[Short Movie Review 41] After talking about the adaptation of the movie "Alita" from "Gun Dream", we continue to follow the footsteps of the three major Japanese sci-fi comics and enter the world of the animated film of the same name of "Aguilar".
Different from American cyberpunk, Xor or "Gun Dream" tells about an alternate distant future world. This film will be launched in Tokyo in 2019 (the film was released in 1988), and the story has an innuendo from Japanese society. We can see the general chaotic struggle of the student movement in the 1960s and 1970s; we can also see the extension of the bad juvenile atmosphere in the 1970s and 1980s. Borrowing the future to satirize the present is obvious.
Compared with those typical cyberpunk works, it has more fantasy parts, so there are some vague places that cannot be explored, and the ideas will be slightly obscure. Under the cover of science fiction or even magic, this film seems to be a metaphor for the arrogance of human beings in their own power, and the blind pursuit of rights and materials, which will lead to backlash against human civilization. Gaining supernatural power without self-sufficiency will only lead to loss of control and destruction in the end.
"Aguilar", which means "light", brings both destruction and new life. At that time, Japan was at the peak of the economic bubble, and the whole country was clamoring for it, until the government took the initiative to burst the bubble and economic construction started again. The work may have originated from the dissatisfaction with the chaotic society decades ago, and the desire for new life, but it has become a magical warning to the future (in addition, the film successfully predicted that Tokyo will host the Olympic Games in 2020).
I can't help but think that in the real 2019, the Internet civilization is rushing forward, information is exploding, and the pace of life is fast; the old words such as "consumerism, money worship" at that time have long been forgotten; the audience gradually acquiesced to special effects into movies. Subject... Where will the generation infiltrated in cyberspace lead civilization?
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