Flash Gordon: Pride
Ming is supposed to be merciless! That’s why he’s MING THE MERCILESS! He doesn’t need a reason for his actions! He attacks planets because he’s bored! He’s so evil, he has a patented Ming Console of Evil Deeds with buttons like “Hot Hail”, ” Tidal Wave” and “Earth Quake”. He doesn’t even know what Earth is, but he’s got a button to quake it!
That’s Ming the Merciless. Let’s compare him to Ming the Benevolent Father.
Situation: Aura royally screws things up.
Ming the Benevolent Father sends Aura to her room to think about what she’s done.
Ming the Merciless has her tortured, possibly with bore worms, exiles her to Fridgia and marries her off to Klytus. And that’s just because she was five minutes late from a party.
Situation: A guy is caught smuggling ice, which is a crime.
[nms:Flash Gordon,4,0]
Ming the Benevolent Father apologizes to the wife, provides medical care for the criminal’s sick kid, and invites the execution guests to refresh themselves with fruited source water.
Ming the Merciless executes the wife as well, and only provides medical care for the sick daughter until she’s well enough to be his concubine until such time as he tires of her and blasts her into space.
However, sometimes a dictator can be judged on the company he keeps.
Ming the Merciless has Klytus for his number one guy. He’s got a gold metal face, head of the secret police, he fancies Aura and he likes to destroy planets. What else could you want from a lackey?
Ming the Benevolent Father has Rankol, who speaks in monotone, has a weird black plate on his head and rides around with a Segway under his voluminous black robe.
But, what about tyrannical fashion sense?
Ming the Merciless stuns all in his view with an elaborate standy-uppy collar and rockin’ mind control bling, while Ming the Benevolent Father still wears his band uniform from when he was a scrawny, 15 year old piccolo player.
While I did like last week’s pilot episode, I also gave it a lot of leeway and understanding. I keep going back to the suckage of the Battlestar Galactica mini-series, but that at least had an immediate threat – in the first hour, humanity had been wiped out to 47,000 people. That’s a threat.
There’s nothing threatening in Flash Gordon. The occasional wild-haired, grunting savage or bounty hunter might come through a rift, but that’s not earth shattering. The best way for characters like Flash and Zarkov to be heroic is to throw them into an impossible situation and ratchet up the stakes. My fear at this point is that the show will take half of the season to build up the Mongo threat, and by then I’m not going to care.
One of my biggest annoyances so far is that Flash Gordon looks cheap. The props looks cheap. The writing sounds cheap. The locations look cheap. The costumes look cheap. Perhaps if the SciFi Channel spent as much money on new programs as they have on their commercials, Ming the Benevolent Father could afford to get himself a Klytus or a rocket or some slutty dresses for Aura and the slave girls.
For now, he has to settle for fruited source water and a Segway.
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I hope that either a) this show gets MUCH better or b) they cancel it quick so that my husband will stop whining and moaning about how they’re ruining some of his favorite characters.
Max von Sydow was the perfect Ming (very closely followed by Charles Middleton) and his ‘Clytus, I’m bored’ line reading is one of the best in comic book movie history.
I had some hope after the pilot, but last night I felt like the SciFi Channel was making fun of me.