When a tumultuous cosmic phenomenon zaps away the pilots of an aircraft in flight, New York Jets football star Flash Gordon takes over the plane’s controls and successfully crash lands it into the lab of the one mad scientist who knows that something in space is causing the disturbances—and has his own rocket ship to go up and find out. Yes, this is *that* kind of movie. The scientist, Dr. Zarkov, kidnaps Flash and the other passenger of the plane, Dale Arden (a female travel agent), and the three launch in the rocket to the planet Mongo. There, they meet the emperor Ming the Merciless and learn that he’s destroying the planet Earth for fun. Flash must navigate Ming’s concupiscent daughter Aura, her jealous, lost-boy boyfriend Prince Barin, and the impulsive hawkman leader Prince Vultan to bring down Ming and save the universe!
Man, oh man, oh man, oh man. There’s a lot to unpack here, but I’ll start with my biggest mistake—I wanted to like this film so badly. Between the awesome Queen soundtrack and its ‘80s cult status, Flash Gordon felt like a film I should have liked; but I couldn’t get into it. The script was full of unbelievable coincidence, sci-fi magic tricks, shallow-cold-war-era morality, and flat characters. Flash, as a character, was hardly interesting. Perhaps there was this tounge-in-cheek/retro-comics angle they were going for, but no one was winking at the camera and it wasn’t funny enough to carry the flick. Maybe this would have worked if the flick looked cool, but it didn’t. Three years after “Star Wars” (and the same year as “Empire”), “Flash” has the soundstage presence, lighting, and design of a red “The Wizard of Oz.” The space effects looked like ‘60s Star Trek and felt even slower.
To end on a positive, I at least found the film entertaining. The film was weirdly sexual. I couldn’t tell if that was to be funny, or because they thought it would better reveal Ming’s terror and Flash’s sex appeal, but I found it funny. And Max von Sydow’s Ming the Merciless was great—both menacing and cartoonish. He played a live-action Jafar who was both bored and enraged by the revolution taking place around him. And of course, I still love the Queen music.