Elektra (2005)

Come, young ones. Journey back to a time of great darkness for our world. A time when George W. Bush was somehow beginning his second term as president of the United States. A time when the world was shocked by a major American city which sat at a low elevation near the ocean getting annihilated by a hurricane. (Totally unexpected.) A time when the word "Marvel" meant not fun action movies, but rather, horrible schlock likes of which most of us would rather forget. The year is 2005. The movie? Elektra.

on the plus side, Garner looked pretty hot

Overview: Elektra is a legendary assassin, considered an urban myth by some. She takes no shit from anybody (except maybe her agent), and is one of those superheroes without any real powers beyond "fights good."

Her world gets turned upside-down when her latest targets, a father and teenage daughter, turn out to be targeted by the shadowy organization known as The Hand, led by the sinister Master Roshi.

No, not this Roshi...

...THIS Roshi (sadly)

Elektra, for no real reason beyond the fact that she's talked with them a few times, betrays her employer and decides to turn bodyguard instead. Fight scenes ensue. It's a pre-Avengers Marvel movie, whaddya expect?

Notable moments/quotes:
Opening narration, accurately lowering expectations for this shitheap: "Since time began, a war has waged between the forces of good and evil."

Elektra: "Don't worry. Death's not that bad."
Target: "Yeah? How do you know?"
The pair were on opposite sides of a roughly 40-foot long room. In between the previous line and this one, she is suddenly at his ear. "I died once." She then teleports back to where she was standing before and kills him with a thrown sai. (You know. Those crazy knife things the one Ninja Turtle used.)

When Elektra goes to the place paid for by the client for her next job, intense, driving music plays as she organizes the mostly empty house and lines up all the fruit in straight lines. The movie later mentions that she has OCD, confirming that this was meant as foreshadowing, but the movie lingers on this for several minutes. Combined with the music, I was expecting something to happen, but instead, it meanders.

Elektra, unwittingly talking to her mark: "My mother died when I was young. I should go." She then goes.

Whenever Elektra kills one of the bad guys, they explode into green gas. The significance of this is never really explained.

One of the (hilarious, at least for this movie) bad guys is called Tattoo. Go on, guess what his power is. HE HAS MAGICAL TATTOOS. At various points, he animates animal tattoos on himself for scouting and combat purposes, and sweet mother of Loki, does it look awful.

Move over, Twilight

Elektra and the dad kiss twice in the movie. There is no chemistry between them at any point, because even this movie knew it was wiser to not even try for a love angle.

One of the villains, whose name is apparently Typhoid (according to IMDB... pretty sure the movie never said it), attacks with decay powers, a bit like a reverse Poison Ivy. She's the only good part of this movie, because when she attacks our heroine...

aw yeah, lesbian poison kiss her to death. unf

Old sensei: "I'm blind and I see more than any of you, because I don't look."

Elektra: "I don't have OCD. I did when I was a kid, but not anymore."

Stab Girl: "We will meet where it all began."
Oddly Japanese bad guy: "And it will end where it all began. For you at least."

During the duel set up in the lines above, Abby (the girl) follows and tries to help Elektra, but only gets herself attacked by Typhoid. Our favorite lesbian decides out of simple jealousy to disobey her orders and kill rather than capture Abbey. Before any of you perverts get excited, no, we do not get a scene of an older woman forcing a kiss on a struggling 13-year-old. Instead, we just get a blown kiss that does... this, for some reason.

brains?

My thoughts: Alright, first a disclaimer: I don't give a shit about superhero comics. If you're looking for someone to tell you why Typhoid absolutely should have tried to poison rape a 13-year-old on screen because of the line she had in Unlimited Elektra #4,652 or something, you aren't going to get that level of depth here. I'm sure there are other people on the internet who can do that, but that's not me. I enjoy superhero movies for the flashy effects, but the average American comic book I'll breeze through in a few minutes. I'm a fast reader, and I find myself incapable of spending much time looking at art, so comics don't take long. There was a time in my life, as a young lad, when I was into comics, but I didn't grow up with superheroes. No, I had the poor fortune (in this case) to grow up playing video games, so when one fateful day at a supermarket when I saw one of my heroes, Sonic the Hedgehog, had his own comic book, I picked up that one and kept reading the series into my teenage years. Due to that, Archie Comics confused the hell out of me with insidious furry indoctrination during my awkward preteen and teen years. Thanks, assholes.

*this is not fanart, this is how they actually drew this character

All that aside, I haven't read comics regularly since junior high, so I don't know a damn thing about Elektra beyond what I've seen in the Marvel movies. I've seen Daredevil, where I know her backstory was touched on a bit more, but really who gives a damn; it's pretty generic as antiheroes go. Blah blah dead parents blah blah trained to be strong woman who didn't need no man blah blah Ben Affleck. Maybe they'll redeem her in their excellent Daredevil miniseries, but for now what you see here is what you get, more or less.


One of the major issues I have with this movie is how it seems to be assuming an awful lot of its audience. For once, we have a superhero movie from this era of comic film adaptations that isn't an origin story (although there are a few flashbacks), and the movie goes too far in the other direction by not giving us enough background. To begin with, there's apparently an ancient conflict between the unnamed good guy ninjas (who can see the future and bring back the dead with plot-convenient magic called Kimagure) and The Hand. What are The Hand's goals? What rules govern their bullshit magic? Well, movie?

"Uhh, can we distract you with an egregious lesbian scene?"

Hah! Too late, movie, you already played that card and years upon years of the weirdest pornography the Internet has available have hardened my... resolve against such tactics! We get to see The Hand having boardroom meetings, and a few of them seem to disapprove of using the supernatural, so they aren't all magic dudes. Do they have a front company? Are they just a company that does shady shit on the side? If that's so, why does their leader dress like a little like an evil Buddhist monk? Maybe these answers are in the comic book, but if that's the movie's answer, then fuck you, movie. Stop being lazy. Nobody wants to read these days. You know that. ...And so do I, which is why I... write blogs.

hold me, Jack (Daniels)

In any case, every so often the good and bad guys scramble to get the Treasure, a young child born with superpowers. In this case, it's actually Abby, which I think they meant as a twist but it's so poorly set up that I'm going to discount that theory. This is apparently the only means both organizations have to bolster their ranks. Or something. It's not really explained. Do either of these sides have an endgame? The movie's intro says the Treasure "tips the balance between good and evil" but if Treasures just keep coming along, they evidently don't tip it very far. I was expecting a more Anakin Skywalker level, but eh. Why make your movie matter at all?

On that note, the movie hilariously resolves nothing in its ending. The Hand agents who were sent after Abby are dispatched and heroic music plays, but if Abby is so damn important, what's to stop them from sending more evil sorcerers after her? They clearly know where the good guys' base is, as we're shown Tattoo spying on them training Abby in one scene. Elektra even leaves at the end of the movie, leaving that much less protection around Abby in case of another attack. Sure, Elektra keeps up the antiheroic "not in this for your revolution" veneer up most of the movie, but we're shown that she does care for Abby for having to become a magical child soldier, since Elektra herself was in the same situation as a kid before she said "Nope, screw this" and ran off. So then why wouldn't Elektra stay and watch over her if she's had this change of heart and wants Abby to be safe? ...Movie?

"...Sequel hook?"

Sequel. You're adorable. Then again, the Cage pulled it off, so I guess that's not totally implausible.

"Nothing is impossible for me. Nothing."

On the issue of protecting this young girl, her father gets a throwaway line to Elektra about how he "knew" that she was there to kill them the moment she moved into the house next to theirs. I'm sorry, what? The two learn of her almost immediately, because Elektra moves in a few days before she's told that Abby and her father are the marks. If the dad knew Elektra was an assassin, why in the name of everything holy didn't they run? Fortify the house? They don't even take the common-sense step of setting up booby traps around the place, because we see their plan when other Hand assassins come after them in a scene is "run into the bathroom and huddle in the corner like abused wives." For being an allegedly protective father, he's total crap at taking any action to keep his daughter safe. He hasn't resigned himself to their deaths, because he does fight in a few scenes, even though he doesn't have superpowers. So then why in Sithis' name does he take no action whatsoever when he knew he and Abby were in danger? Well, movie, what- actually, no. We've seen where that leads, and the Rule of Three can get bent.

In any case, the movie doesn't so much concern itself with logic as with other assets. This is an American action film, damn it! Tits! Guns! Punching! Let's get to the... action?

Sadly, the action is pretty lackluster in this movie. Elektra herself, beyond a mild affinity for future sight magic, doesn't really have any powers. And, since she's an assassin, most of the fights last less than a minute unless she can't get the drop on them. It's really unsatisfying to have colorful villains with weird magic powers just get offed in seconds without any ceremony. Red shirts do not make good villains if our reaction to seeing them defeated so easily is "That's it? Why didn't she do that before?" I'm pretty sure I saw better fight scenes in Cave Dwellers, for fuck's sake.

In conclusion, this just shows us Marvel can screw things up. Let that stew in your brains, nerds; what if they haven't learned? Could they stumble again? Will they fall?

even as a Norse myth buff, Thor's movies still are kinda eh

This movie is overall pretty bland. Hell, it takes them 54 minutes of its 97 minute running time before the main villains even appear and do things. Not a great way to hold interest.

I give this movie a Nic Cage Holds an Asian Boy's Hand out of five. Face the books, if you dare!