Usurper
03-18-2008, 07:39 PM
I tried to find the original thread about the movie Casshern, but the rights for western distribution have been tied up for so effin' long that the thread is long since pruned. The Suncoast that I pestered about it every few months has been closed for over a year now.
Well, it came out here at some point recently, as I noticed it in Walmart when I was out looking for child-labor-exploiting products. The trailer had looked so neato back then, and I'd waited so long, so I snatched it up for twenty bucks.
Well, this one's a rental, kids.
I don't know anything about the anime/manga/action figure/talking alarm clock/whatever that this movie was based on originally, and I can only assume that the writer/director/editor (all the same guy) thinks that I should, because he doesn't bother to extrapolate on, oh, anything at all in this film.
This one takes the same tactic as The New World: sparse dialogue, heavy imagery, maximum pretentiousness.
The creator of this film obviously doesn't think plot is in an any way important to the film. All he cares about is his message: "war is bad, mkay?" It's apparent that the property Casshern is based on is some kind of ass-kicking superhero, and it's almost as if the creator feels put-upon to have to squeeze fighting into his little set pieces.
There's so little exposition of the plot that scenes are strung together in a way that only makes sense in music videos. This director, by the way, would be an awesome music video director (assuming he already isn't; I'm not letting my impression of this movie be influenced by imdb or wikipedia, so I'm not bothering to check it out).
Watching this movie put me in mind of a parody of a German avant garde arthouse film: popping into black and white, characters staring with little emotion, other characters looking at the camera and screaming with the agony-that-is-being-alive. You just have to replace the stark echoy emo stillness with "Moonlight Sonato" to get Casshern's effect.
So, what IS the plot? Here goes: Asia beat Europe in a war. A scientist whose wife is dying finds the magic cure to disease and death: a super stem cell found only in some ethnic group that are now considered terrorists. The military funds the scientist's research and brings him bodies from the people who are the source of the "neo-cell." Then they bring his dead son home from the same warzone.
After a magical lightning strike at Dr. Frankenstein's lab, the unregenerated corpses reassemble themselves and come to life. Rather than jump for joy and begin the experiments immediately, the scientist's assistant orders them all gunned down. Nobody's actions here make a whole lot of sense, because the director HATES WORDS. Anyway, he brings his son, who hates him, back to life. The surviving Frankensteins take the scientist's wife (she came to see her son's body) for no discernable reason with them through the terrorist zone where they find...
...an apparently misplaced European robot army warehouse and factory that can be run by five people. Okay, I guess that's plausible.
What you would think might turn into a superhero pic about the revived son Casshern taking down the evil robot army...doesn't. Casshern is too traumatized by war to want to fight, and fighting is bad, so he doesn't get anywhere. Oh, there's a couple fights. But I think there's more hallucinations about quiet meadows and shit than actual fighting. Unless you count the stylized CGI robots.
I suppose I'm mostly incensed that this message and all the key elements of it (people being interconnected and violence stemming from selfishness, etc. etc.) could have been more fully realized in a plot in which you're made to care about the characters, rather than a movie that fails to make the characters into believable people or recognizable iconic character types.
I look forward to being told how I totally missed the point and am an ignorant doofus who should have better understood the subtleties of the falling blossoms.
Well, it came out here at some point recently, as I noticed it in Walmart when I was out looking for child-labor-exploiting products. The trailer had looked so neato back then, and I'd waited so long, so I snatched it up for twenty bucks.
Well, this one's a rental, kids.
I don't know anything about the anime/manga/action figure/talking alarm clock/whatever that this movie was based on originally, and I can only assume that the writer/director/editor (all the same guy) thinks that I should, because he doesn't bother to extrapolate on, oh, anything at all in this film.
This one takes the same tactic as The New World: sparse dialogue, heavy imagery, maximum pretentiousness.
The creator of this film obviously doesn't think plot is in an any way important to the film. All he cares about is his message: "war is bad, mkay?" It's apparent that the property Casshern is based on is some kind of ass-kicking superhero, and it's almost as if the creator feels put-upon to have to squeeze fighting into his little set pieces.
There's so little exposition of the plot that scenes are strung together in a way that only makes sense in music videos. This director, by the way, would be an awesome music video director (assuming he already isn't; I'm not letting my impression of this movie be influenced by imdb or wikipedia, so I'm not bothering to check it out).
Watching this movie put me in mind of a parody of a German avant garde arthouse film: popping into black and white, characters staring with little emotion, other characters looking at the camera and screaming with the agony-that-is-being-alive. You just have to replace the stark echoy emo stillness with "Moonlight Sonato" to get Casshern's effect.
So, what IS the plot? Here goes: Asia beat Europe in a war. A scientist whose wife is dying finds the magic cure to disease and death: a super stem cell found only in some ethnic group that are now considered terrorists. The military funds the scientist's research and brings him bodies from the people who are the source of the "neo-cell." Then they bring his dead son home from the same warzone.
After a magical lightning strike at Dr. Frankenstein's lab, the unregenerated corpses reassemble themselves and come to life. Rather than jump for joy and begin the experiments immediately, the scientist's assistant orders them all gunned down. Nobody's actions here make a whole lot of sense, because the director HATES WORDS. Anyway, he brings his son, who hates him, back to life. The surviving Frankensteins take the scientist's wife (she came to see her son's body) for no discernable reason with them through the terrorist zone where they find...
...an apparently misplaced European robot army warehouse and factory that can be run by five people. Okay, I guess that's plausible.
What you would think might turn into a superhero pic about the revived son Casshern taking down the evil robot army...doesn't. Casshern is too traumatized by war to want to fight, and fighting is bad, so he doesn't get anywhere. Oh, there's a couple fights. But I think there's more hallucinations about quiet meadows and shit than actual fighting. Unless you count the stylized CGI robots.
I suppose I'm mostly incensed that this message and all the key elements of it (people being interconnected and violence stemming from selfishness, etc. etc.) could have been more fully realized in a plot in which you're made to care about the characters, rather than a movie that fails to make the characters into believable people or recognizable iconic character types.
I look forward to being told how I totally missed the point and am an ignorant doofus who should have better understood the subtleties of the falling blossoms.