Dragonball Evolution

"...the first rule is...that there are no rules..."

Oy, I thought to myself, after hearing the first line of Dragonall Evolution last Tuesday. This is going to be a real winner.

I was sitting in the third row of one of the theater auditoriums at the Flagship Cinemas in Derry, New Hampshire. Actually at the Flagship Cinemas, as I discovered, the auditoriums are, following the nautical theme of the chain, marked as "piers." Thus I was in "Pier Number Five." Cursive letters on the door requested that patrons remain "Quiet on deck."

I had found myself up in southeastern New Hampshire because on Thursday, after perusing the listings on Google Movies, it had suddenly struck me: where the hell was Dragonall Evolution? It had completely disappeared from all the cineplexes in eastern Massachusetts after only two weeks. Thankfully it was still playing in Derry.

I didn't mind the trip, since it was to a new location, a chance to explore a new cinema chain, and to take a road trip on such a nice spring day, with all the daffodils in bloom. A harbor theme for a theater chain struck me as a little incongruous. But it was innocuous enough and completely forgotten once one was in the auditorium itself.

But the movie, I could tell from the opening line, was going to suck.

The "only-rule-is-no-rules" thing has struck me for some time now as perhaps the greatest hallmark of Postmodern cinema, and its greatest weakness and source of artistic delusion.

In the breakdown of the Classical era, heroes became antiheroes, and thus being a renegade became prized overall. Rules and structure became associated with the classical era, which was dead, and thus freedom meant doing your own thing, without regard to any restriction.

The problem with this is that it is bullshit. Postmodernity claims to have "no rules," but in fact it has plenty of rules---making Postmodern cinema arguably more formulaic than Classical cinema. By asserting that it follows no rules, it follows what I call "the rules of the gutter," of the lowest common denominator of infantile ego-driven character actions.

Eventually you wind up with a movie like this one: a magical hero battles a magical villain using magical powers. There are "no rules" on what the characters can do (since magic is limited only by special effects), but everything becomes a stupid retread of cliches. Every bit of hokum from eastern mystical religions is flouted as valid and true, to which I say blecch!

The movie lived up to my expectations. It started with the "white-boy kung-fu prodigy" cliche and went straight into the crapper from there. The young hero, like the worst of Postmodern heroes, is really a boy who hasn't grown up yet, and remains utterly immature at the end of the movie.

Probably the best example of the downward spiral was a scene in which the white-boy hero, at the direction of his master trainer, is trying to use his magical powers to telekinetically light lanterns in a courtyard.

His love interest, a young woman who is a martial arts expert, enters the courtyard. She is not magical, and her powers are not greater than his, but she insists on temporarily taking over his training, and testing him.

She tells them that for every lantern he lights with his magic, he can take one step towards her (with the implied promise of a kiss at the end).

Right here you have the entire difference between the Classical and Postmodern romantic heroes in a nutshell. In Classical cinema, (putting aside the use of magic for now) the rules dictate what must happen next, for the hero to remain a true hero. He must deny the authority of the woman to test him in this way. Instead of agreeing to her test, he must walk boldly up to her, grab her, and kiss her. Then and only then, he can turn around a light the lanterns, as if an afterthought.

But the Postmodern hero of this movie does what Postmodern heroes are supposed to do: he agrees to the authority of the woman to place tests upon him like this. He plays her game. This is the credo of our time: the way to win a woman's heart is to play along with her games, to follow her rules, to give her what she says she wants in order to please her and win her approval. I'll show her, says the boy-man-who-follows-no-rules. I'll do exactly what she says she wants and that will amaze her and make her love me.

In the Classical era, movie makers knew this was bullshit. Let me emphasize this point. The difference here is not one of cultural difference, it is one that speaks to the natures of men and women, and how they interact. Women today are probably no more attracted to milquetoast wishy-washy boy-men who rush to please them than they were fifty years ago. Human nature hasn't changed in this regard.

This is one of the reasons that Classical cinema remains so powerful---it speaks truths that we in our current era are denying. It teaches rules that have been forgotten, instead of spouting bullshit such as "there are no rules."

As a final piece de resistance, after the climax of the story, the hero is given a chance between using his one "magical wish" to send the Earth-destroying villain back to hell, or instead to raise his master from the dead, and let the archvillain go on his way to terrorize and possibly destroy humanity. Guess which one he chooses? He does exactly what a Postmodern boy-man would do. Why sacrifice one's ego for the benefit of all of humanity? That's just a stupid rule, you see, and I do my own thing, dammit.

The one thing positive I can say about this movie is that for about three minutes in the climactic fight scene, it had some cool special effects. If you're a dedicated fan of such things, you might find this movie watchable, perhaps by fastforwarding through most of the dreadful plot on a Netflix DVD.