He'll Save Every One Of Us

So it's nice to remind yourself occasionally that your first impression can sometimes not be the best impression, particularly when that first impression occurs when you're a child. Tonight, in what might have been an effort to try to get my roommate to go to bed so I could watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 in peace -- SPOILER ALERT: it didn't work! -- I started watching Flash Gordon on Netflix. I remember the movie from when I was a child: mostly, what I remember was the theme song (naturally), and that it seemed like a lame rip-off of Star Wars. Well, and I remembered the pulsating slimy scorpion creature inside the stump on Arboria, because frankly, that was gross. But my point here is that my associations with the film weren't great. But people whose opinions I respect seemed to like the film, so I figured I would revisit it.

So we start watching the movie, and almost immediately my attitude towards it improved dramatically. Yes, Sam J. Jones as the title character was a bit of a meathead, but the movie seems perfectly cognizant of this fact, and plays it for laughs. Seriously, attacking the imperial guard as if he's trying to make it through a defensive line? HILARIOUS. But the rest of the cast more than makes up for it. Melody Anderson is much better than I remember, and plays Dale Arden as if she really is in a serial in the 1930s. And when we get to the other actors -- Brian Blessed, Topol, Timothy Dalton, MAX VON SYDOW?? -- there is absolutely nothing to complain about. And the costumes and scenery are actually kind of gorgeous: as my roommate said, it's Star Wars if George Lucas were a gay man. Everything that turned me off as a kid -- the clearly artificial special effects, the Rococo ornateness of the sets and the costumes, the knowing winks to the audience -- are precisely why I enjoyed it so much as an adult. It's so over the top, with such a peculiarly retro-futuristic aesthetic at work within it, and so much fun to look at. Instead of seeing it as an attempt to cash in on Star Wars, it sort of strikes me that it's almost an antidote to it, an attempt to try to take the space opera back to its roots. And I appreciate that.