MovieChat Forums > Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938) Discussion > Would audiences in 1938 have noticed...

Would audiences in 1938 have noticed...

posted 12 years ago by Alfje17
2 replies | jump to latest

... that the Earthmen can pilot/handle any piece of technological equipment even though they'd never seen it before? And they're better at opening/closing doors than the natives: when Flash 'locks' the guards up by closing 2 doors, the guards just keep bumping into the flimsy door instead of turning the wheel just next to it; they reminded me of Lemmings(TM).

I watched this serial for the first time and it's quite fun and rather silly (turning the wheel to close the doors made me laugh out loud), but these 2 nitpicks annoyed me enough to not really get into the serial after that, it all seemed just too silly.

Am I too logical and would audiences 70 years ago just accepted these things? After all it's SF with rays, light bridges, incredibly useless bombers, ... stuff that any all-American quarterback can handle ;)

Maybe I should just switch off my brain and enjoy it for what it is: silly but enjoyable SF fluff.

[–] grendelkhan 11 years ago

These were marketed primarily to children (who were also the audience of the comic strip), though they had their adult fans. Movie serials have never sweated logic much and the audience was more interested in the action than much else. Flash pilots rockets in the strip so the audience expects it on screen. The strip never showed Flash training so why would the serial?

"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"

[–] barjo4 11 years ago

Well, when you consider that Orson Welles ended up with some people committing suicide over a radio brodcast in 1938, it shouldn't suprise anyone about the effects in Flash Gordon.