I got $100 in Amazon gift cards for Christmas + my birthday and I’m spending it on imported candy and movie rentals because, I’m gonna be honest: the job market’s shit, I miss my ex who seems to have fully moved on from ten years in three months, I’m in an environment where nobody believes I’m trans or will use my name, and it is 9 degrees Fahrenheit right now. Which is to say: I’ve earned this, man.
Which is also to say: I don’t think I can review this objectively. Because on an objective level, I think probably the hammer would come down to ‘occasionally beautiful but kinda dumb, pretty sexist, and often cliche.’ However! That is not what I feel about this movie at all! I thought this was 90 minutes of sheer delight.
Do remember being a tween and finding old sci-fi comics at a garage sale, or a flea market, or used book store, or the garage of a neighbor who’s paying you a couple dollars to help pitch some stuff? And he lets you have them for free cus at least they’re not taking up space where his spiffy new golf cart should go? And you open the comic and it’s all full frontal nudity and graphic violence and, because you are twelve, it’s the most thrilling thing you’re ever read? This captures that feeling and distills it into a movie shaped bottle.
This movie feels like being a 14 year old boy. Which I never got to experience, really, because I didn’t realize I was trans until I was in my 20s and also I was the oldest of 6 kids so I didn’t get to be a teenager at all, really. And yes. Okay. It’s bad that titties and violence is crucial to the teen boy psyche except……except it is fun, is the thing.
I’m not saying it’s not sexist. I’m saying once something gets so sexist to the point where every female character gets her tits out and has a sex scene (except one, who just gets whipped while naked) it kind of becomes funny. Somewhere along the line it stops being offensive and starts feeling like a joke. There is an honesty to 80s sleaze that feels lacking in modern times. It feels more juvenile, but less mean, than a modern sidelining of female characters would.
Also, I’m sorry folks, but I am not immune to a minute and thirty second sequence of a woman putting on a leather outfit. I am not immune to aliens arguing they can drive when they’re stoned. I am not immune to zombies on a WWII fighter plane. I am not immune to a killer prog rock soundtrack. I mean come on man. They play “Open Arms” over a sex scene, something so cliche that it loops back around to being cool again.
I think I liked that it wasn’t self aware. That it didn’t cringe at the sci-fi tropes. That it loved the genres it was both parodying and engaging in truly and deeply. You don’t get that so much anymore. Even in sci-fi publishing it’s all people embarrassed at their roots trying to desperately write retreads of old stories to prove they’re smarter and better than the originals. And this movie just. Likes sci-fi. Simply and uncomplicated. It’s nice to remember you can like, do that.
The animation is often beautiful, at several times making me think ‘huh this looks like a Moebius comic I half remember’, which upon checking Wikipedia, is because those segments are based on Moebius comics. Of course sometimes it’s also ugly on purpose aliens doing space cocaine. Or zombies with their guts hanging out. Or the best homophobic stereotype I have ever seen saying “guards, castrate him.” In the same tone of voice somebody would complain about their McDonalds order being wrong. Which I’m going to say every time someone inconveniences me from now on, voice and all. I’m gay I’m allowed.
I don’t know if I can in good conscious recommend this. Contemporary reviews blasted it for its sexism, lowbrow humor, and violence. And like, those things are all true. But there’s something magic in that atmosphere man. Or maybe I’m regressing to a childlike state. I liked it. That’s all I can say. Maybe you will, too.
Signing off,
Marlowe
Marlowe Writes 