Darkwing : The Terror that Flaps in the Night by The Walt Disney Company

This film would be the fourth in the CGI rebooted franchise, and would take place not long after the third.

Darkwing Duck / Drake Mallard is tiring of fighting crime, and he is even tiring of the acclaim he receives. He has defeated his most formidable and colorful adversaries, and the remainder of St. Canards's criminal population is fairly mundane and ordinary, and the crimes are petty and do no attract the same amount of publicity or excite him as had the super-villains he fought earlier in his career. He desires to provide a stable home for his now teenage adopted daughter Gosalyn, and he is looking for a regular day-job and planning to marry his longtime love Morgana.

However, things are not always what they seem. Although they attended college together, and she was was present and played a role in the creation of Darkwing Duck, there is a good deal about Morgana that is still unknown to Drake. Not long after he became "The Terror that Flaps in the Night", Morgana took off unexpectedly for parts unknown, leaving Drake broken-hearted and flabbergasted. She returned to St. Canard years later when Darkwing was almost killed battling F.O.W.L and impersonated by Negaduck. His vanquishing of and re-integration of Negaduck into his body was partly successful due to Morgana's assistance, but he has found her to be a changed duck. While still elegant and alluring, she is darker, quicker to do things outside the law, and unforthcoming about the years in which she was away.

Morgana insists that the past is unimportant, and what matters is the here and now, and Drake eventually agrees. However what's past is prologue, and never far. DW plans one last public-relations extravaganza, and he is to be married at his secret headquarters at the Audoban Bay Bridge, and announce and renounce his true identity to the world on live-television. The ceremony is interrupted by The Beagle Boys, a large canine gang of robbers and thugs who are all loosely related to one another and led by their matriarch, a tough old broad known affectionately as Ma Beagle. A tremendous fight ensues, and when the smoke clears Morgana is gone, as our many of Darkwing's gadgets and weaponry.

Launchpad, who as Scrooge McDuck's bodyguard in Duckburg years before had had dealings with The Beagle Boys, knows that they are merely hired goons, and a much more sinister villain who has not yet shown their face is truly behind whatever is afoot.

Darkwing's detective skills are still second-to-none, and he tracks Morgana to a ship leaving the harbor, where he finds her arguing with a beautiful but deadly Italian duck. Darkwing is easily detected and held at blade-point by one of the Italian's hench-ducks, and she introduces herself as Magica De Spell, Morgana's mother.

In a flashback it is revealed that Morgana, who had always believed her mother had died when she was an infant, was contacted by a mysterious thousand-year old organization of nomadic black-magic-practicing bandits and assassins claiming to be holding her mother prisoner, and that in order to free her mother she would have to assist them in robbing various museums and private art collections across Europe and Asia. Impressed with her abilities, the leader of the organization revealed to her that she herself was Morgana's mother, and that the time had come for mother and daughter to join together in a centuries-long pursuit of seven obsidian ravens scattered throughout the globe, that when joined together on the peak of a mountain on an uncharted island of the coast of Cape Suzette would open a cave rumored to contain buried treasure and the fountain of youth. Morgana accompanied her mother on the quest for several years, but eventually became horrified at her mother's lack of morals and willingness to murder and steal to achieve her goals.

Magica possesses the first six and has now located the seventh raven, which was recently uncovered in a diamond mine on the Ivory Coast owned by Flintheart Glomgold, a tycoon so ruthless and unscrupulous he makes his old partner-turned rival Scrooge McDuck seem like a bleeding-heart liberal. Glomgold will not hand over the raven gladly, so Magica, steeped in old world ritual and savagery, is prepared to take it by any means necessary.

While Darkwing travels with Morgana, Magica and her caravan of pirates to Africa, attempting to dissuade Morgana from re-joining the forces of evil and wanting to prevent Magica from doing anything too dastardly, a Darkwing-less St. Canard once again appears to be falling into the clutches of crime. Old friends Gizmoduck / Fenton Crackshell and Launchpad McQuack pair up to become the latest "dynamic duo", but The Beagle Boys seem to multiply, no matter how many are captured or put down. That they are using devices stolen from DW's workshop does not make matters any easier.

Fenton chivalrously pursues Gandra Dee, a pretty duck who works as a teller in one of the banks knocked off by The Beagles, and Launchpad schools Gosalyn in many of the same crime-fighting methods he originally tutored Darwking in. LP is getting older, and he worries that Darkwing may not return from wherever he has gone. Gosalyn as well was integral in helping to save St. Canard and Darkwing's life in the previous episode, and is headstrong enough to head into the night with or without the proper tutelage, so he reluctantly agrees to train her despite Drake's years worth of insistences that she not become a superhero and lead a normal life.

Our heroes are each faced with a decision, and the bonds they have with one another are put to a final test.

tags (add tags): action, adventure, Based on Animated Series, CGI, comedy, Comic, Disney, epic, reboot, Superhero

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posted: 06/29/2011 by kaspergutman comments | results | vote