POWER PACK: We Weren’t Here to Help with the Groceries

Power Pack (1991 TV Pilot) – Directed by Rick Bennett – Starring Nathaniel Moreau, Margot Finley, Bradley Machry, Jacelyn Holmes, Jonathan Whittaker, and Cheryl Wilson.

I had thought I was finished with Marvel reviews and this would be the one film I couldn’t find, but thankfully someone over on Facebook sent me the YouTube link for POWER PACK, and I was able to give the short, 27-minute pilot a watch. Developed for possible Saturday morning pick-up by NBC, it’s actually a bit unfortunate that the network didn’t pick it up. There’s nothing special here except that it’s nice to see a genuinely sweet (and simple) superhero show aimed at kids.

POWER PACK plugs into the idea that kids have to do all their cool stuff out of the way of their parents. Recently given superpowers by our unseen narrator, the Powers have just moved into a new house in a new town. Mr. Powers does not want his kids using their powers because it’s hard enough to make new friends at school without superpowers.

Things aren’t easy for the Power kids at their first day at school. Alex is a know it all who gets hit on by a really cute girl. I know this sounds good, but it turns out she’s like a giant. Not, you know, like a superhero giant, but just a girl taller than he is. Then there’s Jack, who wants to be cool, so he shows off, using his power to shrink himself to sneak into a spooky mansion with two of his buddies. This sounds like fun, except that its the mansion of some creepy old dead guy and there’s rats and weird stuff inside. There is, however, a glowing amulet that looks cool, so what harm could there be in taking it?

Exactly.

It turns out the amulet fell off the portrait of Dr. Mobius, and he wants it back, so makes storm clouds roll in and speaks in a spooky voice. Alex is the responsible one and so he naturally takes charge and gives Jack a bit of grief before they head back to Mobius’ house, so the two Power boys and their youngest sister, Katie take the amulet and head to the spooky house to put it back, but they have to fight a beam of light pouring out of the vaguely Orson Welles-esque portrait of Dr. Mobius.

This is all a big deal because the kids are supposed to be unpacking the last of the moving boxes. The parents can’t do this because they’re off doing shopping, where the dad tells the mom a story from work, and she has the kind of bored look on her face that tells you she’s currently having about six different affairs.

The kids rush home after fighting a battle of light energy with the portrait to find that Julie, who could not go to the mansion because she was off making new friends at a bowling alley. Katie comes home, sees that everyone is gone, but since she owes Alex for covering for her while she went to the bowling alley, she uses her super speed to unpack everything, so when the kids come home from Spooky House, the parents are none the wiser.

To say that POWER PACK is good would be an overstatement, but it does demonstrate that a kids-friendly superhero show could easily be achieved, Now that Disney owns Marvel, I’d think a new POWER PACK show would be a no-brainer. There’s no costumes here in this ’91 pilot and the special effects were clearly done on the cheap and low, but its heart is in the right place.

And hey, we get to hear Mr. Power say, “With great power comes responsibility,” so you know POWER PACK’s heart is in the right place.

THE DEATH OF THE INCREDIBLE HULK: The Dying Gasps of a Man in Green Paint and a Bad Wig

The Death of the Incredible Hulk (1990) – Directed by Bill Bixby – Starring Bill Bixby, Lou Ferrigno, Elizabeth Gracen, and Andreas Katsulas.

THE DEATH OF THE INCREDIBLE HULK represents the end of an era that had been over for everyone but the Hulk for nearly a decade. Full credit to Bill Bixby, Lou Ferrigno, and all the various cast and crew who extended the 1970s superhero TV boom into the ’90s. Once upon post-United States Bicentennial, network television had room for THE INCREDIBLE HULK, Captain America, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and Wonder Woman, but the brief boom went bust rather quickly for everyone but the Bixby-Ferrigno Hulk.

And here they still are, at the dawn of the 1990s, still kicking for one last ride.

Unfortunately, THE DEATH OF THE INCREDIBLE HULK is a solemn, slow-moving bore, and instead of feeling like the dramatic conclusion that the franchise deserves, DEATH feels tired and in need of a mercy killing.

None of this is the fault of Misters Bixby and Ferrigno, who offer their usual solid work one last time. Well, we can give a little blame to Bixby, who also directed DEATH, but the fault here is really in the script, the pacing, and the overall tone. After the last two movies, which saw the introduction of Thor and Daredevil, DEATH relies solely on David Banner and the Hulk for its superheroics. There’s a foreign secret agent here, but she’s kind of boring, and an old scientist, who’s also kinda boring. The film could have easily used Natasha Romanoff and Henry Pym and added a bit of much-needed pizzazz to the special, but there’s no one here but the Hulk.

Perhaps the producers decided to go with the Hulk alone, just in case this was the final INCREDIBLE HULK production. (There were plans for another TV movie, but they ended with the passing of Bixby in 1993.) If so, that wasn’t necessarily a bad decision – the original pilot movie had only the Hulk and it was an outstanding production.

The fitting conclusion would have seen reporter Jack McGee finally get his story, but Jack Colvin had sadly passed on after the first comeback movie, so there was Bixby and Ferrigno and a bunch of people we’ve never seen before.

The plot here has Banner pretending to be a mentally-challenged janitor who sneaks into the lab of the institute’s senior scientist and fixes his formulas. Banner is still trying to eliminate the Hulk and this is his best bet. Eventually, Banner is found out by the scientist, who agrees to help him. We get a few scenes of Banner living with the scientist and his wife, but like so much of this special, it’s just blah blah blah killing time until the Hulk shows up. This is the first time in any of these Hulk movies where I was bored by the Banner plot.

The part of the narrative that’s been carried by Thor and Daredevil in the past two TV movies is given over to a foreign spy and her handler, the One Armed Man from the Harrison Ford Fugitive movie. Or, as he’s better known around these parts, G’Kar. Maybe if Andreas Katsulas had played his part as a One-Armed G’Kar this movie would have been-

No. It wouldn’t have been better. Not at all.

DEATH moves slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooly, building no tension as the special agent ends up being betrayed by her handlers. She gets over this by falling in love with Banner the way only people in made-for-TV movies fall in love – immediately and in a log cabin.

This foreign power angle goes nowhere interesting, except at the end when it leads directly to the death of the Hulk. Two bad guys are getting away in a plane, but before they take off, the pilot wants to run down and chop the special agent to death with his front propeller. This allows the Hulk to rip the plane open and jump inside, and then the plane blows up and he falls to the ground and transforms into Banner and dies.

Um … that’s kinda depressing.

I suppose Banner had to die alongside the Hulk so that he paid the ultimate price for his initial hubris to experiment on himself, but it is a bit disappointing that there wasn’t a scientific ending to the Hulk, that Banner wasn’t rewarded for his decade-plus long scientific quest to rid himself of the Hulk.

The real shame is that after all these years, the Hulk couldn’t have been sent off to afterlife with a better story. Watching the film, you can see that we’re at the limit of what a man in green paint can bring to the audience. By the end of the decade, FOX would televise both Generation X and Nick Fury movies, and while the special effects in those films are a long way from the 2003 Ang Lee Hulk, the tried-and-true technique of the Ferrigno Hulk smashing through a brick wall is starting to feel a bit old.

As always, though, if the story is good, I’m able to look past the special effects and the story in THE DEATH OF THE INCREDIBLE HULK is simply not compelling.

GENERATION X: I’m Giving You Genius and You’re Giving Me Jock Itch

Generation X (1996) – Directed by Jack Sholder – Starring Finola Hughes, Matt Frewer, Suzanne Davis, Heather McComb, Jeremy Ratchford, Bumper Robinson, Agustin Rodriguez, Amarilis, Randall Slavin, and Kavan Smith.

I’m sure no one involved in the 1996 GENERATION X telefilm set out to make a complete piece of vomit, but that’s almost what happened.

GENERATION X is a rather horrible movie, and one of the worst of all the Marvel movies. The only thing that redeems the movie even a little is that the six kids who comprise the entire student body of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters actually do grow together as a team, and by the time they’re standing up for each other at a town carnival and fighting with Deputy Andy from Eureka, I was invested in their teamwork.

Unfortunately, that’s just about the only thing that grabbed hold of me in GENERATION X. For the most part, I simply watched a bad story play out in front of me.

I grew up a Marvel kid and was definitely more invested with the Avengers and Spider-Man portions of the Marvel Universe than the X-Family of titles, but I never hated the X-Men. I really liked the original New Mutants, I loved the John Francis Moore X-Force, and yes, I liked the original Generation X, too.

I didn’t watch GENERATION X when it first aired back in 1996 (has it really been sixteen years since then?) and haven’t seen it since. I remember the reaction to the movie being rather negative, and so it’s one of those films that makes a small blip in your brain when released even though you don’t see it, and so fades from memory. After watching, I don’t think it’s going to stay rattling around my brain for very long, either.

My biggest issue with GENERATION X is that there’s so little confidence in the material that they blow everything up. It’s not enough that Dr. Russel Tresh (Matt Frewer) is a mad genius, he’s has to be a walking Saturday Morning Cartoon mad genius. It’s not enough that Banshee (Jeremy Ratchford) is Irish, he has to sound like he was fired from a Lucky Charms’ commercial for sounding too over-the-top. It’s not enough that Buff (Suzanne Davis) has over-developed muscles, it’s that her body double for her back shots appears to be Lou Ferrigno.

Being an X-movie, you know you’re in for a “Public Hates Muties” story, and that’s what we get. There’s a Mutant Registration Act and Jubilation Lee (Heather McComb) is in violation of this act when her powers manifest at an arcade. I know, who knew the kids were still going to arcades in 1996? Well, her powers spazz and she gets arrested and the government wants to send her away to reconditioning camp, but as Moms is leaving the station, she’s intercepted by Banshee and Emma Frost (Finola Hughes) who want to take her daughter to Xavier’s.

Mrs. Lee is all, “You’re nuts,” and she’s right, of course. Would it have killed these two to put on, I don’t know, adult clothes instead of looking like bad cosplayers?

But they have to show up looking ridiculous because everything here is exaggerated.

They bust Jubilee out of jail by Emma using her powers to get the cops to think they’re federal agents Hootie and Blowfish, and then they pick up Skin (Austin Rodriguez) and head to the mansion where they meet their four classmates and take classes.

Mostly, though, they just argue – with each other, with the town, with each other, with the town … on and on it goes without developing any real drama or producing any real humor. There’s a bit of a Harry Potter vibe here with the kids sharing bedrooms and wanting to escape the school to go into town, but it’s a retroactive vibe because this movie was released a year before J.K. Rowling’s first book hit the shelves.

There’s a convoluted dream plot here, where Emma and Tresh each think mutants can access the freaking dream world or some stupid kiddie version of whatever Freddy Kreuger does (and GEN X was directed by the guy who directed A Nightmare on Elm Street 2) and it’s just … blah.

In short, GENERATION X manages to feel like a very watered down version of the X-Men movies. This telefilm predates the first X-Men film, too, so it’s wrong, I think, to call this movie overly derivative. The problem is that there’s nothing here that really stands out for the right reasons, and so when Bryan Singer comes along and does the “humans hate muties” angle better, or when J.K. Rowling presents a more enjoyable escape into town for her school kids, it makes GEN X feel weak.

GENERATION X is just simply not a very good movie. The set-up is typical and the execution is poor. The kids aren’t very likable, and the teachers aren’t very interesting. GEN X is not the worst thing ever, but all the little decisions on acting, directing, casting become too much for this very bland story to overcome.