Movie Name : Sumuru
Actress Name : Simona Williams and Nadia Kretschmer
Character Name : Taxan
Year : 2003
In 2003 movie Sumuru. Actresses Simona Williams and Nadia Kretschmer play as villains. WOW, this is Michael Shanks from Stargate sg-1, that was before Stargate, he played a lot of roles before Stargate, I wonder what he thought when he knew that he would be a part of Stargate, personally I never seen him in anything else but Stargate, till now.. This movie is so cheap, but you good actors..
They used to film in really awesome places..
We get to see the first villainess around 9 minutes..
We first see the gorgeous Taxan around 12 minutes, god, my heart is beating seeing her in every second on screen..
She's offering a blood sacrifice to the serpent goddess, I assume the snake represent goddess Sekhmet, the eye of Ra, I really miss supernatural villains..
Sumuru is disrespecting the serpent goddess, how rude!!
There's multiple women wearing bras with a cage around their chests, like, what are you doing here? LOL!
The movie is low budget, it's very obvious, but doing incredible work with so limited resources..
Alexandra Kamp is so elegant and beautiful playing Sumuru..
This movie is weird, it's a 2003 movie, so it doesn't feel exactly like a 90s movie nor as 2010s movie, something in the middle as if it's a transition phase..
Taxan is a living serpent goddess, which is very interesting, in From Dusk Till Down, Salma Hayek was basically manifestation of a goddess, Santanico Pandemonium is basically Sekhmet, the ancient Egyptian goddess that is thirsty for blood, with the sun crown over her head, and you would notice how familiar it is to Helios' crown, and the snake around her also appear in ancient Egyptian depiction of the goddess, so Taxan being a manifestation of a goddess is kind of cool..
To know how important Sekhmet is to the old world, you only need to know that she was worshiped for 3000 years, with no forcible pressure, with the central nations isn't as powerful, people whose their writing to the letters is an art in itself, they worshiped such visualization of what would the god be like.. That's not just like any character, that's the character that gave us the whole concept of vampires, and her father Ra, thanks to this character, movies like groundhog day and every movie with a loop on Ra daily cycle, and contributed to philosophy..
This movie is stupid, and I love it, it's not serious, like the right level of being serious but not very much, like Hercules 1983..
We see our goddess again around 39 minutes, she orders her women to get rid of the guards, and to get the hero to her..
Taxan meet the hero around 41 minutes, I don't know why I'm in love with her, Taxan asks the hero to join her to punish the heroine for her blasphemy, it's insane, but I would do it if I were him, it doesn't make sense, I just wouldn't be able to resist her!
The reason that the hero refused Taxan's tyranny is because in the heroic world acts driven by reason, like why would he support those who would oppress him later?! But in the villain world her tyranny is her beauty, and both men and women suffering by being enslaved by such tyrannical beauty that took away from them any way to resist, her beauty causing many men to face hunger as they can't stop thinking about her, nothing as tyrannical as to take control of what others think, which what a beautiful woman like Taxan do. If you see the whole movie as a painting it doesn't matter how many elements are in the painting as long as it would show us how beautiful Taxan is, she has the contradictory nature of Sekhmet, the character can hold two contradictory absolute truths as the same time, she represent tyranny, and at the same time represent freedom, as portraying villains as beautiful is the highest point of creative freedom, many great fictional characters these contradictions, like with Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein is both the monster and the human, two absolute contradictory truths, same goes with the best Arab poets, when they describe love, for example:
Jarir when said in his poem
"Those eyes, whose gaze is captivating,
have slain us, yet they do not revive our slain."
To know how good character Taxan is, I miss seeing her, not because the movie is boring, but I want to see her more, you never get that feeling with many characters..
I have to re-watch Stargate, I miss this show..
The final confrontation starts around 1 hour 15 minutes..
You can watch the whole movie here..
In the ancient world art and science were treated as sacred, so maybe they didn't have understanding of physics to go to space, but they were experts in administrating society, so when you have a goddess as Sekhmet, it's supposed to invoke a feeling that can't be replicated otherwise, and that's true with two types of characters like a reversal of colors of the same white and black drawing, one with black paper drawn by white lines which is Frankenstein, the other with white paper and drawn by black lines, and funny enough both Frankenstein and The Vampyre were written as a result of the challenge of Villa Diodati, we have characters that proved to be powerful for thousands of years, that associated to some of the oldest artistic works, which is Sekhmet, and her reverse Sphinx, so if we assumed that the ancient gods were made as a way to invoke certain feelings, and Sekhmet represent both attraction and repulsion at the same time, then we can hypothesize that her reversal The Great Sphinx was made for Sekhmet, which make it also Frankenstein, I doubt that there's any character I haven't seen can be as good as these two, because I've seen them all, what Hollywood have been doing for about decade now is creating boring characters, the same type of characters that would be created in dark ages, with the sin have to be repulsive and the good have to look perfect, and they have their audiences, like I enjoyed Hercules, but first I was a kid, the second reason, everything in the show looks awesome, the actors, the costumes, the monsters were fun to watch, but still the character of Hercules itself isn't that interesting, the show is all about looking aesthetically good, easy and simple, like, would I invest tens of hours watching a new remake for a protagonist today? No, I won't, I would only watch it for two reasons, for the villains, and that's what I watch movies and TV shows for, or if the protagonist was a villainess before and I really want to see the actress again on screen as much as possible, like with Hard Knox, I had a great time watching the movie, I love every second of both Kim Penn and Simone were on screen, and the movie was fun..
One of the most interesting things about the character of a villainess, the previous movie with the great Sybil Danning playing Adriana in Hercules have the opposite message of this movie, if you are watching it for the heroes, you will love watching one hero and hate the other, but if you are watching it for the villains, you would have the same contradictory feelings towards the villainess no matter you agree with the message of the movie or not, same thing apply on characters like Frankenstein as it also invoke a certain feeling even if you disagree with the message behind the movie or not, which actually help people be more tolerant..
I know how Hard Knox is barely known outside the fandom of female villains, but he would watch Kim Penn playing villainess before and wouldn't love watching this movie and feel like he had the greatest time of his life? Female villains is like artistic connection that goes back to a thousands of years, and movies are giving you such connection, so when you see a villainess on screen, that's how people 4000 years ago saw the gods..
