#Also deathstalker and the warriors from hell mention!

[sable-in-shadows]

Dragonslayer comes pretty close!

It's even got Harryhausen-esque dragon animation!

Related to people saying they picture asoiaf as looking like 90's fantasy TV-

I want an asoiaf adaptation that looks like a Roger Corman low-budget, absolute piece of crap 80's sword-and-sorcery movie. That's the aesthetic I think we deserved

I want that Mystery Science Theater 3000-ass look

[rosheendubh]

just as point in fact…no one ever paired Tywin Lannister and dad-bod in the same sentence…

—Just sayin’…a mid-60s/maybe early 70s, lean, mean, ruthless, pragmatic, cunning, disciplined, battle-machine. He walked into that throne room when Cersei was about to kill herself, and her son, with more presence than Filoni’s rendition of Thrawn (no fault to Lars, but he was both not well cast, and not well directed) could to an entire ISD hanger’s worth of Fart-Gas Zombies held together by red duct tape chanting his name…which is also quite out of character, whether from Legends/canon EU books. Thrawn’s characterization with Zahn is many things, but excessive displays of aggrandizing isn’t one of them (cue: the apologetics for “but 10 years in Exile”)…it also doesn’t help that none of the actors look like they’re taking their lines seriously (and with the over-long, melodramatic pauses, long-range 10000 yard stares, and ChatGPT level dialogue, who can blame them?—no honestly, I’ve seen ChatGPT dialogue that sounded exactly like that exchange between Sabine and Ahsoka on the ship, with her training…down to the actual tags/and descriptors), and move through the space around them so stiff and hesitant, you can tell no time was taken to smooth out scenes largely cast on green-screen between the production team, and the actors. Which is why, even the action bits appear awkward, and without much dynamism.

—To each their own, but this portrayal of such a pivotal character is definitely Filoni’s (horridly, but only IMHO) misconstruction. —and as for Ezra and Sabine’s reunion…*wah-wah-wah*—whaaaa??? Anyone recall Sansa and Jon Snow’s embrace after ALL THE ABSOLUTE SHITE they’ve survived over the years? I will still rewatch that moment—ya’ll should too. It’s very cathartic compared to Gazoo-moment everyone was rewarded with, between Ezra (“Hey, Girl, Waz’Up-Word”)-lost-boy-for-a-decade-SpaceAladdin, and Sabine (I’m supposed to be in my late 20s/30?-with the emotional maturity of a teen who just lost cell phone privileges-so flipping annoying-you wish Shin actually had gutted her and decapitated her…omg—how do people think she’s *sooo awesome*—and goes shrill on a Wolf-Horse for…reasons?? Oh, dramatic tension, she’s a very tortured and *fiery* warrior…I’m a woman, and a feminist, but this ain’t how ladies should be written…this is how fanboys think STRONGFEMALECHARACTERS act…take a pass, go watch EmilyBlunt in ‘TheEdgeofTomorrow*…).

—GoTs has A LOT OF ISSUES (mostly with S7/S8 of GoT, and its early Season1 episodes were admittedly…difficult. For a while, I called it LotR with T&A$$…but by that SeasonFinale, as Daenerys stepped out of ashes with 3 lil’Bebe Dragons, and Jorah kneels to her, vowing that line, “Blood of my Blood”—a line that could have fallen in flat-trope-tripe—hell no, hello, Drama Hook. We were on Team Dany…). —Genera differences aside, Team Filoni needs to take some lessons from what the GoTs writers/producers learned as they re-vamped (apparently, an even worse original filming of S1E1 of GoTs, that went back to the drawing board, it was so awful…so urban legend/DenofGeek alleges)—get fresh eyes to look at what you’re doin’ dudes…and maybe someone who’s read the actual source material. But isn’t in love with it—like Gilroy. I still think that’s why ‘Andor’ carried such a different essence—and a much needed sophistication for how science-fiction, and SpaceOpera ought to land. Fuck, go read some DeathStalker too, if you’re looking for bombast with tropes, and a good time. Watch bloody ‘The Expanse’. Someone mentioned, if Filoni required a lesson on how to communicate back-story as a balance between narration, and scene progression, to bring a largely uninformed audience up to speed on a Universe/World building Plot mythos with which most audience isn’t familiar, watch the first 15 minutes of ‘Serenity’. And maybe the entire Season of ‘Arcane’?. —which leads to the ultimate conclusion, Thrawn shouldn’t have been used by Filoni at all in ‘Rebels’. They needed a BigBad, and he ought to have just contrived his own generic Imperial of the Week. Which is what he did. And named it Thrawn. And yes, I know, supposedly he consulted Zahn. I’m more convinced, Zahn is diplomatic, and either felt (as he’d mentioned a few years ago), he was done writing Thrawn’s arc, and so, resigned his BlueManArtLovingAdmiral to the Disney drain of EU archives from which Disney borrows when it can’t be bothered to create its own original characters; or, he’s going to quietly retcon Thrawnius back into Zahn shape—given the rumors of recent months where he seems to have reconsidered revisiting Thrawn/Chiss arcs. Who knows? —My suspicion with ‘Rebels’ (of which, I completely can figure out the story-line, *secret*—it’s not that complicated for anyone who’s read any sort of children’s literature, or young adult books through their youth. Yes, I’ve tried watching episodes—it’s a cartoon made for kids—would’a loved as a kid…probably/maybe? As an adult, I’m wondering what other fodder people read and watch to consider this *quality*). I think what no one admits is, the animated series needed a big name from popular Lore to draw viewers, so there was computer-animated, cartoon-Thrawn…Filoni’s Disney Imperial. —okay, soap box rant done—we all have our OPs. I’m holding out for Andor/S2, but after that, cancelling Disney+. Actually, might even cancel before, and just renew when Andor/S2 comes out…

[mst3kproject]

803: The Mole People

I hate this movie all out of proportion for how bad it is.  I mean, yeah, it sucks, but looking at it as objectively as possible, I'm not sure it merits the volcanic rage it inspires.  Maybe I just really, really despise John Agar.  Or maybe it's the racism, or how it fails to tell us anything about the title creatures, or the shitty ending in which 'happily ever after' is snatched away at the last moment from the character who most deserved it.

Okay, maybe The Mole People really is totally loathsome.  Let's examine this.

A bunch of archaeologists climb a mountain to get a look at the ruins of a Sumerian city at the top.  Once there, they fall through some ice and end up in a giant cave under the mountain, where the rest of the city is.  This part, however, is still inhabited, both by creepy-looking albino Sumerians and by their slaves, the titular mole people – also by one cute blonde, because our white hero needs a white love interest.  The surface-dwellers are treated as honoured guests because the Sumerian king believes they are emissaries of Ishtar.  His high priest, however, thinks otherwise, and has plans to sacrifice them to the goddess as soon as he can prove they are mere mortals!  At the end they find their way back to the surface just as the Mole People slaves rise in revolt.  The last Sumerian survivor, the blonde, is pointlessly crushed by a column, leaving us with a movie that accomplished nothing but the destruction of an entire civilization.

Ishtar is an Akkadian goddess – the Sumerian name for her was Inanna, but at least this movie gets closer to her actual homeland than Blood Feast did.  Or maybe it doesn't, because all the wall paintings and hieroglyphs on the 'Sumerian' sets are Egyptian.  The smurf hats worn by the soldiers are Phrygian.  The Sumerians were the people with the long square beards and the bird-headed gods, but I guess nobody on the production design team bothered to go to the Met.  Who cares, right?  The Sumerians are all dead, they can't complain.  Hell, even when current cultures do complain about how they're misrepresented, Hollywood doesn't give a shit.

I have discussed elsewhere my deep, visceral revulsion of John Agar, so I won't go into that again.  Instead, I'll start by saying that The Mole People's main feature is how uninvolving it is.  It feels something like Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell, in that I think they had a checklist: for a Journey to the Centre of the Earth movie, you need a scientist hero, a love interest, a lost civilization, and some monsters.  The writers put a bit more thought into how all these parts fit into a whole than the ones on Deathstalker did, but we still don't get the idea that anybody was really passionate about wanting to tell this particular story.

There are terrible movies in which you can still tell everybody was into it, and the viewer is carried along with them. Teenagers from Outer Space is like this, as is Reptilicus. Everyone involved was enthusiastic about the project and really wanted to make this particular film, and some of that shines through even if the result is not exactly everything they dreamed of.  The Mole People is... not like that.  It feels like the cast and crew just turned up, did as they were told, and collected their cheques with no more enthusiasm than if they were working a shift at Wal-Mart, and as a result the movie itself does the same thing.  It plods methodically through its running time and then it goes home.

The only place where we really get the idea that somebody was trying was in the worldbuilding.  Like in Alien from LA, someone made an attempt to think through how this underground city might work, and whoever it was actually did a decent job.  The humans eat mushrooms and goat cheese, and wear cloth woven from goat wool. The goats presumably also eat mushrooms, and the mushrooms grow in the humans' and goats' shit.  The population must be strictly maintained at a certain size or there will not be enough food to go around – I doubt the writers thought very hard about the fact that it's women who are killed when a cull is necessary, but that, too, actually makes a certain amount of sense, since fewer women means less chance of unplanned pregnancies.  The water comes from an underground river and the air comes down the tunnel behind the Doors of Ishtar.  The mole people mine for building materials.  The writers even gave a nod to the idea of a language barrier – the Sumerians do not speak English, but John Agar's character speaks their language because he has studied it.

It all actually seems fairly complete and sustainable as long as you don't think too hard about the laws of thermodynamics – the only real question is where the heck the actual damned Mole People came from.

Are they humans mutated by a long existence underground, Morlocks to the Sumerians' Eloi?  Are Mole People just a thing that exists and we never met them before now, despite the fact that we dig mines and they could clearly find their way to the surface if they chose to?  The monsters of Pellucidar are supposed to be kilometres down in the centre of the Earth, but the Sumerian city is only at most a couple of hundred metres deep.  In fact, being in a mountain it's probably well above sea level!  If Mole People were digging around down there, we should have been aware of them long ago.  Are they an isolated species, confined to this one mountain?  If so, why?  Are they even 'people' at all?  They make no attempt to communicate with the humans beyond the most basic ideas of hunger and fear, and display little behaviour to suggest that they are anything but animals until right at the end, when they apparently organize a rebellion.

I don't know if anybody else finds this as weird as I do.  Maybe most people just accept that obviously there are going to be monsters in a Centre of the Earth movie.  The thing is, everything else in the film was somehow set up.  We know how the Sumerians got where they are, from the inscription on the oil lamp – the scientists set out to find a Sumerian city, and they find one, it's just a lot more inhabited than they expected it to be.  The way the underground city works makes reasonable sense, and yet there are Mole People, apparently just because.  No inscription mentioning Beasts of the Earth or anything like that.  The only hint we get that there will be Mole People in this movie is the fact that its title is The Mole People.  Maybe the writers figured that was enough. Maybe it is.  All I know is that if this movie were  called The Underground City or The Eye of Ishtar or something, the Mole People would be completely out of nowhere.

The Mole People appear to also eat mushrooms and goat cheese.  What did they used to eat before the humans moved in?

The other totally random thing in this movie is the blonde, Adad.  She serves absolutely no purpose in the story other than to kiss John Agar.  The movie tells us she's a throwback – millennia of living underground have led to these people losing most of their skin pigment, but Adad is 'marked by darkness' (this is called melanism and occurs in nature with things like black leopards).  Cynthia Patrick is clearly not Middle-Eastern, but then, neither are any of the other actors playing the Sumerians.  Even so, she still doesn't fit in as part of their world.  For one thing, there's her clothing and hairstyle, which are pure Fifties Pin-Up Girl rather than matching what the other Sumerian women wear.  For another, despite the fact that Adad's distinguishing trait is supposed to be 'darkness', she's the only blue-eyed blonde!  All the other Sumerian women have dark hair and brown eyes!

Adad would have made far more sense if she'd been presented as the child of the last surface-dwellers who found their way down there, with the fate of her parents to illustrate that the Sumerians mean their threats.  As a bonus, this would also have avoided the percieved need for the movie's utterly asshole ending, in which she escapes the underground world only to have a rock fall on her.  According to Wikipedia, the studio felt they could not possibly let her have a happy ending with one of the scientists, because that might be seen as supporting inter-racial relationships. Heaven knows we can't encourage nice girls to marry John Agar!

This ending is, first of all, completely contrary to everything the movie has set us up to expect, both for the relationship and for Adad herself.  As the only Sumerian with skin pigment and a person whom we know to have been mistreated, returning to the surface world feels like it ought to be her personal destiny.  Killing her off in such a sudden and meaningless fashion feels like a giant middle finger to both her and anybody in the audience who bothered to pay attention.  Not to mention it gives the impression that having the only survivor be the one who looks most like a normal white person just wasn't racist enough for the filmmakers – at the last moment they decided she still wasn't white enough, and offed her!

Adad's death also leaves the main characters having learned basically nothing.  Even with the city itself destroyed by the cave-in, taking with Adad with them would have allowed them to continue studying the civilization they'd discovered, from the point of view of somebody who'd lived in it and properly understood it.  With her dead, her entire culture is gone without a trace, leaving only the vague memories of a couple of foreigners who never saw this world as anything but a threat.  Seems about right, really, for somebody's first contact with white Europeans.

Yeah, fuck this movie.