barely recognizable as sentences.
47) John manages to keep this expression for not just this scene, but pretty much the entire film.
48) In a moment of utter hypocrisy, despite Jane just telling him she doesn’t like her brother, John still introduces himself to Jeff by saying “I’ve heard a lot of good things about you.”
49) Jeff immediately gets pissy and demands…
SHARK TOOTH EARRING.
50) Jeff provides one of the film’s top five line readings with his spitting-out of “A FRIEND?!”
51) John takes this in stride. This is actually a completely different screencap than the one before.
52) Jeff then just randomly punches John, which prompts Jane to unconvincingly flail at Jeff’s chest.
53) Dragon Sound shows up to save their bro! A fight…doesn’t ensue! Though we do get Jeff’s line-reading of “Are these bums your friends?”
54) Grandmaster Y.K. Kim valiantly struggles to get his lines out, and doesn’t even manage to finish his monologue before Jeff tells his boys to go!
55) Following another ADR-d bit of the band driving away, we then get a completely random cut-away to ANOTHER group that hates Dragon Sound, Club Park Avenue’s previous band! Boy, this guy is angry!
56) There’s no real way to convey how the guy’s swearing is utterly random and off-cue, or how a fight scene starts with the club owner, who then has nothing to do for the entire rest of the film. So let’s just go to the video.
According to co-writer/co-star Joseph Diamond in the commentary, ““Most club owners in Orlando are actually trained in the martial arts.”
I’m not really sure what the bearded dude wants to accomplish, as cursing out the guy who fired you is not the best way to get your job back. Perhaps he’s just pissed at “Friends for Eternity.”
57) About a full minute of exposition is then dubbed-in by a long pull-back from a shot of a city front and flags reading “BAYSIDE.”
58) Jeff gets into an awesome business suit to hang with Yashito and “The Yahos” at Yashito’s dojo in Miami. So it’s “Miami Connection” because Yashito is the connect between Miami and Orlando? Again, let’s not try to make sense of this.
59) This sets up several minutes of Yashito’s biker-ninjas doing ninja-move training in full black ninja PJs in the daytime. I’m pretty sure they are dying from humidty.
60) Yashito’s all “We need to get rid of that band, so you can control that area,” despite his never having actually interacted with Dragon Sound in any capacity. Either he is just bummed that Jeff’s sister is dating John, because he and Jeff are such bros, or he is concerned that their pro-friendship, pro-Tae Kwon Do songs are somehow a threat to his ninja movement. This POV will be reinforced soon. This is all done with a maximum of over-dubbed dialogue.
61) We have another scene that has very little to do with the rest of the film with Uncle Song, played by the film’s director Richard Park (aka Woo-San Park). Dragon Sound apparently eats at his place every night, though it’s not really clear if it’s a pizza place or a burger joint or what. More dubbed-in dialogue vaguely explains they’re eating there just before they make their club gig…
62) …where they play their epic “Against the Ninja.”
This song fascinates me, as they have not confronted any actual ninjas yet. Is ninja violence a plague of 1980s Central Florida? Was there a time when you could not walk down the street without getting assaulted by ninjas? Or is Dragon Sound just racist, and afflicted with a shameful anti-ninja prejudice?
Their chants of “tae kwon, tae kwon/ tae kwon, tae kwon/ tae kwon, tae kwon/TAE KWON DO!” might as well be “WHITE POWER!” if they weren’t a multinational, multiethnic band of martial arts experts/college students/musicians.
This number of course includes smoke bombs and multiple instances of off-beat clapping/lip-syncing , epic air guitar and Grandmaster Y.K. Kim fist-pumping a second after everyone else.
And a truly glorious shot of Jim playing TWO KEYBOARDS AT ONCE like a good ’80s rock star.
64) This isn’t a direct bit of awesome from the film itself, but I just love this subtitle in the captioning.
63) There is then an extremely abrupt cut to the former house band guy (whom I’ve found out went on to become a federal prosecutor in real life). He’s changed from his suit to some sort of sleeveless T-shirt with a Dexy’s Midnight Runners cap and a bandanna around his neck, and his crew are scoping out Dragon Sound as they leave…and Grandmaster Y.K. Kim can’t quite jump into their convertible.
64) Much like Jeff, the band leader has brought five cars worth of thugs to block Dragon Sound off in the street. Who are all these people? Was his band super-large like 10,000 Maniacs? Are they his fan club? Visibly, several of them are the same people who were hanging with Jeff, meaning they belong to multiple gangs. That is hardcore.
65) John finds new emotions to display.
66) After nearly a minute of the gang guys yelling indistinctly at Dragon Sound while the band sits there and stares, the band leader comes over to scream at Dragon Sound that because of them, he lost his job and “got my ass kicked!” I’m pretty sure that last bit was his own fault.
Grandmaster Y.K. Kim responds with his flawless mastery of the English language:
I’m sure that was the excuse many people had for appearing in this movie, but NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR BEING IN MIAMI CONNECTION.
Dragon Sound very sensibly points out the band leader should just talk to the club owner, but he’s not having that. FIGHT SCENE!
67) The gang intimidates Dragon Sound by…pouring beer on their car? Visibly, one of the gang members pours beer on HIMSELF before doing this. Perhaps the actor felt bad.
I am also sure that this is because the budget for the film was so low that they couldn’t afford to have actual damage inflicted upon the car.
68) We get the first of many classic Jim lines: “This doesn’t look like the welcome wagon!” You think?
69) At 26:30 into an 86-minute film, we FINALLY get a marital arts fight. IT IS ON! Grandmaster Y.K. Kim is kicking ass, literally, with SLOWED-DOWN IMPACT SHOTS and VIDEO-GAME-STYLE ENHANCED YELLING!
70) Once the gang chases the guys around a corner, they appear to be in a completely different part of the city. Apparently, Kim was such a beloved figure in Orlando that he was allowed free reign in location filming by the city, according to the commentary.
71) After jump-kicking two gang members at once and landing on his feet in a spin. Grandmaster Y.K. Kim has the most awesome “Did I do that?” expression.
72) Despite the many technical, writing and acting problems with this film, it must be said that Grandmaster Y.K. Kim does truly know how to throw down. Confusing direction of this sequence aside, it’s damn good action cinema.
73) JIm lets out a wonderfully high-pitched “YAAA!” as he saves his bandmate. This is not the last time this voice will provide us with joy.
74) The band leader goes down with literally two kicks, and then we IMMEDIATELY cut to the guys just going home and enjoying life like nothing has happened.
75) Now comes perhaps the greatest acting in the entire film.
The guys are all back at the house they all live at, because in addition to being in a band and practicing martial arts and going to school together, they also live together. Bygones.
76) Anyway, after high-pitched-ly announcing he’s going to take a shower (with his shirt off and pants unzipped as he struts down the house) , Jim finds out from John that he got a letter, which then turns into like two minutes of keep-away as he demands, in an increasingly high voice, “GIVE ME THE LETTER!”
77) This summons the other bandmates, who like Jim, are also shirtless. This is one of several sequences where the guys are all hanging out shirtless together.
78) There is also a very dubbed-in, casual line like, “we’ve had enough trouble with that street fight.” Like, “Hey, that happened.”
In sequences like this, the film achieves an almost Robert Altman-esque effect with its overlapping dialogue, albeit unintentionally.
79) I just love this weirdly framed-shot, where Jim is clearly standing too close to the camera.
80) And so, Jim reveals his tragic past in this epic monologue.
81) Yes, Jim is looking for his long-lost father. “I didn’t know you had a father. I thought we are all orpans.” That is not a typo. He also demonstrates an extremely poor understanding of the concept of “orphans.”
82) John is deeply concerned, and develops a new facial expression.
(To further clarify: The main characters are all Tae Kwon Do martial artists who are in a marital-arts-themed band and go to school together and are also orphans, and who are in the crosshairs of a drug dealer, a bitter rival band leader, AND drug-stealing biker ninjas. It’s important to have a scorecard.)
Co-writer Joseph Diamond (who plays Jack, the band member who pretty much hasn’t said or done anything yet), explained: the band members were all “orpans” in order to “get everyone to feel sorry for us. It’s trying to elicit as many possible emotions on as many different levels as possible.” He admits they “possibly” went “a little overboard.”
83) And so, Maurice Smith as Jim acts his heart out as he delivers the monologue of a lifetime. Also, he takes several steps forward to get on his proper lighting mark.
84) In tears, he explains: “My mother was Korean…and my father was Black American.”
85) I’m not really sure how he came by this terminology, nor what wartime romance his mom and G.I. dad could have had given that this takes place in the 1980s and Jim is supposed to be a college student. The fact that most of the cast are clearly in their early 30s results in some awkward chronology.
86) Anyway, Jim explains how his mother died and told him to find his father, but…
That would be logical, yes.
87) For absolutely no reason, this is followed by a sequence of the guys driving their car on the beach.
88) “Friends for Eternity” plays AGAIN. The filmmakers were right to do this.
89) Here’s our boys homo-erotically frolicking in the surf between bikini babe shots!
89) There’s some mad-flexing from Hall and Oates look-alike Tom, let’s show that pic again:
89) …and Jim forgets about this dad long enough to check some (clearly non-existent, added in B-roll footage) bikini babes out.
90) Let’s luxuriate in the utter lack of conviction in such line deliveries as “Baby, I want you” as the guys attempt to hit on women.
91) Damn, these boys are PIMP!
92) “They don’t make buns like those down at the bakery.”
93) After showing several women’s rear ends in bikini bottoms, they randomly show a little girl taking a shower in her bathing suit, which is creepy as hell.
94) This sequence just achieves a kind of greatness based on the fact that they obviously just went to the beach, shot footage of as many people and things as they could, and then left most of it in the final cut. I’m particularly fond of the guy walking around with a pro-nudist sign for no reason.
95) Let’s have some comic relief with Tom attempting to scam on bikini babes by following them around and going, “Excuse me madame, may I have a little kiss please?”
96) This is followed by her shoving Tom, causing him to fall onto some other bikini babes, who then kick sand at him for a full 30 seconds. I’m not sure what Grandmaster Y.K. Kim understands of American courting rituals. It’s like how Lord Zedd on POWER RANGERS was based on US efforts to come up with a Japanese-style monster and they made this horrific skinless thing — almost as though Kim watched guys hitting on girls at bars and made an even weirder, more obnoxious version of that.
97) The sheer awkwardness of John and Jane’s makeout scene in the waves, seen from like three different angles.
98) Even better is knowing that the awkwardness came from KathieCollier and Angelo Jannotti (Tom) dating in real life. Jannotti was apparently sent out for beer during these scenes.
99) We then cut to the gym which Jeff apparently operates out of, where his minions practice by doing things like grappling shirtless on the floor while the Kid Rock look alike (also shirtless) tries to whack them with a pole.
I might be reading something into this movie that isn’t there.
100) Evil Band Leader shows up, now with a bandage around his head, to recruit Jeff to take down Dragon Sound together. How he knew to contact Jeff is not really explained.
101) We get another instance of Jeff’s goons just babbling semi-coherent insults for about 30 seconds.
102) Band Leader and his boys all respectfully take off the sunglasses when Jeff enters the room in an all=-black sleeveless outfit. An intentionally funny joke is that one of the goons winces when he takes off the glasses from his broken nose.
103) Band Leader offers to join up with Jeff if he gets rid of Dragon Sound. There’s just one thing:
104) Band Leader notes that if Jeff gets him his job back, “any money I make is yours.” A) why would he presume the club owner would hire him back just if Dragon Sound disappears, and B) what’s the point of getting his job back if he’s just going to give away the money? Does he just hate “Friends for Eternity” that much?
105) Jeff, flat: “It’s that damn band again.” The scene JUST ENDS.
106) After another establishing shot of the University of Central Florida, just so we know the nice school where this takes place, we get like full five minutes of a Tae Kwon Do exhibition by Dragon Sound on the quad. Literally, all they do is demonstrate moves for like five minutes.
107) After Grandmaster Y.K. Kim demonstrates a bunch of stances and moves with grunts and enhanced sound effects, he takes down Jack in a match with slo-mo kicks, punches, and whatever this move is:
108) John demonstrates another facial expression.
109) Grandmaster Y.K. Kim then demonstrates various knife-disarmament moves (that will come in handy later — SPOILERS!) on John, including THE DEADLY FOOT-NOSE GRAB.
110) Seriously, this ends with multiple shots of breaking boards and a freeze-frame of Grandmaster Y.K. Kim shattering brick. IT’S JUST THERE TO BE THERE BECAUSE THAT’S HOW THEY WANTS IT.
111) We then get the other great monologue of the film as the guys enjoy refreshing beverages afterwards and talk about life and stuff.
John’s got ideas about how they can be even more of a Tae Kwon Do band!
112) John’s idea for Jack to do a drum solo (on his hexagon drums, let’s not forget) is poo-pooed by Jack, who has barely uttered two words at this point despite also being the co-writer of the movie. But he’s finally ready for the most awkward line deliveries in a film filled with them!
See, Jack’s wary because all these people keep wanting to fight them. He doesn’t want to play at the club because of the other band jumping them, and because of Jeff:
Regrettably, there are no clips of this from Drafthouse Films on YouTube, so just watch the thing. I cannot capture the utterly awkward cadence of his dialogue.
113) John tells Jack not to worry about Jeff (again, the whole naming problem in this film) and demonstrates yet another facial expression.
114) Grandmaster Y.K. Kim points out they need to keep their jobs at the club to pay for school, leading to more awkward, awkward line readings. But John vows to protect him!
115) Grandmaster Y.K. Kim’s mentioning of how he came from Korea and how everyone does Tae Kwon Do there leads to Jack’s stunning monologue: Why not have Dragon Sound do a world tour in all the countries they originally came from? Why not visit the local Tae Kwon Do dojos in Ireland and Israel AND Italy, and teach kids about positive music and kung fu and stuff?
116) Grandmaster Y.K. Kim reaizes that they’re not just black-belt music-playing college student “orpans:”
Had this movie only gotten a sequel, what we could have seen!
117) There’s then some more awkward exposition to explain that Uncle Song, the restaurant owner we haven’t seen in a while, is having trouble at his restaurant by a gang of thugs who are completely different from the other three gangs of thugs/ninjas we’ve seen so far.
One of them is wearing a belly shirt and the shortest shorts known to man.
There is so much that I don’t want to read into this movie.
118) The dudes try to skip out on the bill and push Uncle Song around when he tries to get his money, so he kicks their asses while wearing a Mickey and Minnie Mouse apron!
119) It’s unclear whether Uncle Song got his money, but Dragon Sound shows up, is amazed that Uncle Song beat all those guys by himself, and then get his explanation that Tae Kwon Do comes from “right here” (the heart) and “right here” (the mind). This is completely ripped off from THE KARATE KID, but there’s no time to dwell on it because Uncle Song disappears from the rest of the movie, and we’re too busy paying attention to the cutaway to Grandmaster Y.K. Kim fake-kicking Jim’s head and doing the toe-nose thing again in concert.
This only loses awesome points for NOT including a third Dragon Sound music/Tae Kwon Do masterpiece.
120) OH SNAP! Jeff and the Evil Band Leader left them a note for a rumble made in origami form!
Logically, they could just not show up for the confrontation, but they do…
121) Jane is mildly perturbed by this and goes to Jeff’s gym to confront him, where she’s briefly catcalled by a couple of his goons. This does not get its own awesome point, because it is not nearly as awesome as the later scene where this happens again. It does get points for Jeff wearing a shark tooth earring with a suit, and Jane expressing her displeasure at her threatening to murder her boyfriend and all his friends:
122) Jane is all, “Why don’t you just leave Dragon Sound alone?” and Jeff is all, “Just concentrate on school and nothing else!” This is one weird-ass relationship.
123) Jane tells Jeff she’ll keep seeing John “because I love him,” a line she delivers with the conviction of “I’d like to get my car washed.”
124) I sort of love Jeff because he’s just so uncomfortable trying to be the creepy drug-dealing gang-leader brother.
125) Jeff considers John a “second-rate musician” (not entirely inaccurate, but hey — drug dealer!) and threatens Jane by going, “now I want you to go home and think about what I’ve said.” Yeah. Jane is all, “And you are terrible!” like Jeff’s just told a bad joke instead of threatening murder.
126) The actual rumble between the guys takes place in a trainyard where, if you look closely, the trains are for hauling corn syrup. Jeff has yet another awesome outfit.
127) An actual vulture caws in the background, because this is a SHOWDOWN.
128) The Evil Band is trying to match Dragon Sound for pure shirtlessness.
129) I want to point out that John wears a polo shirt to a gang rumble.
130) I also love how Evil Band Leader’s dialogue mostly consists of him yelling some version of “son of a bitch!”
131) For whatever reason, Jim’s not here, and neither is Tom. I increasingly suspect Angelo Jannotti was only in the film for the songs and his Hall and Oates ‘do.
132) Jeff does absolutely no fighting, and at one point, I’m pretty sure a shot just consists of the actor whamming his own head into a train wheel to make it look like he was slammed there.
133) It was pointed out to me in a podcast that Dragon Sound spends most of the film either running from or trying not to get into fights. Indeed, most of this one consists of our boys being chased, then kicking the asses of their attackers once they catch up with them. Oddly, despite Jack being in the car, I do not see him doing anything during the fight.
134) In the single best one-on-one match, Jeff’s Kid Rock look alike goon tries intimidating Jeff by doing some sort of M.C. Hammer shuffle.
135) This is so weird it actually provokes a new facial expression from John…
136) …who then takes out Kid Rock with a roundhouse kick to the gut.
137) OH SNAP! The cops show up and everyone flees! What’s amazing about this is that they are played by REAL cops, who were so excited by being in the movie that one of them accidentally pointed his gun in the direction of his partner.
138) There’s also this line, which a friend pointed out doesn’t offer any solutions:
And where will they go exactly? Another town to menace people with their ninjitsu?
139) Now comes the sequence that earns the film its R rating — Yashito and his boys all go out to a biker bar for a long, long montage set to a song called “Tough Guys.” You probably won’t be surprised to find out that what happened was the production went to a real biker bar, had a great time, and shot tons and tons of footage that they mostly left in the movie.
140) This also explains why there are constant shots of bikers with missing teeth, large-breasted biker babes flashing the camera, and at least one instance s of mooning.
141) Man, this whole sequence makes the bad guy lifestyle look awesome. Biker by day, ninja by night…robbing cocaine dealers, hanging out with your boys drinking brewskies and having girls flash you…you just don’t get that with songs about being friends for eternity.
142) Yashito gives Jeff some sugar, ’cause they’re bros.
143) After another ADR-d bit about how Jeff needs to get rid of Dragon Sound, we see he’s wearing an “Outward Bound Colorado” cap.
Clearly, their program did not have the desired effect on Jeff’s morals.
144) Among the most random bits is a guy demonstrating shoving a nail up his nose and taking it out again. Good for him!
145) We then get several minutes of Grandmaster Y.K. Kim just walking around and chatting with various band members, to remind us that he’s the leader even though he’s a head shorter than everyone else.
This is what is called a “save the cat” scene, where a character is made to seem more likable/heroic by doing something like saving a cat. In this case, Grandmaster Y.K. Kim asks John about his homework and tells him he needs to get some sleep,
146) Then he checks out Tom’s new music for “the keyboard part” to their new song (presumably about Tae Kwon Do) and is somehow able to recognize it as really good by just sight-reading the sheet music in about two seconds. And poor ol’ Jim is just asleep.
147) The dudes are just hanging around the kitchen with no shirts, like you do,. For some reason, there is a pineapple in the middle of the kitchen table. There is some vague discussion about their all writing the Defense Department about Jim’s father, and Grandmaster Y.K. Kim starts randomly popping grapes into the other guys’ mouths, which in the commentary he says he did because they needed Vitamin C. GRANDMASTER Y.K. KIM LOOKS OUT FOR YOU.
148) There is yet another completely gratuitous plug for the University of Central Florida with our heroes walking across campus in their UFC shirts, and briefly stopping to shake hands with some students. Hmm, how do you think they were allowed to film on campus?
149) But OH SNAP! Jeff’s runnin’ crew is in the parking lot watching Dragon Sound as we hear Grandmaster Y.K. Kim say, “Pizza!”
150) They appear to drive all of two feet to the pizza place before Jeff’s goons grab Tom while he’s parking the car. No one in the entire packed parking lot or restaurant that’s RIGHT THERE appear to see or hear anything. But he does get to get off the dubbed-in line, “Mark’s gonna get yoooouuuuuuuu!”
This is probably my racism speaking, but given Grandmaster Y.K. Kim’s incredibly poor English and that it’s established his character immigrated from Korea, why is his name “Mark?” Is “Mark” a common name in Korea? The world may never know.
151) Tom is tossed in a closet with an over-ADR-d thud, and has somehow lost his shirt between being taken out of the trunk and taken into the house.
152) We don’t actually get to see Dragon Sound find out Tom is missing. Instead, we have Jane go look for him at Jeff’s gym…after about a minute of Jeff’s goons incomprehensibly babbling weird zingers at each other.
I feel genuinely sorry for whoever had to close-caption this.
I think they might be trying to breakdance.
153) Anyway, Jane shows up, asks if Tom’s there, and one of the goons just goes…
WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!
This scene gets extra points for Jane’s zebra-print outfit.
154) So Jane walks to an off-camera room, then turns and walks out, all while the guys just throw out random lines like, “salami.”
I don’t know why I love this scene so much. It’s like, they thought the guys were hilarious, just turned the camera on them, and left it all in.
Plus, it’s got Kid Rock, some random fat guy, and a dude wearing what appears to be leather pants and a Pink Floyd cap.
155) But we get to see where Tom is — he’s been CRUCIFIED!
156) Jeff is so evil HE DRINKS COORS LIGHT.
157) In another apparent case of “Leave it in!”, this kidnapping actually looks like a party, with all these guys drinking beer and making out with chicks. Even Evil Band Leader has a honey, and a “Kill ’em All” shirt.
158) There is no scene where Dragon Sound is informed of Tom’s location or is given a ransom note or whatever, but somehow they know where he is and just show up to face the men determined to murder them for A) dating one guy’s sister; B) taking a job offered them by someone else and C) possibly singing songs with anti-ninja lyrics.
159) Evil Band Leader goes, “Son a of bitches are running late! They don’t get here soon, I’d just as soon blow that son of a bitch out of the sky!” I love how he’s somehow able to work “son of a bitch” into every single thing he says, like one of those Texans on that episode of SEINFELD. I bet he orders drive-through with those words as well.
160) Dragon Sound picks up weapons to use against the bad dudes…and Jim gets a plastic pipe. I find that sort of adorably in-character.
161) I love that the logic of these fight scenes plays like a 1980s-era arcade game. Hey, here’s a random setting — the street, a train yard, in this case a construction site (possibly the same one from the opening), and a bunch of goons! Use the setting to kick evil’s ass! Pick up some weapons to help you!
162) At this point, Dragon Sound just starts straight-up MURDERING the bad dudes. I’m pretty sure that’s a Tae Kwon DON’T. OH SNAP NO HE DI’IN!
Grandmaster Y.K.Kim hits a dude in the throat with a pipe, which slices it open with an actual blood spurt.
163) The scene’s too dark for a good screencap, but John knocks out this dude with a pipe or sword or something and then does that classic ninja/samurai thing where he spins it and strikes a pose.
164) Grandmaster Y.K. Kim kicks a bad dude into a plastic trashcan, which breaks it in half! BECAUSE HE IS SO BAD.
165) This fat dude in grey sweats picks up a heavy thing to throw at Grandmaster Y.K. Kim, who knocks it out of his hands! So he picks up ANOTHER heavy thing, and this time Grandmaster Y.K. Kim knocks him onto his back and steps on the heavy thing AND CRUSHES THE GUY TO DEATH.
This is all pretty baller, but man, things have gotten violent! Increase the peace.
I just love how gang dudes are dropping in from out of nowhere to get their asses kicked. It’s just like an arcade game, but with less story!
166) John kicks ass in what we can now see is a half-shirt!
167) Evil Band Leader stops by a trash can, at which point Jim pops out and cold-cocks him with a plastic pipe and a “YAAAAHHHH!” Making this even better, he’s wearing an Adidas shirt.
168) Evil Band Leader actually gets the upper hand on Jim (and we see he’s wearing khaki pants) but Grandmaster Y,K. Kim knocks him out or something. Thank goodness. Wailing on Jim is like hitting a small child.
169) But wait! Jeff enters the game and kicks both Jim and John’s asses…my god, this is confusing…and now confronts Grandmaster Y.K. Kim with TWO SPIKED STICKS.
170) The amazing thing is that they don’t so much fight as wave weapons at each other, then Jeff heads to higher ground and just sort of slips off a ledge with a sound not unlike that of a STREET FIGHTER villain getting TKO’d.
JEEEEEFFFFFFFFFFF!
Man, Jeff was ROBBED. But there’s an UNUSUAL HIDDEN SECRET that gives him a second chance! We’ll get to it later.
By the way, is Evil Band Leader dead? Because it looked like he was just knocked down. Perhaps he had a concussion from the previous kickings of his ass.
171) Anyway, Yashito and his ninjas are just meditating or whatever, when some boys come in with bad news: “Boss! We got a big problem now!” This is delivered with only a slightly better grasp of English than Grandmaster Y.K. Kim’s.
172) “Your brother Jeff is dead!”
Look at how bummed Yashito is. This is the best acting in the entire movie that isn’t Jim’s.
173) Yashito vows that his boys will avenge Jeff’s death! (in a clearly dubbed-in line)
(By the way, they mention “Jeff’s gangs” (not a typo) are here.” Maybe the Band Leader was part of them? Why do I care about this?
174) This results in ANOTHER ninja-training montage, as they pose and do moves and go over pommel-horses and stuff to prep for throwing down on Dragon Sound. I love the sheer number of montages in this movie.
175) Yashito has a flashback to Jeff, because they were BROS. He loved Jeff!
In a way, their villainous friendship serves as a dark mirror to the pure goodness of Dragon Sound, but that perhaps gives the screenplay too much credit.
Now comes THE BEST SCENE IN THE ENTIRE FILM. Here it is in advance, because the audio is desperately needed for this.
176) Jim goes out to get the mail, with no shirt and his pants unzipped (making-of info explains this mailbox was specially installed for the film, good to know!) and spends nearly a full minute just opening up the mailbox and going through the mail.
177) But it’s so worth it for what he finds…HIS FATHER!
There is no use attempting to recap the sheer joy and glass-shattering high-pitched-ness of this. I sympathize, I have a high voice as well. But it just adds such a weird, man-child quality to this scene and this character.
178) Dragon Sound runs outside, obviously attracted by the high-pitched noise. None of them except Grandmaster Y.K. Kim are wearing a shirt. Grandmaster Y.K. Kim lets out an “OH MY GOD!” almost, but not quite as good as Jim’s.
179) Anyway, with Jim’s father coming in on a plane the next evening, Grandmaster Y.K. Kim proposes the band pool its savings of $310 to get Jim a tailored suit from “Best Suit Store.” I used to shop there!
An inflation calculator reveals that $310 in 1987 is $638.96 in 2013. You can actually get a pretty good suit for all that. I mean, we’re not talking Brooks Brothers, but something that could pass pretty well at a party. It is only on this viewing of the film that I have heard Jim’s high-pitched “I’m gonna buy a suit!” He is almost as excited about this as meeting his dad.
180) Jim is then lifted up onto the shoulders of his shirtless (and in one case, towel-clad) friends as triumphant music plays. This might be the single most homoerotic cinematic image of all time.
181) Despite many, many other necessary scenes of exposition being cut out of the final film, we do see the guys getting Jim his suit. This is actually kind of sweet, though.
182) They come home to discover Jane’s there, and is sorry she hasn’t been around, but is totally cool with Jeff’s death. We have previously seen no reaction whatsoever from her for this tragedy that took place all of five minutes of screen time ago.
183) John is overwhelmed with emotions by this.
184) Jane apologizes for “being gone so long” in a vaguely grandmotherly tone. She also compliments Jim on finding his father. I suppose the other band members told her about this while she was waiting for John to get back, but I like to pretend that people over in the next county heard him.
185) John’s like “I feel bad, but we had to do it, we had no choice.” There was an awful lot of straight-up murder in that fight for “no choice.” Also, Jeff was bleeding from the head. I guess I am too pro-Jeff to be objective about this.
186) I like how everyone mentions over and over again that Jim found his father, even as John and Jane have another horrible kiss.
187) So then they just head on over to the airport to meet Jim’s father, and I’m not sure why they even bothered stopping by the house. Possibly to show the others what kind of suit their savings bought?
188) But the biker ninjas are now after them, driving in their ninja pajamas in broad daylight! Wouldn’t someone notice? And wouldn’t those hoods adversely affect their peripheral vision?
I also wonder if Evil Band Leader is now a ninja, co-opted by Yashito’s boys. Sometimes I wish I could stop thinking.
189) They head off our boys, which prompts this brilliantly nonchalant bit of exasperation from John:
It’s delivered like you’d say, “Oh, a detour.”
190) John’s response is all, “Come on, leave us alone! We have to catch a plane!” Like he’s shooing a fly. This line is also clearly dubbed-in.
191) But the ninjas know, you can’t get away with slicin’ a BRO.
192) Massively bad editing ensues as the guys jump off an embankment and into what is clearly a large park several miles from the previous shot, pursued by ninjas!
193) OH SHIZ! JIM GETS SLASHED IN THE CHEST! THEY SLICED HIS TIE AND EVERYTHING!
194) Jim’s nearly 30-second-long scream is met by several returned screams by Grandmaster Y.K. Kim!
195) Seriously, he screams “JIM!” like six times.
196) There’s this shot I can’t quite screen-grab the way I want where Grandmaster Y.K. Kim is coddling Jim’s body, and in the background John just jump-kicks away a ninja sneaking up on them.
197) John kicks away another ninja while Grandmaster Y.K. Kim drags Jim to “safety” through the filthiest-looking swamp water ever (the commentary confirms it was like that in real life). I’m pretty sure that this would not only infect his grievous chest wound with parasites, but also ruin his brand-new $310 suit, which makes me indignant.
198) Grandmaster Y.K. Kim says “Jim” like eight more times while dragging Jim through the swamp.
199) Meanwhile, John’s emotional arc takes a strange climax, as he flees into the swamp, pursued by the ninjas who just shanked his bro.
You know what this means? BERZERKER RAGE.
Sweet lord, the screencaps here are UNBELIEVABLE.
200) Grandmaster Y.K. Kim gets in on the action by pinning a dude in a tree and stabbing him through…the back of his chest, I’d imagine, but the way the dude’s head shoots up made me imagine something more…untoward. What is wrong with me?
201) Slo-mo shot of Grandmaster Y.K. Kim’s BATTLE POSE.
In some ways, I find this tragic. Perhaps in a Sam Peckinpah-like twist, Dragon Sound has now been infected with the violence of the ninja.
201) I can’t get a decent screenshot, but John is at this point straight-up CHASING a ninja through the swamps with his sword!
202) He gets slashed in the back by another ninja, but just turns around and stabs the dude, and gets like 10 full seconds of blood in his face.
203) At this point, everything descends into a paroxysm of violence as John rips off his shirt and he and Grandmaster Y.K. Kim just run around massacring ninjas.
204) WAR POSE!
205) NINJA SLASH!
206) DESCENT INTO MADNESS!
207) MORE WAR FACE!
208) MORE WAR POSE!
209) In a strange warping of space and time, one of the surviving ninjas manages to get all the way back from Orlando to Yashito’s Miami dojo to tell him “everybody’s dead.” Yashito’s reaction is to just decapitate him and laugh.
I can’t really parse the logic of this, but I do like that the ninja is cut off in mid-scream as he’s decapitated.
210) Somehow, Yashito then magically appears in the park/swamp/whatever with the guys. Like, a second later, and he’s there. Googling turns up that it is 320 miles from Miami to Orlando. What route did he take? Where is his dojo located? How long were the dudes wandering in the swamp?
211) Yashito is clearly played by different actor as he confronts Grandmaster Y.K. Kim in a swordfight that has an awful lot of them not fighting each other.
Here’s the awesome part — according to the commentary, because the actor who played Yashito was no longer available, they just got the actor who played Jeff! So in a way, JEFF IS BACK FOR REVENGE.
212) There are also visible grass and dirt stains on Yashito/Jeff (Jeffshito?)’s white ninja outfit. This is why Storm Shadow always had a hard time in G.I. JOE.
213) Seemingly defeated, Yashito-Jeff grabs a hidden knife from his boot and tries to prison-shank Grandmaster Y.K. Kim…only for him to turn around and do the knife-disarming move from the earlier exhibition and stab Yashito-Jeff with his own knife!
STORYTELLING STRUCTURE.
214) Yashito-Jeff is clearly still breathing after being “killed,” though he slooowwwly collapses. That’s not very real-looking blood, though. He could come back!
215) There is a pretty excellent few seconds that’s just a few slow-motion shots of the guys running around. Good padding!
This ends with Grandmaster Y.K. Kim just randomly shouting “COME ON!” in slow motion. I love that.
216) Despite Jim being forgotten the last few minutes, he’s actually still ALIVE, and they’re taking him to the hospital (John is driving, with no shirt and covered with blood). Why couldn’t they call an ambulance, or explain all the dead ninjas to the police? Well, that earlier fight at the trainyard did suggest they were more interested in staying out of gang violence.
217) Jim STILL cannot shut up about his father.
218) This hospital establishing shot has more info than needed.
219) Jim’s dad quite possibly left his family because he could not deal with his son being older than he was.
220) The doctor says Jim is going to be okay! And he’s leaving him in Jim’s father’s care. Yes, the father who hadn’t even seen his son until now, or since he was 9. That monologue earlier was a little confusing.
221) Jim’s dad thanks Grandmaster Y.K. Kim for saving Jim’s life, and swears he’ll make up for lost time with his son. Grandmaster Y.K. Kim addresses Jim’s dad as “Mr. Brown.” Wouldn’t that make Jim “Jim Brown?”
…yeah, I can see it.
223) Grandmaster Y.K. Kim gets one more great moment of bad English with , “Jim is like my brudder. I would…anything for him.”
224) Jim’s okay! And he gets to say the word “father” in a high voice one more time!
225) “Jim, you are truly blessed to have such wonderful friends. they really care about you. And I want you to know that now…I really care too.” PHRASING.
226) Jack, in his Dragon Sound shirt, gets to put a button on the film’s plot…
BECAUSE YOU KILLED THEM ALL AND LEFT THEM TO ROT IN A SWAMP.
227) And John gets in one last face.
Hey, where’s Tom/Hall and Oates?
228) Classic ’80s ending: “Let’s all go home” and FREEZE FRAME.
229) And finally: THE GREATEST MORAL OF ANY FILM EVER:
230) The closing credits feature the song “Tae Kwon Do Family.”
231) 25 years later, Grandmaster Y.K. Kim still can’t speak English very well…
232) …and still isn’t really playing the guitar.
BONUS: The original “dark” ending where Jim DOES die, and then they see a plane touching down at the airport, and John goes, “Oh no, Jim’s father is on that plane” in the flattest voice imaginable, and HOW WOULD HE EVEN KNOW THAT?
Dear god, more than 8,000 words over six days. This was an epic.
If you’ve gotten through all this: Please buy MIAMI CONNECTION on DVD or Blu-Ray and support the fine efforts of Drafthouse Films in rediscovering such masterpieces as this.
Posted by Zack under Best of the Blog Comments Off on Why I Heart Megatron: Yes, a Transformers Post
I’ve been helping out at Crowemag Toys in Raleigh recently, and that’s given me a new appreciation for the Transformers.
The store deals in used toys, and the biggest seller, by far, are Transformers. People pay HUNDREDS for “Generation One” stuff from the 1980s, fan-created “third party” figures, convention exclusives, and more.
(As this place gives me money, should mention: There’s a complete 1980s Scorponok for $300 and Fortress Maximus in the box non-sealed for $1700. Contact through website for info.)
This has inspired me to think back to the day my innocence ended: When Optimus Prime and Megatron killed each other.
The story is now well-known: In 1986’s TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE, the goal was to clear out many of the existing robots and introduce new toys, um characters.
The result traumatized kids so badly that Optimus Prime, leader of the heroic Autobots, later got resurrected. I blame this also in part for his follow-up, Rodimus Prime, being kind of boring.
The idea was, they’re toys, who will care? Well, Prime and his excellent voicing by Peter Cullen had a weird sort of resonance with kids. He was the toy truck that would come to life and be your friend. He was the caring, heroic father figure, a knight in shining armor for the post-STAR WARS age.
That said, I was rooting for Megatron.
Why? It was simple: Bad guys ALWAYS lost.
On cartoons, FCC regulations not only meant bad guys always lost, but they were never allowed to be that threatening. There were rarely any stakes for the heroes to beat them, other than it was their gig.
Well, Megatron wanted to drain the Earth of its resources and conquer the universe, but the consequences of this weren’t adequately depicted for me.
I dug the Decepticons. They turned into planes. They had Soundwave, the cool, emotionless tape-recorder-bot filled with dangerous tape friends. They had Starscream, the whiny, covetous second-in-command (who also had the same voice as Cobra Commander, the late Chris Latta). And they had Megatron, with his military-like appearance, cold, raspy voice, and oh yeah, THE GIANT GUN ON HIS ARM.
Megatron never, ever won, so yeah, when there was a fight to the death, I had mixed fellings.
Let’s set the scene: It’s the near-future and the Decepticons are raiding the Autobots’ headquarters. A number of minor characters get slaughtered, something I didn’t grasp in my younger years.
So Prime is all, “Megatron must be stopped, no matter the cost…”
…and we hear the immortal tune, “The Touch” by Stan Bush. Yes, the one that Mark Wahllberg also sang in BOOGIE NIGHTS. If he doesn’t sing it in TRANSFORMERS 4, that movie is going to be an even bigger ripoff than anticipated.
As much as I love that song and this sequence, they don’t exactly go together. It works a lot better when it’s reprised at the end of the film. Though it does create a thematic linkage or something.
I also like that shot of Prime. Very iconic and imposing. I wish they’d hold on it during his entire line of “Megatron must be stopped,” which is one of many editing problems I see with the final film. I don’t know if this was due to budget limitations or just studio cuts.
Anyway, Prime transforms and rolls out, and Megatron’s on the dead run, yo!
And the other Decepticons are all….
…and with good reason, because…
…and they’re about to go…
And after MOWING DOWN ENEMY AFTER ENEMY IN THE FORM OF A MACK TRUCK, Prime transforms and SHARP-SHOOTS A HALF-DOZEN DECEPTICONS IN MID-AIR WHILE DOING A BACK-FLIP….
,,,AND THEN LANDS ON HIS FEET AND CONTINUES BLASTING AWAY.
I’m sorry, but even if you hate the Transformers, you have to admit — PRIME IS BALLER. That is probably the most bad-ass a good guy got to be in the 1980s.
Oddly, only one Decepticon, Frenzy, thinks to just FLY out of the way and avoid getting mowed down, which is odd as most of the other Decepticons turn into actual jets. Perhaps they were just startled, or damaged, or low on Energon?
…I hate myself now.
So then Prime comes face-to-face with Megatron and is all, “one shall stand, one shall fall!” and Megatron is all, “Why throw away your life so recklessly?” and Prime is all, “That’s a question you should ask yourself, Megatron!”
This is why I love this conflict: Unlike many 1980s good-guy/bad-guy conflicts, where FCC restrictions made the conflict seem more like a rivalry, even frenemy-type deals, it was pretty damn clear that Prime and Megatron EFFING HATED EACH OTHER.
And with the freedom of a PG rating and the desire to introduce a bunch of new toys, they get to unleash that hatred big-time.
MEGATRON TACKLES PRIME!
Prime hurls Megatron into a wall, but Megatron hurles a spike and prison-shanks him, Decepticon-style!
Why did Megatron never just throw a sharp object before? Because it was a G-rated kids’ show.
Also, this is the far-flung future of 2005, and presumably Prime and Megatron are running somewhat less efficiently, despite both of them being millions of years old. …I hate myself again.
Prime sees he’s been shanked, but still dodges a Megatron-blast and does the TIGER UPPERCUT!
Again; The improved animation on this really shows. The characters are allowed to just get BRUTAL, and you can practically hear Megs’ head crunching like a beer can…or would if “The Touch” wasn’t still playing.
But Megs ain’t out yet.
Even though his arm-cannon has been knocked off…for what, the 50th time in the series?…there’s a perfectly good laser-sword just lying on the ground. How convenient!
Prime manages to get slashed IN THE SAME PLACE WHERE HE GOT SHANKED BEFORE. He would make a terrible boxer.
And in pretty much the most epic shot of this, Megatron leaps up for the kill-blow…
…AND LANDS ON PRIME’S FIST.
Prime tries to cyber-stomp Megs, but Megatron literally bounces back….
IN THE FACE!
“I’ll rip out your optics!” he screams, only to get hurled on his butt. “Finish him!” cries an Autobot.
This part I love — Prime just wordlessly goes over and picks up his laser rifle, then heads over to put Megatron down, like, “Yeller’s my dog. I’ll do it.”
There’s a certain workman-like quality to that, i.e. it’s a dirty job, he’s the one who’s got to do it.
And there’s something a little edgy and unnerving about this for a kid. The good guy is prepared to straight-up kill the bad guy to end his reign of terror.
But Megatron sees a discarded laser pistol….
…and here’s the bit I like: Megatron pretends to beg for his life, but Prime doesn’t waver. “You, who are without mercy, now plead for it?”
How many times has there been this scene, where the bad guy begs like a coward? The thing I dig is that Megatron genuinely doesn’t mean it, and Prime knows he doesn’t mean it.
Anyway, Hot Rod shows up to tackle Megatron before he can grab the gun. This is SUPPOSED to be a bit where Hot Rod inadvertently contributes to Prime’s demise, but I don’t buy it. Megatron would have just shot Prime anyway, and his hostage-grab of Hot Rod is too rushed to generate much suspense. Had they drawn it out, it would have been a much more dramatic moment — Prime can’t let one of his own get killed to stop his arch-enemy, and that winds up causing his own demise. Instead, it just feels like a cop-out to say Prime WOULD have won.
Rather, he gets capped. Repeatedly.
You even have Megatron screaming “FALL! FALL!” which is pretty damn baller for an ’80s cartoon villain.
So Prime winds up with a gun to his head…
…and another baller Megatron line: “I would have waited an eternity for this! It’s over, Prime!”
Again, lovely animation detailing. Prime’s injuries looked genuinely painful…for a robot truck…and now Megatron looks on his last legs. But still smirking.
Is Prime gonna take this lying down?
“NEVER!”
And Megatron goes down!
This was a pretty excellent final confrontation, because neither party kept the upper hand for long.
They both gave it their all, and both were ruthless with the other. It was afternoon cartoons with the kid gloves off.
Also, it’s weirdly satisfying to me, because TECHNICALLY Megatron won — Prime died, and Megatron was still alive when he was drifting in space and got turned into Galvatron.
Well, technically Prime came back. But still…
It’s funny to watch this now. As a kid, I didn’t know Prime would come back. I was freaked out, traumatized like everyone else.
And yet, I was grinning, because the bad guy finally got to be EVIL, and in a way, got a win.
I was never as big on Galvatron, the upgraded version of Megatron. Yes, once the series picked up again, he was also voiced by Frank Welker, but I missed the rasp. He was more of a psychotic, though his episodes hold up much better. He’s like a robot Prince Joffrey from GAME OF THRONES.
Never really cared for the Michael Bay films. It’s funny — they’re actual films with giant, giant budgets, and yet I never came to care for those toy-selling robots the way I did for the ones back in the 1980s.
In a way, those shows were sort of the mythology that my generation grew up with, and it’s probably why we haven’t moved on from them that well. They had a weird sense of history and story, and the promise of that unlimited potential you get in your imagination with each new action figures.
Plus, transforming robots are just cool, duh.
I wonder how many will sell at the toy shop this week?
