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Manchester, England, and the year is 1866, sometime during the
Industrial Revolution. Our hero, mechanical whiz kid Ray Steam, toils as
a mechanic at the local textile plant, when one day a package arrives
from Ray's grandfather, Lloyd. Inside is a mysterious ball-shaped metal
device accompanied by blueprints and instructions. No sooner has the
mailman left do a pair of agents from the O'Hara Corporation appear at
the front door to claim the package, followed by Lloyd Steam himself,
hell-bent on keeping the ball away from his former employers, the O'Hara
Corporation.
Ray
eventually eludes his pursuers and makes his way onto a train where he
meets Robert Stevenson, a former colleague/rival of Ray's late father.
(If this Stevenson is supposed to be the author of the same name, the
movie never makes it clear.) Ray barely has time to tell his tale before
he's stolen away by an O'Hara airship and flown to the Steam Castle, the
company's base of operations. There he meets Scarlett O'Hara,
granddaughter of the corporation's owner; Scarlett is a Paris
Hilton-type spoiled brat, complete with yappy little rat dog. Ray also
meets his father Edward, who is very much alive, but is now part machine.
Edward reveals that the metal ball sent to Ray is the "steam
ball," an almost unlimited source of energy Edward and Lloyd have
created, and which everyone wants.
For
sixteen years, fans have waited for Katsuhiro Otomo to direct another
full-length animated movie. In between, he completed the
"Akira" manga in 1990, directed the live-action horror/comedy
"World Apartment Horror" in 1991, and teased anime fans with
his involvement in numerous movies and side projects. For a while, it
seemed as if he'd lost all interest in directing animated movies.
"Steamboy" is supposedly the culmination of almost a decade of
work by Otomo and his production crew, and the result has the feel of a
movie that's been tinkered and meddled with for far too long, like a
certain prequel trilogy you might have heard about.
While
"Steamboy" is not terrible, it feels safe and generic,
offering no surprises and playing out exactly as you'd expect. The movie
shifts from chase movie to cautionary tale loaded with monologues and
conversations about the dangers facing mankind in the face of advancing
technology and the thirst for forbidden knowledge. After this lull, the
movie throws in a few more revelations before clumsily switching back to
action mode to deliver a finale that takes up over 40 minutes of the
125-minute running time, and all of it seems to take place roughly in
real-time.
The
movie was budgeted at about $20 million, the highest ever for a Japanese
animated movie, and there's no question that "Steamboy" is an
expensive and amazing toy. On the eye candy factor alone, the movie
delivers with tons of computer-generated art that incorporates some cool
camerawork, insanely detailed props and dynamically rendered backgrounds
fused with traditional hand drawn art, all of it done in Otomo's
distinctive style. But the fact is, the CG and hand drawn hybrid style
just isn't new anymore, and has lost some of its "wow" factor
after the likes of "Titan A.E.," "Blood:
The Last Vampire," "Metropolis," "Ghost
in the Shell 2: Innocence," and pretty much every Disney movie
of the last five years.
The
movie's use of "steampunk" technology and the Victorian
England location means there are some interesting retroactive/"what
if" equipment on display. Most of the gadgets in the movie would
feel right at home in an H.G. Wells or Jules Verne novel. Unfortunately
they're not entirely innovative, as Hayao Miyazaki took a crack at
similar material back in 1987 with "Laputa:
The Caste in the Sky", and even farther back with his
"Famous Detective Sherlock Holmes" TV series. Frankly,
Miyazaki's earlier works were a lot more entertaining, not to mention a
whole lot cheaper, than "Steamboy."
If it's unfair to judge a movie for falling below
expectations, is it any fairer to fault it for being too
straightforward? Otomo's two most prominent movies of the 90's were
"Roujin Z" and "Memories," two movies that were
quite different from each other but were nevertheless loaded with sly
humor and satire, some of it political. "Steamboy" is just
another cautionary tale of the dangers inherent in scientific advances,
with the steam ball obviously filling in for nuclear energy, genetic
research, etc.
From
the moment we see Edward Steam's part-mechanical body, we know he
personifies science run amok. And when an assortment of foreign
dignitaries show up at Steam Palace for a demonstration of arms
developed by the O'Hara Corporation, the film helpfully offers the
insight that warmongers will always pervert science for their own means.
(Interestingly enough, while those dignitaries include representatives
from Europe and the Middle East, the period setting allows Japan to
escape from the finger pointing.)
If any of the movie's themes sound familiar, it's
because the same grounds were covered just as heavy-handedly in Otomo's
past films, including the highly acclaimed "Akira". And in the
long run, that's the problem. Sixteen years and $20 million have
resulted in little but a Cliff's Notes version of Otomo's filmography,
regurgitating themes he's already dealt with, and far better, in
previous films. Considering the time, money, talent, and resources at
his beck and call, Otomo's "Steamboy" seems like little more
than a missed opportunity.
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