Appleseed Ex Machina - RePost

It is incredibly fitting that the version of Appleseed Ex Machina I watched was the English dub one. This highly anticipated follow up of the 2004 Appleseed movie that was a remake of the original OAV from the 80’s was actually produced by famed Hong Kong action director John Woo. The movie once again utilized state of the art wire mapped cell shading CG technology which allows the programmers to copy real life movements based upon sensors placed on real people that tell the program how to connect the dots. The first movie was lauded as being a pioneer in this technology, but the result left much to be desired in aesthetics. Sure the people moved somewhat naturally, a little more than normal CG allows, but they looked incredibly creepy and almost 2 dimensional. The new movie does improve upon this quite a bit but still looks incredibly disturbing and flat, especially the characters faces…

    The story follows up after the original, I haven’t calculated the amount of time in between the two, but Tartarus (the cities control center) is still being repaired from the attack by the cities automated defenses from the first movie. Ok, here is a background on this title for the unfamiliar…

    The Appleseed franchise is the brain child of Masamune Shiro, creator if Ghost in the Shell and Dominion Tank Police. All of Shiro’s stories revolve around a couple of standard themes; strong, butch military women lead roles (sometimes lesbians), humanity far into the future where cybernetic parts are standard procedures and the resulting loss in humanity and loss of control, global political intrigue and espionage. Anyone familiar with the GITS franchise is well versed in these themes and the same can be applied to Appleseed. The story follows two members of an elite police squad known as E-SWAT. The unit combats cyborgs and terrorists in the utopian city known as Olympus. The city was designed to be the beacon of hope and peace for a war ravaged world. It was built following a global nuclear war with the hopes to save man kind from it’s self. With in the city coexists a multitude of natural humans and bio engineered humans known as Bioroids, who are clones that have been genetically altered to eliminate any bad emotional states. Bioroids largely fill diplomatic and governmental roles; the leader of Olympus is a Bioroid by the name of Athena (see a theme here?).

    Deunan and Briareos are incredibly skilled veteran soldiers who have become members of E-SWAT after serving as regular soldiers and mercenaries during the warring years. Due to an accident Briareos is a full cyborg, while Deunan is fully human. Even with a couple tons of metal involved there relationship is still incredibly close. They are partners on the squad, friends off duty and at one point lovers (although their current physical relationship has not really been touched upon). They end up taking the biggest cases and end up saving Athena and the rest of the city from terrorists trying to disrupt the fragile peace.

OK, review time...

    E-SWAT has been dealing with an increased number of terrorist attacks perpetrated by cyborg’s and are trying to get to the bottom of this dangerous problem. Their investigation leads them to conclude there is an external force controlling the cyborg’s through their machinery. During one operation Briareos is gravely injured saving Deunan. During his recovery period a new member is been introduced into the squad, a Bioroid made from Briareos’ genetic code, this causes Deunan an incredible amount of unease and anger, working with a man who looks exactly like Briareos did before he was turned full ‘borg. When Briareos returns to the squad Deunan remains partnered with the Bioroid as a way of tracking his abilities.
 

    In the meantime Athena is proposing a collaborative joining of every countries satellites into one central system, located in Olympus, to help globally monitor and combat terrorism. During a meeting to discus this with the other world leaders a massive terrorist attack ensues, instead of cyborg’s the perpetrators are normal humans. Now E-SWAT has to figure out how someone or some group is controlling not only cyborgs but un-cybered human beings to do their bidding, especially with the advent of the unified satellite control system. When one of their own falls pray to the terrorist control E-SWAT’s own safety is at risk.

    OK, I have already touched upon the graphics, while it is state of the art CG and in a lot of ways very “eye candy-ish” it lacks. My initial thought, which remained true through out the entirety of the film, was that it looked exactly like an FMV from Final Fantasy. I continued to think that I should really be playing a video game and after certain scenes I was all ready to grab my game controller and fight my way through an epic boss battle. At the end of the movie I turned to my friend and said this really was just someone stringing together all of the FMV’s from Final Fantasy 14 right? I have never been a fan of cell shading and it still holds the same problems it did when it first debuted a few years ago, everything looks like its being hit with a strong flood light. This is incredibly annoying and makes shadow texturing incredibly ineffective. This problem makes every characters face in the movie look 2d in many scenes. This also makes many of the backgrounds look flat. I’m sorry, but isn’t that reversing the technological advances animators have been striving for? As animation has improved the amount of realism has improved as well. It seems that the only thing realistic cell shading wire frame technology is giving us is realistic facial movements and body movements and that’s about it. Every thing else looks plastic and unnatural. Hell even some of the movements look unnatural. I think now, using this technology isn’t to create better art, but to cut time in creating mediocre art. Traditional hand art and traditional CG are still better at making things look…better and more natural. But, whatever, it still looks a lot better then the one that came out in 2004.
 

    The biggest problem I have with the movie, is the movie it’s self. Sure, it had the standard political and cybernetic ethics intrigue that all Shiro titles do, but this movie was filled with almost every single Hollywood action movie cliché. In a quick summery the movie seemed like it was written and directed by Michel Bay with the action sequences directed and choreographed by John Woo. Now, Shiro usually has layers and layers of intrigue and a good amount of twists in his stories. This movie was so incredibly straightforward you wanted to reach through the screen and strangle the characters for not realizing what was going on, it’s like they suffered from horror film-iytis. That isn’t too far fetched of an idea given that the movie also feels like a collection of FMV’s from Resident Evil/Biohazard 7, but I’m getting ahead of myself…lets move in order.

    E-SWAT goes to some large gothic church to rescue some hostages from some cyber terrorists. Deunan sneaks in ahead of everyone else and starts blowing everyone away in typical Woo fashion. The action moves franticly and rapidly not allowing you to really focus on any of the details, which is incredibly annoying and one of the things I loved about the first movie. This problem actually goes away for the most part later in the film; the action becomes a little less erratic, at least with the camera views. This first encounter ends like all buddy cop movies, with the heroes running from the building as it goes up in a fiery ball of DOOM. Briareos is wounded but the hospital puts him back together. Another cliché that carry’s through out the beginning sequence and then the end of the movie is that the two hero’s have the same exact watch. When Deunan is rescued from the explosion the first thing she see’s is Briareos destroyed watch and she cries in horror at her partner/lover/friends injuries. After the operation, lone wolf Deunan (know that she is momentarily partnerless and is supposed to be on leave) goes after a rampaging guy in a power suit ahead of E-SWAT. At the end of the fight Deunan is introduced to her new partner, the Bioroid grown from Briareos DNA. Tension ensues…dun dun dun. How ever can they replace her partner? How can they tempt her with this stud of a man who looks exactly like the one love in her life looked like when he was still human? DAMN THE GODS!!!

    Briareos is released from the hospital, good as new, and E-SWAT is trying hard to crack the case of who is controlling all of these rampaging cyborg terrorists and why. Upon investigating a link with a major arms manufacturer, Poseidon, E-SWAT has linked a number of cyborg parts involved in the incidents made by that company. A dignitary from the company meets with Athena personally to discus the situation as well as to get an edge on in the attempt at central control of the global satellite system. Athena, shrewd and wise, dismisses that and focuses on the joint leaders meeting.

    E-SWAT is charged with refined crowd control during the meeting. They are there to jump in during any major problems; otherwise the police force is controlling general security. Of course incidents begin happening, through out the checkpoints surrounding the meeting place, vehicles are crashing though the gates followed by masses of zombies…err normal humans pretending to be extras from Resident Evil/Biohazard begin shambling towards the bewildered police, causing panic and confusion. E-SWAT deploys from their aircraft to assist the police. Briareos new partner, a partial ‘borg ends up being hacked and blows up the drop ship he is in before heading to try and assassinate Athena. The dignitaries witness this from the glass dome of their meeting space and begin to panic. Athena tells them to chill out and finalize the negotiation, that they are protected. Thus ensues an exciting battle above and on the dome between Briareos and his new partner while wearing power suits. In the end Briareos has to end his new partners’ life, but before he does he begins to see haunting images and hear disturbing messages. Oh yeah, I think every other movie with John Woo’s name on it HAS to have doves in it, it’s like a law from God or something, yet this time the doves are cybernetic and they are the ones transmitting the signal controlling the mob, which is kind of cool. This cliché of the cop hero killing the buddy side character cop partner is followed by the cliché of the cop funeral with the grieving widow and children. Oh yeah, to top the funeral off the guys little son pulls a JFK Jr. moment and salutes after the squad salutes…how touching.

    Now it’s personal and E-SWAT has to figure out why the normal humans are all being controlled. The viewer probably saw it coming before the delegates ever meet, it’s painfully obvious how normal, non-cyber, humans are being controlled the same way the cyborg terrorists are. Even Deunan figured it out, she just neglects to tell anyone about it for like, a couple of days or so after more shit has hit the fan. While she’s pissing away her time doing god knows what, maybe boinking the Bioroid, all of the cyborg’s are kicked off of active duty due to their lack of equipment security from the terrorists, not considering that the last attack involved raging mobs of non-cybered humans. This causes discontent with Briareos, white guy #2 cyborg and token black guy cyborg, who all shuffle off while bitching.

    On a night out on the town in which it seems Deunan is working on a 3-some between human, Bioroid and Cyborg, Briareos stops a driverless rampaging car from killing Deunan, which reminds me… Earlier in the film we have a flash back from when Briareos was still flesh and blood and how he saves Deunan from a sniper and we have a touching scene in which he promises to always protect her even if its from the apocalypse. Ok, so he stops this freaking car, even pops a vein? while lifting the front end of it off of the ground. Pop a vein? Seriously this guy is 99% metal, how the hell does he have veins? This actually gets cleared up a few minutes later when his entire body pops veins, which is the visual sign that he is being hacked. He goes crazy and rips off the front of an innocent ATM machine nearby; from there he plugs cables into his eye sockets and attempts to hack into the brand new joint satellite control system. He fails, is no longer controlled, COPS shows up, the Bad Boys theme rolls and Briareos is taken away and put in solitary at the cyborg hospital. Deunan goes crazy, she can’t trust her partner/lover/friend and she is helpless to do anything about it. She all of a sudden remembers that she figured out how the normal humans are being controlled, tells a tactician for the squad, who looks like a member of Glay, all hush-de-hush and covert. He looks into it and confirms it. In the mean time Briareos confides with his and Deunans, Bioroid diplomat friend about his situation. She helps him with some data, he realizes he’s being screwed by his HMO and uses this nifty sonic attack thing to break out of solitary to go kick his medical provider’s ass. (When did he ever have super powers?) Their Bioroid dignitary friend, who was the main terror target in the original OAV and the 2004 movie, aids and abets his escape, but the cops call it an armed kidnapping. Briareos is more than crafty, but not too crafty to make the viewer wonder how he got away (like GITS, YAY) and gives the cops the slip. He confronts his target, who eagerly confesses to his role, which comes to a surprise to absolutely no one, meanwhile, the Bioroid copy is P.I.’ing to find him before any harm can happen. Because even though he was made form the same DNA he thinks Briareos is guilty before proven so, even with the knowledge that CYBORGS ARE BEING CONTROLLED AGAINST THEIR WILL!!! 

    The gumshoe tracks him down finally, after the guy Briareos confronted off’s himself and Briareos slips away from the fuzz again. This time Deunan, with the help of Glay guy, is looking for Briareos as well, before the cops kill/arrest him. She interrupts the exchange between the Cyborg and Bioroid and convinces Bioroid what’s going on then injects Briareos with an antidote? that will stop the control of his body. They do this through nano machines to clear that little oddity up; it was really covert and sudden. Within like 5 minutes we find out that evil nano machines were introduced into his body and then Deunan has an antidote to kill the nano machines…I don’t think Appleseed has ever dealt with nano technology before, and it didn’t afterwards…nice and clean. Ok, so the 3-some is back on, but first we still have to stop the people being controlled, oh yeah I forgot to mention that during all of this half of the city, or more, is trying out to be zombies in the next Resident Evil/Biohazard game and their target is…well Tartarus, the building/system that controls the entire city. Oh yeah, the satellites were hacked and are now beaming the control frequency to the mob. The coolest part about this whole event is that a warning flashed on the screens of the satellite command center throwing up a MOB warning…how cool is that that the programmers thought that at some time they would have to warn the operators that a ravaging mob would be a threat some day…good planning. I wonder if NORAD has a MOB warning.

    Ok, so the 3-some goes to harass Poseidon’s dignitary in telling the truth about what is going on. They confess to it being done by some rouge ex-group of researchers in the organization who have been defunct for years that are doing it…oh yeah and the control center is in some huge, derelict, floating manufacturing plant that was part of the research division as well. So the hero’s with some tactical support from Poseidon fly off to the ocean to stop this mother brain. This thing looks like a jumbled up Borg ship from Star Trek…its incredibly massive and just floating a few hundred feet above the middle of the ocean. How the hell does Poseidon just neglect this massive derelict manufacturing facility? It boggles the mind. Ok, so we go into The Matrix mode as the 3-some with a rough commander from Poseidon and a squad of red shirt foot soldiers attack this Rubik’s Cube on LSD to stop everyone from being controlled and forced to act like living MOB zombies. When they get inside, after flying through it like the attack on the interior of the Death Star from Return of the Jedi they are attacked by swarms of those sentinel robots from The Matrix movies, but with much smaller tails. The red shirts all fall and danger prevails with the 3-some, lots of fast camera movement combat, guns blazing, no one running out of ammo and lots of mechanical death. Then some heavy hitting automated cyborg’s show up and get dealt with.

    Now it’s time for the final boss fight, which is against the reanimated corpse of one of the research divisions dead scientists who is being controlled by the system and reminded me too much of Genova from Final Fantasy VII. There were even mechanical naughty tentacles that were kind enough to keep the scene to a PG rating, at least until violence prevailed, then it moved up to PG-13. In a final fight, that I thought was going to lead to one of the 2 male heroes’s sacrificing himself we end the movie in typical Hollywood fashion.

    So yeah, it’s a frigging Michal Bay movie, that wasn’t directed by him. We did however get to see an upgrade on Woo’s trademark double fisted gun fighting, this time we got to see 1 person wielding 3 guns!!! Other then that, this is a forgettable movie; I actually would not recommend seeing it. That is unless you greatly enjoyed such films as; Pearl Harbor, Hard to Kill, Lethal Weapons 1-23, Rambo 3 and Cameron Crow action films.