Something I did a bit ago I felt like sharing here!

I had never seen an Imagi film in my lifetime, but after seeing this one, I get the impression the best I can say about the studio is that they make very subpar films. Oh sure they got action and suspense, the drama and the characters, but no substance, nothing to make me feel it was worth the $7.75 I paid to go see Astro Boy today, and here's why...

Of course since I'm writing to level-minded people like me, I feel I need no introduction on who Osamu Tezuka was or why Tetsuwan Atom (a.k.a. "Astro Boy") is what it is, you should've already known that by now, and I don't need to further you on it's incarnations and translations over the past 50+ years either. Now then, we got that out of the way, what I will say is that much of what you know about the guy probably won't come into use here so you can put your copybooks away for now (don't throw 'em away, they might come in handy for further explanation to the masses).

It is the future (I assume it's mentioned in the film just when that is, but for now, I don't have it jotted down, nor did I think to bring a Mead memo pad either to the theater for notes) and mankind made as shithole out of planet Earth, and in a Jetsons/Wall-E sort of way, the last of mankind's finest take to the skies in the floating city, Metro City (so generic). Meet Toby (played by some kid who's probably hot stuff right now), a 13 year old whiz kid who just ditched school early to go have some fun (passing a pop quiz beforehand of course), only to find out his dad, the noble head of the Ministry of Science, Dr. Tenma (played by Nicolas Cage) wasn't going to be with him as he has something to do with unveiling the Peacekeeper with President Stone (played by Donald Sutherland). Being too crafty and impatient, Toby fiddles with the robot Orrin (played by Eugene Levy) and heads over to the ministry only to be shot down for his smartass comment (but still quick on the brain to get out of a fix). Through Dr. Packadermis J. Elefun's lecture, we find out about there having been a star that crashed on the earth that contained a positive and negative energy orbs or whatever. They had some intentions to place one of them in the Peacekeeper to power up this robot built to protect the city from whatever invasion may happen. The president gets all PO'd over something and has the red orb placed in the robot and have it on a test run, but the robot goes apeshit and a protective glass shield is placed between him and the scientists in time, but Toby gets stuck on the other side and is vaporized by the Peacekeeper, who almost killed off the rest of the guys after absorbing through the glass before Dr. Elefun put a little posi-juice to his nega-juice (what'll play out a little more later in this film I can tell you).

Left with only Bart-eh, Toby's lucky red cap, Dr. Tenma puts all his time and effort to replicating his son as a robot (in typical movie magic fashion, from a single strain of hair inside the cap for DNA which just happens to have all of Toby's memories stored). Toby is reborn as a robotic double, for which Tenma now feeling too guilty for the loss of his own son feels he has to be there at Toby's side 24/7, but he just couldn't see to accept him sooner or later as his own son, and eventually tells the boy he doesn't want him anymore. This comes right after Toby discovers he can listen to robots talk (hardly ever explained at all) and can fly with his rocket boots or whatever. After a brief enconter with President Stone's robots, he is flung off of the floating city, down to the surface of the earth, in a giant scrap pile of robotic discards where a gang of human orphans traps and brings Toby (now called Astro by a gang of robots known as the Robot Revolution Front, don't feel like talking about them now) to see a pal of theirs called Hamegg (played by Nathan Lane) who seems to have put on the pounds for this role, who claims to love robots, but who's real intentions are found out later.

I bothered only to scratch the surface of this movie, but the rest of it just sorta goes into places that it's hard to say if I liked it or not. The adaptation takes many liberties and licenses with Tezuka's creation and characters and often feels to reconstituted and modified to go with whatever tastes the execs. think the kids would want. By the time the end comes it pretty much ties up the loose ends though it gives you the unexpected tease that felt so rushed and predictable I just didn't know what to think. The end credits are done in the tacky "Wrath of Khan" font and not even the classic Astro Boy theme song is nowhere to be heard (as I sorta like to have it there to begin with). No, this film is only really worth your time on DVD via rental so I hope I did a good job with the facts, sorry that it seems like I'm cutting this short, but the film made me do it!

As an addendum, I kinda thought the stupid Universal Studios bit after the end credits was OK, though I wish they done the Animal House ref. too, since then I may have felt more vindicated for having to see my 7 bucks to to this American-Japanese-Chinese collective.

Couldn't help but noticing last month marked the last time a new episode of MST3K came out 10 years ago, this of course was a held over episode in the 10th season that aired on Sci Fi on Sept. 12, 1999, "Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders". I just thought about it right now since I still miss the show dearly, and it was a shame Sci Fi bothered being dicks about not renewing it past the third season. That show was perfect on there.

And because someone's always sticking things up online, here's the episode in question for those to view!


Nowadays the new SyFylus channel just annoys me with it's wrestling and reality-based programming that has little bearing on Science Fiction, no doubt wanting to harbor a far larger audience than the 30 year old basement geeks the network catered to a decade ago. I'm all right with that, but it's sad seeing these channels just fall apart after so many years of fine service.

Personally I was not that big into this logo when it came out, as i was far more familiar to this more classic one from my toddler days...


The new logo is said to be a throwback to this logo if only for the font design (not too close, but very newbie for today's tots).


Still, I noticed a while back i still had THIS after many years in storage under nook 'n cranny!


Saw there's a page all about it!
www.cmonfwank.com/article023.html

Hope to bother writing more in the future!

An amusing pic i had to find while doing a Google image search, though it's other a doctored parody or a definite bootleg, you decide!