#he is indestructible at this point which is why it takes Sauron to kill him

[braxix]

Elrond: I think I might have just killed Gil-Galad...

Galadriel: What? Oh, good for you I guess.

Elrond: You're not mad?

Galadriel: Gil-Galad is fine, Elrond. This is the tenth time you've almost killed him.

Elrond: Um... It is?

[flying-elliska]

lotrblogging pt 2 - Return of the King extended edition

- I just love this movie so much, it’s just a collection of big narrative payoffs and it’s so satisfying ! 

- I honestly hate Denethor more than Sauron ; he’s just such a compelling antagonist, that despicable figure of authority that lets his biases completely corrupt everything, seeing only what he wants to see, and a good example of the dangers of unfettered pessimism that passes off cowardice as ‘realism.’ And of course what would a story be without at least one terrible father figure, I mean. Also the noble but pointless sacrifice of Faramir/Pippin singing/the triviality of Denethor’s terrible table manners still gives me so much chills. i can’t help but think of Tolkien going through wwi, one of the most egregious examples of brave young men being sacrificed to the pride of older officials, safe behind the battle lines, for completely trivial reasons. Ugh. 

- i think what is so amazing about this movie is that most of the heroes go through a moment of being completely hopeless : Pippin and Gandalf in an assieged Minas Tirith, the Rohhirim charging a much bigger army, Frodo and Sam having to go through Mordor and talk about not coming back, the last battle at the Black Gate they know they can’t win but is meant as a diversion, etc. And from their limited perspective, it really is. But they decide to fight regardless ; and then they realize they’re not as alone as they thought ; because everyone decided to fight. It’s like the opposite of the Prisonner’s Dilemma, and it’s like the Good Ending for so many of the problems facing the world and it’s such a satisfying narrative and ugh - i’m emo

- i already talked about this re : masculinity and shit but i just love how emotionally open everyone is in this movie ! it’s just so fucking delightful ! i think this is part of why i loved the movies so much as a neuroatypical kid who had trouble regulating/expressing emotion. It’s also very straightforward, with little irony or second degree or whatever. very relaxing. I mean, take Aragorn, in the books he is honestly kind of boring, he’s so aloof and serious and remote, but in the movies he just cares so much ! i mean that look of utter devastation on his face when he gets out of the caves and thinks he hasn’t been able to convince the ghost army ! beautiful !!! it could be cheesy or trite but they just play it so earnestly and fully, it’s just !!!!! yeah !!!!

- honestly throwback to my teen self having a crush on a different character everytime i rewatched the movies there are a lot of beautiful people in there

- i find it very unrealistic that there is not one culture in there that has warrior women. and very bland. especially the Rohirrim who are kind of Viking-like, and have a word for ‘shieldmaiden’ apparently but there’s only one around ? and what about the elves who are all supposedly badass and indestructible ? i’m sure any elf maiden could like, seriously fuck up a human dude, also having thousands of years to train. gender roles being so unquestionably replicated in fantasy settings where they don’t necessarily makes sense is so annoyinnnng. that said, Eowyn’s ‘i am no man’ moment of ultimate badassery is just....still so incredible. But I’m glad they didn’t include the moment where Eomer is all ‘war is the province of men’ in the cinematic version because that makes him look like a serious dick tbh and he already doesn’t have a lot of personality so...

- i know it’s based on ancient myth where these archetypes are frequent but like, the worldbuilding is really full of like...um...uncomfortable tropes, like the evil races concept is one thing, but then the movie topped it up with some really problematic design choices, like making some of the men aligned with Sauron look distinctively middle-eastern which, yikes. As a product of its time there’s a lot worse, but i like to think if they remade it today they would be more aware of this, as I am watching these movies as an adult. And also, glad that fantasy is moving away from these tropes today, at least in books. 

- man i love Legolas. he just seems high half of the time, spouting off epic poetry in the middle of a creepy cave full of skulls that’s only tangentially related to whatever is happening. he stops a minute to be a snarky badass, then he goes back to thinking about poetic stacks of mist and golden leaves or whatever. legend. absolute goals. also that drink-off with gimly where he wins and is like ‘oh my fingers are tingling’ with a delicate finger motion. so stupid. amazing. 

- monarchy is bad etc but i love narratives about kingship/leadership as acts of service, and stuff about the king being linked to the land and if he fucks up then everything goes bad, he can’t just do whatever, as a proto-pattern of accountability of power, and mankind having to be a good steward. and Aragorn as a healer. 

- i skipped the bits with the giant spider. when there’s a giant spider in a movie i always make a point of honor to skip it. because that’s just unnecessary. 

-  Sam and Frodo’s relationship is so beautiful, ugh. And honestly it kills me everytime, how there’s these big epic battles but they’re put in parallel with the small acts of compassion and kindness of these two, and with Gollum as well. How these small, personal struggles matter just as much. And of course, the ending, with Frodo failing and Gollum stealing the ring from him and then falling into the pit of Mount Doom...That moment puzzled me for a long time. It highlights the importance of Frodo’s compassion, but it’s also very disturbing, because it shows how much is left to chance in the end, like the fate of the world wasn’t determined by a grand gesture or someone making the right choice. This probably haunted Frodo for the rest of his days. Maybe it shows the importance of putting yourself on the right path ; but also in the end, so much of history really comes down to chance and unrelated stuff. 

- overal it just holds up so well. the visual effects are still mostly incredible and there is such craftsmanship in there, i can’t believe those movies are almost 20 yrs old. i remember my parents allowing me to skip school to go see Return of the King with them, felt like one of the best days of my life lmao. i think part of what makes them so great - compared to stuff like GoT, which had also amazing craftsmanship, but the story really doesn’t make me want to rewatch at all - is that there is this sense of wonder about it. (and they’re not trying to avoid being seen as fantasy, lol.) It’s not shy about the whole ‘and here’s a totally different world, isn’t that awesome !’ thing. And the character arcs are just incredible. It’s far from being flawless, it’s very pompous at times, it’s a zero in terms of diversity, and I can see that more clearly now. But I like that it’s aware of its own myth-like aspects ; stuff that I used to find lame, like Gandalf calling the moth or the eagles, bother me a lot less, because the point is not Realism!!!. It’s the metaphor of small gestures and signs of hope in times of tyranny and mass violence. And that holds on its own. 

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball GT Retrospective (5/7)

[Note: I originally wrote this on January 14, 2013.]

The final arc of Dragon Ball GT is one big slap in the face of anyone who held out hope that it would somehow get better.  I remember when Funimation promoted the last round of episodes premieing on Cartoon Network.   "The Shadow Dragons Saga".   That just sounds epic, right?  They couldn't possibly screw that up, right?   I mean, Shadow Dragons have to be awesome, whatever they are.   It's probably a law or something.   Well, someone call the cops, because Toei found a way to take a concept like "Shadow Dragons" and make it suck. 

The story begins with the fallout from the Super 17 Saga.   Goku and his friends gather the Earth's Dragon Balls to repair the damage caused by the Hell portal, but when they find the balls, they're all cracked.   Unsure how to proceed, they decide to summon the Eternal Dragon anyway, and to their horror the whole thing goes pear-shaped.   Smoke billows out of the cracks of the balls, and the dragon that emerges is completely different from the Shenron they usually deal with.   This dragon smokes a big cigar and he mocks the heroes when they ask to make a wish.   The Smoke Dragon then takes the Dragon Balls away and dissipates.   At this point, the Elder Kai contacts Goku and explains what the hell just happened.    The whole issue stems from a throwaway line from the end of Dragon Ball Z.   Then, the Elder Kai disapproved of using the Dragon Balls to revive the victims of Majin Buu.   He trusted the Namekians with the power of the Dragon Balls because they refrained from using them, but he felt that frequent wish-making would interfere in the "natural evolution" of the universe, or something like that.  At the time, everyone just assumed he was being conservative, but this Smoke Dragon is what he had been worried about from the beginning.   The short version is that the Dragon Balls have side-effects.   Each time you make a wish, it introduces bad karma to the balls.  They store the negative energy until they can't contain it any longer, and if that happens they crack and release an evil dragon that can destroy the world.  Normally the safety valve for this is that the Dragon Balls scatter across the planet after each use, and they take centuries to find again, which is plenty of time for the negative energy to dissipate.   But Bulma invented the Dragon Radar, which has allowed her and her friends to gather the Dragon Balls multiple times in a matter of decades.   This latest attempt was the straw that broke the camel's back.  Bulma quickly shifts the blame to Goku, since she never would have been able to gather the Dragon Balls without his help, and Goku decides that the only way to make things right is to go kick some evil dragon ass.  Pan tags along with Giru (the robot who assimilated the Dragon Radar), and that's the status quo for the next several episodes.  The Smoke Dragon separates into seven evil Shadow Dragons, each with a Dragon Ball embedded in his body.  Giru locates them with the radar, Goku fights them for a while, repeat seven times.   As you might have anticipated, I have several problems with this premise.   First, the Dragon Balls aren't some magic talisman that appeared out of nowhere.   Granted, they didn't come with an instruction manual, but over the course of the story, we learn how they were created and how they work.   The Namekians essentially "invented" the art of making Dragon Balls, and the general rule is that a set of balls is only as powerful as its creator allows it to be.   Thus, the Earth's Dragon Balls could resurrect the dead, but they were helpless against Vegeta and Nappa, who were stronger than Kami, their creator.  The Namekian Dragon Balls could grant three wishes, but they could only resurrect one person per wish.   Dragon Balls can also be "transferred" from one creator to another.  When Kami merged with Piccolo, Goku recruited another Namek, Dende, to reactivate his Dragon Balls.   Dende not only accomplished this, but he took requests, and rearranged the wishing power of the Dragon to grant two wishes instead of just one.  As a bonus, you could just make one wish, then come back and make the other four months later instead of waiting a full year.  When Guru, the creator of Namek's Dragon Balls, died, Moori became their new caretaker, and he removed the whole "one resurrection per wish" limitation.   The point I'm trying to make here is that the "technology" of the Dragon Balls is pretty well understood, and while it might seem magical to the uninitiated, experts like Dende, Mr. Popo, and Moori were always happy to answer questions and explain the rules.  So why didn't they ever say anything about the dangers of overuse?   When the Smoke Dragon appears, Mr. Popo mentions how an evil dragon destroyed an entire star system once.   Why didn't he say anything about this before?  Of course, it's not like the good guys used the Balls frivolously.  Most of the time it was kind of an emergency, or a matter of stopping a bad guy from using them first.  But still, at some point they should have come forward and explained the risks.   "Look, we seriously have to stop using the Dragon Balls or else." Second, assuming the Dragon Balls were designed with this limitation in mind, why do they only turn to stone for a single year?   Whoever wrote this episode of GT never considered the fact that the Dragon Balls already had a safety valve in that they can't be used continuously, even if you have the means to re-gather them all.  If the safest course is to use the Dragon Balls only once every 100 years, as Elder Kai says, then why not fix it so the Dragon Balls remain inert for a full 100 years?  This is the same problem I had with the Black Star Dragon Balls destroying the world after each use.   Why would anyone create something so inherently dangerous?   This would be like Sauron forging the One Ring and if he doesn't take it to Mars and polish it exactly seven times on every seventh Thursday it blows up and kills him.  No, that's dumb.   He made it convenient for himself.   If he loses it, it'll find its way back to him.   It's indestructible unless you take it deep within the heart of his own territory.  That's not airtight, but it's pretty safe. I could accept that the Black Star Dragon Balls were a flawed, overpowered creation, but this "negative energy" idea holds that any Dragon Balls are flawed and overpowered.   What good are they if you can only make one wish every century, and there's no one around to enforce that rule? Third, no one ever brings up the Namekian Dragon Balls, which were used almost as often as the Earth's set.  If each wish contaminates the Balls, then a set that grants three wishes a pop should be even more dangerous.   Worse, the Namekian year is roughly one-third of an Earth year, so the Namekian Dragon Balls can be used three times more frequently.  The Namekians themselves had little need for that many wishes, but after the battles with Frieza, Buu, and Baby, they had to use them to help out the people of Earth at least five times.    That's fifteen wishes, dammit.  So where's their evil smoke dragon monster?     No one even attempts to explain this, which just makes the premise that much harder to believe.   I'm not saying Dragon Ball or Dragon Ball Z were free of plot holes, but Akira Toriyama worked pretty hard to establish the rules of the story and keep them straight.  With GT they just do whatever and hope the audience doesn't think about it too hard.   Fourth, why don't they just kill Dende?  The deal is that if the Dragon Balls' caretaker dies, then the Balls and the Dragon both go inert.   Usually this is a obstacle to be overcome, but in GT the Dragon Balls seem to cause more problems than they solve.   Piccolo sacrificed himself to prevent the Black Star Balls from being used again, so why doesn't Dende take one for the team and end this Shadow Dragon crisis before it starts?   Of course, he doesn't have to die, he could just use his power over the Dragon to deactivate it, right?   Again, I could live with this as long as someone on the show offered an explanation why this won't work.   The whole premise seems to hinge on the idea that the negative energy contaminating Shenron is much stronger than the powers of Shenron himself or his creator.   But why should that be?  If the negative energy is a backlash to the energy used to grant wishes, then shouldn't evil Shenron be exactly as powerful as regular Shenron?  He can be despicable and uncontrollable, but physically he's no stronger than before.   King Piccolo killed Shenron with one hit, and Goku's like a million times stronger than that in GT. And yet the Shadow Dragons are strong enough to give a Super Saiyan 4 a hard time.   I can appreciate the poetry of the Dragon Balls themselves being the final boss of the Dragon Ball mythos, but it just doesn't line up with everything we've known about the Dragon Balls leading up to this.  For all the hype, Shenron was never omnipotent, and he's actually pretty fragile when you get down to it.  His main role is to solve problems that can't be fixed with punching or explosions, so putting him in a situation where he has to trade punches with Goku is kind of dumb.   Toei tried to solve this problem by beefing up Shenron, effectively turning him into an unrecognizable set of characters.   Instead of one giant dragon who looks pretty scary, we get seven humanoid-looking goofs who are supposed to be insanely powerful, but most of them just suck.   More than half of the Shadow Dragons are pathetic.  I'm not saying that to insult the concept, I mean they are literally pathetic characters.   Goku shows up and they go all to pieces, mostly for the sake of bad comedy.  Then they use guile and treachery instead of strength, and Goku only wins when he finally stops screwing around.   I suppose this was a deliberate plan to make the Shadow Dragons feel like other groups in Dragon Ball.   Each Shadow Dragon is stronger than the last, and the real challenge is to beat the one at the end.   Fair enough, but why would Shenron divide himself so unevenly?  For that matter, why do the good guys play along with that?   Goku wants to fight them all by himself and no one has a problem with that?   Considering how weak most of the enemies are, they would have been better off sending Goten or Majuub to wipe out some of them while Goku handles the tough ones.   Anyway, the worst part about the Shadow Dragons is that they each get at least one whole episode to show off how much they suck.   The Two-Star Dragon: Funimation gave each Shadow Dragon a name, and they called this one "Haze Shenron" because he deals in pollution.   He's the weakest Dragon, but his pollution powers make his enemies even weaker, so that's why it takes twenty minutes to beat him.   This is dumb, because all the heroes in the show are adept at sensing ki, the life energy everyone uses for shooting fireballs and flying and so forth.   Goku can tell that Haze Shenron is weak just by looking at him, but for some reason he can't sense his own power fading.  Of course, if he'd just destroyed Haze at first sight, he could have avoided the entire issue, but they had to stop and talk to him first.   Haze's weakness is his overconfidence.  Once he has Goku and Pan beaten, he tosses them into a polluted lake, thinking the acidity would corrode their flesh in minutes.   Instead, Giru (who is unaffected by pollution because he's a robot) rescues them and drags them to a cleaner part of the lake.  Not only does this clean water revive them, but they stay down there for like five minutes without drowning.  Now that they have a second chance to beat Haze, they take him out with one hit and recover the Two-Star Dragon Ball.   The Five-Star Dragon: This guy was named "Rage Shenron", which doesn't make sense unless rage has something to do with electricity, which is his power.  Rage looks like a deformed bird fetus, and he controls purple slime that feeds on electricity.  He's not much stronger than Haze, so he uses all of his electric slime to create a giant replica of himself to ride around in.   Goku turns Super Saiyan 4 to fight him, but his attacks are useless against Rage's slime, which can absorb ki blasts and redirect them.   Rage's weakness is his overconfidence.  Once the battle starts going his way, he gathers so much electrical power that his slime body grows to the size of a small town.   Goku and Pan are helpless against him, but fortunately it rains.   Rain short circuits the slime, destroying it, but Rage's body is so large that he can't take shelter.   Goku and Pan literally float in the air and watch the dumbass beat himself because he was too sloppy to check the weather forecast.  Rage makes a fake surrender ploy at the very end, so Goku blows him away with a Kamehameha just for good measure.   The Six-Star Dragon: They called this one "Oceanus Shenron", although he seems to be more of a wind elemental than a water one.   At this point, the continuity starts to get fuzzy, because it seems like Goku and Pan have only been at this for one afternoon, but by the time they track down Oceanus, he's already established himself as a local legend in this fishing town.  His tampering with nature somehow causes fish to fly out of the ocean and onto dry land, and the villiagers gather them up instead of fishing like they're supposed to be doing.   For no apparent reason, Oceanus assumes the form of a green woman called "Princess Oto", but Goku and Pan see through the disguise immediately.  Oceanus mostly spams this one attack, Whirlwind Spin, which resembles a hurricane.  Even though Goku once broke a mountain in half with his bare hands, the air pressure it strong enough to pin him down.   He could power up to Super Saiyan 4, but he doesn't.  I have no idea why.   Oceanus' weakness is his overconfidence.  Pan is too stupid to figure out the flaw in Whirlwind Spin, so a seagull demonstrates it for her.   Like a hurricane, the center of the attack is relatively calm, so if you fly in directly overhead, you can get in a free shot.  Pan hits Oceanus with a Kamehameha, and Goku uses his own for good measure, and that's it.   The Seven-Star Dragon: This one is named "Natron" or "Naturon".  I don't even know what that means, since he's a body thief who digs tunnels.  He hot dogs it for a whole episode just so he can pretend to lose and trick Pan into taking his Dragon Ball.  This allows him to take control of her body, which he uses to become much stronger (his first body was an ordinary mole, so it's a big step up).   Pan's not that strong in Dragon Ball Z terms, but apparently Pan + Natron Shenron is somewhat impressive.   It's kind of hard to tell how strong he is, though, because Goku keeps holding back for fear of killing his grandaughter. Natron's weakness is... his overconfidence.  Goku plays possum near the end, and Natron taunts him by allowing Pan to partially emerge from his body.   Goku yanks her out, leaving Natron stuck in his true form, which is somehow even smaller and crappier than the other three Shadow Dragons we've seen so far.  For some reason Goku's totally cool beating up this sad sack in his SSJ4 form, even though he barely bothered to use it against the other three.  Kamehameha, and we're done.  They spent two episodes on this bullcrap, so I especially hate this one.   The Four-Star Dragon: This one has fire powers, so Funimation named him "Nuova Shenron".   I don't know why they spelled it that way, unless it was for trademark purposes.  They didn't call the Two-Star Dragon "Haiz Shenron" though.   Nuova looks pretty dumb, but compared to the first four he at least looks like a worthy opponent.  He's also the first one who can actually fight worth a damn.   So of course Toei introduces him just as Goku's inexplicably weakened from hunger.   It's not like they're in the middle of nowhere.  Goku could fly back home in a few minutes and grab something to eat in between dragons, so why did he walk into Nuova's turf unprepared?   The result is a whole episode of pointless stalling.  Nuova wants to play cat and mouse with Goku, even though he seems to be able to kill him in a toe-to-toe fight, thanks to his heat powers.  Goku scampers around and whines about how hungry he is, and Nuova calmly walks around looking for him, apparently forgetting that he can a) fly, b) fly at super speed, and c) melt anything in his path.   If Goku punches Nuova, he'll only burn his hand, so the only hope he has is energy blasts, which he can't use because he's too hungry.   Nuova's weakness is sloppy writing.   Even though Goku just got done complaining that he's too weak to fight with energy blasts, he turns around and starts harassing Nuova with energy blasts.  The idea seems to be that he can't land a heavy blow, but he can whittle him down with hit-and-run attacks.  This leads to Goku using the sewers for cover, and when Nuova chases him into the sewer, he's briefly stymied when he runs into a dead end.   Blocking Goku's path is some sort of giant ventilation fan.   He doesn't want to fight Nuova in close quarters, but that fan you guys.  It's turning at speeds exceeding 3rpm.   It must weigh at least twenty pounds, and it's probably made of solid aluminum.  How can Goku possibly get past it?   Well, he digs down deep, and somehow finds the courage and skill to time a perfect jump through this enormous, slow-moving fan that probably wouldn't have hurt him even if he missed.   What's more confusing is that Nuova didn't just shoot him dead while he was waiting for the right moment.  Once they're out of the sewer, Goku then decides to fight Nuova as a Super Saiyan 4, even though he was too weak to do anything else for most of the episode.   Intermission: Now, in the midst of all this, Vegeta's back at home having a midlife crisis.   This is probably the best episode of Dragon Ball GT, simply because it's roughly 50% flashbacks of cool scenes from DBZ.   Vegeta's frustrated because he hasn't gotten to do anything for the whole series, mainly due to the fact that he never advanced beyond Super Saiyan 2, while Goku is two levels above that.   He wants to help round up the Shadow Dragons, but Bulma warns him he'll die.   Look, maybe he's not the strongest guy on the block anymore, but I'm pretty sure Vegeta could have taken out the first four Shadow Dragons, and I'm really sure he could have blasted apart that ventilation fan that stymied Goku.  Also, Pan's a lot weaker than Goku and she managed to stay alive this long.   Anyway, Bulma figures out how to turn Vegeta into a Super Saiyan 4 so he can join the battle.   I'm kind of surprised it took this long for them to try it, since her plan is to just use the same technology that turned Vegeta into a Golden Great Ape during his possession by Baby.   Cleansed of Baby's contamination, Vegeta can repeat the process, and jump from Golden Ape to SSJ4, the same way Goku did.   Come to think of it, Vegeta could have just undergone the same procedure Goku used to grow his tail back.  It's been like a year since SSJ4 was discovered, so it's not like he hasn't had time to work on that.  What sucks about this episode is that they spend the entire time teasing SSJ4 Vegeta, but we don't get to see it until several episodes later.   The Three-Star Dragon: While Nuova Shenron fights SSJ4 Goku in a halfway decent battle, his comrade "Eis Shenron" shows up and interferes.  See, he has ice powers, so Eis=Ice, or something.   The gag with Eis Shenron is that he's Nuova's brother, and while Nuova's been teasing a face turn during his battle with Goku, Eis is a cowardly opportunist.   He uses Pan as a human shield, has no qualms about using dirty tricks to win, and when Nuova refuses to help him, he feigns surrender and blinds Goku with a.... You know, actually, I have no idea how Eis blinded Goku.  He's on his knees surrendering, he surreptitiously dips his fingers into a frozen puddle on the ground, and then he swipes at Goku's face.  The implication is that Goku's eyes have been poisoned somehow.   I mean, is it poison ice? That doesn't make a lot of sense.  And yet, afterwards, Goku washes his eyes out with water, and Nuova gives him a small bottle of "antidote" (where did he get it?).  So I don't think we're talking about frostbitten corneas or whatever.  The point is that Goku spends the next four episodes or so with his eyes shut.   Eis' weakness is that Goku can kick your ass with his eyes shut.  He stupidly assumes that blinding Goku "halves" his strength.   Except Goku can sense his enemies' ki, so he can still fight just as effectively without looking.   This has been demonstrated countless times in the past, so I don't know why Toei would pretend to ignore this years later.   Eis and Nuova are supposed to be the strongest enemies Goku has encountered to date, but they fight like amateurs.  Goku punches a hole in Eis' body and follows up with Super Dragon Fist, which would have been satisfying if he hadn't waited so long to use it.   Nuova Shenron decides to withdraw, feeling that it would be wrong to fight Goku until he regains his sight.   I find Nuova's change of heart ridiculous.  The Shadow Dragons entire reason for being is to destroy the world.   When Goku meets him, it's in the ruins of a city he presumably attacked and destroyed.  He claims to have a code against hurting innocents or the defenseless, except he's made from evil energy and his ultimate goal is to destroy the world.  Goku never questions him about this apparent conflict of interest, and it doesn't really matter because Nuova gets killed before it really becomes an issue.   Just as he gives Goku the antidote to Eis' blinding attack, both he and the medicine are cut down by.... The One-Star Dragon: This guy doesn't have any elemental powers, so Funimation just called him "Syn Shenron".   He's easily the strongest one, which begs the question of why he didn't just come after Goku from the start.  He no-sells all of Goku's attacks, and leaves him battered and unconscious.  Seems like a winner, right?   Syn's weakness is GT Logic.  Just when all seems lost, Goku's family and Trunks show up to help him.   Gohan, Goten, and Trunks agree that they're not strong enough to fight alongside Goku, but they plan to donate their energy to Goku so he can recharge to full power.  Majuub tries to hold off Syn Shenron, but to no avail.  Despite the fact that Syn dominated a Super Saiyan 4, the boys manage to hold him off long enough.   So if they can do that, why can't they just fight Syn directly?  And if they really are no match for Syn, how are their combined powers sufficient to re-energize Goku?  Of course, this whole paradox is just a retread of the last time SSJ4 Goku needed a recharge, back when he was fighting Baby.   Goku insists on taking more energy from the boys than is safe to use, because he needs extra juice to cope with Syn's power.   This is irritating, because it really isn't clear what the risks are in this situation.  Gohan and the others are no worse for wear, in spite of giving "all" their energy to Goku, and Goku doesn't seem to get much stronger for the boost.  It's just a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.  Goku does manage to get the upper hand on Syn, although it seems less like Goku is stronger and more like Syn just overdosed on stupid pills.  Even though we've established that Goku can fight just as effectively while blind, Syn still tries to exploit the weakness by throwing a clockface from a tower at him.   Goku then blows him away with a Kamehameha-Super Dragon Fist combination.   The only catch is that it doesn't get the job done.  Though beaten, Syn absorbs the other six Dragon Balls, transfoming into "Omega Shenron", the final final boss of Dragon Ball GT.   Hoo-boy. NEXT: The Omega Glory

[mst3kproject]

Goliath and the Vampires

Like Colossus and the Headhunters or Hercules against the Moon Men, this was originally a Maciste movie.  Exactly why the folks at Wild East Productions decided to call the hero Goliath when they dubbed it into English, I have no idea.  Goliath was the bad guy, who got his ass whooped by a kid who threw a rock at him – even Bert I. Gordon knew that. But Goliath it is, so let's see what this movie has to offer.

Well, it's got Gordon Scott, the hero of Danger! Death Ray. It has large men in small skirts, soldiers getting thrown into barrels of water, a super-strong invulnerable guy who lifts heavy stuff and escapes prison by bending the bars, and an over-long sandstorm.. basically everything a sword-and-sandals movie needs to qualify for the Satellite of Love treatment.

As for the actual plot: our brawny protagonist comes home from a hard day of saving drowning children, only to find his village under attack by Vikings dressed as Mongols (watch the movie, you'll see what I mean).  Goliath arrives too late to do anything but watch the bodies smolder, but he vows to follow the raiders to their homeland of Salmonak and save his girlfriend Julia from their clutches. Salmonak turns out to be a desert kingdom rather more Arabian than The Magic Voyage of Sinbad, and its people, from the meanest beggar to the Sultan himself, are slaves of the vampire Cobrak!  Cobrak seeks to conquer the world with an army of the undead, but now that they've got Goliath on their side, perhaps the people of Salmonak can at last overthrow their literally bloodthirsty tyrant.

The... Viking Mongols?  Mongol Vikings?  I'm gonna call them Monglings. Most of them are undead, but we're not allowed to find that out until the movie's almost over, so they wear helmets to hide their semi-skeletal faces.  These helmets are among thr most ridiculous pieces of so-called 'armor' I have ever seen on a screen. The men wearing them look like they're trying to cosplay a particularly impractical Final Fantasy character.  I don't feel up to describing these things, so I'm going to have to show you.

That is a ridiculous note to begin a movie on.  One of the top reasons I really hope this one gets into Shadowrama someday is because I would dearly love to see Crow and Servo try to move around while wearing those.

There's a lot to make fun of in Goliath and the Vampires. Besides those stupid helmets, there are the random dance numbers, one of which features a woman with spikes on her nipples, shimmying to what sounds like surf movie music.  There's the dried-up husks of the vampire victims, propped against the walls or stacked up like lumber.  The name 'Salmonak', which sounds like a yearly publication to predict what the fishing will be like.  The bit where the Vizier meets his sudden and untimely end in a booby trap.  The climactic fight between Goliath and his stunt double (this would be my choice for the stinger).  My favourite potential running joke, though, is the fact that Goliath seems like he's constantly trying to escape from the movie.

At the beginning, he vows to go to Salmonak and rescue the women the Monglings have kidnapped – particularly Julia, his fiancee (Maciste movies seem to have assigned him girlfriends, wives, parents, and siblings willy-nilly, without any sort of regard for continuity).  We never find out how he got to the island when no ships that pass that way ever return, but once he's there he meets the Sultan's son Kurtik.  Kurtik wants help to defeat Cobrak, but Goliath has no interest in this.  Having freed the rest of the women from a slave market, he just wants to get Julia back and go.  In trying to do so, he ends up in chains in the palace dungeon, looking like he may need Kurtik’s rebellion after all... but he still wants no part of it.  He breaks out by knocking some columns down, grabs Julia, and runs, only to get lost in the desert and forced to rejoin Kurtik and his Blue Men.  Sorry, Goliath.  You're not allowed to leave the movie until you've liberated Salmonak.  Those are the rules.

Blue Men? I hear you say.  What's up with that? I don't know.  The name is at least accurate, since they are blue, and they don't appear to have any women.  Are they humans who paint themselves with woad, like the ancient Picts?  Are they some kind of underground desert elf sort of creature?  The movie never tells us.

It never tells us exactly what Cobrak is, either.  The movie is called Goliath and the Vampires, and when Cobrak's face is revealed at the end he does look appropriately pale and toothy.  He and his undead slaves appear to subsist on human blood, yet the zombies walk around in daylight without so much as tanning their pasty white midriffs, and the movie implies that Cobrak created them through a combination of hypnosis and chemistry rather than by biting them.  A drug is also able to bring the drained victims back to life, which is definitely not how vampires normally work.  Some of Cobrak's powers are also, at the very least, untraditional for a vampire.  He appears in a cloud of red smoke whenever his name is mentioned, for example (this is the coolest-looking thing in the movie) and seems able to materialize and dematerialize at will.

He's also a shapeshifter, able to assume Goliath's form and apparently his strength and indestructibility as well, in order to be a match for him in the final fight.  Or maybe he was already super-strong and indestructible – he's one of those villains who mostly just stands around wearing a spiky costume, so it's hard to say.  This development does tend to make one wonder why, if Cobrak can do that, he's holed up in a Fortress of Doom somewhere instead of assassinating the Sultan, assuming his form, and ruling that way.  I mean, that's what I would do if I had shapeshifting powers.

The fight itself, however, is hilarious.  It has no artistry or choreography to it whatsoever, it's just two nearly-identical guys in miniskirts pretending to beat the shit out of each other,  Most of the time it looks like two teenagers in a parking lot, trying to put each other in headlocks.  It's a fight between guys who have no idea how to fight.

With only one really weird exception, the characters are all tropes: we have a Hero, a Damsel, a Cute Kid, a Dark Lord, a Femmy Fattily (as Crow would say), and so forth.  The opening, in which Goliath saves the Cute Kid from drowning, establishes our hero as Good And Noble, and that's about all we ever get.  Cobrak is merely aloof and evil, like Sauron or – for a more MST3K sort of example – the Organization Known as Q. Things like his goals and the source of his funding are at best unclear.  Cobrak's flunky, Astra, has the obligatory subplot where she betrays her evil master because the hero saved her life, and gets a spear through the middle for it.

Goliath's fiancee, Julia, spends most of the movie being kidnapped.  She's kidnapped by the Monglings at the beginning, and then sub-kidnapped by their leader, who has decided she's the best one in the batch.  He takes her to a tavern, where she is re-kidnapped by Astra, who turns her over to the Sultan.  Goliath rescues her, but then Astra kidnaps her again and gives her to Cobrak, who drains her dry – thus allowing her corpse to be de-kidnapped by Goliath, who takes her to Kurtik, whose alchemy can revive her.  Never once in all of this does she try to take her fate into her own hands, and she ends up being one of the more egregious Sexy Lamps I've seen outside of a Gill-Man movie.  As Roger Ebert said of Liv Tyler's character in Stealing Beauty, “she exists primarily to stir lust in the loins of the men.”

The aforementioned only exception to this cast of stock characters is the commander of the Monglings, whose name, we learn, is Amal.  He is played by actor and ballet dancer Vanoye Aikens, who as far as I can tell is the only black actor in the movie.  When we meet the Monglings at the beginning, Amal is the only one not wearing a helmet, and thus serves as the human face of this attacking force. After the Monglings leave, a survivor complains to Goliath that the raiders are inhuman and barbaric, and at this point I was wincing, prepared for an avalanche of early 60's racism.  The fact that we then move on to an Arabian Nights Fantasy Land populated by distinctly non-Arabic actors didn't help any.

However, we do later learn a little more about Amal as a person, some of which is surprising.  For one thing, he's just as terrified of Cobrak as any of the captured women are of him. For another, he considers himself crafty, thinking he can get away with keeping the prettiest girls for himself and making deals with the rebels – but he actually shows up to his conspiracy meeting drunk and it turns out that Astra already knows exactly what he does with his spare time.  In a movie peopled largely with bigger-than-life archetypes, Amal is surprisingly ordinary.  He’s a Dumb Thug and a Petty Traitor, but never quite the stereotype of either.

Of course he dies, but it's a pretty entertaining death.  I've never seen somebody go that far out of their way to be a railing kill.

Goliath and the Vampires is sometimes slow, and it can be a little hard to tell what's going on when, say, multiple groups of characters are all wandering around lost in the same foggy swamp. But it's not so bad that it isn't any fun, and would be a good evening's entertainment for MSTies or just for people who enjoy Maciste movies.  Even when it does drag a bit, you'll be rewarded for sitting through the slow stuff with something deliciously silly.