Captain Invincible a spoof meant to capitalise on the Superman franchise.
Captain Invincible! America's greatest superhero fights against bootleggers and even helped in the defeat of the Nazi regime. He seen as America's greatest treasure until the second Red Scare happens.
There's a congressional investigation held to determine if Captain Invincible is a supporter of the Commies. They attack his clothing Choice (as being pro-communist) and more importantly question him as to why he was helping Stalin in the fight against the fascist.
Of course Captain Invincible's response was that he wasn't a pro-communist, he was simply fighting the Nazis and took every opportunity to do so.
But the court finds his testimony unbelievable and labels him as a possible enemy combatant.
This leaves Captain Invincible in a state of anguish and he flees the United States into obscurity not to be heard for another 30 years.
We now cut over to present day where we find Captain Invincible standing up on the cliff looking over the Australian Forest. He's become a drunkard and has no recollection of the world around him.
While he's lumbering around Australia drinking away his past, Mr.Midnight (played by Christopher Lee) is planning a notorious plot to eliminate all the ethnically inferior people from New York city.
Those ethnicities in question being anybody who isn't of Anglo-Saxon blood living in America*.
Now in order for him to achieve this goal he has to mentally manipulate all the ethnicities into living in one particular area that can easily be disposed of at a later date. To do this Mr.Midnight has to steal from the US government (or possibly the Australian) a machine known as the 'Hypno Ray'.
The United States Government after determining the severity of the stolen weapon decides the only course of Action is to search for Captain Invincible and reintegrate him into society so that he can help search and eliminate Mr.Midnight.
It's an effort that might almost seem fruitless if not for one Australian police woman (Kate Fitzpatrick). She's grown accustomed to dealing with this drunkard who's loitering around convenience stores and Pubs in Sydney. She was able to recognise from a search photo that Captain Invincible and the drunkard happened to be the same man.
She tells her superiors that she knows the man and an investigative team is sent to retrieve him. At first the whole Venture seems pointless as the captain has no interest in helping a country that let him down so many years ago.
It's only when the president of the United States shows up himself and can friends Captain Invincible directly that he decides to help. Years ago a young boy who was part of the Boy Scouts Brigade aspire to be Captain invincible. When the captain told him that such a dream may be impossible and he should just settle for being the President of the United States. This boy took that message to heart and did just that.
Most of the film after this is just Captain Invincible trying to Silver up and rediscovering his powers. Much like Captain Marble he has too loudly proclaimed a saying before his powers can work. He needs to say magnets-on to create a magnetic field or magnets-off to repel a magnets. He also has to Proclaim to fly before he can actually fly.
He also has a strange power in which his mind can be used with a kind of supercomputer able to hook up with electrical devices far out in the world that can be used to triangulate information or the location of people he wishes to find.
Although he doesn't really find Mr.Midnight so much as Mr.Midnight finds him. He has him sent down a long pipe which leads him to Mr. Midnight's base. From here he's met with the temptation of all the Liquors of the world as Christopher Lee sings about how great it is to drink alcohol, while simultaneously named dropping various to mixed drinks.
The captain is able to overcome this with the help of a radio broadcast reminding him of the Glory Days of America. He's able to defeat Christopher Lee and regain his status as a proper superhero within the American culture.
I wish I could say this was a good movie, but it's just not the case. There's a good movie in here.
But the script feels lacking and the actors have very little to work with. It's a movie that simultaneously underdeveloped and boring. As the story progression feels a bit unnatural. Things just kind of happened and characters decide to go to one place than the next it almost feels like a Porto movie. As if this was a first draft and they hadn't completed it yet.
a lot of it comes down to the background music. And the simple lack of it in this particular film. There are so many scenes that just feel hollow as if they're supposed to have a Whimsical element to them or even a comedic one but it just Falls flat. With the exception of the Christopher Lee** segments. Not only does he have proper ambient music featured throughout his scenes.
But the set design around him is better made too. Possibly because he spends 70% of the film it one particular location so they really went to town with making sure his location looked proper and thought out. In fact that's the funny thing about Christopher Lee scenes in this movie he almost feel as if he belong in a different film. He comes off more as a Bond villain. I maybe that's part of a joke.
The lack of ambient or emotional music might be the strongest problem in this whole film. You're making a spoof of Superman, but the Superman movies depend so heavily on there well made well time to music. The heart and soul of those movies exist within the notes, so that I have absolutely none of that in your own film just feel so counter-intuitive.
Then there are the musical numbers. There's very few of them at the beginning of the film and the first one feels completely out of tone what the rest of the film. In which it's the song where the president literally says bullshit for a minute and a half.
None of the songs really feel all that well made, they're just kind of there and they don't really progressed the story. The Only Exception to this is the Christopher Lee Drinking Song.
So here's something that was puzzling me. Why does the United States (possibly Australia) have in their Arsenal a 'Hypno Ray?' That seems incredibly unethical. In fact the entire government comes off is particularly evil in this film. The President is this slimy hybrid of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and his subordinates and military personnel are a bunch of psychopaths all chomping at the bit to Nuke the hell out of the Rooskis even when they're not entirely sure that they're the ones that stole their weapon in the first place.
It makes them out to be a far more notorious force than Mr.Midnight could ever be. Perhaps that too was also part of a joke, a kind of commentary on government relationships and Views in relation to both their people and the greater world abroad. Though that would be pure speculation on my part.
But then the plot involving the government's just kind of fades away around the third Act of the film. And any connection we might have with the president or his administrative staff is completely forgotten. There's a scene where the President informs his committee that if Captain Invincible is unable to stop Mr. Midnight within 24 hours that the problem will be handed over to them and they can deal with it as they see fit. You'd think this would be an important point to the film, perhaps add a little tension of time to the situation as it's clear that they have pretty diabolical responses to this whole issue. But nothing comes of it and literally after that scene ends it's never heard from again.
We have another interesting moments involving Mr.Midnight. When he comes into contact with Captain Invincible and informs him that he's an outdated Relic doomed to live in the past unable to evolve and move on with the world.
Which is fascinating to think about giving that Mr. midnight himself is a kind of hyper racist who wants to return New York and possibly the rest of the world into this old imperialistic view of Anglophile dominance.
The realistic answer to all this is that I'm putting way too much thought into any of these ideas and that this is just a silly little joke.
Also there's a fascinating part of this movie where Christopher Lee keeps feeding small animals to bigger animals that he has as pets. At first it's a slug that he feeds to a frog, then the Frog to a snake the snake to a bird and finally the bird is served to him. It's a great visual metaphor.
Conclusion:
It's long, kind of boring and kind of pointless. I can't even recommend it to Superman fans as a comedic take on the Superman franchise given that Superman 3 will do that so much better.
Just look up (Christopher Lee ''Name your Poison'') on YouTube and you'll find the only part of the film worth a damn.
And I hate that I have to say that. When I look at this movie I can tell that there was work and Care put into it. Somebody gave a damn about this and unfortunately it just didn't turn out.
I can recommend it if you're a fan of film. There's so many little things in the movie that are kind of neat to look at. Like the captain going mad because it's super computer brain is screwing with him or his powers going haywire because of impulses he has toward certain things.
*It's kind of funny that Christopher Lee of all people should have a plot in a film where he's trying to create an Anglo-Saxon Centrist New York. given that he made a medieval heavy metal album a few years back in where he personifies the character Charlemagne and has an entire song dedicated to the slaughter of the ancient Saxons still living within the German territories.
A kind of retribution made to even out the deeds of the past.
**What's the deal with this creature? It's this little minion that Christopher Lee has and they never explain how he got it, where it's from or exactly what it's supposed to be. I don't know if I'm supposed to think of this creature as a mutated monkey or some sort of horrible racist stereotype of an old East Asian man.Or somebody just saw the Dark Crystal and thought; ''hey we can have a cool puppet too.''
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