Movie Review: Krull

First of All:  Last night, as I was bashing my mind against a paper I had to do for class (the paper was winning), a friend of mine called me up and said "Hey, we're having a movie night, it's a great old film, one of the first ones to have Liam Neeson in it."   Well, me being a huge Liam Neeson fan, I jumped at  the prospect and ordered a tactical retreat from the paper, which laughed scornfully at me while I ran.  When I got there, they revealed the movie was Krull.  I'd never heard of it before, which isn't surprising, since the movie is older than I am, but the cover had that sweet bladed throwing star of death thing you can see in the picture, so I figured "How bad could it be?" and sat down to watch.

Second of All: It's hard to fit Krull into a specific genre...it's got splashes of science fiction, a whole ton of fantasy, a little humor, and a tender part that almost makes you cry (it involves a little kid and a puppy, so you know how that kind of thing goes).  I'm not sure what to call it...science fantasy?  Fantasci fiction?  I dunno.  Anyway, so the movie opens with a giant, mountain-like spaceship (no, really, it looks like a mountain) flying down to this planet--called Krull, hence the movie name--and landing there, quoting a prophecy that the princess will choose a husband, who will become the ruler of the world, and their kid will become the ruler of the galaxy.  So this big mountain thing lands and tons of guys in black armor ride out on horses with spears.   Yeah, spear-wielding horsemen come out of a spaceship.  You see why it's hard to place the genre.

The plot revolves around the princess--who gets kidnapped by the alien bad guys so that the big evil nasty can marry her and be the one who rules in the prophecy--and her prince fiancee, who is desperately trying to get her back.  The prince, in order to save her, has to go find an ancient artifact called "The Glaive" (no, not the European weapon that's a spear with a longer blade), which is the pointy star of death on the cover.  After that, he has to actually find the bad guy spaceship, which is hard because at dawn every day, it teleports to a new location on the planet.

Third of All: The review!
To be honest, I'm not quite sure what to think of this movie.  It was a complete genre bash, where dudes with swords and axes were fighting aliens with laser spears, and they had magical horses trying to chase down a spaceship.  It was a bit...odd.

I have a few other eyebrow-raisers, too, but I won't be too hard on it, since it is an old movie from a time when directors didn't need a perfect script to make a movie.  First, the kingdoms where the prince and princess came from were these ancient enemies who hated each other, but as soon as the prince and princess are about to get married, they're suddenly totally cool with each other.  Of course, it doesn't actually happen, since the princess gets kindapped by evil space aliens, but what really kind of bothered me was that both kingdoms are never mentioned again in the whole movie--other than the prince suddenly becoming king when his dad dies in the fighting.  The new king-prince person also spends a remarkably short time grieving after he wakes up in a courtyard full of his dead family and friends.

Also, regarding his quest for The Glaive, he defies death by climbing steep mountainsides and lava, but when he gets it, he never uses it the entire movie until the end.  It could have completely owned so many of the bad guys they faced throughout the movie, but no, he kept it all tied up on his belt while swinging swords at them. Also, at the end, once he does pull out this awesome--and I mean awesome--weapon, which is thrown and can be controlled with your mind to whack as many bad guys as pop up, it gets under five minutes of screen time, and it only takes down about six or seven aliens before proving ineffective at killing the main bad alien boss guy.  If it's worthless against the Beast--as he's called--then why did they go after it in the first place?  And if it's ultimately only effective against his minions, then why wasn't he using it the whole movie?  It makes me sad when a movie doesn't use a sweet weapon's ultimate potential.  It turns out it's some kind of magic wedding fire that can kill the Beast, which I definitely didn't see coming.

Aside from other guffs I have, I think the greatest of them all was the lack of Liam Neeson.  He was the reason I agreed to watch the show, but his screen time fit into about fifteen mintues, and--Spoiler alert--he dies a redshirt's death at the evil spaceship.  Granted, it was really early in his career, but it's still pretty obvious--in the bits of glances we see of him--that he's a much better actor than 90% of the cast.

As far as content goes, it was very clean, and I guess you could pull out a message about love persisting against all odds or something, but I'll leave that up to your interpretation, if you ever choose to watch this movie.

All in all, I'd have to say I give this movie 3 out of 6 Nerd Stars.