Thunderdome

Completely unexpected, I found myself with an evening's worth of free time, and decided to do something for the blog. I promised you pop culture, but up until now we have mostly talked about history. Therefore I chose a little movie called "Captain Thunder and the Holy Grails" and boy, did I choose wrong. I jumped into the movie completely on a whim without any information upfront. I was fooled by the title, thinking it could contribute something to the greater Topic of Arthuriana. It does not. Although it's still interesting from cultural perspective: If the world ended tomorrow and CTATHG would be the last of all our stories to survive, you'd have a great example of how history gets muddled up with popular stories, and how both are the worse for it.

Up to that point the movie is pretty good

Captain Thunder is a Spanish comic character, and an exceptionally successful one at that. He had a comic strip running from 1958 until 1967, there are several songs and movies about him, mostly in Spanish, ans also a video game. He's something like the Spanish Asterix, a notion upon which the Internet seems to agree with me. Captain Thunder is a knight-errant from Europe's 12th century and he goes on adventures with a core group of three other people. The term knight-errant and especially in connection with the European medieval period is going to feature heavily in the future of this blog. There is few to be found about him, and even fewer in English, so I had to rely mostly on the google translation of his wikipedia article.

Rock on, spanish guy I don't understand!

 
His most notable trait is his reluctance to use violence, of course he will if forded to. The first character from the above mentioned entourage is Goliath, and it's best to think of him as Spanish Bud Spencer with an eye patch. Next there is Crispin, who is from Northumbria, and is Thunder's squire. In an RPG you'd probably call him a rouge. The trio is completed by Sigrid, a viking princess, intended to turn the damsel in distress cliche on it's head. She and Thunder have a thing going, but won't marry. That actually makes it kind of political, as it was banned or censored in some countries where this was considered inappropriate.

Now, I think I can't postpone talking about the movie itself any longer, so let's get it out of the way.

The film starts in the middle of a crusade to the Holy Land, and the English knights advance on a fortress near Acre, where Sigrid is assumed to be held in a dungeon. It starts in media res, with the characters of Crispin and Goliath in jail, too. As they are about to be executed Thunder rescues them, and subsequently has to fight a prince of the fortress. He frees Sigrid and an old man called Juan de Ribeira, who gives him the Holy Grail he hid in his cell, and who is killed when none of the main characters is looking. Thunder is sent to Spain to escort princess Sigrid back to her father. They are ambushed by the Knights of Sir Black, and Sigrid is once again taken captive. Thunder learns from a monk (or somesuch) called Morgano that he is the son of the last of the knight charged with guarding the Holy Grail, and that his birthmark was why de Ribeira gave him the grail. Sir Black wants the grail to summon...something that'll give him even more power, although he already is terrorising the surrounding lands. Thunder is taken captive by a brainwashed Sigrid, in the ensuing fray Sir Black's men manage to steal an artifact from Morgano without which the grail is worthless, and which needs to be united with the grail before the....eclipse! They let  Thunder go, it seems they are afraid of his birthmark. He and his group try to instigate a revolt of the farmers around Sir Black's Castle, but fail. Crispin sneaks into the castle to provide a distraction and open a door. Morgano arrives with some balloons to firebomb (!) Sir Black's forces into submission (but not without getting mortally wounded), and Captain Thunder defeats Sir Black in one of the dumbest endings ever filmed. And of course Sigrid and Thunder kiss.

Now, if you think I made that sound boring and convoluted, thank you, because that's exactly what the movies was. There are movies which are good because they are bad, but this one is horrible because it's boring.

Thunder's violence eschewing trait does not seem to have made it into the movie, as he or his companions have certainly no qualms about killing. At first I thought it's a serious movie, but after I saw Crispin and Goliath bickering though their execution I realised that this is one of those movies where the good characters with names are never in any real danger. The action scenes are staged in a way that sucks all the tension out of them. They are too slow, and you can see the stuntmen do an evasive movie even before the attacker has begun the stroke, and it happens all the time. Goliath has virtually no personality besides "I'm big, I like to ea"t and his catchphrase, some thing along the lines "big green frogs!". Yeah, so that's a curse now. Crispin's got it worse, he has a thing about being small and being shy around women, the second one is only important when the movie bothers to remember. It also makes for one of the most misogynistic Goodbye scenes ever. Morgano might as well be called Captain Exposition, because he is nothing but a Deus Ex Machina to advance the plot (Cluing in Thunder, loosing the ruby needed by Sir Black) and save the heroes with his bomb squad of Balloons...Yeah, apparently that was a thing back then. Also, he seems to built those during one night, when they are spontaneously needed. Ho he did it so fast (or at all!) is anyone's guess. As I told you before, historical records are spotty sometimes, therefore I'll cut the film some slack on that matter. Not. In fact, I usually like that kind of steampunk (what punk is it if there's not even steam?), but in this case it jars horribly with the tone of the movie.  Towards the end I thought that there were some more characters of importance, as suddenly some emphasis was given to beard-guy with a distinctive axe fighting style, big bald guy, Scrawny guy with threads and Pony-tail. But as soon as I realised that, they were killed. Incidentally, Axe-guy and Bald-Guy are killed gruesomely in what was has up to that point been a practically bloodless movie. The final showdown in Sir Blacks Altar room is one of the stupidest things ever filmed. Thunder should at this point be dead three times over. When the floor gives way because of the ceremony he's started Sir Black starts choking Thunder, and we can see the big reveal, a monster lifted straight from Dune, advancing upwards through a hole over which the two are hovering. But instead of doing something, anything, Sir Black has the Grail taken out of it's hands by Thunder after what feels like hours, and is subsequently eaten by the giant worm. Exactly like that. He does not even fight for it or try to finish Thunder off. He had it coming. The actors are all nondescript, to put it positive. None of them seems to posses any emotional range. I have the feeling Sir Black would be played by Christoph Wals if this was a Tarantiono film, but then the rest would probably good too. There is one scene where the camera shakes so violently without any rhyme or reason it actually got nauseating. Also, Thunder goes to swim in another scene in his chain mail and armour plates. But that's easily explained, as those same pieces of armour seem to be mostly decorative any way, because at various point they offer no protection whatsoever, they are pierced, sliced and hacked conveniently every time some bad guy needs to die. I wonder why they bother to wear sthem, they must be cumbersome. So, moviemaking at it's worst.

In case you thought I was joking

On the other hand it's astounding what you can  do nowadays with a budget 5.5 Million. Most of the time the movie doesn't look bad, just bland, and the effects are pretty accomplished for what it is (one shot of a thrown spear shattering midair through magic looks pretty good), and I like most of the customs. Although the landscape is recycled for the Holy Land and Iberia (and you can see it), the shots of it are actually quite beautiful. In almost every scene you can see it's film set, but a nice one. The movie could have been salvaged and some fun if the actors were better. As it is, they are too serious for what the movies sets out to be, or what the source seems to demand.

I want to point out that I'm not judging about the comic strip itself, it's going on in fits and starts until the present day, and there has got to be a reason for that.

To be thorough I want to show the Spanish language poster. It's interesting because of the colour timing that suggests the Comic movie the international poster seems to be ashamed of. Also, there is another movie about a Captain Thunder. Of course, he's called the "Gay caballero" there, although it meant something different back then. It's from 1930, which means it's in the public domain. Presented with a choice, I'd recommend that one, based on the assumption that it can't be worse than this one, and might actually be pretty good. Also, free movie!

I had hoped Captain Thunder would have some kind connection to our actual topic, but as it stands it only gives us this blog's first mention of the Holy Grail, and we will have to contend ourselves with that. We will of course look further into this matter, as we will into knights, and especially the topic of chivalry.

I took the risk of that entry being boring consciously, as it provided an ability to write something, and I hope you liked it and had some fun anyway. Also, I didn't want those two hours of my life go to waste. Did I mention it's two hours? Because it is two hours and you feel every minute of it. As always, your Feedback is appreciated. And with that I leave you to ponder what productive things you could have done with the money that went into Captain Thunder. Also, this might now be the most encompassing (English speaking) source about Captain Thunder on the Internet. So there's that, too.