March 22, 2004
Casshern
Most Sci-Fi or other genre creations are collections, with slight adjustment, of the tropes and elements pioneered by previous creations - this is often true of even the best and most innovative entries. It's like each film or novel is a chess game, with the pieces staying the same but seemingly endless variation somehow emerging. Casshern, then, may turn out to be the coolest motherfucking chess game ever played - the trailer has giant, red-eyed robots, fascistic bureaucrats presiding over gargantuan halls, air fortresses with giant cannons, armies that stretch over the horizon, pink fleshy things that emerge from vats to be revealed as something akin to human. Most importantly, there is a bloody showdown between a red ninja and a white ninja amidst the ancient ruins of a lost civilization, and then the white ninja chops one of the aforementioned robots in half - with his bare hand. It's a live-action manga war movie as directed by Terry Gilliam.
It may well be a full year before we see this in the states, and it may never see theatrical release, but god damn those two minutes up at apple may be the best preview I've ever seen, and I didn't even have the sound on. There are a few things in English on the official site, but really, just watch the trailer - who cares about the plot?
Yeah, looks really cool... April 24th, it says, too.. though I imagine it will take longer to make it over here since I've seen no previews for this.
I live in Tokyo and I had the chance to watch Casshern. Unfortunately, the movie was a total dissapointment. The trailer looked good but the actual quality of print in the theater is almost the same as those you see in video games. The story was very mundane. Surprisingly, the main theme of the movie was anti-war. Unlike most cartoon based action movie, there's only about 15 minutes of action scenes. The worst part is the director's lack of knowledge in making a good edit. It is such a slow boring film with bad dialogues.
Well that's disappointing to hear. At least Steamboy should be out soon. I doubt that will be bad.