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Day 15 - A Film That I Hate From My Favorite Genre
Wizards (1977)
Yesterday I wasn& #39;t sure whether or not police/crime movies were my least favorite genre and I am similarly not sure whether or not fantasy can really be considered my favorite. However, the fantasy genre does
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Wizards (1977)
Yesterday I wasn& #39;t sure whether or not police/crime movies were my least favorite genre and I am similarly not sure whether or not fantasy can really be considered my favorite. However, the fantasy genre does
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include a great many movies that I truly love. This movie is not one of them! The film takes place millions of year in the future, after all life was nearly destroyed by nuclear war. The remnants of the human race live in the irradiated parts of the world and have devolved
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into mutants, while elves and fairies have miraculously returned and live in the nice parts. Twin wizards are born to a fairy princess, one of whom is nice and handsome and the other is evil and ugly. Blackwolf, the ugly wizard, goes off to rediscover lost technology and tries
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to turn the mutants into an army. However, his plans continue to fail because his mutant goblins are stupid and can& #39;t fight until Blackwolf discovers some ancient films of Nazi propaganda that allow him to rally his troops. Now Avatar, the good wizard brother, must go out on a
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quest with his friends to stop his evil brother. I& #39;ll admit that the central premise of the movie, science vs magic, is something that I find interesting, as I mentioned on Day 7, but it& #39;s executed pretty poorly here. For one thing, using literal footage of Hitler and constant
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Nazi iconography as a standin for the terrible excesses of industrial technology and war is incredibly on the nose. In fact, this film almost seems like just an excuse to have elves beat the Nazis with the voiceover narration outright stating that "Hitler had been defeated
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once again" after Blackwolf& #39;s forces lost. I appreciate the desire to talk about the fact that fascism will almost assuredly rise again, especially in the current global political climate, but this is the least imaginative way of doing so. In addition to the poorly executed
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central conflict I feel that the rest of the story is also nothing to write home about. Every scene goes on far longer than it should, filled with unfunny jokes and attempts at political and religious satire. Characters are abruptly killed with no fanfare and really no
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mention again. Some of the animation is neat looking, but I think that the character designs are universally unpleasant. Most of the women are grotesquely and bizarrely over-sexualized. The main elf character looks like a brunette version of Cutter from Elfquest wearing footy
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pajamas (Wendy Pini was very briefly involved with this production so this may or may not be a coincidence). The move can& #39;t decide whether the bad guys should be mutants goblin/troll things or tall lumpy dudes wearing giant gas masks. There are frequent and truly hideous
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attempts to make Blackwolf& #39;s army look bigger by rotoscoping over footage from other movies such as "El Cid" or "Zulu," are always distracting and out of place. The soundtrack is very heavy on the funk, which probably works for some people but I didn& #39;t like very much. However
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not everything in the movie is all bad. Many of the backgrounds created by Ian Miller are beautifully detailed and moody. Miller has done illustration for different Tolkien-related books and the same stuff that works for Isengard or Mordor works here. There are also portions
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of the movie told in the form of storybook-type illustrations, done by comic book artist Mike Ploog, that are lovely to look at. These two things aside, I found this movie to be a long and rough watch. When talking to people around my own age I find a lot of people hold this
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film in fairly high regard. I think it is a fairly similar situation to "Heavy Metal": people saw it when they were kids, were impressed that it was a cartoon that wasn& #39;t obviously made for kids, and think back on it fondly. I can wholeheartedly embrace be nostalgic for old
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things, particularly those from your childhood, but I personally can not stand this movie and I would not recommend it to anyone who didn& #39;t grow up with it!
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