Tag: movies (Page 2 of 4)

The Other Three Airports

November 4, 2025 / Zander

Airport (1970) was so successful that it paved the way for three sequels. Unfortunately, none of them was on par with the original movie.

Airport 1975, directed by Jack Smight, was easily the worst one. Released four years later, it clearly reveals how quickly the franchise shifted from melodramatic ensemble drama to pure spectacle. The premise is simple to the point of absurdity: a midair collision between a small plane and a jumbo jet leaves the cockpit crew dead or incapacitated, forcing a flight attendant (Karen Black) to pilot the aircraft until rescue arrives. That’s it, a single setup stretched into nearly two hours of shouting, turbulence, and increasingly implausible heroics.

Where the first Airport balanced human drama with technical realism, Airport 1975 turns those elements into clichés, aiming for spectacle over story, and hysteria over tension. It’s both unintentionally hilarious and historically significant: the film that marks the moment when the “disaster movie” became self-parody.

The credits claim Airport 1975 is “inspired by the novel by Arthur Hailey”. In truth, there’s almost nothing of Hailey left. His original 1968 book and the 1970 film adaptation were grounded in procedural detail, exploring the complex interdependencies of an airport system under stress. His themes were about human competence, bureaucratic failure, and the beauty and danger of technological progress. The sequel jettisons all of that. The only surviving element from Hailey’s world is Joe Patroni (George Kennedy), the no-nonsense maintenance engineer, a minor character in the first film, now magically promoted to Vice President of Operations. Everything else (the midair collision, the stewardess at the controls, the nun with the guitar, the bizarre passengers) is original, though “original” may not be the right word. It’s really a pastiche of Hollywood sensationalism.

Everything that worked in Airport (the grounded realism, the professional tone, the believable human flaws) is mishandled here. The dialogue, once clipped and procedural, has devolved into a soap opera. The cross-cutting tension between the control tower and the plane, once exciting, now feels repetitive. And the star ensemble, once dignified, is now a circus of mismatched personalities: Charlton Heston growling as macho pilot Alan Murdock, Karen Black visibly miserable as the panic-stricken stewardess, and a gallery of celebrities who seem unsure whether they’re in a drama or a variety show. It was a hit at the box office but a critical embarrassment, the kind of movie that made the parody Airplane! (Abrahams, Zucker & Zucker, 1980) inevitable.

The first Airport reflected its time’s casual sexism, with stewardesses as glamorous accessories and female characters often defined by romance or hysteria. But Airport 1975 takes that dynamic and amplifies it into caricature. Karen Black’s Nancy Pryor, the film’s de facto protagonist, is portrayed less as a capable professional than as a trembling, weeping woman thrust into a responsibility she’s unfit to handle. Her male colleagues, especially Charlton Heston’s Murdock, talk about her as if she were a child. “She’s just a stewardess!” becomes a repeated line, almost a refrain. Instead of exploring the psychological tension of being alone in the cockpit, the film milks it for male heroics: the man on the ground shouting instructions, the woman barely coping, and the ultimate salvation arriving (literally) in the form of a male savior (Heston winched through the cockpit window).

Gloria Swanson, playing herself on board the doomed jet, is one of the movie’s strangest touches. The aging silent film legend, dictating her memoirs to her assistant mid-flight, brings a surreal, meta-textual layer, but not intentionally. But that’s not even the most bizarre or mismatched cast member. Linda Blair, just one year after The Exorcist, plays a sick child who never stops smiling, seemingly in a different emotional universe from everyone else. George Costanza’s father, Jerry Stiller, appears in a minor role, supposedly in comic relief. Erik Estrada, later famous as Poncherello in CHiPs, plays a swaggering co-pilot who dies minutes into the story. And to top it all, there’s the singing nun. Helen Reddy as Sister Ruth serenading Linda Blair with a folksy song on guitar is, by general consensus, one of the most excruciating scenes in the history of the genre. It’s meant to humanize the passengers and offer emotional respite, but instead it feels like the filmmakers mistook The Sound of Music for realism.

The movie’s central image, a gaping hole in the cockpit windshield, also provides endless unintentional comedy. In real life, of course, the sudden decompression from such an event would cause catastrophic structural failure and likely suck everyone out. In the movie, though, people stand around chatting calmly while wind whistles in the background, as if someone merely cracked a window. The absence of depressurization effects reveals the film’s approach to realism: none whatsoever.

The passengers’ reactions to the crisis are so exaggerated and poorly acted that the film often feels like a parody of itself. Extras flail their arms, scream on cue, and faint in synchronized rhythm. The hysteria is theatrical rather than human, a kind of collective overacting that annihilates any tension.

By 1975, the disaster movie formula had become industrial: each picture needed a new set of celebrities, a new catastrophe, and a new way to out-shout the last. Subtlety and realism were casualties of the genre’s own success. Airport 1975 stands as the most transparent case of that self-destruction.

Airport ’77 (Jerry Jameson, 1977) was a step up from the previous fiasco, in tone, direction, and coherence. Universal tried to course-correct: bring in a new director, a more grounded script, and a cast packed with vintage Hollywood royalty. The setup this time is a privately owned Boeing 747, filled with art treasures and VIPs, that crashes into the ocean after being hijacked and ends up resting on the seabed. What follows is a hybrid between an air-disaster film and an underwater survival drama.

One of Airport ’77‘s most striking features is its cast, a cross-generational lineup that looks like a tribute to Hollywood history. James Stewart plays Philip Stevens, a wealthy art collector who owns the doomed jet. His presence lends gravitas even though his role is mainly confined to ground control. Stewart’s dignity elevates even the most ridiculous lines. Joseph Cotten and Olivia de Havilland, both legends of the 1930s and 1940s, add a touch of faded grandeur, their elegance underscoring how far the franchise has drifted from the sober professionalism of the 1970 original. Christopher Lee also gives a restrained, dignified performance, no small feat in a movie about a submerged 747.

Representing the “younger generation”, Jack Lemmon stars as Captain Don Gallagher, a responsible, unflappable professional, the kind of role he rarely played, and one he approaches with understated realism. Lee Grant and Brenda Vaccaro add spice to the cast, though their subplots are essentially filler. The result feels like an Old Hollywood reunion trapped inside a popcorn thriller. It’s oddly touching, even as the script doesn’t quite know what to do with all that talent.

The science of Airport ’77 feels shaky. Once the plane crashes and sinks intact to the ocean floor, the movie asks us to believe that it remains both structurally sound and pressurized hundreds of feet underwater. The final act, in which the Navy raises the plane using giant inflatable air bladders, is even less believable. While lifting submerged objects with buoyant devices is possible in engineering (and was famously dramatized decades later in Raising the Kursk), the notion of quickly elevating a fully intact 747 (probably a 200-ton object) in one piece is more fantasy than engineering.

Airport ’77 sits in an odd place in the series. It’s probably the best-made of the sequels, but also the most unintentionally elegiac, a movie about sinking that feels itself sinking. Watching James Stewart and Olivia de Havilland deliver dignified performances amid absurd circumstances mirrors Hollywood’s own decline into spectacle-driven excess.

By 1979, the Airport franchise was running on fumes. The first film had been a prestige studio production, but its sequels were increasingly mechanical. The Concorde… Airport ’79, directed by David Lowell Rich, is the final, delirious stage. It takes the disaster formula (star ensemble, airborne peril, melodramatic subplots) and cranks it to absurdity.

The premise is already ludicrous: a corrupt arms manufacturer (Robert Wagner) tries to assassinate his own girlfriend, TV journalist Maggie Whelan (Susan Blakely), because she’s about to expose his illegal weapons sales. Instead of silencing her discreetly, he decides to blow up the Concorde she’s flying on, killing a complete passenger list of diplomats, celebrities, and airline staff, to prevent the leak.

This is corporate damage control as interpreted by a Bond villain. Wagner’s company controls advanced missile systems, so he launches actual military-grade missiles at a commercial supersonic jet. When that fails, he sabotages the Concorde’s cargo door, causing havoc on board. It’s an escalating series of assassination attempts so disproportionate they cross into farce.

The script seems unaware of its own absurdity. It plays the attacks straight, with heroic music and solemn reactions. What might have been a tense espionage thriller becomes an accidental satire of late-1970s paranoia and corporate amorality. Capitalism so ruthless it’s literally self-destructive.

George Kennedy’s Joe Patroni returns for a fourth and final appearance, completing one of cinema’s strangest professional evolutions: from chief maintenance engineer (Airport) to vice president of operations (Airport 1975) to consultant and technical adviser (Airport ’77) to Concorde pilot (Airport ’79). It’s as if a car mechanic had become CEO and then suddenly started racing Formula One. Patroni’s transformation from blue-collar engineer to supersonic pilot is utterly implausible. He would need tens of thousands of flight hours, special Concorde training in France, and type certification for a craft that required two co-pilots with extensive test-flight experience.

By 1979, though, Patroni wasn’t a character anymore: he was an institution. Kennedy plays him with deadpan sincerity, as though he knows the entire film depends on his gravelly authority. In a way, Patroni’s improbable career mirrors the series itself, with each installment trying to ascend higher, faster, and further from reality, until it flies right off the edge of reason.

The movie’s centerpiece sequences feature the Concorde dodging heat-seeking missiles by performing aerial maneuvers worthy of a fighter jet. The real Concorde, of course, was a long, slender supersonic transport, fast but not agile. Its wings were optimized for high-altitude speed, not dogfighting. Pulling high-G evasive rolls and inverted dives would have shredded the airframe or knocked everyone unconscious. And yet, in the film, the jet performs full barrel rolls, vertical dives through mountain passes, and near-instant turns to dodge not one but two missiles. The sequence is scored like an action ballet. The audience is meant to gasp, instead they giggle. This was supposed to be the height of Cold War techno-thriller tension, but it ends up as the Looney Tunes version of aviation heroics. As if the missile ballet weren’t enough, the writers outdo themselves with a sequence in which Patroni’s co-pilot (French star Alain Delon, playing Captain Paul Metrand) decides to depressurize the Concorde mid-flight, open a cockpit window, and fire a flare gun to fool an incoming missile. It’s easily one of the most gloriously insane moments in 1970s Hollywood cinema.

Between missile attacks and cabin decompressions, the movie makes time for romance. Alain Delon, the embodiment of Gallic cool, falls for flight attendant Sylvia Kristel, fresh off her Emmanuelle fame. Their chemistry is surprisingly gentle and human, a calm interlude amid chaos, though their scenes feel like they belong in a different film entirely. The French setting gives the movie a veneer of sophistication, as if Universal wanted to borrow a bit of European chic to offset the silliness. But the romance feels underdeveloped and tonally dissonant. The script alternates between pseudo-poetic pillow talk and mechanical exposition about missile guidance systems. Still, Delon brings gravitas, and Kristel’s serene demeanor almost makes the nonsense around them seem poignant (for a few fleeting minutes).

In the final act, the Concorde is damaged by another attack, leaving it with a gaping hole in the fuselage and a hydraulic failure. Yet the crew manages to fly it manually and land on a snowy mountainside near the Alps. In reality, such damage would cause explosive decompression, catastrophic structural failure, and uncontrollable roll moments, especially at supersonic speed. The Concorde’s frame was built for pressure equilibrium, not patchwork survival. Even subsonic flight would be impossible with that kind of breach.

The snowy crash landing pushes the movie fully into fantasy. The plane glides gracefully onto a snowfield, passengers are mildly shaken, and everyone exits smiling. It’s not a disaster, it’s a ski commercial. The movie ends not with tragedy or awe, but with absurd optimism, the cinematic equivalent of a shrug and a champagne toast.

The Concorde… Airport ’79 was a commercial disappointment and a critical laughingstock. It didn’t just kill the Airport series, it effectively killed the disaster genre that Airport had popularized. Audiences had moved on to the new spectacle of space (Star Wars), realism (The China Syndrome), and adult drama (Kramer vs. Kramer). Airport ’79 felt like an artifact of a bygone era: glossy, inert, and oblivious.

Favorite Movies About Dragons

October 28, 2025 / Zander

Dragonslayer (Matthew Robbins, 1981)
Dragonheart (Rob Cohen, 1996)
Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
Reign of Fire (Rob Bowman, 2002)
How to Train your Dragon (Sanders & DeBlois, 2010)
Age of the Dragons (Ryan Little, 2011)

In chronological order.

The first Airport

October 21, 2025 / Zander

The seventies were the decade of disaster movies, and no series represents that better than the Airport franchise.

Airport (1970), directed by George Seaton and produced by Ross Hunter, is one of the defining films of the disaster genre. In fact, it created it. Based on Arthur Hailey’s 1968 best-selling novel, the movie portrays the crisis-filled operations of a Chicago airport during a blizzard, culminating in a bomb threat aboard a Boeing 707. With its ensemble cast (Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jean Seberg, Jacqueline Bisset, George Kennedy, Helen Hayes, Van Heflin), glossy production, and high-stakes melodrama, Airport was a massive commercial hit and an Academy Award success (ten nominations, one win).

It arrived at a time when commercial aviation symbolized progress, cosmopolitanism, and modern anxiety all at once. Its mixture of glamour, procedural realism, and human frailty struck a chord with audiences, and its influence extended into the 1970s with a slew of imitators and sequels.

Hailey’s novel was famous for its documentary-like realism and multiple intersecting storylines. The film stays broadly faithful to that structure and to most of the major characters: the beleaguered airport manager Mel Bakersfeld (Lancaster), the suave pilot Vernon Demerest (Martin), the PR officer Tanya Livingston (Seberg), and the elderly stowaway Ada Quonsett (Helen Hayes). However, Seaton streamlined Hailey’s more detailed bureaucratic and operational passages. The novel spent extensive time describing radar systems, air-traffic procedures, and administrative rivalries. That’s a level of depth the film could only suggest. The movie simplifies or romanticizes many subplots, turning the material into melodrama rather than procedural realism. Where Hailey focused on systems under stress, Seaton focused on people under pressure. Still, the adaptation preserves the novel’s essential tone: an almost reverent fascination with the machinery of modern air travel and the human fallibility that complicates it.

One of the most striking things about Airport today is how quaint it feels as a depiction of aviation culture. The film is an accidental documentary of late-1960s jet-age glamour and logistics. Air travel was a luxury, with passengers dressed formally, meals served with silverware, and airline staff exuding near-military decorum. Equally revealing is what’s absent. There are no metal detectors, no computerized boarding passes, and minimal security. Passengers stroll to the gate minutes before departure. The bomb plot hinges on the ability of a man to walk aboard with a briefcase of explosives, something unthinkable today. The airport itself, with its snowed-in runways, typewriters, and control towers filled with analog gauges, feels like a cross between a cathedral of modernity and a stage play about industrial hubris. And fifty years later, the movie’s casual sexism (stewardesses’ roles, Dean Martin’s flippant charm) and the mix of glamour and chaos in public infrastructure evoke a bygone age, not just of air travel but of optimism in technology.

Airport was Alfred Newman’s final score before his death, and it’s a masterclass in classical Hollywood orchestration. Newman, who had been one of the studio system’s most influential composers (with over forty Oscar nominations and nine wins), wrote a score that oscillates between stately grandeur and rising tension. His central theme, brassy, confident, and sweeping, embodies the romance of aviation. Yet his underscoring of the crisis scenes is crucial, with the gradual layering of suspenseful motifs during the bomb subplot sustaining the film’s tension when the dialogue threatens to drag. Newman’s use of brass and percussion gives mechanical urgency to the airport setting, while his leitmotifs for Ada Quonsett and D.O. Guerrero (Van Heflin) add warmth and pathos. Without Newman’s score, much of the film’s suspense would dissipate. The music provides propulsion, turning what could have been a talky ensemble drama into something that feels airborne.

In a cast of movie stars, Helen Hayes, the “First Lady of the American Theater”, shines in a different light. As Ada Quonsett, the elderly stowaway who sneaks onto planes for fun, she delivers the only entirely endearing and emotionally resonant performance. Her mixture of comic timing and gentle melancholy recalls the screwball heroines of an earlier age, grounding the film in humanity amid its mechanical chaos. Hayes won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the role, and deservedly so. She brings both levity and wisdom, stealing every scene she’s in, a remarkable feat in a movie crowded with Hollywood glamour and technical spectacle. In a sense, she represents the innocence of travel itself: the wonder of flight before it became routine and impersonal.

Though often dismissed by later critics as glossy pulp, Airport deserves recognition for its craftsmanship and its influence. It codified a narrative structure that would dominate the 1970s: multiple intertwining stories converging on a single disaster. It also marks the transition between two eras, the last gasp of Old Hollywood studio gloss and the dawn of the modern blockbuster. The film’s pacing and melodramatic tone feel dated today, but its fascination with infrastructure and crisis management foreshadows the procedural realism of later television dramas. Its mix of star glamour and catastrophe spectacle became a blueprint for The Towering Inferno, Earthquake, and even Titanic. Airport is a polished, sometimes soap-operatic but ultimately iconic film, faithful in spirit to Arthur Hailey’s novel, fascinating as a window into the aviation world of its era, elevated by Alfred Newman’s majestic final score, and humanized by Helen Hayes’s luminous performance. It remains both a disaster film prototype and a nostalgic elegy for the Jet Age’s faith in order, beauty, and flight.

The Innocents: essence of the fantastic

September 23, 2025 / Zander

Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw is famous for being slippery. Are the ghosts real, or is the governess losing her mind? The 1961 film The Innocents keeps that same spirit of uncertainty, but instead of James’s careful prose, it uses images, sound, and atmosphere to create doubt. The story is essentially the same, but the movie sharpens the tension, leaning into the creepy sexuality and suppressed desire that James only hinted at. Where the book makes you question every line, the film makes you question every shot.

The script started with a stage adaptation, but Truman Capote was brought in to rewrite it. His influence is evident in the sharp, suggestive dialogue and in how the children’s eerie maturity is conveyed without feeling overdone. Capote gave the film its double edge: everything can be read two ways, as either a genuine haunting or as the governess projecting her fears and repressed desires. That balancing act is what makes the movie so unsettling.

Director Jack Clayton avoids cheap scares. Instead, he lets silence and stillness work on you until a sudden figure in a window or a whisper in the dark lands like a thunderclap. His staging is deliberate: characters are positioned like pieces on a board, with distance and movement telling you just as much as the dialogue. The effect is slow-burning dread that never quite gives you release.

The black-and-white photography by Freddie Francis is breathtaking. He plays with overexposed whites, deep shadows, and reflections so that even a bright garden feels uncanny. Ghostly shapes seem to appear naturally in the frame, with no special effects needed. Wide shots capture everything in sharp focus, forcing you to wonder if that shadow in the corner is real or just your imagination. This isn’t just pretty camerawork, it’s cinematography designed to make you doubt your own eyes.

Deborah Kerr is the movie’s anchor. She plays the governess with total conviction, which is scarier than if she’d gone for hysteria. You believe she cares for the children, but her intensity makes you worry she’s also dangerous. Kerr was older than the governess in the book, which works brilliantly, as she feels like someone who has kept her emotions bottled up for years, now cracking under the strain. The final scenes wouldn’t hit nearly as hard without her layered performance.

Literary critic Tzvetan Todorov defined the “fantastic” as that moment when you can’t decide if something is supernatural or just psychological, and you’re stuck in that hesitation. The Innocents is a textbook case. Every ghost sighting can be explained naturally, and every “rational” explanation leaves room for the uncanny. The film never tips its hand, and that’s why it lingers so powerfully.

The Turn of the Screw has been filmed many times, but most versions stumble by taking too firm a stance one way or the other. Some make it a straight ghost story, others a psychological breakdown. A few are handsome productions, but none capture the same knife-edge uncertainty. The 2020 film The Turning tried but felt contrived. Probably the closest spiritual successor isn’t even an adaptation: Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others (2001), which gets the atmosphere and ambiguity right (up until the final reveal).

The Nightcomers (Michael Winner, 1972), intended as a prequel, demonstrates precisely how to ruin this kind of story. By providing us with an explicit backstory about Quint and Miss Jessel (with Marlon Brando as Quint), it explains what James and Clayton wisely left ambiguous. Instead of mystery, we get tawdry melodrama. The children’s corruption is spelled out, and the air of dread collapses into cliché. In trying to “fill in the blanks”, the movie drains away all the power of the original.

Mike Flanagan’s Netflix miniseries The Haunting of Bly Manor combines James’s story with other works of his, reframing it as a tale of love, grief, and memory. It’s beautifully acted and emotionally satisfying, but it isn’t The Innocents. Where Clayton’s film keeps you trapped in doubt, Bly Manor builds a mythology of ghosts and explains how they work. It goes for catharsis instead of unease. As a result, it’s touching but far less haunting.

Final word: The Innocents remains the gold standard. Capote’s sly script, Clayton’s restrained direction, Francis’s brilliant visuals, and Kerr’s magnetic performance combine to make a film that never gives you an answer. It’s that refusal to resolve the mystery that makes it unforgettable.

Three Dredds

September 9, 2025 / Zander

I’ve recently had the chance to see two movies I had never seen, Judge Dredd (Danny Cannon, 1995) and Dredd (Pete Travis, 2012). They are both adaptations of the comic strip Judge Dredd, but they differ significantly from each other.

Judge Dredd first appeared in 1977 in 2000 AD, a British weekly anthology comic, created by writer John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra. The strip was a reaction against both American superhero excess and the bleak prospects of late-20th-century urban life. The setting, Mega-City One, was a sprawling dystopian metropolis stretching along the American eastern seaboard, plagued by crime, unemployment, and social decay.

Dredd himself was conceived as the ultimate law enforcer: judge, jury, and executioner rolled into one. He wore a militaristic uniform with oversized pauldrons, hid his face behind a helmet, and spoke in terse, authoritarian commands. The character was never meant to be a hero in the traditional sense. Instead, the comics satirized authoritarianism, policing, and state power. The world of Judge Dredd is one in which the law is absolute but also absurd, reflecting anxieties about fascism, militarization, and the erosion of civil liberties.

A key point is that Wagner and Ezquerra didn’t present Dredd as purely admirable or purely villainous. He was both protector and oppressor, embodying the contradictions of a society that sacrifices freedom for security. This ambivalence made the strip unique: readers could cheer for Dredd’s brutal efficiency one moment and recoil at his inhumanity the next.

The first significant attempt to bring the character to the screen was the 1995 film, Judge Dredd, directed by Danny Cannon and starring Sylvester Stallone. Hollywood, however, took significant liberties, as it often does. The movie largely abandoned the satirical edge of the comics in favor of a more conventional action hero flick.

Two controversial choices defined this adaptation. First, Stallone removed the helmet for much of the film, undermining one of the character’s essential traits. In the comics, Dredd’s facelessness symbolizes his role as an impersonal instrument of the law. By showing his face, the movie personalized him, trying to turn him into a sympathetic action hero. And then there’s the tone shift. Instead of a biting critique of authoritarian justice, the film leaned on big explosions and campy humor. Rob Schneider’s annoying comic-relief sidekick, created just for the movie, epitomized this tonal mismatch.

The socio-political undertones were diluted. The movie glossed over issues like corruption and cloning, instead favoring an individualistic narrative where Stallone’s Dredd proves his innocence and defeats his evil twin. Rather than questioning the legitimacy of a justice system where one man can sentence citizens on the spot, the film framed Dredd as a misunderstood hero whose authoritarian streak was simply misapplied by others.

This 1995 version attempted to graft the DNA of Judge Dredd onto the template of a mid-90s blockbuster, featuring big sets, one-liners, and uncritical thinking. The satire and ambiguity of the source material were sacrificed in favor of marketable heroics.

Seventeen years later, Pete Travis’s Dredd, with Karl Urban in the title role, corrected many of its predecessor’s missteps. Urban kept the helmet on throughout, preserving the character’s anonymity and symbolism. The tone was stripped down, brutal, and unflinching, definitely closer to the original grim satire.

The film centers on a single day in Mega-City One, with Dredd and rookie Judge Anderson (this character exists in the comics, but is far from being a rookie) trapped in a mega-block under siege by a drug lord, Ma-Ma. The plot is minimalist, almost claustrophobic, but it highlights key elements of the Dredd mythos.

It’s about the system, not the man. Dredd is not a maverick but an avatar of institutional justice. He doesn’t question the system, he enforces it ruthlessly. His humanity is glimpsed only in subtle ways, primarily through his mentorship of Anderson.

Violence is part of the routine. The film portrays violence with a grim realism. The saturation of slow-motion drug sequences contrasts with Dredd’s mechanical efficiency, underscoring the dehumanizing effects of both crime and policing.

There’s always socio-political commentary. While not overtly satirical, the film critiques a society where entire populations are warehoused in high-rise blocks, policed by authoritarian judges. Anderson’s psychic empathy provides a faint counterweight, reminding viewers that the Judges’ system is ultimately inhuman.

Unlike the 1995 movie, Dredd doesn’t try to make its protagonist lovable. He is the law, nothing more, nothing less. The world here is bleak but consistent: when society collapses, authoritarianism fills the vacuum, but at the cost of individuality and compassion.

I found it interesting to compare specific details in the two adaptations, such as Dredd’s uniform and the depictions of Mega-City One. Stalone wears what appears to be a spandex or Lycra bodysuit, which is remarkably close to what we see in the comics. However, on screen, the costumes look theatrical, flashy, and even campy. Instead of intimidating authoritarian uniforms, they read like superhero cosplay. Urban wears leather and Kevlar-style armor, designed to resemble real-world riot gear combined with tactical SWAT outfits. They kept the helmet, badge, shoulder armor, and overall silhouette, but toned down the bright colors and cartoon exaggerations. Boots and gloves are black, the eagle is muted bronze instead of blaring gold, and the armor looks worn and functional. Not comic-accurate in color or extravagance, but they’re far more convincing in a live-action dystopia. We see the same contrast with the environment. The 1995 Mega-City One is highly futuristic, neon-lit, vertical, like Blade Runner on steroids. Numerous CGI cityscapes, flying vehicles, and giant billboards. It looks like an over-designed movie set rather than a chaotic, lived-in society. The 2012 Mega-City One is a grittier, more grounded interpretation. From afar, it appears as a sprawl of crumbling modern cities, with mega-blocks rising like concrete fortresses amid a sea of urban decay. On the ground, it resembles Detroit or Baltimore with added dystopian rot: graffiti, gang-ruled projects, bleak streets. This nails the tone of Mega-City One as a decayed, crime-ridden society on the brink of collapse.

In conclusion, the 1995 movie incorporates some authentic details (clone origin, Rico, Fargo, Mega-City One, Cursed Earth), but reshapes them into a Hollywood-friendly narrative: the wrongly accused hero, the evil twin, the wise mentor, and the comic-relief sidekick. The comics were far more satirical, cynical, and episodic, whereas the movie attempted to mold Dredd into the conventional blockbuster protagonist. The 2012 Dredd doesn’t try to adapt any single classic storyline, instead it condenses the world’s essence into a tight, brutal scenario. It’s more faithful in spirit than the 1995 film because it retains the helmet, the authoritarian tone, and the oppressive city, but it strips away the comic’s satirical absurdity in favor of realism.

Watching Anime: Speed Racer

July 29, 2025 / Zander

As with many successful anime tv series, Speed Racer started on the printed page. Tatsuo Yoshida’s original manga Mach GoGoGo (serialized between 1966 and 1968) emerged during Japan’s rapid modernization and automotive fascination. A product of its time, it combined elements of heroic storytelling, spy thrillers, and science fiction, inspired by both James Bond and Japanese racing culture. It followed Go Mifune (translated as Speed Racer in English), a hotheaded but honorable young driver who dreams of becoming a world-class racer with his technologically advanced Mach 5 car. Yoshida’s art was clean, dynamic, and expressive, prioritizing kinetic energy and sharp contrasts to match the speed-driven plot. The manga was unabashedly aimed at boys, with themes of courage, family loyalty, and justice, but it also delved into espionage, sabotage, and betrayal. The mysterious Racer X, secretly Speed’s brother, exemplified the manga’s melodramatic and moral complexity.

The anime version of Mach GoGoGo, titled Speed Racer in English, was a cultural milestone in the USA when it aired in syndication starting in 1967. Translated and dubbed by Trans-Lux Television, it became one of the earliest anime series to achieve mass American exposure. Its recognizable theme song, stilted dialogue, and frenetic pacing helped engrain it in the American pop culture memory, albeit more as camp than drama. Though typical of its era, the animation was limited, with repeated sequences that would make the show appear cheap to modern audiences. It also had some sort of moral simplicity, with episodes ending with clear lessons about perseverance, courage, and loyalty.

One thing that it introduced to Western audiences was the team structure typical of many anime, a core group of characters representing specific archetypes. A main hero (young, idealistic protagonist), a father figure (mentor, leader, or actual parent), an older brother figure (rival, protector, or mysterious ally), a token female (often love interest, emotional anchor, or action girl), and a little kid and/or pet (comic relief, mascot, or symbolic innocence).

Despite technical shortcomings, the anime was groundbreaking for its influence on later Western perceptions of anime and created a dedicated fanbase that saw Speed as more than just a race car driver. He was a symbol of virtue and speed in a chaotic world. That was never recaptured by the reboots made decades later.

Speed Racer X (1993), produced by Tatsunoko and dubbed by Saban Entertainment, was mired in legal issues and aired only sporadically before being pulled. Tonally, it tried to modernize Speed while maintaining the campy flair. Unfortunately, it failed to resonate with either original fans, who saw it as inauthentic, or a new generation, who found it bland and formulaic.

Speed Racer: The Next Generation (2008), a CGI animated series produced by Nickelodeon, was meant to tie into the live-action film’s release. The concept, a futuristic school for racers run by an aged Spritle (that was Speed’s younger brother), was conceptually odd and tonally confused. It felt more like a marketing product than a genuine creative endeavor. Poor writing, stiff animation, and weak characterization ensured it was quickly forgotten.

And then we have the live-action film Speed Racer (Wachowskis, 2008), a colossal disaster. It was a surreal experiment that failed both commercially and critically. Its ambition was undeniable, attempting to create a hyperreal aesthetic that mimicked anime visual grammar through CGI. The film was loud, saturated with candy-colored visuals, and jam-packed with kinetic action sequences that seemed torn from a video game more than a racetrack.

Not often do so many things go wrong in a single movie. Let’s list just a few. Visual Overload: The film’s hypersaturated palette and constant digital movement overwhelmed viewers rather than immersing them. Narrative Incoherence: Despite a relatively simple story, the movie was weighed down by flashbacks, tonal shifts, and overwritten dialogue. Mismatched Casting and Tone: While some performances (notably John Goodman and Susan Sarandon) showed warmth, the film veered from childish slapstick (Spritle and Chim-Chim) to heavy-handed anti-corporate allegory, never settling on a target audience. Disregard for Realism: The film’s physics-defying races and rubbery CGI cars removed any stakes from the action. It bombed at the box office, grossing $93 million on a $120 million budget, and was swiftly labeled a misguided failure.

Instead of embracing the stripped-down emotional clarity and kinetic storytelling of Yoshida’s manga and anime, the Wachowskis imposed a convoluted mythology. They turned Speed Racer into an epic, when it had always been a serial. They also tried to blend Looney Tunes humor (chimpanzee antics) with dark critiques of corporate corruption and existential racing philosophy. This tonal split alienated both children and adults. And the hyper-CGI aesthetic made everything feel intangible. Speed’s struggles, victories, and relationships felt like simulations rather than real emotions playing out in a grounded world.

Speed Racer, as a property, has endured because of its iconic characters, archetypal storytelling, and unique place in the history of anime. But nearly every attempt to revive or reinvent it has stumbled, none more extravagantly than the Wachowskis’ 2008 film. That disaster, while visually innovative, serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of over-intellectualizing simple source material. What Speed Racer needs isn’t another reinvention, it’s a return to the track: fast, fun, and fearless.

The Yokai Trilogy

June 17, 2025 / Zander

Yokai are a category of supernatural monsters from Japanese folklore. They encompass a wide range of beings, from mischievous spirits to fearsome monsters, and are often associated with strange phenomena and unexplained events. In the late 1960s, Daiei Studios created a trilogy of films with this theme, managing to make each one distinct from the others, much like the yokai themselves.

Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters (original title: Yōkai Hyaku Monogatari, literally One Hundred Yōkai Tales), released in 1968, is the first in the trilogy. Directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda (better known for his work on the Zatoichi series), the film combines Edo-period ghost storytelling traditions with practical effects and folkloric imagery, weaving a moralistic parable into a tapestry of the supernatural.

Although it often suffers from tonal inconsistency and dated effects, 100 Monsters holds historical and cultural importance as an early cinematic attempt to visualize Japan’s rich folkloric tradition of yokai through live-action. The film bridges classical kaidan (ghost story) aesthetics with the more commercial jidaigeki (period drama) and tokusatsu (live-action films or tv shows that make heavy use of special effects) traditions of postwar Japanese cinema.

At its core, 100 Monsters is a morality tale disguised as a ghost story. A greedy land developer and a corrupt magistrate team up to destroy a tenement and sacred shrine to build a brothel, disregarding both the law and spiritual taboos. Their actions include disrupting a traditional hyaku monogatari (one hundred tales) ghost-story gathering, in which participants extinguish one candle for every story told.

The narrative progresses slowly, focusing more on human greed, oppression, and sacrilege than on the yokai themselves. In fact, supernatural events are mostly confined to the third act, creating a stark contrast between the mundane and the uncanny. The film uses yokai as agents of karmic justice, as the eventual supernatural vengeance is not just a horror spectacle but a cosmic rebalancing against injustice.

The effects, while primitive by modern standards, rely on a mix of suitmation (actors in costumes), puppetry, and practical trickery. The yokai designs are based on classical emaki (picture scrolls), particularly those by Toriyama Sekien. This dedication to traditional imagery gives the creatures a unique cultural authenticity rarely seen in Western monster films of the same era. Among the yokai we see the classics kasa-obake (the hopping umbrella ghost), rokurokubi (the woman with a stretching neck), and noppera-bō (the faceless ghost).

Akira Ifukube (best known for scoring the first Godzilla) provides a subdued yet ominous score that complements the restrained pace. The use of silence and ambient sound also enhances the tension, particularly in scenes leading up to the yokai appearances.

However, the film struggles to maintain a consistent tone. The slow buildup and excessive focus on corrupt landlords and local politics, while thematically relevant, may test viewers’ patience. This makes the final act, where yokai finally appear, feel both rewarding and too little, too late.

Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare (original title: Yōkai Daisensō, literally The Great Yokai War), also released in 1968, is the second entry in Daiei Studios’ yokai trilogy. Directed by Yoshiyuki Kuroda and released just months after 100 Monsters, this sequel pivots dramatically in tone, structure, and style. Where 100 Monsters was a slow-burning, moralistic kaidan (ghost story) steeped in atmospheric dread and karmic retribution, Spook Warfare gleefully transforms the yokai into active protagonists in a supernatural adventure. The result is a surreal genre mashup: part horror, part tokusatsu action, part children’s fantasy, and entirely sui generis. While it lacks the moral depth and thematic gravity of its predecessor, Spook Warfare succeeds through sheer visual invention and its unprecedented commitment to yokai spectacle. It’s campy, chaotic, and utterly unique.

The film opens in ancient Babylon, where a demon named Daimon (styled after a Western vampire or necromancer) is awakened from a long slumber. After arriving in feudal Japan via a possessed statue, Daimon promptly kills a magistrate and assumes his form, ruling the town with dark magic and feeding on human blood. The local yokai detect the foreign presence and begin to mobilize in defense of their homeland.

This east-vs-west supernatural conflict propels the plot. Unlike the minimal yokai presence in 100 Monsters, here the yokai are fully active agents with personalities, motivations, and even battle strategies. They unite, squabble, and fight like a supernatural resistance force.

But Spook Warfare takes a sharp turn toward the whimsical. While still set in a historical period, the film eschews the moody austerity of 100 Monsters for a playful, even goofy tone. The yokai are no longer eerie omens of spiritual judgment, they’re now folk heroes. This tonal shift broadens the film’s appeal to younger audiences while also reflecting the growing popularity of yokai in children’s media, particularly through the work of manga artist Shigeru Mizuki. This comes at the cost of emotional depth. Themes like cultural identity, tradition, and collective resistance are hinted at but rarely explored in detail. The film is more about fun than fear, more spectacle than story.

A potentially deeper layer lies in the framing of the villain. Daimon is explicitly foreign: Babylonian, vampiric, with Western-style robes and magic. His invasion of Japan and possession of a magistrate could be read as an allegory for cultural intrusion, colonialism, or postwar Westernization. The yokai’s defense of their native land might represent a kind of folkloric nationalism: Japan’s traditional spirits defending cultural identity against a foreign evil. Yet the film doesn’t explore this with any real nuance. It’s more a structural motif than a fully realized allegory.

Yokai Monsters: Along with Ghosts (original title: Tōkaidō Obake Dōchū, literally The Haunted Journey Along Tōkaidō), released in 1969, is the third and final entry in Daiei Studios’ trilogy. Co-directed by Yoshiyuki Kuroda (Spook Warfare) and Kimiyoshi Yasuda (100 Monsters), the film returns to a more somber, morally grounded tone reminiscent of the first film, diverging sharply from the colorful playfulness of Spook Warfare. It is less of a yokai showcase and more of a traditional jidaigeki (period drama) with supernatural overtones.

This fusion of ghostly folklore with a grim tale of vengeance and redemption makes Along with Ghosts the most narratively serious and dramatically intense of the trilogy, but also the least fantastical. While its yokai elements are used sparingly, they remain thematically integral, acting as both symbolic and literal agents of justice.

The film opens with a treacherous act: an old man witnesses the murder of a courier before he can deliver crucial legal documents meant to stop a criminal gang, and then is he is also murdered. His young granddaughter, Miyo, becomes the target of the villains, and the film follows her perilous journey along the old Tōkaidō Road as she seeks safety and justice. A wandering swordsman with a mysterious past, closer to a ronin archetype than a folkloric figure, comes to her aid.

The yokai in this entry are peripheral but potent. Unlike in Spook Warfare, where they’re protagonists, or in 100 Monsters, where they’re manifestations of spiritual retribution, here they are ghostly echoes that haunt the edges of a brutal human world. Their appearances are minimal and atmospheric, usually connected to locations desecrated by violence or injustice.

The narrative structure is more conventional: a straight revenge-pursuit drama with clear moral stakes punctuated by moments of supernatural intervention. The emotional center is Miyo, whose innocence and suffering lend the film its gravitas. As with the previous two films, Along with Ghosts frames its story around the consequences of moral corruption. The film is a condemnation of human cruelty, particularly that inflicted upon the vulnerable, like women, children, and the elderly. The yokai are not the cause of fear, they are the consequence of wrongdoing.

Stylistically, Along with Ghosts is darker, more violent, and less fantastical than its predecessors. The directors employ a muted color palette and minimal musical scoring to create an oppressive and eerie atmosphere. Much of the film takes place in forests, graveyards, and rural roads, giving it the feel of a ghostly travelogue through haunted Japan.

The adorable child actress playing Miyo (Masami Furukido) delivers a notably moving performance. Her fear, tenacity, and innocence are all convincingly rendered. The ronin protector (Kôjirô Hongô), while archetypal, provides a stoic counterbalance and channels the genre conventions of the silent defender. The villains, as in many jidaigeki of the era, are unambiguously wicked, cowardly, greedy, and contemptuous of tradition. Their downfall, precipitated by ghostly visitations, feels less like plot convenience and more like the fulfillment of cosmic justice.

So 100 Monsters was a folkloric sermon inside a kaidan (ghost story), Spook Warfare was a tokusatsu yokai adventure that played like a Saturday morning cartoon, and Along with Ghosts was a revenge road drama with yokai as haunting punctuation marks. In this sense, the trilogy moves full circle: from dread, to spectacle, back to dread but now filtered through tragedy.

Reinventing the myth of Jason and the Argonauts

June 3, 2025 / Zander

After watching Ray Harryhausen’s three Sinbad movies (see Traveling with Sinbad and Ray Harryhausen), I wanted to rewatch Jason and the Argonauts, and this week I did just that.

Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963) remains one of the most enduring cinematic retellings of Greek mythology. Not because of narrative accuracy but because of its visionary special effects, evocative score, and mythic tone. Though the film adapts the ancient myth of Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece, it does so with considerable creative liberty, transforming the story into a fantasy epic for mid-20th-century audiences. At the heart of its enduring appeal is Ray Harryhausen’s groundbreaking stop-motion animation and Bernard Herrmann’s thundering orchestral score, all set against the sun-drenched ruins and coastlines of southern Italy.

The film draws from the Argonautica, by Apollonius of Rhodes, and other classical sources but condenses, modifies, and sometimes wholly invents elements of the myth. Key figures from the legend are present (Jason, Pelias, the Argonauts, Medea), but many of the events are streamlined or altered.

Some things align with the myth. Jason’s mission to retrieve the Golden Fleece to reclaim his throne from the usurper Pelias. The divine involvement of Hera, who acts as Jason’s protector and benefactor, consistent with some classical sources. The encounter with Phineas and the harpies and the passage through the Clashing Rocks are lifted directly from the Argonautica.

However, the gods are simplified, functioning more like chess players than characters within an epic cosmology. Hera and Zeus appear as a bickering couple who watch Jason’s progress from Mount Olympus, a device more aligned with modern narrative convenience than classical theology. Characters like Hercules are reduced to brief side roles and comic relief rather than the tragic, complex figures of myth. Medea’s character, crucial in myth as both a helper and later a tragic antagonist, is largely sanitized. Her betrayal of her people and the dark magic she employs in the original are omitted. In a way, she is reduced to a passive romantic interest. The climactic battle with the skeletons has no basis in the original myth but brilliantly replaces the more prosaic theft of the Fleece.

These alterations are not flaws but rather necessary cinematic inventions to fit the tone and pacing of a family-friendly mythological adventure. The film is not a literal transposition of the myth, but is mythic in spirit, compressing sprawling source material into an archetypal hero’s journey, which, for many viewers, is Greek mythology, or at least its cinematic avatar.

The special effects in Jason and the Argonauts represent the apotheosis of Ray Harryhausen’s career. Using his patented Dynamation technique, he infused life into creatures of myth in a way no live-action or early CGI could. Four sequences, in particular, stand out.

Talos, the bronze giant who guards the treasure of the gods, is rendered with a weight and presence that convey true menace. His creaking joints and inhuman movement evoke the unsettling uncanniness of ancient statuary come to life. His death, bleeding ichor from his heel as he topples into the sea, is visually and emotionally stunning.

The Harpies are terrifying in their grotesque, birdlike design and relentless torment of the blind prophet Phineas. Harryhausen manages to elicit pathos for Phineas while showing off the harpies’ chaotic and disruptive power.

The Hydra is a marvel of design, even if misplaced in this story (it was not Jason who fought the Hydra, it was Hercules who did it as part of his Twelve Labors). Although the stop-motion animation of so many moving heads is a logistical feat, Harryhausen controls the scene with elegant pacing. The monster’s defeat directly leads to the summoning of the skeletons.

The Skeleton Fight is perhaps the most famous Harryhausen sequence. This sword battle between Jason, his companions, and seven skeleton warriors raised from the Hydra’s teeth took four months to animate. It is a masterclass in timing, choreography, and spatial storytelling. The skeletons are more than visual tricks. They seem cunning and malicious, and their coordination with live actors is astonishing. Unlike most modern effects, Harryhausen’s creatures feel tactile. They occupy the world of the actors, enhanced by careful compositing and clever blocking. The monsters are the drama, not mere obstacles.

Bernard Herrmann’s score for Jason and the Argonauts is monumental, brooding, and filled with heroic grandeur. Known primarily for his work with Hitchcock (Psycho, Vertigo, The Birds), Herrmann here brings an entirely different register, one inspired by classical modes and Wagnerian brass. Talos’s theme is a percussive, ominous motif: mechanical, slow, and unrelenting, matching the statue’s unholy animation. The skeleton battle is scored with whirling strings and jarring dissonances, emphasizing the unnaturalness of the combat. The love theme for Jason and Medea is restrained, evoking Greek antiquity without slipping into Romantic cliché. Herrmann’s use of brass and percussion gives the score a ceremonial, almost religious tone, appropriate for a tale driven by gods and fate.

While set in mythic Hellas, the film was primarily shot in southern Italy. The choice lends the movie an authentic Mediterranean atmosphere unmatched by Hollywood backlots. The architecture and ruins seen throughout the film ground the fantastical story in a recognizably ancient world. The First Temple of Hera at Paestum (used in the harpy scenes) is particularly striking. Its weathered Doric columns and open spaces are both majestic and desolate, reinforcing the tragedy of Phineas’s blindness and torment. Rather than building sets, the film uses these ruins to suggest timelessness and the lingering shadow of divine presence. Palinuro and the Amalfi Coast stand in for various seascapes and island vistas. The jagged cliffs, sun-bleached rocks, and deep blue waters give the journey a convincing epic scale. The cinematography (by Wilkie Cooper) captures these locations with painterly composition, highlighting both the natural beauty and eerie grandeur of the ancient world. In this sense, the movie has more visual fidelity to Greece than most later productions filmed in studio-heavy settings.

Jason and the Argonauts is not a scholarly retelling of Greek mythology. It is a cinematic myth in its own right. With its blend of spectacle, artistry, and archetypal storytelling, it embodies the timeless spirit of heroic adventure. While scholars may balk at its liberties, and purists may miss the tragic edge of Medea’s betrayal or the complexity of Hercules’s presence, the film captures the awe and terror of encountering the unknown, the monstrous, and the divine. It is perhaps best remembered not for its plot but for its moments: Talos turning his head, the Hydra writhing in battle, the skeletons crawling from the earth. These images, combined with Herrmann’s music and the ancient stones of Paestum, transcend fidelity to myth to become a modern myth of their own.

Watching Anime: The Many Faces of Astro Boy

May 20, 2025 / Zander

Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atom) is more than just a cartoon character. He’s a cornerstone of modern Japanese pop culture and a foundational figure in global science fiction storytelling. Created by Osamu Tezuka, the so-called “God of Manga”, Astro Boy first appeared on the printed page in 1952, eventually becoming the star of Japan’s first major animated television series in 1963. Astro is instantly recognizable with his big round eyes (according to Tezuka, inspired by Disney’s Bambi), jet-powered limbs, and heart of gold. But behind his charming appearance lies one of fiction’s most poignant origin stories: a tale of loss, abandonment, identity, and artificial humanity.

Tezuka, a trained medical doctor turned artist, was deeply influenced by Western literature, animation, and post-war trauma. His work often combined fantastical science fiction with deep human concerns. With Astro Boy, he created a character who was simultaneously a child, a weapon, and a mirror for human fears and hopes in an age of rapid technological change.

Astro’s origin story (rebuilt and reimagined across manga, tv, and film) reveals not just changing artistic styles, but also evolving philosophies of life, death, and what it means to be human.

One of Tezuka’s clearest inspirations for Astro Boy was Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio. Like Geppetto’s wooden puppet, Astro is a creation born of love and grief, a substitute for a lost or absent child. And like Pinocchio, Astro must embark on a journey of self-discovery, confronting internal doubt and external hostility to become “real” in an emotional, if not biological, sense.

However, whereas Pinocchio centers on the transformation of a puppet into a human boy, Astro Boy reverses the trajectory. Astro is built to resemble a real boy but gradually realizes he is not human and never will be. His tragedy lies not in wanting to become human per se but in wanting to be accepted as he is. The constant tension between how he is perceived (a machine, a tool, a weapon) and how he sees himself (a boy with emotions and conscience) makes Astro a far more tragic and modern figure than Pinocchio.

Tezuka’s Astro Boy manga (1952–1968) begins with the death of Dr. Tenma’s young son Tobio in a car accident. Unable to cope with the loss, Tenma creates a robotic duplicate in Tobio’s image, Astro. At first, he believes the robot can fill the void in his heart, but when Astro fails to grow like a real child, Tenma goes cold and eventually sells him to a circus. It is Professor Ochanomizu who later rescues Astro, recognizing his potential and giving him purpose.

This origin emphasizes emotional realism and moral ambiguity. Tenma is both a grieving father and a failed god, a man who tries to cheat death and ends up compounding his tragedy. The story subtly explores whether love for a child must depend on their humanity or whether even a robot can deserve compassion. Astro’s journey is as much internal as external: a search for dignity, acceptance, and autonomy.

The 1963 Astro Boy anime series marked the birth of Japanese tv anime. Targeted at children and produced with limited resources, this version simplifies the manga’s origin story. Tenma still creates Astro after losing his son but abandons him with far less cruelty. Astro quickly transitions into a noble superhero, fighting crime and injustice with a smile.

What’s lost in psychological complexity is gained in accessibility. This version frames Astro as a cheerful icon of modernity, reflecting the era’s post-war optimism. Technology is seen not as a danger but as a friend, something to be embraced. Astro becomes less of a tragic figure and more of a model child: brave, honest, and kind.

The 1980 Astro Boy reboot attempts to restore some of the manga’s emotional depth. Dr. Tenma’s grief is shown with greater gravity, and Astro’s feelings of rejection are more fully explored. The show gives more time to his struggle to understand human behavior, emotion, and his place in society.

This version straddles two audiences: children and nostalgic adults. It maintains the accessibility of the 1963 series but reintroduces key philosophical questions. Can a machine feel love? Should robots have rights? What is the soul? It pushes Astro toward a more mature role, not just as a hero but as a child grappling with adult truths.

Astro Boy‘s 2003 adaptation is the most mature and morally complex. Created for the franchise’s 40th anniversary, it leans into the tragedy of Astro’s origin. Dr. Tenma becomes an obsessed and ultimately villainous figure. After failing to recreate Tobio, he rejects Astro not just emotionally but violently, erasing his memories and casting him into the world alone. Astro only learns about his origin in episode seven.

This version uses Astro’s story to critique social prejudice, AI ethics, and systemic inequality. Robots in this world are oppressed, segregated, and often exploited, echoing real-world histories of racism and classism. Astro becomes a hero and a figure of compassion and forgiveness in a society that dehumanizes him. It reflects the anxieties of its time: fears of surveillance, terrorism, and technological dehumanization. Where earlier versions asked “can robots be human?”, the 2003 series asks “how should we treat the ‘other’, even if it’s not human?”

In the 2009 CG-animated feature, produced by Hong Kong-based Imagi Animation Studios, Astro Boy is given a slick redesign and a simplified origin. Dr. Tenma (voiced by Nicolas Cage) creates Astro after Tobio’s death, rejects him briefly, but is quickly forgiven and redeemed. The story turns into a standard “chosen one” narrative: Astro runs away, finds friendship among outcasts, and returns to save the city from a militaristic villain (voiced by Donald Sutherland). Absent is the thematic depth of earlier versions. Gone are the questions of identity, suffering, or systemic bias. Instead, we get a story of self-acceptance and family-friendly adventure, in line with Hollywood animation conventions. While visually polished, the film loses the existential core of Tezuka’s creation.

Among Astro’s many foes, Pluto stands apart. Created by another scientist to destroy the world’s strongest robots (including Astro), Pluto becomes a tragic figure. In the original manga, he is a tool of hatred who slowly develops a sense of conscience, eventually refusing to kill and sacrificing himself. Pluto’s role is critical: he is Astro’s dark mirror, a machine built for war who comes to yearn for peace. Their confrontation is not just a battle of strength but a clash of ethics. Tezuka uses Pluto to explore how even “evil” machines can change, and whether morality is hardwired or learned.

This relationship was so rich that it became the centerpiece of Naoki Urasawa’s critically acclaimed manga Pluto (2003–2009), a noir-style reimagining that reframes Astro and Pluto’s story for adults, pushing the themes of trauma, war, and identity even further.

One of the most haunting aspects of Astro’s character is that he can never grow up. Built to resemble a 9-year-old boy, he is physically frozen in time, despite gaining wisdom, experience, and pain. Unlike Pinocchio, he will never become a “real boy”. Unlike other child heroes, he cannot age into adulthood.

This places him in the lineage of figures like Peter Pan, the boy who never grows up, and Claudia from Interview with the Vampire, the child turned immortal, cursed to stay young while her mind matures. Like Claudia, Astro’s eternal youth becomes a prison, especially in versions like the manga and the 2003 anime, where his longing for identity and love is rejected because of what he is. His childlike body disarms those around him but also prevents him from being taken seriously. He is too young to be feared, too artificial to be loved, and too powerful to be ignored. A poignant paradox that gives him enduring pathos.

Five Pearl Harbors

May 6, 2025 / Zander

I’ve recently watched six movies that featured the Japanese attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. It’s so interesting how they all used the historical event in different ways and with different purposes.

From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953) ends with the attack. Before that, we see the intersecting lives of several characters around the island. Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift), Sergeant Milton Warden (Burt Lancaster), and Private Angelo Maggio (Frank Sinatra) navigate the tensions of military life in Pearl Harbor. Karen Holmes (Deborah Kerr), the wife of Warden’s commanding officer, and Alma (Donna Reed), an “entertainer” working at a gentlemen’s club, explore what roles are available in a closed society made for men.

None of the characters are heroes. Prewitt is tragically stubborn, accepting undeserving punishment from his superiors and justifying it as personal integrity. Warden is cynical and pragmatic, caught in a doomed affair with his commanding officer’s wife. Maggio is a self-destructive underdog who has accepted his fate, trying to have a few moments of pleasure before it all ends. All three are locked into a system of institutional cruelty, masculinity under pressure, and the suffocating effects of rigid hierarchies, both military and societal.

The women occupy a paradoxical space, central to the story’s emotional undercurrents and, at the same time, only peripheral in a male-dominated world, their lives shaped by their relationships to the men and their limited agency within a patriarchal order. Karen is the archetype of the disillusioned military wife trapped in a sexless, loveless marriage with an unfaithful husband. Her affair with Warden is an act of both rebellion and desperation. Alma works as a prostitute and dreams of a respectable life back on the mainland. Her romance with Prewitt is fraught with illusions and pragmatism: she wants to love him, but not at the cost of her escape plan.

From Here to Eternity is a brooding, emotionally resonant war drama classic of mid-century American cinema. Adapted from James Jones’s 1951 novel, the film is often remembered for its iconic beachside kiss between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, but it is far more than a memorable still frame. It is a study of a repressive and masculinized institution that crushes those who don’t conform. The military, as depicted here, is less a protector of freedom than an engine of conformity. Dissent, even principled dissent, is punished. Compassion is a weakness. While sanitized compared to the novel, especially in its portrayal of sexuality and institutional corruption, it still tackles extramarital affairs, prostitution (thinly veiled), and brutality within the ranks with remarkable frankness for the time.

From Here to Eternity is easily the best movie of this batch. It captures a world on the brink of historical catastrophe, populated by people already living through private wars. It reflects the gender norms of its era, sometimes critically and sometimes uncritically, but always with emotional depth. Its women, while not given full narrative autonomy, are as vivid and wounded as the men, and their struggles underscore the film’s bleak view of a world where love is no match for duty, and integrity comes at the cost of survival.

In Harm’s Way (Otto Preminger, 1965) starts with the attack. From there, it tries to build a narrative of a sweeping World War II epic, echoing the grandeur and psychological nuance of earlier war dramas. And it fails. Miserably. In the mid-sixties, it is still trying to build heroes in the style of the mid-forties.

Playing Captain Rockwell Torrey, John Wayne is a paragon of stoicism, a figure of silent suffering and noble command. He is rarely questioned and even more rarely wrong. He begins the film as a granite-jawed archetype of military virtue and ends the same way. Perhaps that’s the point: he is the immovable rock in a sea of shifting loyalties and crises, but it leaves little room for psychological complexity. As the more volatile and morally compromised Commander Paul Eddington, Kirk Douglas offers a counterpoint: his character is flawed, scarred, and driven by guilt. Yet his arc, involving a sexual assault subplot that is handled with both narrative bluntness and emotional detachment, feels poorly justified and oddly sanitized. Patricia Neal is given the unenviable role of Lieutenant Maggie Haines, the nurse who exists primarily to be Wayne’s emotional salve. There is a quiet dignity in her performance but, like all the women in the film, she is relegated to the periphery of a man’s world. Jill Haworth and Paula Prentiss play roles that are at best ornamental and at worst exploitative, especially in scenes where trauma is either brushed aside or used solely as motivation for male characters.

In Harm’s Way is based on James Bassett’s 1962 novel of the same name, but it streamlines, sanitizes, and sentimentalizes much of the content. Where the book offers a mature, morally complex portrait of military life during World War II, the film opts for broad strokes, traditional heroism, and a less introspective tone. And the movie goes on for 165 minutes, trying to weave together a personal melodrama with a broader military campaign but never giving either element the depth or pacing it needs. The romantic subplot feels like a studio-mandated softening of the action, while the strategic developments often devolve into scenes of men staring at maps.

Tora! Tora! Tora! (Richard Fleischer & Toshio Masuda & Kinji Fukasaku, 1970) is all about the attack on Pearl Harbor. While the two movies I commented on previously were based on novels, this one is based on historical documents. Instead of using the episode as the opening or the closing of a fictional story, the goal here was to present the attack as closely as possible to the facts. Tora! Tora! Tora! presents a level of historical fidelity that was rare in war films of its time. Eschewing the melodrama typical of World War II cinema, the film adopts a more analytical, even clinical tone in its dissection of the political and military machinery on both sides of the Pacific.

The American military and intelligence community is shown to be hamstrung by layers of bureaucracy, inter-service rivalry, and a failure of imagination. Rather than depicting the USA as simply caught off guard, Tora! Tora! Tora! presents a nuanced picture of systemic failure. Commanders like Admiral Kimmel and General Short are portrayed as competent men working within a confused and compartmentalized system. Intelligence officers pick up ominous signals, like decoded messages and reports of Japanese fleet movement, but these warnings are either dismissed, misinterpreted, or bogged down by red tape and interdepartmental inertia. The film underscores how rigid thinking and an overreliance on protocol dulled America’s preparedness. This dramatization of bureaucratic dysfunction doesn’t scapegoat individuals. Instead, it indicts a system structurally incapable of responding swiftly and decisively. It’s a chilling message, made all the more effective by the film’s docudrama style.

On the Japanese side, Tora! Tora! Tora! is equally committed to portraying internal divisions and philosophical disagreements. The film avoids reducing the Japanese military to a monolithic villain. Instead, it emphasizes the profound ambivalence among Japanese leaders about the wisdom and morality of attacking the United States. Admiral Yamamoto emerges as a tragic figure, a strategist with grave reservations about war with the USA, famously noting that Japan would only “run wild” for six months before American industrial might turned the tide. His internal conflict is rendered with restraint but clarity, contrasting him with more hawkish elements within the Imperial Navy and Army. The cabinet debates, the vacillations, and the forced consensus all contribute to a portrait of a nation not inexorably driven to war but pushed into it by a mix of pride, desperation, and flawed assumptions.

While Tora! Tora! Tora! earns praise for its accuracy and evenhandedness, its austere tone can also be a liability. Characters often feel more like avatars of historical forces than fully realized individuals, and the narrative momentum occasionally stalls under the weight of procedural detail. Yet this same quality also lends the film a unique power. It plays less like an adventure movie and more like a fatalistic tragedy unfolding with the inevitability of a Greek play.

In Pearl Harbor (Michael Bay, 2001), the attack happens around the middle of the movie. It wanted us to already know the characters when they are impacted by the attack on Pearl Harbor, but it also wanted to end with a victory (even at the expense of historical integrity). It’s a sweeping war-romance epic that attempts to dramatize a devastating and pivotal moment in American history by inserting a love triangle between Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, and Kate Beckinsale, plus a collection of history inaccuracies.

The film takes serious liberties with historical facts, especially in how it inserts its fictional protagonists into the center of the attack’s response. Affleck and Hartnett play Rafe McCawley and Danny Walker, two fighter pilots who manage to get airborne during the surprise attack and shoot down multiple Japanese planes in what can only be described as a heroic fantasy. While a handful of American pilots did manage to get airborne and resist, the depiction in Pearl Harbor exaggerates the success and agility of the defenders. In reality, the US response was largely uncoordinated and overwhelmed by the scale and surprise of the assault.

The film also blurs lines between real and fictional elements. For example, the Doolittle Raid, which the protagonists participate in near the end, is portrayed as a natural progression of their personal storylines. Historically, the Doolittle Raid was a daring bombing mission on Tokyo that took place months after Pearl Harbor and was carried out by specially trained volunteers. Affleck and Hartnett’s inclusion feels forced and serves more to give the characters a satisfying arc than to honor that mission’s real complexity and risk.

Bay’s signature style of slow-motion hero shots, grandiose music, and pyrotechnic-heavy action is fully displayed during the Pearl Harbor attack sequence. The recreation of the Japanese aerial assault is visually impressive, with soaring camera work and chaotic, visceral imagery that captures some sense of confusion and horror. However, while the visual effects are technically remarkable, they are emotionally hollow, often more interested in choreographed destruction than in the human tragedy it represents. The attack becomes an action set piece rather than a historical turning point.

There are brief glimpses of the real human cost of war, such as wounded soldiers flooding the hospital and nurses scrambling to respond, but these moments are fleeting. Cuba Gooding Jr.’s role as real-life Navy cook Doris “Dorie” Miller, who earned the Navy Cross for his valor, is powerful but underdeveloped. His presence is a reminder that Pearl Harbor could have been more impactful had it chosen to center on real historical figures rather than fictional heroes. Instead, we get an earnest but misguided epic that sacrifices historical accuracy and emotional authenticity for romantic clichés and explosive spectacle.

I included The Final Countdown (Don Taylor, 1980) on the list because of its intriguing premise: What if a modern US aircraft carrier were transported back in time to the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor? Unfortunately, the film ultimately falls short of its philosophical and narrative potential, opting instead for a conservative and somewhat superficial approach to its central dilemma.

The nuclear-powered USS Nimitz is caught in a mysterious storm and hurled back to December 6, 1941. The question becomes: should the crew intervene in the course of history and prevent the Pearl Harbor attack, potentially saving thousands of lives but also rewriting world events?

The premise offers immense dramatic and intellectual potential, yet the movie shies away from exploring the consequences of time travel in any meaningful way. Instead, the narrative is tightly controlled and ultimately resolves itself with a deus ex machina: the return of the Nimitz to the present before any intervention can occur. This decision preserves the historical status quo and sidesteps any messy philosophical questions about the morality of altering history, the unpredictability of time, or the ripple effects of technology out of its era.

Though the cast features solid performances, the characters are largely archetypal and underdeveloped. Kirk Douglas plays Captain Yelland with stoic authority, representing military pragmatism and responsibility. Martin Sheen’s character, Warren Lasky, a civilian observer, is meant to offer a more philosophical perspective, but he’s never fully utilized as a moral or intellectual foil to Yelland. Charles Durning plays Senator Samuel Chapman, a 1941-era politician whose presence allows the film to briefly explore the cultural and political mindset of the past. Yet even this opportunity is muted, as the film is more interested in showcasing aircraft maneuvers than interrogating ideological contrasts between 1941 and 1980.

The most glaring weakness of The Final Countdown is its reluctance to engage with the philosophical implications of its own plot. The film flirts with questions of fate, determinism, and the ethics of historical intervention but never commits to any position. This indecision makes the film feel safe, even timid, when it could have been bold and provocative. Moreover, the paradoxes inherent in time travel (causality loops, alternate timelines, the grandfather paradox) are ignored or waved away. In contrast to more intellectually ambitious time travel films of the 1970s (like Time After Time) or the 1980s (like The Terminator), The Final Countdown seems content with its own superficiality.