Steamboy, animated movie by Akira’s director
Visually stunning, technically beautiful, and mostly entertaining, Steamboy feels weirdly empty and forced. Perhaps the nearly ten year life span of the project and huge budget had a life-sapping effect. Part of the problem here may be the base premise of steam driven technology itself. Rather than be an interesting extrapolation, the steam tech comes off as artificial premise for making a blockbuster for a toy franchise. You’ve seen far worse movies than this. But if you like the tradition of challenging Anime, this is very Disney indeed. Compounding the problems are occasional philosophical riffs on the meaning of science to society, and to nationality, which in themselves are excellent and intense ideas — but played through the lense flare of family entertainment it does more to hurt Steamboy than to create interesting moments. You come away wishing Otomo had gone all one way or all another, rather than failing to be Miyazaki.
McGeek > Steamboy, It’s A Small World After All
LikePopularity: 4%
