Appleseed Alpha: Written by
Marianne Krawczk, directed by Shinji Aramaki.
Starring: Yuka Komatsu,
Junichi Suwabe, and Aoi Yuki. Running Time: 93 minutes. Based on the manga of the same name by
Masamune Shirow.
Rating: 1.5/4
Appleseed
Alpha, both in terms of its animation style and its story (yet another
World War happened that resulted in a bombed-out, apocalyptic future), comes
across as less of a film and more like an unskippable cutscene in a video game
that lasts an hour and a half. Sadly,
since it ultimately fails to do anything new with the materials it takes from
other sources, or cover it up with enough comedic brevity, your time would
probably be better spent playing an actual video game.
It is…sometime in the future, and
human society has been driven to the fringes in their efforts to survive the
fallout of a devastating conflict some years prior. We never learn any details about the who, the
what, the where, or the why that led to the war that caused this, but it was
apparently bad enough that the bombs turned the currently hilly and forest-filled
East Coast of the US into the Badlands.
I know it’s the East Coast we’re seeing, because we learn almost immediately
that the shell of a city the film starts in is New York, and the maps we are
shown later on when the characters go elsewhere indicate we are just a little
southwest of Manhattan Island in the final act, which means that the big,
explosive finale must take place somewhere in New Jersey. If I were a betting man, I would put my money
on Camden.
The city, and probably the rest of
the world, is divided up between various local gang lords, although
rumors persist of a peaceful and prosperous haven city called Olympus, located somewhere…..else,
from what I gathered. Some of these
leaders are cyborgs, including a rejected Reboot
villain named Two-Horns (guess what his defining physical feature is?) who
bosses around our two mains, a young woman named Deunan and her cyborg friend (who
may have once been her human boyfriend?) called Briareos, who, with his
armor-covered, muscular form and kangaroo-like antennas for ears, looks suspiciously
like Chappie’s linebacker older brother.
They agree to a single, last job for
Two-Horns to repay their debt, stopping off first at the residence of the gang
doctor, Matthews, to get Briareos fixed up.
Said doctor bears a striking, and some might say plagiaristic, resemblance
to Wash from Firefly, both in terms
of his design and in how nearly all of his dialogue consists of smartass
wisecracking. The difference being, of
course, that Wash’s smartass wisecracking is both genuinely funny and emotionally
endearing, while Matthews’ is neither. Somehow,
it never occurs to Deunan and Briareos that he might be under orders from
Two-Horns to deliberately keep Briareos underpowered, but since the film opens
with them making the grave error of using the New York subway system, I can’t
say this shocked me.
Their mission, of course, goes
incredibly awry, and they end up harboring a young girl and her bodyguard/escort
from a powerful team of cyborgs chasing them to stop their “mission,” which, naturally,
eventually pulls Two-Horns into the action as well, which just might result in
him, Deunan, and Briareos trading in their usual mutual antagonism for a quick
alliance of convenience. You only get
three guesses as to what the little girl’s mission consists of, but if you
already suspect that it has to do with a leftover superweapon from the
aforementioned global shitstorm, congratulations! You have seen at least one other dystopian,
sci-fi action film in your life! You get
nothing.
I must admit, when all the pieces
are finally in place for the big action set piece at the end, involving a
cyborg martial artist and the aforementioned doomsday weapon fully loaded and
moving, the result is very nearly enough to justify the first two acts. It’s some well-animated action that doesn’t
bore, but even there it utterly fails to give us anything new- even the moving,
city-sized weapon looks like an exact hybrid of Howl’s castle and the
mechanical spider from Wild, Wild West. It’s even taken down video-game style- there
is a single opening, which can only be hit by a certain kind of sniper rifle,
and that is somehow enough to bring the entire behemoth down. Oh, what will kids these days think up
next?
Ultimately, there is nothing so
offensively bad about Appleseed Alpha
that causes me to actively dislike the film, but its complete lack of
originality in every department, even the good parts at the end, prevent me
from recommending it to anyone, even those who play the kind of games the movie
so eagerly mines from. Perhaps the next animated,
post-apocalyptic adventure tale we get based in New Jersey will be a little
better. Why not have one set in Trenton?
-Noah
Franc
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