Astro Boy

This is not a 5 star movie. Not even close. I have immense issues with like 70% of this movie but it definitely shaped me as a person and the media I consume. This is probably going to be extremely jumbled bc I have too many thoughts on it. I just gotta get it all out.  For context my Blu-ray copy of Astro Boy is the same copy I have had since I was 6 or 7. This movie is extremely important to me. I think I held onto the idea that people just remembered this movie in the wrong light for the longest time, but I never went back to it fully. I was a freak about this movie and franchise and I have no idea why. Watching it brought everything back it’s kind of freaky how much I forgot. I started remembering the ds game that had side scrolling shooter sections and the McDonald’s toy I had that was just a see-through Astro, and that I would constantly bug my Mom to give me Astro boy hair. And I just now remembered that bc of my love for this movie I eventually got a dvd from the 2003 show, which I think I still have. Couldn’t tell u what happened in it, but I remember loving it. I just find all of this incredible bc my introduction to this franchise was this movie, and this movie kinda misses the whole point while also trying really hard to make Astro Boy something totally different from its source material. I will now be complaining for way to long about a stupid dumb baby movie. I wanna get all the stuff I didn’t like out of the way first bc I wanna stop thinking about the wrongdoings of this movie as soon as possible. And yes it’s a kids movie but like whatever man that’s a dumb excuse and it sucks and I hate it and I wanna over analyze and critique stupid movies I love. OKAY. Whoever decided that an adaptation of Astro Boy needed the stereotypical animated movie rag tag group of misfits needs to reevaluate everything. I am being 100% serious when I say you could take most of the side characters in this movie and find a better version of them in another children’s animated movie that came out in the same time frame. The group of kids Astro bonds with is just the How To Train Your Dragon side characters except less funny. There’s twins, an idiot, and a girl. The twins are just children and that is all you need to know about them. The idiot is an idiot and can’t read and that’s all you need to know. The girl is a girl and I genuinely think that is all they were thinking about in terms of characterizing her. Cora, who is Kristen Bell, is so weirdly written. I think they were trying to go for the whole “oh we aren’t so different you and I”, but it doesn’t work. She just comes across as extremely dull and again, her character can be dumbed down to she is a girl. Which is weird bc it makes me wonder why any of these characters were made at all. It’d be one thing if Cora was given an interesting backstory or something, but no. All we get is that her parents are from Metro City and she wants to get back to them. That is pretty quickly dropped, then picked up for like 3 seconds near the end. The only thing she has common with Astro is they both were “thrown out” by Metro City, but no she wasn’t that was a lie. Maybe I missed a line or something but I think her parents just lost her or something Idek. Even if it was true though, literally every other side character has that same thing in common so Astro and Cora’s relationship, if you can call it that, is not unique in any way. He catchers her falling of Zog for a scene, so there’s that I guess. The idiot has one memorable part, and it’s about the fact that he can’t read. I don’t remember his name, which should tell you how important he is to the overall plot. Same goes for the twins and Hamegg. Hamegg is the Act 2 bad guy for all intensive purposes and while I thought his backstory would mean some sort of resolution would come I was deeply wrong. He is here so that Astro doesn’t stray too far from Metro City so that the President’s men can come get him when it’s convenient. They keep implying he’s Astro’s replacement father or whatever which could work but after act 2 he shows up for one scene so it doesn’t lead anywhere. Hey, maybe it’s that way so that the main bad guy can shine but nope. President Stone is cartoonishly evil and it feels like his dialogue was written to shove that in your face as often as possible. I’m not against characters who are just full time evil, but in this case they are specifically wanting him to be so evil that it’s funny. Except it’s not funny it’s just annoying. He has lines about giving bribes to rich people, actively trying to cause war, etc. which again could’ve worked. A heavy theme in Astro Boy is war and why it’s bad but in this case President Stone doesn’t really serve any other narrative purpose than to become a boring grey big robot for Astro to fight in the end. The ending sucks. It’s rly dumb. It’s the Amazing Spider-Man 2 ending and nobody likes it stop doing it. The dialogue throughout the entire movie is serviceable at best and disengaging at worst. It’s so clearly a problem with telling instead of showing. Instead of the audience being able to sit in Tenma’s grief we get the whole “it’s AlL My fAuLt” spiel and everything but they already set up the visual representation with Toby’s hat so it is there for no reason. Tenma in general is weird, but none of it is Nic Cage’s fault (obviously). I actually enjoyed his performance for the most part it’s just that the writing fails him. Tenma is pretty quick to completely be done with Astro, which feels pretty tacked on. There’s a scene where a servant robot is wearing Toby’s hat and Tenma has an extreme reaction to it. I actually really like the scene, it sets up Tenma’s doubts about Astro being a replacement for his son. It could be foreshadowing for the ladder half of the movie where Tenma realizes that he can’t replace Toby, but no. Instead it’s the event that causes Tenma to start hating Astro and within a couple of hours (in the timeline of the movie) he is completely on board with shutting Astro down and giving him up. I just don’t buy that. It would make sense if he has reservations about Astro, in fact I wish we got more scenes like the hat one to further give Tenma more development while also showing how Astro is not Toby. But we can’t bc we just gotta hurry to get Astro to the surface so we can have more engaging conversations with the cast of How To Train Your Dragon. It’s infuriating because I genuinely believe this movie was made with good intentions. I want to believe that a team of people were so passionate about Astro Boy that they believed that they could successfully adapt it to a children’s movie that would give the series new life. But so many aspects go against that. Much like the original, there are hints at larger more philosophical questions about humanity and war at play but they aren’t given the time they deserve. President Stone’s overt villainy isn’t trying to commentate on war or political parties he’s just the bad guy and that’s it. The idea that the people of Metro City reject the people of the surface is an interesting idea that is also given nothing. There’s one scene in the end that has a ton of people be like “wait u kids r from the surface???? That’s crazy” then they all smile and we move on. Why are we setting up these ideas when the movie clearly doesn’t want to explore anything with them. The movie wants to focus purely on good and evil, which is clearly represented by the blue and red core. It’s pretty clearly at the center of the film. It’s the power of the blue core, or the good, that ultimately destroys the red core, evil, and also revived Astro in the end as a result of his good deeds. This isn’t necessarily a bad idea on paper for an Astro Boy story, but it just isn’t handled in an interesting way. Speaking of things being handled improperly the comedy. Good god the comedy in this is unbearable. The most “well that just happened” dialogue I have heard in a while. I believe there were 2 times in which I exhaled slightly more than I usually do while breathing. One was because there is a character called Mike the Fridge, who comments on the fact that he is a fridge and two was because I don’t even remember. I actually forgot one of the two jokes I thought was alright while writing this. These jokes don’t land at all and I feel confident saying that bc I don’t particularly remember laughing that much at it when I was younger either.  Bc I don’t have much to say on them, the action sequences in the movie are fine. Not bad but nothing to ride home about either. The best one is the 2nd fight during the robot games and that’s all I got. Okay now, surprisingly, there are several aspects I did like, hell even loved. For one, the motif. Astro gets his own John Williams like Superman theme and I love it. I got chills when I heard it for the first time on this viewing. I’m hoping it is on Spotify for the love of god. The overall soundtrack is pretty good too. There are several tracks I actually still remembered quite well and they fit the tone pretty well. I do like the visual difference between Toby and Astro being their hair. Toby clearly has more human looking hair while Astro’s looks like it’s painted on. Toby’s also looks a lot more natural, so his “horns” aren’t really horns but Astro’s are just straight points. I love how for most of the time Toby is wearing his red hat but later Astro admits that he doesn’t really like the hat. Honestly, I found myself enjoying most of if not all of act 1. Nothing compared to the show, or even the original manga but for a reimagining it’s alright. I like how despite the little amount of time we spend with Toby they still managed to tell you everything you need to know so his death still leaves an effect. The little detail of Tenma calling him “son” and Toby calling him “sir” is a nice touch that isn’t directly addressed to the audience. The entire sequence of Astro getting the hang of his powers from the amazing theme to the visuals all of it is amazing. The way Astro spins around and dives down into the clouds is the type of sequence I hope we will see in James Gunn’s Superman movie. I love how dynamic the camera is while Astro cautiously tries to regain control over his new abilities. I think another reason I love this scene is because I would always replay this mission on the ds game. It’s just fun and engaging and I think it’s my favorite moment in the film. The sequence before the hat scene I mentioned before involves Astro being told by Tenma to read some books. I love that while flipping through a book Astro seems uncomfortable when at a section titled “war machines”. That is the type of commentary I found so intriguing about the franchise in the first place. Despite its target demographic being younger kids, it still addressed serious issues like war and violence in a way that could be understood by anyone. Astro should be a pacifist, and for the most part the movie sticks to this. He usually only resorts to fighting when he has no other option. The only out of character moment is during the robot games. Astro clearly states “I’m not going to fight” but then 6 seconds later he decapitates a robot using a force field so ya know. I’m not sure if I would say it’s an absolute must have for Astro, like Batman’s no kill rule, but that’s only because I remember little about the original source material. I honestly don’t remember if that’s an aspect of his character, but I like the idea of it. To me, it just makes sense that this robot designed to comfort a grieving father would only resort to hurting someone if it was absolutely necessary. I feel that the movie handles that aspect of the character pretty well.  One of the reasons I decided to revisit Astro Boy was because I recently began reading Pluto. I have a creeping feeling that Pluto will become one of my favorite pieces of fiction ever. I felt like I needed to revisit this untouchable totem of my childhood so that I can move onto other things. The idea of someone adapting this story I loved so much for a more mature audience kinda weirded me out when I first heard about it, but I really wanna give it a shot. Astro Boy helped me realize why I like so many of the things I do. The more philosophical questions I wondered about from this movie made me love movies like Ghost in The Shell and Robocop. Which then led to my love for an unhealthy amount of robot characters.  The family drama mixed with heroic action probably boosted my already extreme love of superheroes. Which I still love to this day. I feel like I owe a lot to this movie, which is why I feel it deserves 5 stars.  Mike The Fridge for life.