Takeshi666

Reviewing traditional narrative films is easy, because they all hold certain objective values that always hold true. Is the script any good? Do the actors do a good job portraying the characters?

Koyaanisqatsi instead echews all of these traditional narrative elements. There are no actors, no script, no dialogue, not even an omnipresent narrator that explains the audience what is going on. Instead, it is much more like visual poetry; a work of art, perhaps a somewhat abstract one, as any meaning of themes the film might have are those placed upon it by the person observing it, therefore they reflect more on the person making those claims than the film itself. It is like holding up a mirror to a person, except they do not realize it is a mirror, and the individual they comment upon is actually themselves. Therefore it is quite interesting to listen people's takes on it, particularly those of a more sociopolitical nature.

Then what is it actually about? The closest thing I can say with some sort of objective eye is that it is about humanity, the planet and our place in it. The title translates to "life out of balance", but director Godfrey Reggio deliberately chose a word that would mean nothing to most people, so perhaps that is entirely coincidental, but a translation of the hopi language song in the movie does reveal some clue as well; that perhaps modern life isn't entirely natural. All of this is ultimately just guessing. However, I can't say that this movie didn't get me thinking. Free from the constraints of a narrative forced upon the audience, we're exposed to the footage we see without any context telling us how we should feel about it. The famous Grid sequence in particular shows up people going about their daily lives; we see a river of light, created by shots of highways in fast motion. We see people standing in lines, and I realize that these aren't just faceless crowds. These are all individuals, who are all there for their own reasons. Many of those reasons may be mutual, but none completely identical. The scenes of people working in assembly lines have a somewhat bittersweet tone as well, viewed through the lens of a modern viewer; although they may appear, and indeed may have been repetitive and menial, this is how they made their living, and it's hard not to feel something knowing that many of them probably lost even that little work they had, due to either outsourcing or automatization.

This freedom of interpretation is only one half of the reason I love this movie so much. The other half is the fact that I've always been a very visual person; I'm the kind of a guy who listens to a movie soundtrack and can play the scenes they're used over in the actual movie near-perfectly in my head, entirely by following the beats and cues of the music. Koyaanisqatsi feels almost tailor-made to that end; the soundtrack by Philip Glass is somewhat minimalistic, repetitive and simple, making it for ideal earworm material; I find myself playing the music on my head, then actually playing it, and finally asking myself "why aren't I just watching the movie again?" which I eventually end up doing. A lot of people seem to quickly become bored by it, whereas I continue to remain engrossed by it.

I know that's an odd criticism to make, but that's just one of the many problems with the New Scooby-Doo Movies. About a year or so ago I decided to sit through all the Scooby-Doo cartoons up to the present day, but I haven't even reached the Scrappy episodes yet and my interest is already wearing thin. Unfortunately I'm too stubborn to simply give up either.

The biggest problem with the series is the episode length. They call them "movies" but they're only about 40 minutes long - but they could still stand to be a great bit shorter. The actual stories themselves - the mystery - feel like an afterthought, playing second fiddle to the non-stop hijinks of Shaggy, Scooby and whoever the guest star happens to be this week. Fred, Daphne and Velma seem to be there just to provide us with a running commentary. The mysteries, such as they are, are considerably less well-thought out as the original, where the monster would somehow fit into the local mythos. Here you get the ghost of a German WW1 pilot haunting an American airfield for some reason.

The other major problem is the guest stars. More often than not, the celebrity guest stars are voiced by somebody else, making me wonder why they're included at all if we're just gonna get some impersonators. It feels very much like the kind of horrid 70's variety show that is very dated now, where we're introduced a "celebrity guest" as if they were the real deal, but instead we get a lousy lookalike act. It's especially noticeable with the likes of Laurel and Hardy or the Three Stooges, most of whom were dead at the time this series was made. When the celebrity guest is a fictional character themselves, like Batman or the Addams Family, it works a lot better since it becomes just a crossover cartoon.

When I watched the original series, I inadvertedly watched some episodes from the late 70's which were labeled under a third season, and they definitely feel like this series but considerably cut down in length and without the unnecessary guest stars hogging up all the screentime.

After the abysmal critical and popular performance of Robocop 3 and the watered down TV series, it seemed like poor old Robo was out of breath which is probably why a Canadian production company was able to get the rights and made big promises to return the character to it's serious, satirical, blood-soaked roots.

On paper, this should've been good; it's now been over ten years since the original film and Robocop is aging, both in his organic and mechanical components. Not only that, but Alex Murphy's son, Jimmy, is now a junior executive on OCP. Delta City is no longer just a dream, but OCP has committed serious managerial errors, imposing a non-lethal crimefighting policy, just in time for a new, very much lethal supervillain named Bone Machine to make his appearance, all while a sinister cabal named Trust is formed within the ranks of the OCP.

Problem is that the production falls flat straight out of the gate as Page Fletcher is far too small of stature to fill the Robocop shoes. Or the rest of his costume, because he looks like the suit was made for someone far bigger than himself. The new, second Robocop's costume fits slightly better on the person wearing it, but still doesn't look quite right, thanks to his lips practically bursting through the prosthetics. The production values in general are so poor that the earlier TV series looked like a Hollywood production in comparison.

While they technically succeeded in delivering on their promise, it certainly feels like the use of the adult elements is somewhat misguided. Graphic violence, the little there is, doesn't really serve much in the way of purpose the way it did in the original. Somebody gets shot, a squib goes off. It's nowhere as over the top as the first two films. The trademark satire feels somewhat toothless, largely thanks to the extremely cheap look of the in-universe TV broadcasts, which never convince you for a second these were produced by a multi-million dollar megacorporation.

And then there's the story. There's nowhere near enough of it to pad out the six hour runtime, and it feels like there was a huge change in production staff midway through because the sudden change in direction comes almost out of nowhere. Suddenly there's a new villain with a new plan, the cabal within the OCP is almost completely sidelined, and the only plot thread carried through all four mini-movies to the end to any kind of a satisfying conclusion is the James Murphy subplot.

I never saw this series on it's broadcast, largely because I don't think it was ever actually broadcast here. It also never really seems to come up when discussing the character; at most people mention the third movie or the TV series saying "oh yeah that was bad", but this never seems to crop up. I bought the DVD many years ago and despite having watched it then, I realized I remembered almost nothing about it on my re-watch, but I can now see why that was the case; the story is such a mess and the production values so bad, that to be quite honest, if I had to recommend anybody either this or the earlier TV series, I'd probably go with the latter. Bloodless as it may be, it's positives far outweigh the negatives compared to Prime Directives.