Kentish Express Ashford & District - What's On
ANOTHER FLASH IN THE PAN?
My boy has started to really, really like Queen.
Last week, I decided to play him the Queen song that was my favourite when I was his age: Flash, the theme song from the 1980 film Flash Gordon. Queen did the soundtrack, you see, and Flash (ahaaaaa) was the lead song. The song hasn’t held up. He was underwhelmed, and so was I.
As for the film; I haven’t watched it for a long, long time, nor has my son, but I think now’s a good time to show him. The Queen connection will hook him and he’s old enough now to handle Peter Duncan off Blue Peter going through his ultimately fatal tree-person initiation.
The 1980 film hinted at a sequel which never happened, but Flash has always been hanging around on the periphery of pop culture. For the last few years there have been various attempts to remake the film, and it looks like the project might finally be going ahead. 20th Century Fox has hired Overlord director Julius Avery to write and direct the Flash Gordon reboot. Matthew Vaughn (Kick Ass, Kingsman) was previously linked to the project, but now he will instead produce.
Overlord is a Nazi-zombie horror, and while it’s only being released this week Fox evidently has enough confidence in Julius Avery’s abilities to offer him what is sure to be a major release.
Avery apparently grew up being a fan of Flash Gordon, and when he went to Fox to pitch his vision of the hero, the company signed him up almost immediately.
Mike Hodges’ 1980 film has become so embedded in the cinematic landscape (helped along by references in more modern movies like Ted), that many people don’t realise that Flash Gordon existed long before Freddie Mercury was a twinkle in Mr Bulsara’s eye. Flash was created by Alex Raymond and made his comic debut in 1934 - that’s four years before Superman was introduced. Flash Gordon was originally a professional athlete who battled the evil ruler Ming the Merciless on the planet Mongo.
Flash made his first big screen appearance in 1936, where he was played by Buster Crabbe in a 13-part film serial, and there followed two more serials in 1938 and 1940, and all three were turned into feature-length movies.
It took 40 years for Flash to return to cinemas in the Mike Hodges film which starred Sam J. Jones as Flash with Max von Sydow, Ornella Muti, Timothy Dalton and BRIAN BLESSED. The movie made just $27m worldwide, but it has picked up cult status.
I expect this reboot to play around with Flash Gordon and put a different spin on the character, and hope it takes more inspiration from the original Flash Gordon serials than the cheesy 80s movie. Looking at the overblown 80s nostalgia right now though, my hopes may be misplaced.