Before opening, first express my gratitude for the new season of "Love, Death and Robots", because its return really gives the audience a feeling of "coming home".
The reason for this is because I am reminded of the "Game of Thrones" finale that has the ability to slaughter the audience, of course, their fates are also very similar, the excretory passage of the altar will always let the former gods decline to the end, and now the second season has fallen to 7.0 points, catching up with the eighth season of game of thrones is just around the corner.
Two years ago, Love, Death and Robots conquered countless audiences with "adult animation" as a selling point, but its real charm comes from the diversity of forms and innovations that are difficult to outline.
Whether it is the 18 episodes of the first season or the 8 episodes of this season, each episode is a separate story, the art style and theme are different, and the solid genre elements also bring a new degree of freedom, while liberating the creator and the audience.
The first episode of the first season of Love, Death, and Robots, while widely acclaimed, was also negatively criticized for its abuse of nudity and parts of the plot that allude to sexual violence.
The whole second season is therefore much softer, although there are still cult elements, the scale has been reduced.
But that's not what really makes it collapse.
I believe that after watching the second season, the audience can feel the barrier, although "love, death and robots" have everything, but most of the single episodes lack soul, the perception is completely "yesterday's love, today's bed and dreams".
The first episode of "Automated Customer Service" is enough to disappoint the audience, and there is nothing impeccable in the quality of the film, but its treatment of the science fiction genre is so shallow that it is incomprehensible, who said that appetizers can give diners a plate of roast pig hair?
The pension life of the wealthy elderly in the film is very moist, comfortable enough to maintain the arrogance of being human, they enjoy the golden years in the high-tech pension community, and artificial intelligence can meet any needs of the owners, including walking the dog and shoveling.
This is the slave society of the future, and the nightmare under the peace is the dysfunction of the domestic robot, and when it turns to the plot of the "Cold Sacrifice", the much-needed tension of the story is solved.
But is that all? When two elderly people run hand in hand with their pet dogs, although there is a positive illusion that activates the vitality, it is ultimately a "employer's perspective" robot uprising story.
Enslaved robots are driven mad by the "consumerist" system of mad demons, and the moral high ground is still human, which is completely the level of children's cartoons.
In the fourth episode, Snow in the Desert, the scene is magnificent, the rough and desolate painting style is the first to dominate, the story is that various bounty hunters hunt down a man named Snow, because he has the ability to regenerate.
Human beings as immortal beings are very lonely, and even if they have the skill of immortality, they cannot possess eternal things.
In the film, Snow meets a woman who is a synthetic person with a human brain and is best suited to live an immortal life with Snow.
The idea of this episode is clear, in fact, "eternal life" is a "dehumanized" fantasy for human beings. But in addition to the desert scenery, the rest of the plot tastes like chewing wax, Snow's past is only revealed a little bit, and its mystery and a large number of fight scenes will keep the audience out, resulting in the entire episode has no memory points to speak of.
The sixth episode, "The Whole House", is a spoof advertising presence, the children's faces are CG-composed stop-motion characters, and on Christmas Eve, two innocent children tiptoe downstairs to see Santa Claus, only to find a terrifying monster stealing food.
But the giant beast has no interest in eating the child, it is just a thriller version of the listening beast, only a good child can receive gifts, and a good child can always get gifts.
The episode is rough as if it were an extension of a sentence that explains an idea in just a few minutes, and even if its bad taste doesn't disgust the audience, there's really no need to be a separate episode.
In the seventh episode, "Living Cabin", Michael B. Jordan plays a forced space pilot who finds refuge in life capsule 817-RD9G, but is chased in a claustrophobic space by a robot that accidentally triggers a maintenance system. A plethora of adrenaline-pumping fight scenes interspersed with memories, with themes similar to the first episode, or rebellious robots and self-helping humans.
Most of the problems in the above four episodes are due to outdated themes or insufficient completion, but compared to the first season -
The remaining four episodes still maintain a certain level, even if netizens shout "overturn", they still need to be explored.
Probably embracing all kinds of "over-interpretation" is the most suitable way for us to face the animated series.
The second episode of "Ice" is the only two-dimensional animation of the season, and Robert Valley is no stranger to everyone, and it is he who directed the first season of the decisive single episode "Zima Blue".
/ The picture above is from "Ice" The picture below is from "Zima Blue"
First of all, his expressionist style is too recognizable, and at the same time, clues about "illegal robot modification" also appear in "Ice".
However, compared with "Zima Blue", this new work is more of a visual continuation, handling the dynamics of the characters and the spectacle scenes such as "ice whale breaking the ice" better, but the theme of the story itself is very ambiguous.
The story is set on an unsuitable planet, and through the father's words, it is learned that the family is working as an overseer in the colony as an outsider, and for the earthlings, it is necessary to decide whether to transform themselves into an "adapted" version.
Sedgviz and Fletcher are brothers, and his older brother Sedgwizi is the only child who has not been transformed, and in order to impress his brother's new friend, he joins a dangerous activity to compete before the ice whales break the ice.
Because the background is very vague, but from some details can be related to the racial and social issues in today's America.
For example, whether "being transformed" has a metaphor for "whitening yourself", including other "unique accent" modified children and the use of psychedelics before racing, can be associated with criminal teenagers who are keen on street culture.
From the father's point of view, it can be associated with "American Factory", and from the brothers, it seems that it can be associated with "Skateboard boy".
The third episode, Commando Squad, is the most cinematic episode of the entire second season, with extremely smooth shots and transitions, and the shadow of the Blade Runner dystopian world can be clearly seen.
Unfortunately, this is yet another story of moral struggle with men as the main body, a male police officer named Brith sandwiched between two extreme worlds, who is the maintainer of a cruel system, and the women in the two extreme worlds are used as a material case to stimulate their choice.
In order to ensure that the population does not grow indefinitely, and to ensure that valuable wealth remains forever in the hands of a few rich, they have opened a monopoly method that is more effective than the hereditary system, that is, "immortality".
These people will slaughter newborns for eternal life, lest this stable world be replaced and overthrown by "new people". In a dystopian world, massacres of innocent children are acknowledged by the power system, pointing the finger not only at "superfluous" children but also at women's wombs, and finally to inspiring men through women's perceptions of "fertility and life", pushing women to two extreme stereotypes.
It's not that it fails in the disgusting male gaze, but this kind of character setting has been rusted, including the "toy little dinosaur" that can trigger the male protagonist's guilt, which is difficult to establish in character logic. But the reason why "Assault Squad" is worth exploring is because it has a light knock on the class gap in the real world and the greed and selfishness of human nature itself.
And this episode deals with the exploration of the "elasticity of time", which is the greater meaning of a hundred years or a second? Immortality and death, which model has made mankind's "great art"? Perhaps "eternal life" is precisely the nemesis of art.
People living in "artificial paradises" hold on to a culture that has been polished and refined, and they can squander more than twenty years to hone an opera and continue people's support for her, which is really understanding the essence of elitism.
In the same way in the real world, many "noble" artistic cultures are exclusively occupied by certain classes and used to distinguish groups, as human beings have always done.
The fifth episode, "Tall Grass", has a long ten minutes, and the shaping of the "horror atmosphere" is also very successful, as if indulging in dreams, and it seems to restore the labyrinth of "The Shining", and the stop of the train is also full of metaphors.
When a train suddenly stops at the edge of an endless high grass, the most dramatic scene is that people are "drawn in" by the light of hell.
The episode can be seen as a successful thriller climax accompanied by a synopsis, where the conversation between the surviving passenger and the old conductor is really reminiscent, after he told the passengers that the train stopped only if the engine failed, but later explained that similar things happened more than once.
The old conductor's interpretation of these ghosts is also very interesting, he is not describing terrible things, but with a little sympathy, like telling the past of old friends, those man-eating ghosts, afraid of fire, were also once human beings, for various reasons left in the high grass, never came out again, and continue to attract passers-by.
So what exactly is the metaphor of tall grass? Is it the massacres that have taken place in human history, or the call of the evil of human nature to humanity, or the moral positions that everyone swings... It is only up to the audience to imagine.
If the second season didn't collapse as completely, it must be because of the existence of "The Drowning Giant". At the same time, it is also the closest to the episode of "Zima Blue" in terms of thematic depth, and even a certain commonality can be vaguely seen, that is, the ultimate grand assembly disintegrates into pieces, miracles will dissipate, and great fantasies will end, which is naturally tragic and in line with the current metaphor of the times.
A perfect giant corpse appeared in the viewing area, and over time, the giant began to decay, dirty graffiti appeared on its body, severed limbs were cut off, the head was cut off, and finally disappeared on the coast, and later many of the giant's bones appeared in the town, and the organs remained as symbols, and over time, no one knew where it came from. On the surface, "The Drowning Giant" weaves inevitable death and functional decay into a modern myth, but it is still "science fiction" in essence.
The poetic narration coupled with the animation's display of spectacle excavates the depth of "The Drowning Giant", the mysterious giant who was washed up on the shore was once a miracle in everyone's eyes, but finally forgotten, only the narrator recorded him, remembered him, knew the whereabouts of each fragment, and mastered the way to stitch together the "Legend of the Giant".
How human beings dissolve history, digest culture, how to polish miracles into nameplates that assist transactions, these details are melted into ten minutes in great detail, and the conclusion is not so pessimistic, which is to rationalize the dark age of civilization.
In fact, in the three themes of "Love, Death and Robots", love and death are the evidence of life, and robots (artificial intelligence) are actually the mediums that humans use to touch "life". Artificial intelligence itself carries the attribute of "death + eternity", in these stories, through the mode of getting along between humans and robots, the self-alienation of humans, or the manifestation of life characteristics in non-living beings... It can reveal which direction its subject points.
The science fiction genre originates from the impulse of human self-exploration, and returns to narcissism with the help of alienation, but in the second season, most of them are empty love and death, as well as crazy robots, disappointed, it makes the audience's mood of expectation calm down, perhaps in the third season, everyone can objectively evaluate the true value of "Love, Death and Robots".