Flash Gordon
Flash Gordon (1980)
Image From IMDB
The moment the movie starts with Ming the Merciless laughing as he presses different natural disaster buttons on his computer to begin the destruction of the Earth––basically because he’s bored––while Queen plays in the background, you know you’re in for a good time. It doesn’t get any less crazy after that.
Flash Gordon is an NFL superstar who ends up on a rocket ship because he thought it was a phone box and is blasted into the Vortex and home castle of Ming where he has to align himself with Hawkmen, Lizard People, and James Bond, in order to bring down Ming and save the Earth which only has fourteen hours until its destruction. The stakes are set, the players introduced, and the clock is ticking. Let the colourful cheesy madness ensue.
While I do think the movie is probably half an hour too long, it’s packed with memorable scenes throughout from Flash’s first fight where he’s pretending to be on the football field, to Dr. Harkov memory wipe, and anything involving Dalton looking like a low budget Robin Hood. Flash’s fight with Bond Hood on the moving platform is fantastic, as is the approach to the castle and energy shield on his space bike––There really is so much going on at times.
Princess Aura is a great character as she slinks her way into every scene, and Max Von Sydow is the perfect Emperor Ming in my eyes. The Dale character kind of annoys be as the relationship between her and Flash is bizarre to say the least––and i’m more Team Aura––but I do like her little football ‘Go Flash Go’ chants at multiple times in the film.
My favourite scene of the movie has to be when Brian Blessed Vultan––which keeps making me want to say Zoltan––takes the Zapp Brannigan approach to stopping a ship by sending in wave after wave of expendable Hawkman to die so they can inch closer to it, after they’d perfectly set it up for an ambush. And he gets a promotion for it!! Utter madness, and the main action scene of the film.
Everything is so colourful throughout. There’s plenty of different sets, models and miniatures. I’m not sure how they done the colourful swirling vortex backgrounds but my guess would be either filming mixing watercolours or chemical reactions, either way it looks fantastic. The costumes are all super fun, even Flash’s ‘Flash T’Shirt,’ which I still can’t decide whether it makes me like him more or think he’s a bit of an idiot, either way he wins me over quickly enough.
It’s just a movie that wants you to have a good time. It knows what it is, even if the production was a disaster by all accounts. How many movies have heavy guitar riffs doing the Wedding March, or have rocket ships skew people. Even the end of the movie feels like a Monty Python sketch.
I’m not going to pretend it's a great film that everyone should watch, but if you enjoy colourful cheesy space opera’s with some questionable acting and effects, but plenty of energy and fun, then this one is for you. I think it’s great, and there’s something different about it every time that makes me laugh.
