Pinnochio in reverse!
1:24 PM 4/17/10 · I expect that as with most geeks today, my experience with Astro Boy was down to about nil. Never having seen one of his original cartoons, admittedly I caught one flipping channels accidentally but didn't linger, but nonetheless able to recognize him just from his basic look. I don't know what to make of that but it's not unique...
...there's a Japanese series of toys, probably connected to a giant robot series similar to the oldskool Godzilla flicks, called Shogun Warriors and even though I don't know much of anything about it I've known which one was Great Mazinger (something like that) almost as long as I've been able to speak.
Go figure.
Having watched Astro Boy now I don't know if I should compare it to the vague notions I had about the original. Really, the only thing that might not be canon, and this is a guesstimate at best, is I didn't realize that the lil' guy was supposed to be a real kid prior to becoming a robot. I will say I like how they worked in the genetic memory angle, that was very cool and a favorite factoid to any cloning process I've seen since as far back as the old live action Spiderman series.
Even though I don't know the original series, I got the sense that they got the main characters pretty close to spot on. In appearance anyway. I know that in the same way I've always been able to recognize Astro Boy...which I'm admittedly foggy about.
All that said, this movie kinda dragged along at a snails pace for me for quite a bit. I'm a little hazy as to why I wasn't liking it so much...up until the first moment the lil' robot figured out he could fly. From that point on I was having a blast with the whole thing!
There's an interesting twist which could be compared to a second class citizens angle or maybe equal rights in general. All of the robots in this movie are at least as intelligent as the humans and fully self aware...yet they're treated like they're property. Okay, sure they are but they're not treated fairly at all. Junked and discarded when outdated, made to fight to the death for the amusement of others, tortured simply because they're not viewed as equal or even real life. It's annoying any maybe that's just because it was portrated so well.
You should definitely see Astro Boy if you haven't already. There's a lot of DVD extras but I only watched the 2 mini·movies that're in there.
...there's a Japanese series of toys, probably connected to a giant robot series similar to the oldskool Godzilla flicks, called Shogun Warriors and even though I don't know much of anything about it I've known which one was Great Mazinger (something like that) almost as long as I've been able to speak.
Go figure.
Having watched Astro Boy now I don't know if I should compare it to the vague notions I had about the original. Really, the only thing that might not be canon, and this is a guesstimate at best, is I didn't realize that the lil' guy was supposed to be a real kid prior to becoming a robot. I will say I like how they worked in the genetic memory angle, that was very cool and a favorite factoid to any cloning process I've seen since as far back as the old live action Spiderman series.
Even though I don't know the original series, I got the sense that they got the main characters pretty close to spot on. In appearance anyway. I know that in the same way I've always been able to recognize Astro Boy...which I'm admittedly foggy about.
All that said, this movie kinda dragged along at a snails pace for me for quite a bit. I'm a little hazy as to why I wasn't liking it so much...up until the first moment the lil' robot figured out he could fly. From that point on I was having a blast with the whole thing!
There's an interesting twist which could be compared to a second class citizens angle or maybe equal rights in general. All of the robots in this movie are at least as intelligent as the humans and fully self aware...yet they're treated like they're property. Okay, sure they are but they're not treated fairly at all. Junked and discarded when outdated, made to fight to the death for the amusement of others, tortured simply because they're not viewed as equal or even real life. It's annoying any maybe that's just because it was portrated so well.
You should definitely see Astro Boy if you haven't already. There's a lot of DVD extras but I only watched the 2 mini·movies that're in there.