Before you go on a quest with Pixar's ONWARD, may we suggest another fantastical journey to a distant planet called…
Director: Peter Yates
Stars: Ken Marshall, Lysette Anthony, Liam Neeson, Robbie Coltrane
After his bride is kidnapped by an alien sorcerer called The Beast, a young king sets out on a quest with Liam Neeson to get her back.
Because who else do you call when someone you love is taken?
I genuinely love KRULL, but it's a complicated kind of love. People have suggested it for Awfully Good throughout the years, but while it was critically derided and bombed at the box office, I always had a soft spot for it. However, catching it on TV a while back, I think I figured it out—KRULL's real magic is tricking you in to thinking it's a legitimately great movie. It's a film made up of memorable moments and set pieces, so much so that all you remember is the cool stuff…and not the long list of things that do not hold up well.
I'm ready for the Rian Johnson remake called GLAIVES OUT.
To its credit, what works, really works. The mix of medieval fantasy and sci-fi—think STAR WARS meets King Arthur—is a blast and still feels timeless almost four decades later. (Allegedly, the movie was a straightforward sword-and-sorcerer tale until the filmmakers wised up late in to preproduction.) I mean, c'mon, it's got alien knights armed with swords that shoot lasers. No wonder KRULL has such a strong cult following.
There are also aspects of this movie that are truly impressive and just unironically well-done. Some of the visuals are gorgeous, from epic real-life vistas to artsy, nightmarish sequences straight out of a Jodorowsky film. And for such a weird flick, the production values to everything are insane. There were crazy on-location shoots in Spain and Italy and over 20 gigantic sets built at Pinewood Studios, along with lavish costumes, stellar makeup, and state-of-the-art (for the time) special effects. And tying it all together is a fantastic score by the late James Horner, which really elevates things and makes even the worst parts feel stronger as a result.
Wanna feel old? These are the Doublemint Twins now.
If only the rest of KRULL lived up to all that. The script is both equal parts amazing and terrible, filled with some great lines ("The man has raisins in his braincase!"), but also saddled with a ton of cheesy dialogue straight out of every generic fantasy movie. There's also a half-baked prophecy shoehorned in about a man and a woman having a child that will save the galaxy, which only seems to exist to spoil the end of the movie.
The overall plot itself is just a series of random smaller quests that feel more like excuses for set pieces and showing off production design than actually servicing a story. While there's no harm in that, some of the side tangents are just downright weird and unnecessary to the already long runtime. My favorite is the old man paying a visit to his ex-wife, who lives in giant spider's web, so they can discuss how she aborted their son after he was born. And then they both die.
TAKEN 4 is when the franchise really started to go off the rails.
Once on the quest to confront The Beast and his army of Slayers, the would-be king collects a variety of companions, including a magician that looks like Steve Coogan's dad, a Cyclops with a penchant for harpooning people with his trident, and a band of robbers full of future famous faces, including a young Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane. It's a fun group of characters, but by the end there's just too many to really develop and care about. For example, why is the kid even in this movie? He serves absolutely no purpose. Screw that kid.
The acting is pretty good overall and everyone sells the high-concept story…with the lone exception being Ken Marshall, who unfortunately has the lead role. His completely bland performance as Colwyn comes off like an uncharismatic Errol Flynn, and the writing doesn't do him any favors either. For some reason, they keep having the hero escape every situation completely unscathed, while all the more interesting and loveable characters die horrible and painful deaths around him. At one point, he even uses the Cyclops as a human shield.
When The Beast says he has his eye on you, he really means it.
At the very least you can't accuse KRULL of being forgettable. Many of these are positive memories, like horses that run so fast they catch fire, or the Cyclops, who is still my favortie depiction of that creature in cinema. However, much of KRULL remains pure nightmare fuel. I can still hear the squealing death screams of the Changeling as it dies, picture the Slayers' heads splitting open as their weird brain worm exits their dying corpse, and feel the pain of the poor guy who drowns in quicksand at an excruciatingly slow pace. And don't get me started on the giant translucent spider [shudder] or [SPOILER] the Cyclops' death scene, where he is slowly crushed to death saving everyone, only for the king to run away without a care.
Thanos missed a real opportunity going with a lame ol' glove.
However, nothing embodies the love-hate aspect of KRULL more then the Glaive. If there's one thing you remember from this film, it's probably the mythical five-pointed throwing star that I'm sure every kid was obsessed with. (When it turned up on an episode of South Park years later, I completely embarrassed myself in front of my girlfriend by squealing with delight.) It has to rank up there as one of the coolest weapons ever used in a movie. But when you actually watch it in the context of the film itself, it's wildly disappointing. The Glave is introduced at the very beginning as the only weapon that can possibly defeat the omnipotent Beast, and after a laughably easy quest to retrieve it, the hero wields it for the rest of the movie. Except every time he goes to use it in a fight, his mentor stops him and tells him that it's not the right time yet.
Given KRULL's obvious comparisons to STAR WARS, imagine if Obi Wan had shown Luke a lighstaber the first time we see them together on Tatooine and kept hyping it up but never actually letting him turn it on. And then at the end, Luke uses it one time in battle and realizes that he doesn't need it and that the real weapon was the friendships he made along the way.
The Safdie Bros.' CALVIN AND HOBBES movie ended how one would expect.
In case the above description doesn't make it clear enough, the final act of KRULL is, to put it nicely, disappointing. After an hour and forty minutes of questing and constant reminders of the Beast's unstoppable godlike powers, the heroes show up to his fortress and the villain is just a guy in a bad rubber suit only visible from a distance via greenscreen. He's very easily defeated, not once, but twice. And only twice, because after the Glaive fails to fully kill him, Colwyn discovers that it's not his weapon that can stop the Beast, but the power of his love for his queen—which for some reason creates a monster-killing flame he can shoot out of his fingers.
So, yes, I still love KRULL and applaud all the hard work that went in to it and appreciate all the undeniable cheesiness that makes it special. It's not a perfect film but it will leave a Glaive-sized hold in your heart.
If you were hoping for a Cylops sex scene, you're going to be sorely disappointed.
Love is fleeting. Power is eternal. Buy this movie here!
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Thanks to Jesse, Karina, Alex and Abel for suggesting this week's movie!
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