"Ragnarok": A Clueless Thor, a Gay Loki, and a Lot of Beefcake

 

I had to find something to watch before my cereal got soggy, so I went to Amazon Prime and clicked on the first movie I hadn't seen there before: Max Cloud.  I knew nothing about it except that there was a cute guy on the icon.

Scene 1:  A model spaceship.  They don't even try to make it look realistic.  A disembodied voice warns that they've lost power and they are going in hot.  Prepare for a crash landing.

Scene 2:  Ship cook Jake (Elliot James Langridge, below) is hanging upside down in the ship's bridge.  The hull has a gigantic hole in it, but not to worry, the atmosphere is breathable.  As he extricates himself, the square-jawed, gung-ho, rather self-possessed Captain Max Power...um, I mean Max Cloud (Scott Adkins) arrives.    Headquarters tells them that they have crashed onto the planet Heinous, a prison for the most evil, violent, and immoral villains in the galaxy.  But a rescue ship will arrive in six hours.

Scene 3: On Mount Doom, some Skeletor-like villains.., wait, this is a video game!  A cheesy old-fashioned one.  Setting: Brooklyn, 1990.  The rather butch, overall-clad teenager Sarah stops the game to take a call from her bff, Cowboy (Franz Drameh).  Then overbearing Dad comes in to criticize her for everything, especially her video games."Your dead mother disliked video games."  Harsh!   

She continues to play.  On the ship, Max Cloud is searching for crash survivors, when he comes across a secret room, and inside the Space Witch, a glittery drag queen, who offers to help.  But Max dismisses him: "A man can't be a witch, just like a woman can't be a spaceship captain."  

Back in Brooklyn, Dad comes in and bans Sarah from using video games.  She pouts: "I wish I could play video games all day, and no one could stop me."  I know where this is going: somewhere over the rainbow.

Scene 4: In the morning, Cowboy, who is dressed like the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire, stops by, but Sarah isn't in her room.  He notices that she left the video game on, so he starts to play while waiting for her.  Why is she playing as Jake the Cook, the worst character?  

Back on the Ship. Max and Jake...wait, Sarah is actually living in the Jake character!  "You're...you're Max Cloud! You're real...can I touch you?"  I'd like to touch Max, too...  Max slaps him; it hurts!  He looks down at his crotch and starts to cry (because he has a penis now?) 

Back in Brooklyn, Sarah tells Cowboy that she got zapped into the game, and can't get out.  They've both seen "Tron," so they know it's possible. 

Cowboy discovers that while he is outside, he can "play" Jake and control Jake/Sarah's movements.  But he can't pause the game, and if he turns it off, Sarah might vanish forever.  He has no choice but to play.

Scene 5:  Fortunately, Cowboy has played the game before, so knows how to avoid getting the characters killed, like don't go into the room full of ninja assassins.  Max goes in anyway, and fights them off.  Meanwhile, Jake/Sarah is embarrassed by his constant arousal, a problem that teenage boys have a lot in the presence of hot guys.

Next they find another survivor, the no-nonsense Commander Rexy, who happens to be Max's superior officer.  Wait -- Max just said that a woman can't be a starship captain.

More ninja assassins are coming, but instead of fighting them, Jake/Sarah suggests that they go to Max's bedroom (a three-way coming up?  But this had the feel of a G-rated movie).  "If we just sit here and do nothing, we'll be safe." But Max won't hear of it: "We have to rush headlong into battle, even if we are sure to be killed."

Ulp: this is the part where Cowboy always dies, no matter which character he's playing.  But with Sarah's help, he maneuvers the characters into beating the ninjas.

Scene 6: Next up: Brock Donnelly, intergalactic bounty hunter.  Jake/Sarah swoons in barely contained homoerotic/heteroerotic horniness.  Brock asks "Is he always like this?" Commander Rexy: "No, not normally."  Brock: "Works for me." Commander Rexy grimaces in disgust.  Because of the implication of same-sex desire?

Brock explains that he came here looking for an intergalactic criminal named Shee, but he's willing to let her go and help them get off the planet.  They have to hurry, because every 24 hours the two stars that orbit the planet burn as hot as the Earth's sun and turn everything into "space liquid."  That makes no sense, but it's a video game from 1990, so go with it. 

I'll stop the scene-by-scene there.

 

Beefcake: Martyn Ford plays a villain named Musculator. Max shows muscular arms.

Other Sights: No. This is very low-budget.

Gay Characters:  Max and Jake don't express any heterosexual interest.  Cowboy doesn't either, until the last scene.  

When Sarah's Dad takes over the game play, Cowboy rubs his shoulders to keep him relaxed, and tells him: "I hope this doesn't come across as weird, but you are magnificent."  Weird because he's expressing same-sex attraction, or because it's his friend's Dad?  Dad, by the way, is fine with it.

 Sarah getting hetero-horny while inhabiting the body of Jake leads to a lot of homoerotic moments.

The Space Witch is a drag queen.

Max Cloud's back story: he wanted to become a pastry chef, but his father found that career goal too feminine, and sent him to Space Academy to "straighten him out."

Heterosexism:  A heterosexist ending in which Cowboy and Sarah inexplicably kiss, after never expressing any interest in each other before.  Meanwhile, Dad hooks up with Sofia (an adult player freed from the video game). 

My Grade: A until the last scene, then D.

source http://everydayheterosexism.blogspot.com/2021/08/max-cloud-video-game-parody-spoiled-by.html