"Whoever controls this device will have power such as men have dreamed of since the beginning of time!”
It's fascinating to compare this second episode with that of the rubbish Batman and Robin: the difference in quality is all the clearer from the similarities in format. Again, after a longer first episode, we’re now into a much shorter length. The music is very similar. There’s a hooded and masked baddie with a loaf of very ‘40s behatted hoods working for him. There are fights. It all points towards a cliffhanger every seventeen minutes. And, after the cliffhanger, the action shifts from vaguely oriental lands to the USA, a similar setting to Batman and Robin, and the racism (although everyone seems to be white!) is no longer so apparent.
And yet it’s all so much better done. The direction and acting remain clearly superior. This is still a movie serial, and not exactly great art, but it all looks perfectly competent. Captain Marvel in action- flying, being impervious to bullets although one can’t help wondering why he never gets shot in the face- looks bloody good. The dialogue is functional, but does its job well.
But it’s also at plot level that this is obviously superior. The guillotine is used as the cliffhanger at the end, but it’s introduced earlier in a nice little Chekhov’s Gun moment. And it’s established that the Scorpion is really one of the archaeologists, so we have a nice little whodunit going on.
I’m enjoying this, and relieved to be.
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