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Q: Both Grace Jones and Tina Turner made such big splashes in Conan The Destroyer and Mad Max: Beyond the Thunder Dome. How come they never got spin-off movies? Did they almost get spin-off movies? – Greta, Boston, MA
A:
Alas, both those movies came out in the mid-1980s, a very different time — not just for fantasy films (which had even less respect than they do now), but for women in fantasy and for African American women in film in general.
Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome and Conan the Destroyer deserve credit for putting kick-ass women in a genre where they’d never really been before. But in the era before Buffy and Xena, having such characters carry a major motion picture, especially one purportedly aimed at teenage boys, was a stretch. Throw in the fact that both actresses were also African American, and, well, you’ve firmly entered “pipe dream” territory.
But there was talk of Tina Turner’s Aunty Entity, the ruthless leader of Thunderdome’s Bartertown, appearing in the planned fourth Mad Max movie, Mad Max: Fury Road, but the movie never got made (but is finally in development now, as just Fury Road — no word on whether Tina Turner or even the character of Aunty Entity will appear in that, though it seems unlikely.)
As for another appearance by Jones’ Conan character Zula, it’s a good bet that she would have appeared in the planned third movie in a Conan “trilogy,” Conan the Conqueror, but that didn’t get made either. Star Arnold Schwarzenegger, his career on the upswing and feeling burned by the producers’ decision to top-bill him for his cameo in the flop Red Sonja, declined to participate, so the film was refashioned as Kull the Conqueror, about Robert E. Howard’s other barbarian, but without Zula.
Last year's semi-embarrassing return of Aunty Entity!
Still, both Zula and Aunty Entity did get reprises of sorts. Jones appeared as the similar Umpatra Warrior in a 1999 episode of the syndicated show Beastmaster. And at age 69, Tina Turner appeared in Entity garb in some concerts last years.
Q: Genre films aren’t known for their acting (despite the fact that it’s sometimes pretty good). But what do you thinks is the worst performance in a sci-fi or fantasy film? — Greg, Cody, WY
A: Well, keeping in mind that this is all subjective and “good acting” is all in the eye of the beholder, I was shocked by how wooden Sam Worthington was in Clash of the Titans — how could this be the same guy I enjoyed in Avatar? Arnold Schwarzenegger really is as bad as you remember in the Conan movies — unlike the Terminator movies, he had no excuse to be mechanical. And speaking of things Terminator, I’m surprised more people don’t comment on Christian Bale’s hammy acting in Terminator: Salvation (and, um, other movies).
Of course, there’s Halle Berry, who put in one of the worst performance of all time with her turn as Storm in The X-Men movies. And it goes without saying that all the actors in the three Star Wars prequel movies — let’s face it: even Natalie Portman — are terrible (with the exception of Ewan McGregor — his “Alec Guiness” rocks!).
But the worst genre performance of all time? It’s gotta be the surreally bad Heather Langenkamp in the original Nightmare on Elm Street (although in fairness, the “award” should really go to director Wes Craven, since talented Johnny Depp is also in the movie (in his film debut), and his performance is almost as bad as Heather’s.
Next week: the best fantasy film performances of all time!
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Nice article. Good info for anyone who’s into social networking.
I have to say, I liked Ian MacDiarmaid in the prequels. And Christopher Lee has never been bad in his life, though he’s been in some *terrible* movies.
Mentioning Christopher Lee leads inexorably to Hammer films, and thence to Olinka Berova in Vengeance of She: but her performance, god-awful though it is, pales beside the towering crapness of the movie itself.
I always liked Schwarzenegger’s performance in Conan, especially the first movie. It gave it that nice barbaric feel.
He definitely looks the part, but I rewatched this movie last week and was surprised by how bad he seemed (Wilt Chamberlain in the sequel is pretty bad too). But I think a lot of it was the direction — I don’t think they cared about the acting AT ALL.
Well, considering that for the three main leads, they used a bodybuilder, a surfer, and a dancer, I would say, yes, they probably didn’t care about the acting.
But I always thought the crudeness of the leads’ acting contrasted well with the better actors in the film like Von Sydow, Mako, & especially James Earl Jones.
Anyway, the world should be forever grateful to the Conan movie for giving us this dialog: “What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.” :)
That’s hilarious. :-)