Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Though anime season scheduling would disagree, it is clear we have reached the end of summer at this point, making my every humble attempt to go for a jog now a struggle against the vicious winter elements. My feud with the concept of seasons is well-established at this point, but every fall has me wondering afresh why I still live in New England, when there are so many other regions less afflicted by dreaded seasonal conditions. In spite of this lamentable state of affairs, I have been doing my best to keep busy for you all, and at this point have once again brought myself up to date on outstanding reader projects. This puts me in the thrilling, terrifying position of actually having some free time to work on my own short fiction, something I haven’t done since just after college. I’ll let you all know how that goes soon, but for now, let’s break down the week in films!
First up this week was The Titan, a recent science fiction film set on a future earth ruined by overpopulation and war. Casting around for a miracle solution, scientist Martin Collingwood (Tom Wilkinson) decides the most practical answer is obviously to move humanity to Saturn’s moon Titan. However, in order to survive Titan’s exceedingly hostile atmosphere, humans will have to change their very nature. Enter our protagonist Rick Janssen (Sam Worthington), who is supported by his wife Abigail (Taylor Schilling) as he undergoes Collingwood’s harrowing genetic adaptations.
The Titan clearly wants to be a film about Big Ideas, a desire it expresses mostly through ponderous pacing, drab set design, and a whole lot of slow pans around its increasingly disillusioned protagonists. There’s certainly the bones of something interesting there; the relationship between Rick and Abigail gestures towards questions about what truly defines human nature, Collingwood is a textbook vehicle for ruminating on the overreaches of scientific ambition, and the film’s ending almost makes a point about letting go that fuses its personal and societal ambitions.
Unfortunately, the film never really digs deeply into any one of these ideas in the manner of something like Gattaca or The Fly, offering no points of consideration beyond the mere raising of the topics. On top of that, it lacks a personal touch; Worthington is absolutely sterile in the lead role, meaning there’s no perception of human intimacy to lose in the first place, and thus no sense of something being lost as he becomes increasingly less human. What is left is simply the subversive thrill of watching a man become a monster, but The Titan takes itself too seriously to even have much fun with that. In practically all respects, The Titan demonstrates that ideas are cheap, and execution is everything.
Our next viewing was Trigger Warning, a recent Netflix release starring Jessica Alba as Parker, a former soldier who returns to her hometown of Creation in the wake of her father’s mysterious death. Investigating the incident, Parker discovers that his alleged death via mine collapse is actually a coverup for an illegal gun-smuggling operation, with the town’s ruling Swann family controlling the flow of weapons. Calling on all her gun-shooting and high-kicking experience, Parker will have to battle her way through this web of conspirators, and return true justice to Creation.
Trigger Warning was apparently pitched as a cross between John Wick and First Blood, but I’ll be honest: it’s clearly a riff on Walking Tall, and that’s where you should set your expectations if you’re considering a viewing. That said, as far as Walking Tall riffs go, Trigger Warning is action-heavy and efficient, making admirable use of Alba’s significant martial arts talents, and composing fights such as to emphasize the clumsy, desperate physicality of brawling in a saloon or jail cell. Alba has really put in the work as a B movie action star, and it warms my heart to see her lending her star power to class up bloody little features like these. If you’re looking for a light afternoon viewing, you could do a lot worse.
We returned to the great slasher tentpoles for our next viewing, checking out Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Halloween III has been pretty roughly maligned over the years, largely owing to the fact that it doesn’t include the series’ original antagonist Michael Myers. After directing the first and writing the second Halloween, John Carpenter intended to branch the series out into an anthology, with only the preeminence of Halloween night linking each entry. Audiences disagreed with this audacious gambit, Halloween III failed to match the success of its predecessors, and Michael was thus returned to the screen for the series’ subsequent installments.
Recent appraisals have been kinder to Season of the Witch, solidifying its position as a cult feature stranded along the lonely highway of horror. Writer-director Tommy Lee Wallace’s feature is certainly a departure from its predecessors; focused on nefarious Halloween masks that combine Celtic witchcraft with mad science, it falls somewhere between Invader of the Body Snatchers and a lesser Stephen King novel (fitting, considering Wallace would also direct the It miniseries), low on dramatic scares, but heavy in ambiguity and menacing atmosphere. And with a divorced alcoholic subbing in for the default final girl, it feels more tethered to the tenets of ‘70s horror than slashers, a touch more Don’t Look Now than Prom Night. The film’s flourishes of body horror are welcome but infrequent; altogether, I feel like Halloween III is precisely one practical effects maestro short of genuine memorability. A whole lot of interesting pieces here, but “cult” is doing a lot of work in maintaining its proximity to “classic.”
I then continued my journey through anime’s OVA boom, screening the first episode of Megazone 23. The three-part series introduces us to Shogo, a delinquent biker in a gleaming vision of ‘80s Tokyo. When his friend introduces him to a secret military motorcycle, he is swiftly thrust into a world of intrigue and danger, learning that the very world he takes for granted is a fabrication concocted by a giant supercomputer.
Megazone 23 is a handsomely animated and intensely ‘80s artifact, brimming with big hair, aerobic dancing, and rocking synth tunes. The cast actually attends a screening of Streets of Fire early in the feature, which serves as a perfect indicator of the drama to come. Expect cut-off jean jackets, copious motorcycle chases, and sexy rebellion against The Man, whoever The Man might turn out to be.
That’s actually Megazone 23’s biggest issue – with so much plot to get through and such an improbable conflict of lone rebel versus the system to set up, the feature is pretty light on connective tissue, and demands a significant degree of forgiveness in handwaving its narrative contrivances. But the show is clearly more about setting a mood than delivering the cleanest thriller beats, and its all-encompassing era tone indeed offers a tantalizing snapshot of bubble-era Japan. I also appreciated the prescience of its narrative, which actually goes a step further than The Matrix in tying our pacification through pop culture idols into the base mechanics of its simulated reality. A beautiful and altogether engaging first episode that I’ll be sure to continue.
