Although FLASH GORDON: MAROONED ON MONGO adequately updates material from 1930s serials to a 1990s sensibility, refashioning Flash Gordon and Dale Arden as teenagers. The revamp is an unspectacular series of cartoon adventures strung tenuously together.
After conquering Mongo's neighboring planets, Ming the Merciless sets his sights on Earth. He prepares by opening up a portal to a nearby black hole. After Ming's initial reconnaissance mission jeopardizes the lives of space shuttle astronauts Colonel and Katherine Gordon, their teenage son Flash
and Colonel Arden's daughter Dale are flown to safety by NASA. From his home-planet Mongo, Ming torpedoes the NASA plane, which crash-lands near the research facility of Dr. Hans Zarkov.
Ming's compassionate daughter Aura sabotages the black hole portal in order to spare the life of an enslaved child. Before Ming can repair the portal, Flash, Dale, and Zarkov rocket to Mongo to thwart Ming. Although Aura intervenes on several occasions, Ming vows to annihilate the earthling
meddlers, particularly after they re-damage the still crippled portal and cause a further delay in Ming's invasion schedule.
Rescuing guerrilla princess Thundar from Ming-friendly jungle creatures, Flash convinces her and rebel prince Talon that Ming's anti-Earth propaganda is a ploy to maintain his power base. Uniting the rebel factions, Flash reawakens the fighting spirits of Ming's oppressed colonies. When Ming
claims that a greater enemy, the Star Vandals, threatens everyone's safety, he proposes a truce; Flash and Dale discover that the peace talks are a ruse after they visit an abandoned rebel compound. Warning Thundar, Talon, and the freedom fighters about Ming's trap, Flash captures Ming's general
and launches a bomb toward Ming's mothership.
In true serial fashion, this movie ends on a cliffhanger. With a sequel beckoning, it's unlikely that Flash's rocket-bomb will put a crimp in Ming's vainglorious style. Like 1996's PHANTOM 2040: THE GHOST WHO WALKS (which boasts some of the same creative personnel in its credits), this shoddily
animated update looks designed to be easily shown in TV installments after its video release. It's a shifting, perfunctory enterprise in which any single perilous adventure could be removed and re-edited in at a different juncture. Whether Dale is escaping from cave people, or rock monolith
monsters are bombarding Flash, this kiddie 'toon exists on one, unending, action-movie loop. Unimaginatively, FLASH GORDON: MAROONED ON MONGO pits its exuberant teen heroes against megalomaniac Ming, but the real enemy is this project's exhausting recycling of narrow escapes from interchangeable
menaces. (Violence.) leave a comment
