Sci-Fi animated films

This is a collection of reviews of science fiction movies that are primarily animations. I pulled them out of the main feature movies list, because I felt that they were a different order of thing than those with actors.

La Planète sauvage
Fantastic Planet

1973 Les Films Armorial, Ceskoslovenský Filmexport

OK emancipation on alien world

color cartoon

This is a straight story of escape from enslavement and debasement, told on a surreal alien planet.

Aliens: “Draag”, humanoid, blue, hairless, with big round red eyes and fish fin ears. The females have breasts and round bottoms, though. The Draag do all sorts of incomprehensible things. They are several times as tall as the humans, whom they call the “Oms”. (French hommes.)

Places: Ygam is the planet of the main action. Toward the end, we learn that “Fantastic Planet” refers to a moon of Ygam... but the script never fleshes that location out.

The planet Ygam is full of Bosch-esque animals.

Gadgets: The Oms get educated from a telepathic learning device stolen from the Draag. The Draag make use of numerous material objects in strange ways, most of which remain unexplained. There’s a recognizable low-tech extermination device that disperses poison tablets. Little floating reconnaissance rockets leave spots of light on things they look at.

Weapons: Oms use various things for fighting, mostly knives and hooks, apparently made of biological objects. The only explicit weapon is a “fighting animal” strapped to combatants.

The animation is very weird and beautiful, to me. It’s at least novel.

Warning: the film wraps up prematurely, like they ran out of time and money. Pretty disappointing.

Полигон
[Polygon]
aka. ”Firing Range”

1977

+ mind-reading tank

color cartoon

Russian

Mind-reading tank weapon. Unusual animation technique.

The Iron Giant

1999 Warner Brothers Feature Entertainment

++ robot from space, animated

cartoon

Date/Place: 1957 / Rockwell, Maine

Robot: He came from space, but has lost the memory. He doesn’t handle electricity well, and becomes self-aware. Evidently he was intended as a weapon, but he decides he’s “not a gun”.

Gadgets: Sputnik 1, F-86 Sabres, Polaris missile (an anachronism: these weren’t deployed until 1961, several years after Sputnik 1).

The cartooning is just gorgeous, and the writing and characterizations are totally fun and kind of brilliant.

The script pokes a lot of fun of cold-war and space race nuttiness, and 1950s sci-fi monster movies.

There is a nod to Bambi.

The G-man is from the “Bureau of Unexplained Phenomena”.

“Frankly, I’m not at liberty to reveal the particular agency that I work for, and all that that implies.”

WALL·E

2008 Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios

++ eco-crash + animated robots

Date: 29th Century

Premise: people have destroyed Earth’s environment. The only remaining life seems to be cockroaches. One robot, WALL·E, which has achieved a sort of intelligence, remains, dutifully cleaning up huge mounds of garbage.

Vehicles: starliner Axiom, capable of “hyperjump”, by which it travels faster than light, has luxury accommodations for a vast number of utterly useless, vegetative, consumption-centered but good-natured passengers, and a crew of busy robots.

Robots: Many. The protagonist is WALL·E “Waste Allocation Load-Lifter (Earth Class)“, which has achieved a sort of lovable artificial intelligence, keeps collections of things he finds, appreciates 1960s musicals. EVE “Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator”, arrives on Earth, confoundingly wielding a blaster ray, and proceeds to forge a romance with WALL·E. On the starliner, however, there is a bewildering variety of robots.

Computers: ship’s computer, and its second in command, AUTO.

Weapons: blasters, lasers.

Other gadgets: see-through televisors.

Pokes fun at: throw-away culture (which evidently caused the environmental disaster), “super-size me” mentality (the mega-corporation that owns the starships is “Buy n Large”, fashion.