by Clayton Hayes, Staff Writer

We live now in a culture that, for all its faults (and there are many), has at least one thing going for it: we know that the 1980 film Flash Gordon, directed by Mike Hodges, is worth watching. It’s been endorsed by director Edgar Wright and popped up as a sort of comedy film meme in things like Blades of Glory (2007, dir. Will Speck and Josh Gordon) and Ted (2012, dir. Seth MacFarlane). It’s influenced more recent Flash Gordon media like the 2007 TV adaptation on SyFy and the Flash Gordon comic books of the 2010s. There was even enough interest in the film to support a 2017 documentary, Life After Flash (dir. Lisa Downs), about the film’s cult following and the life of its star, Sam J. Jones.

But cast your mind back with me, if you can, to the late 90s/early 00s before this reclamation had taken place. Or at least a time when I, a sci-fi and fantasy-obsessed teenager living in suburban Michigan, had never heard of the film and was barely aware of the character. And then, on one fateful trip to the public library, I checked out a copy of Flash Gordon and my life was changed.

See, up until that point, I was not a “movie person.” I enjoyed watching movies, sure. I’d loved the Star Wars trilogy from pretty early age, but that only led to my being a Star Wars fan. I went after anything I thought could scratch that Star Wars itch; books, movies, video games, anything. I exhausted all avenues which, for me, meant Scholastic book orders and library visits. I assume that’s how I ended up leaving the library with a copy of Flash Gordon that day, in a desperate attempt to find something (anything!) like Star Wars to stuff into my brain.

I watched Flash Gordon the way I did most things as a teenager: alone in my parents’ basement. I have a vivid memory of finding it absolutely hilarious to the point it made me giddy. I’m not sure, looking back, what exactly hooked me. It’s campy in a very silly, very over-the-top way but the cast (with few exceptions) plays things pretty straight. Maybe I just couldn’t really wrap my head around the result. I knew I loved it, but I wasn’t sure why. And so I opted for the sort of derisive, half-sarcastic way that teenagers (especially, I think, teenage boys) love things when they’re afraid of any sort of authentic emotion. At the same time, I felt a great deal of ownership over this film that I had “discovered” and experienced on my own, that no one else (so far as I was aware) even knew about.

For a long time, that was how I understood my appreciation for movies. I constructed a sort of identity for myself as “Guy who watches bad movies,” always looking for some hidden gem, something outside the mainstream, something I could feel ownership of the same way I had with Flash Gordon. Something that I felt I could comfortably love with a sense of plausible deniability. That sort of interest can only sustain itself for so long, though, and I think I was either going to start being more earnest as a movie fan or lose interest in them altogether. Thankfully, for a few reasons, but I’ve got to own the whole journey that got me here. I’m happy to be where I’m at now but I saw a lot of very fun movies along the way, and I have Flash Gordon to thank for getting me here.

I’ve revisited Flash Gordon several times since that first watch and, though the way I appreciate movies has changed, I’m happy to say that my love of Flash Gordon hasn’t. After all, how could you not? The music by Queen and the score by Howard Blake are iconic. The amount of time and effort that must have gone into production design is mind-boggling. Brian Blessed puts in one of the most memorable performances (ever?) as Prince Vultan. Really, it’s incredible that a film as packed as this one could fit in so many memorable supporting performances: Max von Sydow’s slyly camp Ming the Merciless, Emperor of Mongo; Timothy Dalton’s romantic rival turned staunch ally Prince Barin; Topol’s incandescently energetic Dr. Hans Zarkov. Even Melody Anderson and Ornella Muti come across well as Dale Arden and Princess Aura despite being given very little to work with.

There’s one performance, though, that I think deserves deeper discussion, that of our Flash, the aforementioned Sam J. Jones. He was pretty harshly treated when the film was released (he was nominated for a Golden Raspberry for Worst Actor) and, even now that we know most of Flash’s lines were dubbed by another actor, recent reviews still tend to be critical of the performance. I certainly agree that Jones’s Flash doesn’t come across as a traditional sort of heroic lead and that there’s an inevitable temptation to compare to Mark Hamill or Harrison Ford in Star Wars, which had come out only three years earlier. I think this is misguided for a number of reasons, and I’d even go so far as to argue that Jones’s characterization of the Flash is an essential part of why this movie still works.

First, I feel it’s important to remember that the only reason George Lucas made Star Wars is because he couldn’t get the rights to create a Flash Gordon film. Star Wars began its life as an attempt by Lucas to create his own version of a Flash Gordon-style story as a feature film and, as we all now know, it was a massive success. With Star Wars looming so large in the public consciousness, trying to do the same type of story with the same type of hero was not going to result in a particularly memorable film (as we know from the many, many Star Wars knock-offs that came and went around the same time). This movie had to do something different and, if it hadn’t, I don’t think it would’ve ever developed the following that it has.

More important, though, are the themes we see embodied in the Flash Gordon character. In a series of events that would be mirrored 40 years later with Star Wars, the Flash Gordon comic strip was created when publisher King Features Syndicate couldn’t secure the rights to William Rice Burroughs’s John Carter of Mars. Flash Gordon draws from the same tainted well as John Carter, telling the story of a dashing (white) Earth man bringing civilization to the savage races of another world. Pairing that sort of story with a straightforward heroic lead would’ve felt pretty cliched even in the late 1970s. Worse yet, it’d push those colonialist (and racist) themes to the fore, not a good look for a film in which the primary antagonist is rooted in racist “Yellow Peril” imagery of the early 20th century. It barely scrapes by as it is, and then only if you’re feeling charitable.

This film needs Jones’s performance to undercut Flash’s believability as a hero. With very few exceptions, characters treat Flash with a kind of reverence, of awe. It’s made clear time and time again that every character in the film believes that Flash is the embodiment of heroism, including Flash himself. But we, the audience, are never made to see him in that same light. The Flash that we see (through Jones’s performance) is pretty mediocre and, frankly, kind of bland. One of the few scenes in which he feels competent is also one of the silliest, in which Flash uses his football skills (he’s a star quarterback for the New York Jets in this adaptation) to combat Ming’s guards. And even this momentary competence is immediately undercut as he’s knocked out by one of the “footballs” Zarkov is throwing to him. His success as a hero is more often the result of luck or outside intervention than anything else, with Flash serving as a sort of good-hearted but bumbling comedic foil within more serious surroundings.

The clear distinction between Flash as viewed by the world of the film and Flash as viewed by the audience feels, to me, more like parody than a flawed heroic performance. And, again, I think a “successful” heroic performance, even a comedic one, would kill this movie’s appeal. There’s a scene about halfway through the film where Prince Barin (played by Timothy Dalton) challenges Flash to a duel in the court of Prince Vultan (Brian Blessed). Flash triumphs (of course) but refuses to kill Barin and, when Vultan huffs over this breach of tradition, Zarkov gushes over Flash’s display of “humanity.” It’s the kind of scene that feels a bit saccharine and, if we were meant to take Flash seriously, two hours of scenes like this could be pretty insufferable. Instead, the audience gets to smirk their way through it because we’re in on the joke, even if the characters in the film aren’t.

I think that’s as good a note to end on as any. Give this one a rewatch if you can! And, if you do, think about how it might feel with a different performance at the center of it. You might just end up agreeing with me.