Steamboy

This is a review of the English subtitled version of the film and not the English dubbed version A boys own adventure as our young hero fights to keep a steam ball out of the hands of evil corporate profiteers. Set in and around London in the late 1880's this is quite simply one of the most amazing animated films ever made. Odds are you have never seen anything like it on this scale.

As Otomo Katsuhiro pushed the field of animation with his Akira some twenty years ago, he does it again with Steamboy his long in production masterpiece. This is a film so rich and detailed you simply can not truly believe that anyone would have taken the time to do the animation. This is a film to shame most animators working in the field who keep things simple. Nothing is simple here as we get grand battle scenes in London, chases through the English country side, and huge clockwork machines that are mind boggling in their visual complexity. It has to be seen to believed.

The characters here all arc. No one is as they seem at first or second except perhaps for our hero, Roy, who tries desperately to do the right thing with the scientific marvels his father and grandfather have given him but instead finds no one is wholly good nor evil. There is a complexity to everyone that is uncommon for most animation, both Japanese and American.Its refreshing to see that we are given real people to root for and to hiss. What happens to them may move you to tears, it did me.

The film is constructed in essentially two half's. The first is a rollicking adventure as Roy is thrust int the fight against the aforementioned evil corporation, which, like the characters is not as clearly evil as first seems. It his here that there are several set pieces that are some of the finest things I've ever seen on film, in particular the initial chase by the bad guys to get the steam ball. It starts in Roys home, which is trashed and then continues on steam powered vehicles across the countryside before ending up intersecting with a speeding train. Spielberg could learn a great deal for the next Indiana Jones movie. This first half is near perfect in execution.

The second half of the film is a giant set piece that begins as a small scale fight during the London Exhibition and quickly expands into a full scale war in London. Its is here that the film falters, not because its bad, rather because its not fully clear whats happening. Its as if Otomo set in motion this huge machine and didn't know how to control it. I knew over all what was going on in the big picture but I was lost as to the details. This is a damaging flaw to the film that destroys many people ability to enjoy the film. If you can let yourself go and let the film wash over you then you will be more likely to truly appreciate this film for what it is- grand story telling on a huge scale.

I can't recommend this film enough. Certainly one of the best animated films ever made, I'm sure it will be near the top of my best films of the year.

Lastly Stay through the credits. If its not readily apparent the pictures under the credits take the story well past the ending of the film and show you quite clearly what happens to everyone we've come to know. One can only hope that we will one day be treated with the story those pictures tell.

Katsuhiro Otomo's intricately beautiful and intensely silly steampunk fable is so steampunky that the characters all keep saying steam and some of them are even named Steam and steam keeps happening. It's about 60-70% steam. Steam. Plotwise it's very thin and has a very ropey sense of time and pace - which is in stark odds with how incredibly beautiful it looks. Everything here has the kind of beauty, complexity and weight that the majority of other anime productions rarely touch. The DVD I found of it (on a steamy wall near my SteamHouse) only had the dub, which outside of Anna Paquin trying and failing to sound like a Mancunian boy, contains quite a strong dual performance from Alfred Molina and Patrick Stewart. A curate's egg. Made of steam.

Saw this at the Toronto International Film Festival, and I swooned with the massive audience in sheer awe at the absolutely astounding masterpiece that Otomo-san has created. 10 years in the making, the visual feast pays off with an incredible bang.

Although not as violent and complex as the powerhouse Akira, Steamboy is a straight-forward sci-fi-action-adventure story set in Victorian London, England that even strangers of the anime genre can follow with ease. I can see this film being another landmark hit in North America that will hopefully draw more people to appreciate anime. When this comes out in 2005, don't miss it for the world!

I haven't marked this as a spoiler, but I do mention a couple of things that occur in the film. I don't think they'll spoil it though...

I wanted to like this film SO much. I love the Steampunk genre and knowing how good the animation on Akira was I thought this would be a lush Steampunk adventure akin to Ghibli's Castle in the Sky.

However, where that film had heart, this one had cogs and steam. Yes, it was beautifully animate and had some lovely ideas in it. The central concept of a power source that never was, and yet is so powerful it corrupts all manner of men and turns family upon itself is fascinating. It's something that I would expect to see in a futuristic sci-fi with some kind of newly discovered power. Setting it in a steam age where the power source is a new way of harnessing steam is, for me, the single best thing about this film. It's a nice twist. My main problem with it is bland characters with nothing to make you feel the ties between them. The film tries to get us to sympathise with James' plight when he makes revelations about both his father and grandfather, without EVER having shown us any kind of previous relationship between himself and them. We are asked to assume that there is an emotional tie between a boy and a father and grandfather who have been absent for an undivulged amount of time. The film asks us to feel betrayal from both the father and the grandfather towards the other, without ever having shown us that they ever did anything but hate each other. It is hard to empathise with this betrayal from two people who we have only seen mistrust each other from the outset. The film asks us to feel James' angst when Scarlett is in peril, without ever having shown us he has any kind of emotional tie to her (and quite rightly so in my opinion for she is rude, abrasive and irritating throughout the whole movie. Why the film then expects us to want James to save her is beyond me!)

This film is actually quite cold and mean-spirited. Rarely do we see any character in it act out of anything other than their own interests. Rarely does anyone help anyone else. The characters are selfish and single-minded. I'm normally not so cynical, but maybe this is truer to life than most films. Maybe in such extraordinary circumstances, people would be so selfish. But as a piece of cinematic entertainment, it leaves me cold.

What I DID enjoy was that the film didn't clearly outline who was "good" and who was "evil". There was a point, round about where James first meets his grandfather in the castle and stops trying to hinder him, that I almost kicked myself. It was about there that I had a revelation that the film wasn't going to tell me who to root for and I was disappointed in myself for being annoyed with the film up to that point for not making it clear who were the "goodies". Such is how used to being force fed emotion and morals by films. At that point, I was pleased that the film left it up to both James, and the viewer to decide who was "right". Yes, James makes his choice, and as the viewer we are then more likely to side with him, but at the point I described in the film it was very much up in the air and I liked that.

Unfortunately I watched the dubbed version. Though, being set in England with English characters, maybe, for one, this was more authentic. I bought my DVD, put it in the player, went to find the language options only to discover it was an English only DVD. Yes - some of the accents were ropey to say the least, but not to the point of distraction. I'm a Midlander but I know what a broad Mancunian accent sounds like. With Patrick Stewart being from Huddersfield, not far from Manchester, I though he might've gotten the accent closest, but he seemed a little too generic northern pushing towards Lancaster. Though that is a minor quibble. And hey - maybe the granddad moved to Manchester from Yorkshire?

Lastly - my final major quibble with the film is that by the end of it, I was left with a "so what?" feeling. Has this experience changed James in any way? Or the balance of international power? From the closing credits, I think James went on to develop a super steam train and maybe become a superhero who fought in something like WWI, brought forward maybe due to the steamball? I don't know. The film didn't focus at all on how this monumental experience of being kidnapped and, whilst aboard a pioneering and potentially world-altering piece of technology being actively and aerially embroiled in an explosive international battle for power on which two of his close family members are very active on opposite sides has affected young Master Steam and as such, I find the film again rings hollow.

I don't just come on IMDb just to knock films. I come on to comment when something about a film is notable enough to me to comment on, good or bad. And the hype surrounding this film coupled with a certain amount of disappointment was one thing. Also, it is rare that whilst watching a film, I notice a lack of emotional connection at the time of watching. If that lack is there, it's normally afterwards that I notice so I thought this was notable.

Technically, a very proficient film. Emotionally, lacking.

Where this film's heart should have been, there's just cogs and steam.

Steamboy has such a rare quality of production values that it almost merits a viewing for the aesthetics alone. But there is a story to the film; and although the hardcore fans of Otomo may have been expecting something a little deeper, and although the pacing and characterization is notably flawed, it still stands as an extremely fun yarn with no shortage of what you'd expect from a classic action/adventure flick. The film, in many respects, is comparable to works like Sky Captain and the Indiana Jones films; a classic storytelling style somewhat augmented for a modern audience.

Numerous characters such as Scarlett and the henchmen are essentially devoid of anything resembling development. Scarlett in particular seems to have had her personal developments skipped or accelerated just to give a comic or emotional foil to Ray and the others, and it sticks out noticeably. She's given the typical "redeeming moment" at the end of the film that has no real grounding or weight considering her screen presence; it comes and goes without making a single ripple in an audience.

Essentially, Steamboy crams too many action set pieces and grand ideas into a story too lightweight to fully support them, and the plot suffers because of it. But it's far from lacking meaning or emotion, so as long as you can detach yourself from expectations you're assured quite a ride.

As a final note, if anyone finds the explicit diatribes concerning science a little distracting, try to keep in mind that they all come from your stereotypical mad scientists types. It becomes somewhat more plausible!