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Astro Boy |  | Actors: Nicolas Cage, Kristen Bell
Studio: Summit Entertainment
Category: DVD
List Price: $26.99
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Seller: moviesandgamestore
Rating:  44 reviews
Sales Rank: 4036
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Languages: English (Unknown), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language)
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Region: 1
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
Running Time: 94 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 6 x 0.4
MPN: SUMD66113402D
UPC: 025192058417
EAN: 0025192058417
ASIN: B001PR0Y7Q
Theatrical Release Date: October 23, 2009
Release Date: March 16, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
SET IN FUTURISTIC METRO CITY, ASTRO BOY IS ABOUT A YOUNG ROBOT WITH INCREDIBLE POWERS CREATED BY A BRILLIANT.
Amazon.com
Are heroes born or made? How does one go about finding one's true destiny? Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage), a revered scientist on the floating paradise known as Metro City, has recently created a technologically advanced robot in the image of his late son Toby in an effort to assuage his overwhelming grief. Far from an average robot, his creation (Freddie Highmore) is a thinking, feeling robot endowed with the memories and emotions of the real Toby and powered by a unique blue core energy recently discovered by Dr. Tenma's good friend Dr. Elefun (Bill Nighy). Despite his efforts, Dr. Tenma quickly discovers that his new creation will never replace his human son, and he coldly casts him aside. Being a thinking, feeling robot, the robot boy sets off in search of a place where he might fit in, and his journey lands him below Metro City, on the surface of the wasteland known as Earth, where he is befriended first by a trio of rebellious robots who dub him Astro Boy and later by a group of human orphans led by the robot repairman Dr. Hamegg (Nathan Lane). Although Astro Boy fully intends to confess his robotic origins to the humans, circumstances prevent the disclosure, and his first real friendships are tainted by the underlying deception. Meanwhile, back in Metro City, President Stone (Donald Sutherland) launches a campaign to destroy Astro Boy in an effort to steal the blue core energy and use it with its opposing and very unstable red core energy to guarantee his reelection. In the end, Astro Boy's real ancestry comes to light, and his relationships with the humans and his very existence are threatened. It also falls to Astro Boy to save Metro City from certain destruction at the hands of President Stone. Based on the 1950s Japanese manga and the 1960s Astro Boy Japanese animated television series commonly credited as the first anime cartoon, Astro Boy is an engaging, action-packed film about self-discovery and pursuing one's destiny. While there's a healthy amount of violence and peril in the film, it's generally appropriate for ages 7 and older. --Tami Horiuchi
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 44
 Great Movie for family July 20, 2010
P. Wong (NJ, USA)
The movie was well made and great for family and kids. Also teach us the value of life and virtue.
Better than expected July 18, 2010
joe mitch
I thought the voices were miscast but the story was probably better than the original Astroboy.
AstroBoy July 13, 2010
P. Carey (Pepperell, MA United States)
Item arrived as ordered- was a gift for little boy- he was very excited about it! Thanks Amazon!
 Good story that could have been great. June 24, 2010
The Night Falcon
First off, I'm a huge Astroboy fan, so make sure you are relaxed, are enjoying a cup of tea or coffee and would like some interesting reading to stimulate you, as you read this review. I'm in no rush, as I write it. I have all the anime's in my library, including many of the Japanese VHS tapes and have watched them allot over the years, even though I've not been a boy in over 4 1/2 decades. They still are great fun to watch at any age!
Now you already have the current summary write-up given by Amazon.com on what the film is about. I think it is ridiculous to re-hash a story summary already supplied by the seller, when I write a review on Amazon.com. Rehashing the summary should not be the purpose from those of us who write these reviews and have seen a film or read a book being offered. Who needs the repetition? How boring! However, here are some things I would have liked to have seen happen in this film that never did happened.
Second of all, the plain fact about this film is that it failed at the box office level: Something that should not have happened. A friend of mine said it would have done better, if it had been released in early summer, not when the kids went back to school. I don't fully share his view, although that MAY have helped box office sales some.
When I get in touch with the side of me that is still a boy, still alive under all the worlds "crap", after living in an aging body over half a century old, while asking that boy why it failed at the box office; I think that boy has some interesting things to say about this film and what disappointed him the most in his expectations. I also don't think it was the use of CGI graphics that took away from the charm of this motion picture either. I think everything was beautifully handled with the computer graphics, for the most part, in high praise to the artisans who did all the rendering work. It was a job well done for the most part. There is also allot going for this film in praise to David Bowers work, BUT the initial spiritual premise of this film hits a pitfall right from the start.
To start this review, I have to look back to when we were kids in the 1960's. Many of us; who watched and loved Astro, wanted to be Astro: I myself use to day dream, as a boy, about being born as Tobio and then being transferred into the Astroboy body, while preserving my human experiences in that transfer. I know, I was weird, but then I even remember things I knew before I was born back in those days. I suppose my dream of becoming Astroboy sounds a little like Robocop the movie, where a human head is preserved and attached to a robot body. That was an ugly approach to me. I'm acknowledging the existence of the soul and taking all focus off the flesh in my day dreams as a boy. I've always been a spiritually minded person, since the day I was born, which had nothing to do with my upbringing either in the Catholic Church.
Anyway, always Osamu Tezuka alluded to the idea of the soul of Tobio being transferred into the Astroboy body throughout his work, even though he borrowed story themes from western novels when he wrote his own stories. I suppose he borrowed story themes like he did simply to say; "why reinvent the wheel when it has already been invented?" Also, this idea of soul transference was directly addressed in the 2004 anime series in a number of the episodes, but not clearly made evident, as the series developed except at the end.
I've been a scholar of the arts, sciences and religions of the world all my life. Anyone who knows past Japanese and Chinese history knows there is heavy influence from Buddhist teachings in these cultures. All of this originates from the Vedic teachings of India, like the Upanishads, as those teachings migrated into China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Tibet over the centuries. This was before Japan became heavily westernized over my life time, which was not so when I was a boy. As Japanese and Chinese technology invaded the Americas back in the 1960's, so did the teachings of Zen Buddhism.
The singing group, known as "The Beatles"; also helped bring these Vedic cultural influences into the Americas of that day and my generation. When you know this about the history, it is clear that the idea of "reincarnation", which is taboo in the western cultures, has had a heavy influence on those other cultures. The subject of reincarnation is taboo in the Western cultures, because of the heavy "fundamental Christian" influence in the West. It was especially so, back in my day as a boy, but without it, you lose a needed, logical avenue; that makes it possible for kids to empathically connect to characters they saw on the "big screen" back in those days. These inflected spiritual truths were further alluded to in television series like "Lost in Space" and Irwin Allen's "The Time Tunnel", with "The Time Tunnel" being a very sophisticated show for its time. Forth dimensional math was not something an audience raised in the 1940's and 1950's was ready for, but my generation was. The same is true with Stanley Kubrick's "2001 A Space Odyssey" where the film ends showing the infamous "star child" in the birth sack; indicative of reincarnation of the soul. Allot of people always blow it in understanding that ending, because they do not take the time to understand the writer and what influenced his writing. I'm talking about Vedic teachings like the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita.
You learn that even Jewish mysticism, as revealed in the Sepher Yitzerah, Zohar and Kabbalah, teaches reincarnation and so does the Christian Bible in the Passage taken from Matthew 17:10-13 where we learn that John the Baptist is the reincarnation of Elijah the Prophet. Naturally, you don't hear Christian fundamentalists teach from this text, because they feel it is directly in opposition to the idea of all of us being resurrected one day into the same body we were born in. I love what Thomas Melin Benedict revealed when he died from cancer for 90 minutes, as he toured the Universe after death and how he was shown that reincarnation is part of the deal. He also asked the reader the question; "What do you think was going on with souls before Adam and Eve were created and before God took on the name of Jesus for mankind?" Betty Eadie makes it clear in her book; we were all around when this world was first created billions of years ago. In my own life's review, with my first death encounter at age 25, I was shown by our Lord that I am a very, very old soul. What I was exposed to gets lost in the translation of trying to put it all into our own language you should know. Death has to be experienced to be fully appreciated and understood.
Well, regardless of each person's spiritual influences as they grew up, I don't think there is one boy I knew, when I was a boy, who loved Astro, who didn't want to be born as Tobio, only to wake up one day as Astroboy and as such would fantasize about being the famed robot hero. These other cultural and spiritual influences helped make for a mind set that could accept such fantasy roles, which is why I bring it all up in this review. You had to have been alive back then to know what I'm talking about. Same goes for the girls who loved Astrogirl.
These days, we seem to be a world that is getting more and more caught up with our empty material creations, which have no life in them and are moving more and more away from our true spiritual origins in my view. This will only lead to the destruction of our civilized cities. Bowers makes this point clear in this movie, as he shows the earth all used up from man's pollution.
"Our bodies are on loan": This idea was heavily promoted in the 1960's and 1970's when Eastern teachings started to penetrate into western thinking; which made those time periods, not only magical in their revelation discourse of the human spirit, but because they appealed to the soul-side of man, which made product merchandising successful as well. The more flesh minded this world gets, especially with sex, the more merchants fail at the retail store level with moral toy products; simply because they are not appealing to the spirit side of man; in line with truths that are far above even the fundamental Christian beliefs these days. This line of insight is what defines the true definition of decadence, like we see in the great empires of the past that finally failed, the most predominant being the old Roman Empire.
The more this current generation departs from this premise of our eternal existence, the more the world steeps into more and more darkness and more emptiness, even in the merchandising side of the equation. Too much affluence leads to a lack of imagination in any society when you review history and the United States is becoming guiltier of this sin against the imagination as we age as a nation. This sin against the imagination is what also contributed to the box office failure of this film. We simply have lost that generation with the great imaginations we had in the 1970's, which was my generation, who would have loved films like this one. I'm becoming a dying breed at my age: Just about extinct as I write this. Even recent films like "The Last Mimsy" fail to capture the audiences of today that would have been captured in the 1970's, simply because people are more interested in shopping till they drop, than they are searching out the deeper truths of the Universe; like it was in my day, as a young boy and teenager.
Kids need to EARN the answers taught in their story books, not have it spoon fed to them by a computer. So while sci-fi books and comic books are great in teaching the lessons, children still need an active playing field where they can play out the variables, which is more non-existent these days with this current generation. These days, with computers and their designers doing everything for us, people have forgotten how to think and create for themselves all the more, which is sending our nation into decline, as a result. Perhaps when we finally fully collapse financially, as a nation, all of those old ways will be re-birthed among all of us. Nothing is earned anymore by the individual, except a high credit card debt for all the junk they buy over a life time. In spite of the debts we create for ourselves, we still wind up empty, spiritually, as we age, having lost the real lessons of life in the loving and understanding of each other. Bower's film would have scored big points in the 1970's when you can see all of this, but these days it appeals to a generation who has forgotten or abandoned the high spiritual values that helped make America great.
With all that said, I think Bower's script would have gone much better, if David Bowers had reviewed the 1960's anime version more, concerning Osama Tezuka's work and had gotten more into the "spirit" of his work; literally. Understand; I'm not knocking Bowers. He's a fine director and his years of lesson learning show on his slightly care-worn face, when you see him interviewed.
However, in the scene, in Bowers Astroboy movie; where the Peacekeeper robot obviously absorbs Tobio, before Dr. Elefun uses the blue core cable to shut down the Peacekeeper robot, which also kills Tobio in the bargain, I would have written that scene a little differently; even as a boy. A better scene would have found us seeing Tobio running to the back of the warehouse, at his father's beckoning, to escape the power of the Peacekeeper, when the explosion takes place. From there, we would learn that Tobio is badly hurt and barely alive. We would then see his father, Dr. Tenma, taking his nearly dead boy into his lab where he has been working on the new Astroboy body, having modelled it after his own son.
This issue of transferring the soul into a robot body was brought out in the 2004 anime series, but like I said, it needed more development. The avenues available in the script, once you take that route, as the writer, are intriguing; to say the least, especially with sequels. I would have then written into the story, ahead of time, a brief discussion between Dr. Elefun and Dr. Tenma, that Tenma had been working on the ability to transfer the human soul into a perfect robot body, with Astroboy about to be his crowning achievement to mimic the work of God with a fully synthetic body that could carry a living spirit in it. If I were in the spiritual realm, I would have volunteered for the role as Tobio you should know. What an experience! Dr. Tenma's ability to do this was certainly brought out in the 2004 anime series near the end of the entire series of episodes where Tenma talks with Shadow, telling Shadow that he created Shadow, so that Shadow would transfer Tenma's soul into the body of a robot, so he might "serve by the side of his son over the earth forever as father and son". Buy the 2004 anime series, if you want to learn more about what I'm talking about.
So why was the premise of soul to body technology ignored in this full length feature CGI film? Bowers and his CGI team could have continued their good story line, now turned great, just about as is, but with the twist where we, the audience, have watched Tobio actually become Astroboy! His film would have made more sense, as the story progressed! This would have followed the spirit of the Pinocchio premise also, where Pinocchio goes from a puppet to a real boy, while always being himself spiritually, at the soul level, regardless of the body he was in. This would have captured more, the hearts of Bower's young audience; if Bowers had caught the vision of this correctly from the start. I was especially fascinated by the transformation of Pinocchio, from a wooden puppet to a real boy, when I was a boy. Why not the reverse with equal fascination? This is how kids think.
Even the three times the "blue fairy" appears in the story of Pinocchio, you have to be blind not to see how those three appearances come from Christian culture? The blue fairy represents three transitions of consciousness Pinocchio must go through to prove himself worthy of being a "real boy" in the flesh. The first transition is from lifeless matter to live matter with a flesh conscience apart from soulish conscience. Read the work of Teilhard Chardin to understand what I'm talking about here. The second transition is his deliverance from his sin with Stromboli and the temptation to embrace all manner of lies told to him by Honest John, the fox. The third is the test of whether he will give his life for another, in this case for his father at the end, to prove the noble nature of man. Like the good fairy said to him; "Prove yourself brave, truthful and unselfish and one day you may be a real boy".
In each case the blue fairy represents first; the Father who gives life in the first appearance, defining Pinocchio's bravery and courage to take on life; second, the Son of God who takes away sin defining Pinocchio's truthful side and third, the "Holy Spirit", the great helper, in her third appearance as a dove where Pinocchio must prove himself unselfish, as he gives his life to save his father's life.
When you see this, you can see the writer was heavily influenced by Christian teaching when the story was written and this is why the book remains an all time classic, because it embraces the Biblical teachings as well as it does, with a waiting audience back in my day and even before the 1950's. Since Astro is also based off of the Pinocchio formula, to break away from that perfected formula of success in the selling of the story; is asking for trouble from any audience and I think this is where Bowers blew it in writing the story line with his script. In the end, face it, kids want to be Astroboy or Astrogirl when they watch Astroboy. Not to see this is to be blind to what goes on inside the minds of children when they fantasize. This is also true of those who like Batman, Superman, Spiderman and so forth from American culture.
What I have in mind would have required a very simple rewrite of the master script Bower's wrote. Otherwise you could just leave the rest of the script the way it was written for the most part. The mythology of good vs. evil; where evil becomes this Peacekeeper robot, bloated with too much of itself, consuming everything in sight to satisfy itself; while good becomes this dwarfed, all giving, but powerful, humble force, is a universal message in all the religions of the world. It also makes for good screen action at the end in the battle scenes. I enjoyed all of that very much: Very predicable at my age, but loads of fun to watch; regardless. Also the story works pretty much in accord with the standard hero's journey format.
In every hero's journey; the hero always walks into his or her destiny, not even wanting the journey or even seeing it coming to change his or her life. In this case, the hero's journey begins where Tobio dies. In that death, which is a physical death; he spiritually awakes to a new and more powerful body, ready to explore his great powers. In this case, each thing thrown at Astro from then on, though brutal to watch, makes him realize his incredible physical powers, but also awakens him to an inner wisdom of kindness and love toward all that he meets. This marks the true good of any hero. This is not only the "testing in fire" each hero goes through in all the Greek tragedy stories, as well as the stories of the Bible, before he or she has to fulfil their divine purpose in life; but it also serves as a spiritual revelator the hero must past through, if he or she is to recognize their destiny, which Astro finally does in the end. Bowers has done his homework well, for the most part, with the way he wrote the story. It's a good story line, but not great, for the sake of the missing premise I'm sighting in this review.
Finally, Astro is rejected by his creator, Dr. Tenma, who is disillusioned at first by his own robot creation, only to realize later that his creation is truly good and worthy of his love. So, Dr. Tenma "grows up" along the way, as well, in his role as a "god-type" figure: A lesson man needs to learn, should he one day succeed to this level of ability in perfecting AI technology. With current day technology advancing like it is, a real Astroboy could be walking around on this earth one day, even if that is a hundred years from now. We won't see it in my generation, as to what the realities of AI could become one day, but it could happen.
It's all a good moral message on the subject of what defines life too, whether your body is synthetically made or organically made. Anyway, in Bower's movie, after Astro is rejected by his dad, he is further tested to make him face his physical powers, while President Stone is busy trying to capture the "rogue" robot named Astroboy. Then when Astro falls to the earth, after enduring a horrendous near nuclear explosion to destroy him, in President Stones efforts to claim back the "blue core" (Astro's soul); Astro learns true humility being with other outcasts, like himself, to help perfect his loving nature. I very much loved this transition in the story line: Great teaching tool for the young to learn from. We also see Astro demonstrate his love toward all life along the way, whether that life be organic based or synthetic based. All sentient life is respected by Astro; that is unless his own existence is threatened along the way by other robots, until he learns the ultimate sacrifice in the end where he gives up his own life to take out the Peacekeeper robot to save Metro City.
Once Astro has finished his sojourn on the surface of the earth, he is brought back to his home to be executed and experiences his first "death and resurrection" in obedience to his father's will, when Dr. Tenma has to take away his blue core, the source of his existence. Funny too, Edgar Casey said the soul of each of us is located in the center of the chest, when you read Casey's readings recorded by Dr. Lammers and his team from the 1940's. What we think is a "heart ache" is really a "soul ache" when we feel emotional pain in the center of our chest in other words. So when I watch Dr. Tenma take the blue core out of Astro's chest to give it to President Stone, with that in mind, it's like God taking away the soul from the body.
In all, Tobio dies three times and is three times "resurrected" in this movie which connects us again to the Bible and the significance to the number three, oddly enough, represents the trinity taught in the Holy Bible. This also tells me Bowers is being influenced in his writing by some exposure to Christian teaching, more than he may be aware of, as a writer. Pinocchio certainly had that influence in its structure when you study the structure of the story. Still, the first resurrection is a disconnected one in Bower's script, because Tobio dies in Bowers film with only his strand of hair making it possible to preserve Tobio's memory. In my version of the script, we would have seen Tobio's soul transferred into the Astroboy body, thus putting more sense to the three resurrections in the film's story premise, in parallel to the storyline of Pinocchio.
We also learn that Astro can break his wrist restraints any time he wants, after he is captured, but stays in strict obedience to his father's will, even to the point of death. We are reminded of Jesus going to the cross, in obedience to His father, to the point of death, only to be raised again by His father, once he has proven His obedience in this scene. Astro then rises, in a "second" resurrection, given by his father, only to do final battle with the one Dr. Tenma was to give Astro's soul to, President Stone; who we finally learn is an evil man, "absorbed" with his own self glory and not the welfare of the people who he is suppose to rule over. I suppose you could define this as the "Devil in the mix" needed to create the final tension in the end which makes for good screen action in the final battle of the story.
I do love the old plot lines being re-embodied in this storyline I might add. It's the old, "battle it out to the end, good vs. evil plot line, and blow everything to hell, until good wins" scenario. Even at my age, I enjoy it in spite of its predictability and the gags thrown in, to move it along.
Bowers has a good sense of humor, in my view, with many of his gags. My favourite gag is the part where Astro uses a huge I-beam that weighs tons, to hit over the head; of the way too big Peacekeeper robot and gets the response; "That all ya got?" while the Peacekeeper spits out a tooth from the blow he took. Way too funny a scene! I couldn't stop laughing with that one. Then Astro clenches his fists, as if to say; "No, that's not all I got. I'm going to beat the heck out of your chin!" which is about all he can do; given how big the Peacekeeper robot has become, as it becomes too full of itself, which pure evil always does.
Like I said earlier, Astroboy was a take off of the old Pinocchio story plot line where a wooden puppet becomes a real boy. Alan Ladd, key animator of the old 1960's animes, tells this, if you ever buy the old anime series from the 1960's. In Astro, we have kind of the reverse, where a real boy becomes a puppet boy, or a "robot boy" in this case, only to find that it is not the body that defines him, but that Tobio has been given a chance to learn his high spiritual side more, which is what defines the true heart of man's existence. This message is lost to some degree, in my opinion, because the idea of Tobio becoming Astro has not been established early on in the film. The idea that Dr. Tenma uses a strand of his son's hair to re-create the memories of Tobio, did nothing for me: That's not even good science, even though the cells of each organic body on the planet has the DNA to recreate the entire body, if needed. However, our memories are not stored in the DNA, only the replication of our body is stored. Too much bad science and not enough of the spirit side of the Universe was introduced to balance this thing out. This was a major mistake, in my view, Bowers made when building the premise early on with the story line.
Take any of these great truths away from the Astroboy script and you get the reason why this thing failed at the box office like it did. Even if you compare this to Pinocchio, at all times Pinocchio was always himself, whether in his puppet body or his real boy body. That consistency was lost in this film and it killed the spirit of the film in a big way as a result. Too bad too, because when films like this fail in this way, we don't get the fun of watching successful selling sequels made and I would have enjoyed seeing this made into sequels, which obviously won't happen now, simply because it didn't even break even at the box office.
Remember, you have to think the way a 2 to 7 year old is going to think, having never seen these plot lines before. Too often I think kids have more sense in separating good and evil in their minds than adults do. Anyway, to these young kids, it's all new when it comes to life's plot lines. To old scholars like me, its old news. Films like this are always made for the young generation and not old fogies like me. Still, the kid I once was is still alive inside me, which helps me to enjoy these films when they come out, even at my current age.
In the end, Astro is faced with the greatest sacrifice of all. First he must subject himself in obedience to his father's will to win over his father's love and then in the end he must sacrifice himself, to the point of death, to save Metro city and clear it of the evil Peacekeeper robot. Again, we see allot of the Bible in this story writing. So we have two deaths and two resurrections in this film script concerning Astro's climb to ascended mastery, minus the one death of Tobio with vague reference to a resurrection in order to become Astro in the beginning of the film.
Following the plot line of Pinocchio, we see Astro birthed from a real boy, the reverse we see in Pinocchio; where Astro's father gives him life, unlike the blue fairy in Pinocchio who represented the spiritual realm. Kind of a sign of the times indicating we live in a more secular humanistic world vs. a more spiritually minded way of looking at things over half a century ago.
Astro then shows divine love, toward his father, to help his creator understand His creation's worth. This results in a second death and resurrection happening to Tobio, who should have also been Astro, to prove Astro has learned full obedience to his creator's will which fully touches the heart of his father-creator, Dr. Tenma. He is then rewarded with a second resurrection, because of his pure goodness. When he finally sacrifices himself for the good of mankind in Metro City at the end of the film, Astro experiences a third death and resurrection. So we are reminded of the good fairy's words; "Prove yourself brave, truthful and unselfish..." This draws us back to the old story of Pinocchio again, as Astro proves himself "unselfish" in the scheme of things. The mythology is very good in this movie for the most part. We even witness Astro's "life's review" which you hear talked about in most Near Death Experiences these days, as Astro dies inside the Peacekeeper's red core near the end of the film, in order to destroy pure evil with his pure goodness. We see his short life was a life devoted to real love, no matter how badly he was treated.
So while Astro's life appears to be "short" when he gives his life to save Metro City, he is raised yet a third time to an even higher level of understanding with his third resurrection in the film. Astro has become even more loving and grateful for the gift of life when this happens, just like Pinocchio was when he finally became a real boy. The great messages sent to kids about bravery, self sacrifice, righteousness and divine love are all taught in this film, which makes this a wholesome family entertainment product worth watching many times. It also makes for good discussion afterwards, with your kids, who view the movie and the story it tells.
There are about a dozen technical glitches throughout the CGI rendition of the movie you may not catch with the first viewing. The most obvious is which side Astro's forward spike is located. At one moment it may be above his right eye and in the next scene, it is above the left eye. Apparently there were two production teams who failed to talk to each other involved in the making of this film, when this was all being rendered. (chuckling) It makes for a humorous, if not the annoying, constant shifting of the spike on the top of Astro's head, once you catch the error in the production side of the film.
Other minor flaws would be when President Stone sends the "Spirit of Freedom" rockets at Astro to try and destroy him to collect the "blue core" in Astro's chest for Stone's own agenda to be re-elected as President of Metro City: Where Astro's clothes should be burned off his body in this scene, they stay neat and in tact through the scene. I would have preferred his clothes be burned off when the missiles hit him, so we can see him in his black leotards, green belt and red power boots, the way we all remembered him in the old anime's. This was a perfect time to "undress him" and show his memorable side from the past, in other words. This also would have avoided the other error that comes when Astro has to use the machine guns from his butt later on. Normally, when those guns appear, they should have torn right through his jeans, but instead the animators have his pocket flaps neatly fold up and down when the guns appear and retract. In real life, the reality is the guns would have torn right through his pants, leaving holes. If he had shed his clothes earlier, then everything would have been prepared for Astro when he has to use his machine guns on the Peacekeeper robot. I'm sure Bowers kept Astro in his civilian attire to get Astro through the scene when he meets Hamegg and his other friends, who think Astro is a real boy. Still, there were opportunities to develop these areas better to capture more what real life would be, given how well the CGI graphics were done to mimic real life throughout the story.
Another blunder in the script is where we see Tobio absorbed by the Peacekepper robot as a human, only to be killed when the blue and red core come together, but in the case of President Stone, who was also absorbed by the Peacekeeper robot, he doesn't get killed when the blue and red core come together at the end of the film. Talk about inconsistency with this one! I guess you can sum this up in the words; "While you can't keep a good bad guy down, the good always die young" it seems.
Here's another interesting observation as well, thanks to a talk I was having with an old college friend of mine; who visited me and saw the movie. The old laser recorders on the market use a red laser light vs. the new "blue ray" laser light now in the market. So it is clear Bowers was being influenced, as a writer, by today's technology and captured it in his writing; hence the "red core" and "blue core" orbs used in the film; with the blue core becoming the soul of Astro in the end.
I would have loved to have given this five stars. The production quality is certainly worth the five stars, but the main weaknesses in the script, I talk about, is a major weakness that my inner boy just didn't like. Tell a boy he can't wear those rocket powered boots, have machine guns come out of his butt or turn his arms into cannon powered lasers and right there you've lost your major audience of dreamers who long to be Astro. (chuckling) You also blow it at the merchandising level at the same time. Makes sense doesn't it? But only if you are in touch with your forgotten boyhood it seems.
I still would purchase this film for its overall message and action content. I may not live long enough to ever see the live action version of the movie be created, but I hope that whoever gets that job, will finally realize; young boys and girls want to be these characters and only when you incarnate Tobio into the body of Astro, will the writer finally get the premise right. Whoever finally gets that right, will make a killing at the box office, providing the other issues of the hero's journey are properly addressed in the script writing.
Rev 6
Awesome! June 22, 2010
S. McNeal (Kansas City, MO)
I rented this movie first. Anime is one of my favorite genres and so I checked it out. Seeing how awesome it was, I had to own it so now I do. Watch it if you haven't already.
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