An Indigo Mind

During one of my recent housesitting trips I had occasion to watch the American Astro Boy movie, thanks to Netflix. I was looking for something light and fun, with plenty of action and color. Osamu Tezuka was a genius and Astro Boy has a simple premise, how badly could Americans screw it up? Ha, a should know better.

Don’t get me wrong, there was plenty of light hearted fun, and action, and color, but outside of that… wow. It’s starts off with loveable too-smart-for-his-own-good Toby[1. who happens to own an indstructable hat..], and then quickly kills him off. That I was expecting, but it was handled with the grace and delicacy of a sledgehammer, and not nearly enough angst. From that rather good, if deeply creepy, opening on the movie is about as deep as as a dried up puddle. I can’t fault the actors, most of them seemed to be really trying, but the characters come off as parodies of themselves. Everyone seems to be operating on Space Logic[2. 2 + 2 = 39!], and at least twice the war-hungry politician declares that he’s evil and then promptly does something evil. And one robot is randomly ghetto.

Oh, and is there some sort of law that if there are robots in a movie that are programed with restrictions on harming humans those restrictions have to be Asimov’s Three Laws? I mean really.

Probably the most jarring thing about this movie for me was the design. They didn’t even try to make the new characters’ designs mesh with Tezuka’s designs at all, which means there is proportion issues everywhere and a sharp disconnect between the characters. Going with the old Blue Is Good, Red Is Evil angle came off as too obvious, and was there something wrong with having him be powered by super-nuclear energy? I found it infuriating that in one of the extras the designer made it sound like he designed Astro Boy. Really no credit or homage was paid to Tezuka at all, which is this movie’s biggest crime.

I suppose it wasn’t really a bad movie, certainly a kid young enough to not care or know better would have fun with it, but it’s a good movie either. It falls apart as soon as you apply any brain cells – the best entertainment is found in making fun of it.

Oh, and Mt. Sufion or whatever-the-heck they called it – totally Mt. Fuji! That’s just insulting – it’s an international symbol of Japan! It’s like slapping some other name on the Eiffel Tower and hoping no one notices.