[Mini-Review] Equilibrium
The movie which spawned the whole "gunkata" genre, but remains virtually unknown in the neocolonial world with its lack of marketing budget, Equilibrium (2002)!
4/5: Excellent, but imperfect.
Equilibrium. The first time I watched it, I was so impressed that I hounded the Internet for weeks. Surely Kurt would give us a sequel, or prequel, or SOMETHING which give us more "gunkata" goodness.
Yet, all we have is the pathetic UltraViolet, which features some softened form of the art, not nearly as impressive and more importantly, still underused.
Action asside, though, EQ is part of the "sci-fi satire", and it was the writer-director's intention to use it to protest against film censorship, and the increasing tendancy of the state to try to "protect" people from their own self-invokation of feelings, thus shaping their emotions to be state-serving rather than self-sustaining. Marriage without love, work without variety, life without color, joy, beauty, or hope. That's the world that Kurt paints in this modern classic.
Yet, is is really worth classic status? A few things are missing.
Some people don't identify with the protagonist, and his "sudden change". However, I identified totally with it, but perhaps that's just me. The problem I had with the story, however, is that it doesn't continue, they are no sequels or prequels, no novels, no... franchise. Yet this series isn't a series, it's just a one-shot movie. It deserves more, esp. with crap like Matrix: Revolutions.
A whole fandom has sprung up around the whole "gunkata" concept, reguardless of wheter people "get" the satire part of it or not. It's sorta a pity that Kurt didn't do more of a follow up, but if he doesn't have that vision... I guess not everyone can be George Lucas, right?
As for the movie itself, it covers a lot in a short time but doesn't tell us what happens after the critical point. This is fine for a movie with a sequal or follow-up/side-story, but again, there's a lack of vision on the part of the origional creative team; this isn't Ghost in the Shell or anything Japanese. (As you can tell by now, I'm partial to the Japanese "creative industry".)
4/5: Excellent, but imperfect.
Equilibrium. The first time I watched it, I was so impressed that I hounded the Internet for weeks. Surely Kurt would give us a sequel, or prequel, or SOMETHING which give us more "gunkata" goodness.
Yet, all we have is the pathetic UltraViolet, which features some softened form of the art, not nearly as impressive and more importantly, still underused.
Action asside, though, EQ is part of the "sci-fi satire", and it was the writer-director's intention to use it to protest against film censorship, and the increasing tendancy of the state to try to "protect" people from their own self-invokation of feelings, thus shaping their emotions to be state-serving rather than self-sustaining. Marriage without love, work without variety, life without color, joy, beauty, or hope. That's the world that Kurt paints in this modern classic.
Yet, is is really worth classic status? A few things are missing.
Some people don't identify with the protagonist, and his "sudden change". However, I identified totally with it, but perhaps that's just me. The problem I had with the story, however, is that it doesn't continue, they are no sequels or prequels, no novels, no... franchise. Yet this series isn't a series, it's just a one-shot movie. It deserves more, esp. with crap like Matrix: Revolutions.
A whole fandom has sprung up around the whole "gunkata" concept, reguardless of wheter people "get" the satire part of it or not. It's sorta a pity that Kurt didn't do more of a follow up, but if he doesn't have that vision... I guess not everyone can be George Lucas, right?
As for the movie itself, it covers a lot in a short time but doesn't tell us what happens after the critical point. This is fine for a movie with a sequal or follow-up/side-story, but again, there's a lack of vision on the part of the origional creative team; this isn't Ghost in the Shell or anything Japanese. (As you can tell by now, I'm partial to the Japanese "creative industry".)