From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a quick spoiler free film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie Heavy Metal 2000 released in 2000.
Starring:
Michael Ironside, Julie Strain, Billy Idol
Directed by:
Michael Coldewey, Michel Lemire
Genre:
Animation, Action, Adventure
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
R
Budget:
$15,000,000 (estimated)
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
5.4
The Synopsis is:
This film is the long awaited sequel to the animated film Heavy Metal released 1981 based on themes of the ultra cool Heavy Metal Magazine. The original film stuck with the spirit of Heavy Metal Magazine featuring many short stories that featured different art styles.
Most of the fans of the first film were disappointed after waiting 19 years because the ending of the 1981 film left lots of room to continue the story, using the same formula, however, the sequel was a completely different by telling one continuous story. The fans really expected an anthology.
This time, the story is based on the graphic novel The Melting Pot written by the owner of Heavy Metal Magazine since 1992 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator, Kevin Eastman, along with Simon Bisley and Eric Talbot. The Melting Pot features FAKK2 which stands for Federation-Assigned Ketogenic Killzone to the second level, and is the alias both of the heroine, Julie, and also her home world, Eden.
The legendary Queen of B Movies, and fantasy art model Julie Strain, voiced the main character, Julie and was the model to inspire original graphic novel. She was also married to Kevin Eastman at the time, so you get the sense that the film was infused with Eastman’s influence through out.
The story starts out with an average asteroid miner, Tyler finding an ancient green key that transforms him into a rapey homicidal maniac seeking immortality.
And really the movie is all about Tyler and displaying what a savage killer he is. After ravaging a small community called Eden, killing everyone in sight, he randomly kidnaps the sister of our protagonist, Julie.
Julie vows revenge and we spend a lot of time watching her attempt to kill him multiple times.
We don’t really learn anything about our brooding protagonist or why she is so good at fighting, but seeing her in action is admittedly pretty cool.
To be completely honest, besides being disappointed that the film was not an anthology, I was really expecting something else visually while watching the film because the 1981 film was so good at translating the visual look of the original Heavy Metal magazine stories which was a wonderful feature I wanted to see in more animation.
The animation in this film had a very generic after school cartoon look to it. It lacked a lot of the visual depth, color, texture and detailing that I expected. Even while looking at the the graphic novel drawings for this property, I hardly see any resemblance in the film. The artistry from the original content is completely absent. And that is a big let down.
And I know that there had been a lot of talk about remaking the 1981 movie, but this movie is the one that should get the remake because it is conceptually great.
There are still many really cool visuals, great spaceships and vehicles and all of that sci-fi gooey goodness I just can't live without. It has the same tone and artistic style of Titan A.E. also released in 2000 with lots of space travel and revenge.
I just tried to enjoy the film as its own stand alone thing and that worked much better, and in the end I was amused.
2000 has the gratuitous nudity and violence that was in the original, but it also has a heavier hand of profanity. This leads me to the story, which I thought was full of action, adventure and intrigue. The pacing drags a bit in the middle, but the last third really ramps up the cray-cray and is tons fun.
The script was interesting because, it was filled with hilarious corny dialogue that was over the top and fun to watch.
Michael Ironside voices Tyler and delivers many of the outrageous lines in this film like the pro he is. And WOW, he’s amazing in this. He is easily the best part of the film, making the character very charismatic in spite of the his vile deeds. Tyler has lots of awesome quotable moments that bring a lot of attention to how much he’s a villain you just love to hate.
One issue I had with the character was how dumb he was at so many points in the film and it was clearly a plot contrivance and I felt that a real opportunity that was lost to do something truly amazing with the story.
There were multiple creepy rape attempt scenes that was super cringey, nauseating and completely unnecessary after the first one. We get it, Tyler is a bad guy, we are not supposed to like him. But we still ended up liking him any way.
I enjoyed Julie Stain as Julie. I am actually a big fan of hers.
We also have Billy Idol voicing Odin wonderfully. I had no idea he could be so good at it, but he’s great in this.
The film pays homage to a sequence in the original movie by having Julie swim through a built in pool to change into her battle outfit before going out and kicking some bad guy tushy! I loved it!
In fact, just focusing on the protagonist as a tough female warrior that can stand up to the bad guys and win, is a tribute to Taarna as well.
The film has many flaws but I didn’t take it very serious and that helped me to enjoy it because it has a lot of the essentials I enjoy in an animated story… ridiculous scenarios, larger than life characters, a heavy metal music soundtrack and Michael Ironside shouting wickedly memorable quotes.
It is truly a guilty pleasure.
My Rating:
7.3
That sums up my quick spoiler free review. This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off!
Take care movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
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