Appleseed Saga: Ex Machina
Director: Shinji Aramaki
Genre: CGI Animated Action, Science Fiction
Background
This movie is first and foremost a work of science fiction. I would not
characterize it as anime. It is a science fiction movie that happens to
be computer animated. The care in producing the three dimensional animation,
action tableauxs, and creative camera angles elevate this film above the
common animated feature. Much research was done in order to make the characters
more lifelike, including making the eyes less cartoonish as well as getting
the movements right. An extensive amount of computer modeling was done
to create an effect that duplicates reality while also maintaining a stylized
look.
Ex Machina is a sequel to a previous science fiction movie, both of which
were based on a popular Japanese science-fiction comic book. The film
is distinguished by the three dimensional animation style as well as benefiting
from having John Woo as the producer. The director and many of the creative
people involved in making the movie are fans of John Woo and are fluent
in recreating his style, so they felt it was a natural fit to bring him
on to assist with the movie. While this is not a John Woo film, it does
have the benefit of his input here and there, particularly with his signature
camera angles and action flourishes.
Synopsis
The movie is about a future where genetically engineered humans help protect
humanity from itself. The main characters are part of an elite police
force whose mission is to quell disturbances by those who would seek to
destroy the fragile post nuclear war harmony. The main characters are
called upon to unravel a scheme to dominate earth and do copious amount
of bullet-fu etc. That's what the movie is about on the surface. On the
inside the film asks who is it that we love when we say we love someone,
as well as complicated issues of personal identity. Some of the humans
are classified as cyborgs because they are partially mechanical. Others
are clones spawned in test tubes, genetically engineered with specific
traits desirable for their work maintaining a peaceful world. Comparisons
to Bladerunner are inevitable, however Appleseed Saga Ex-Machina turns
the formula inside out. Instead of having main characters that are robots
on the inside, human on the outside, this film features a character who
his a machine on the outside and human on the inside. The third major
character is a clone of the human who is trapped in the mechanical body.
The main character is a woman who is in love with the human trapped inside
the cyborg body, but also finds herself attracted to the clone who resembles
but is not the person she is in love with. Got that? While that may sound
like a lot to cram into a story, it's actually a sub-plot woven into the
overall plot of saving the Earth from imminent chaos. As in Bladerunner,
the cyborg/human sub-plot does not take over the plot but stays in the
sweet spot where it influences the chain of events, moving the story along.
Why you should see this movie
While comparisons to Bladerunner are inevitable, the most notable difference
is that Ex Machina is not a noir. It is a modern science fiction action
film that takes advantage of advanced theories of action choreography
and sets them down in a plausibly futuristic Earth. It doesn't comment
on itself as many other science fiction films do, it simply is it's own
reality. The film benefits from the John Woo style of action choreography.
Think of the difference between the light saber fights in the original
Star Wars and the acrobatic duels of the later films. Asian action choreography,
head and shoulders above typical Hollywood point and shoot action style,
heavily influenced those scenes. The action in films like Terminator,
Chronicles of Riddick, and even Serenity boil down to simple point and
shoot scenarios, no different since James Cagney and Bogart were pointing
guns at cops and gangsters in their films. Ex Machina brings the science
fiction genre to the present and advances it a few paces by eschewing
old genres and creating a true sense of time and place.
The soundtrack adds significantly to the drama and the setting. It's
rumbling rhythms and random crackling reinforces the sense of a story
set in the future. This is in contrast to the symphonic scores science
fiction films often feature. Appleseed leaves behind the old rhythms of
film scores that have been with us for almost a century and replaces it
with sounds that evoke the future. This is a great achievement that will
probably become more notable when reviewing this film years later. Think
of the many science fiction films from the seventies whose soundtracks
evoke the period in which they were composed, instead of evoking a world
of it's own. The soundtrack could very well succeed in transcending the
time in which it was created.
A pleasure of science fiction is it's ability to inspire a sense of wonder
at all the gadgets, methods of transportation, weaponry, even culture.
Ex Machina introduces wild technologies but their attention to details
like the bolts that hold a weapon together makes them seem real. There
are many sections of the movies that are a treat for the eyes.
It's refreshing to watch a science fiction film that rises above old
fashioned conventions in storytelling, such as the western or film noir,
and seriously undertake to craft a true world in every sense, including
the sounds and the soundtrack. I purchased a copy from eBay but there
are many online stores that specialize in these kinds of films. I strongly
recommend buying or renting this film.
Robert Totts
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