Post by The Curmudgeon on Sept 26, 2010 18:39:51 GMT 2
Godon's alive? Not for long.
I'll put my hand up and admit it; I was excited. When I first heard the news that a brand new series of Flash Gordon was coming to the Sci-Fi Channel, the Nostalgia Nerd inside me thought back to the gloriously camp and wonderfully garbage 80s movie, or the action packed, spirited capers of the Buster Crabbe serials. The Serious Nerd inside me pondered what such a show would be like, sitting alongside more intelligent sci-fi reboots like Battlestar Gallactica. Would it be possible to produce a grounded, realistic science fiction show based on the bonkers adventures of the ancient comic strip hero, with rocket ships and Hawkmen and all kinds of "Simpler-Times" lunacy? Or would the show go all out, embrace the Boys Own adventure theme, hoping to capture the tone and attitude of the strips?
Turns out it would be a little bit of both, with a huge dollop of "Suck" added in for good measure.
So, it turns out that in 2007, certain plot points just aren't realistic in this oh-so modern adaptation. So no rocket ships to the planet Mongo (it's now a parallel dimension which Flash and co can hop in and out of, yeah that's much more realistic than, uh, space travel) and certain names have been altered as well. Flash Gordon is now Steven "Flash" Gordon (because he can run fast, plus that unfortunate incident with the brown mac and the ten year old girl, possibly) and Ming the Merciless is now, God help us, Benevolent Father, and is an obvious take on Saddam Hussein. Wow. How chin-stroking and relevant. Except the crucial difference isn't the lack of Ming's famous beard and robes from the comic, serials and movie - it's the fact this new Ming is quite possibly the most boring villain of all time. Not in the least bit threatening, intimidating or even amusing, he's just sort of.. there. He looks like your bank manager.
But then, he's evenly matched, because this reboot's Flash is every bit as dull and pointless as his "nemesis." I understand the character of Flash Gordon isn't exactly a famous archetype; he's not the tortured billionaire of Bruce Wayne, he's not the guilt-ridden, socially awkward Peter Parker, so you could pretty much fill in a lot of blanks in Gordon and run with it. So those blanks that have been filled in are now "smug", "hateful" and "incapable of any emotion other than apathy." In the first episode he ends up on Mongo, a new UNIVERSE, remember, and placed in jail about to be killed, by ALIENS, remember, and he acts like he's just nipped out for a pint of milk. He sighs, he quips, and that's it. He doesn't care, so why should you?
The other characters are just as bad. Dale is like Flash-Ette, similarly good looking, similarly sarcastic and equally hateful. Zarkov is the nervous nerd and Ming's daughter; fiery tempered and spunky in the serials and the most beautiful creature who ever walked the earth in the 80's movie (Ornella Muti, quite possibly from another planet.. she really was too damn sexy to be entirely human), is dull and pouty in this series. She, like the others, have the exact same flaw; they're the same initial characters we all know, but with no spark. You don't believe, sympathise or even like any of them. Oh, and Token Black from South Park has been added to the cast list too, providing nothing but his obvious reason for being there. It's almost like the writers of this drivel had a) never read any Flash Gordon comics before and b) never watched any science fiction television before, instead deciding to pitch these characters as a cross between Beverly Hills 90210 and Friends, all unfunny quips and pointless mugging as each tedious, stupid story pans out.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the show tanked and was cancelled after its first season, but it's not like the rot began to set in after the first 12 episodes; it was dire - positively DIRE - from the very first episode. If it didn't have the words "Flash" and "Gordon" in the title I would have switched off after the first episode (hell, the first twenty minutes). I actually survived past episode 3 which SFX Magazine described as "possibly the worst episode of anything, ever." In fact, I lasted right up until the end of episode 8, until I found myself sobbing into my hands at the thought there were still 14 episodes left to go.
It's a damn shame. It had the budget, it had the potential audience, it had decades of potential storylines to take inspiration from and it had a full season run. Far more deserving shows had much less to work with before they were binned before their time. To re-write several key elements of a comic strip for being "dated" and then hampering the show with characters and dialogue worse than an episode of He-Man is baffling. Filling the show with bland, boring performances when history has provided the exact opposite is just galling. A waste of time, money and a potentially great franchise.
Flash Gordon 2007 could have been great. With better writers and cast it could have taken key elements that made the original great and evolved it into a relevant, intelligent piece of science-fiction. Or it could have given us enjoyable romps a la Xena or the BBC's Merlin series. It did neither, and ended up a boring, confused mess that made you believe (British joke alert) the writers were from Ming's home planet, or as we like to call them... Mongoloids.
