Mediocre Movie Month 2016: Some Thoughts on "Journey to Promethea"

Wonderful.

Journey to Promethea (2010)

Directed by Daniel Garcia
Produced by Daniel Garcia, Michael Thompson
Written by Daniel Garcia

Starring Billy Zane, Scott L. Schwartz, Louis Herthum, Jessica Heap, James DuMont

Budget: $2M (estimated)

After a few days of Sandler-inspired meltdowns, I decided to cleanse my palate with some of the incredibly cheap fantasy fare populating Amazon Prime. In an effort to match Netflix in simple quantity, the retail giant has snatched up as many cheap titles as it could, regardless of quality.

And what a blessing it is.

Allegedly this movie was originally made for TV, which I 100% believe. From the goofy acting to the cheap Ren Faire costumes to the Windows Movie Maker special effects, Journey to Promethea shouts "amateur" from the moment you hear the title (Promethea? Come on) to the final second of the end credits, done in the always-professional Papyrus font.

We start with some narration about the Samillian Tribe, a proud people who were conquered by the evil King Laypach (Zane) and cursed to wander aimlessly for eternity. This consists of walking around a forest with half-hearted looks of defeat on their faces. After a failed rebellion led by the warrior Draden, the man is executed. Before his head is removed, he says his spirit will enter one of the Samillians and lead them to Promethea.

A few years later we meet Magnus, a farm boy. King Billy Zane hears a prophecy that if the descendant of Draden sticks the sword in a magic rock, he'll turn to dust.

Can you spot the cut?

Yeah, this movie follows the Hero's Journey, filtered through the lens of an absolute madman. The director is a computer animator and graphic designer who I am convinced is actually an alien. The best way I can describe this film is that it's an alien's attempt at producing a cookie-cutter epic fantasy movie, from the wise mentor to the princess to the chosen one absurdity...but it's done with such a misunderstanding of why those tropes originally worked that it becomes a hilarious comedy from pretty much the first shot.

Seriously, from the first shot, which is a really, really bad rendered fly-over of a lush waterfall jungle and a textureless castle. Cut to King Billy Zane listening to his jester tell jokes. "What did the ocean say to the sand? Nothing, it just waved" is the first thing out of his mouth.

Daniel Garcia knows that jesters didn't tell literal jokes, right?

Oh nooooo...

Cut to Magnus, who watches his father die and brother get captures by King Billy Zane's soldiers. At the funeral pyre he encounters a magical chicken (yes, really) who turns out to be the...sorcerer Gydro? It's a little-person actor in yellow makeup with the worst three-fingered posthetics you can get and a pitch-adjust on his voice that makes him sound like a smurf. Anyway, this chicken-wizard tells Magnus he's got a destiny, then wanders through the woods for a bit before he finds a princess and tells her about Magnus. She and her band of scantily-dressed handmaidens wander out into the woods to find the guy.

Magnus meets up with Ari (Herthum, who played Dolores's father in Westworld in a hilarious "that guy" moment) who fulfills the part of the Obi-Wan, but he's far closer to Bran from Eragon. They train a bit, get into some fights with King Billy Zane's minions, and the movie lurches forward on a tread of misunderstood cliches.

"Sup."

Really, the story here doesn't matter so much because the individual scenes play more like a series of loosely-connected nonsense. Billy Zane never leaves the throne-room set (I don't think he ever actually stands up), the movie takes place almost entirely in the forest, and the production design is staggeringly inept. At one point we get a close-up of one of the king's soldiers and their chain-mail is represented by grey sweaters.

Hell, the film quality looks like a VHS despite the fact that it was made in 2010. This isn't an exaggeration, there are spots where it looks like everything's been run through a filter, and I was questioning whether it was intentional or not.

This movie is wonderful. I haven't even mentioned one of the Princess's handmaidens trying to seduce Magnus literally in front of the Princess, nor the disfigured prisoner with the Sloth-from-Goonies makeup, nor the jpeg sword-fight effects. Beautiful.

The Wonderful

"Year 31: We are running low on detergent."

Oh man, these effects are brilliant. At one point Magnus has a vision of the magical sword which appears as a static image with the background twisting around it in an obvious Whirl filter. The fire on the chicken-wizard looks like an animated .gif superimposed over the footage. When King Billy Zane turns to dust at the end it's accomplished with the most basic of "disintegrate" filters. In order to make the chicken-wizard sound appropriately inhuman they did a really basic pitch-adjust on his dialogue.

Hell, the costumes are so crisp and clean they look like they were sewn from cloth bought at Jo-Ann Fabrics. Everything is so bright. These people have supposedly been walking through the wilderness for over thirty years and there's not a speck of dirt on them anywhere. All of the swords are the same style of prop and look like plastic. At certain spots we see "wise men" who have the most absurd flesh prosthetics on their faces. Billy Zane is wearing an obviously plastic crown and his harem is the least committed I've ever seen.

The Eragon
Of course, this isn't meant to be taken as an endorsement of the movie. It's definitely something to watch if you want to question Billy Zane's decision making processes. I've sent him a few messages over Twitter asking him whether he had as much fun as it looks while filming, but he hasn't gotten back to me yet. I suspect this is something he wants to forget. After all, he was in Titanic.

By most mechanical and dirty hand, I shall have such revenges on you...

The Verdict
If you want to see a Martian take on our Earth-like epic fantasy movies, give this a shot.

Otherwise, go watch Westworld. It's been nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Drama and if it doesn't win we should riot.