a review of 终极天将

FLOPUARY #18: Works well as Gilliam's farewell to the retro fantasy-adventure genre before his more modernist '90s phase, but also as Gilliam's playful postmodern take on a past-their-prime superhero team movie, right before he and MUNCHAUSEN cowriter Charles McKeown failed to crack Alan Moore's WATCHMEN in feature script form. Like all Gilliam movies, it's kind of a mixed bag of episodes and incidents with some working better than others. You also have the somewhat repetitive thread of the Baron seducing/being seduced by the wives of belligerent mythological figures (Robin Williams' King of the Moon and Oliver Reed's Hephaestus, respectively), and the somewhat drawn-out reintroductions of the members of the Baron's league of extraordinary gentlemen 😉, which only really comes together in the climactic battle. But ultimately, I found that this one held up better as a work of subversive fantasy than I remembered, thanks to a brilliant reality-bending ending that has a certain striking similarity to the hysteria being whipped up about US border security, as well as the prospect of world leaders conniving together in pursuit of a brutal (yet profitable) international order.