[Predator City] looks a bit like a live-action version of Hayao Miyazaki's animation, with various aircraft flying in the sky, and the city moving forward on the ground. A girl who was raised by a robot embarks on the road of revenge for her mother, and then meets a little male protagonist while saving a city and falls in love.
[Predator City] is actually an out-and-out steampunk movie, adapted from the first book "Predator City I: Deadly Engine" in the "Predator City" four-part series by British writer Philip River.
The behind-the-scenes lead of the film is Peter Jackson , who served as the producer and screenwriter of the film, and the special effects come from Weta Studios, which has done special effects for the [Lord of the Rings] series.
Although the film did not succeed at the commercial box office as expected, the steampunk world created in it is exciting enough.
Sky jams, moving steel cities, big cities swallowing smaller towns, and all those beautiful flying machines.
The protagonists drive the red airship Jennifer Humph , like a huge red moth, freely shuttle between the air city and the moving city of London. When the war broke out, it was the most important tool. Flying together in the blue night sky.
The airship is a romanticism that belongs to the steampunk world. It is a dream and a dream come true.
In 1991, the famous science fiction master William Gibson and Bruce Sterling co-wrote the novel "The Difference Engine" , which is about the content of aircraft, and wrote:
She stared at the sky, at the outline of the huge, elegant steel flying machine. In her lifetime, it has learned how to fly to the sky. In front of this huge and gorgeous machine, a swarm of small drones flew up and down and screamed like a bagpipe into the red sky.
It is generally believed that "The Difference Engine" in the 1990s was the beginning of the widespread spread of the concept of "Steampunk".
But before that, there were actually too many novels and movies with steampunk aesthetics.
It's a bit bulky and difficult to define precisely, but in general it's about a nostalgic 19th-century Victorian nostalgia with an aesthetic built on a once-in-the-steam era.
Throughout history, the most developed region and era of steam industry is undoubtedly the British Victorian era in the nineteenth century.
During the reign of Queen Victoria (1837 to 1901), it was the peak of the British Empire, and the industrial revolution using steam as a power source was just in the ascendant.
In a sense, this is indeed a romantic era, at least in the nostalgia and fantasy of steampunk works, steam power is exaggerated or myth, new technologies and new machines emerge in endlessly, all kinds of new ideas and new theories with infinite imagination. been continuously raised.
At that time, people were full of confidence in seeking knowledge, beautiful imagination and the courage to do DIY in the future.
The airship, which straddles the two worlds of fantasy and reality, has thus become one of the essential elements in shaping the steampunk world.
The desire to fly has always been one of the greatest dreams in human history, and the realization of this dream may go back to the era of hot air balloons.
As early as 1783, the French Phil brothers made a sensation in the world with their hot air balloon flight. They loaded a sheep and a duck and flew around the Palace of Versailles in a hot air balloon for 8 minutes.
The French royal family, including Louis XVI, witnessed the flight, and it was the first successful flight ever to carry a living creature.
In the years after that, people began to be gradually sent to the sky.
In 1785, for example, Blanchard flew across the English Channel in a hot air balloon with flapping wings and a bird-like tail.
But it wasn't until 1852, nearly 100 years later, that the first airship in the true sense of the word appeared.
With the successful manufacture of a steam engine weighing 160 kilograms and a power of 2.2 kilowatts in 1851, the airship powered by it was finally manufactured.
In September, a Frenchman named Henri Giffard successfully piloted the airship on the outskirts of Paris, and the powered airship entered a new era.
The amazing thing is that, in 1844, before the first steam airship appeared, there was already the first short story about a steam-powered aircraft, "The Snitch" .
Even in the earlier works of fantasy writers such as Mary Shelley and Jules Verne , there were already imaginations and descriptions of powered airships.
But in any case, the real heyday of airships, especially rigid airships, originated from this German designer named Ferdinand Zeppelin.
In 1900, Zeppelin built the first rigid airship (hard skeleton), and a few years later he used all his possessions to build the largest airship at the time.
In 1910, the airship made by Zeppelin officially flew from Frankfurt, Germany to Dussel, establishing the first regular air route. At this time, the airship could carry 24 passengers.
After his death, his heirs built a huge round-the-world airship in his name . In 1929, the round-the-world airship departed from the United States and flew over Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, and China for as many as 21 days before it ended. The journey shocked the whole world.
With the rapid development of airships in the early 20th century, fantasies about airships began to appear more and more in science fiction of this period.
In 1902's "Continent of the Central Sun" , it imagined a group of dwarf geniuses who were good at manipulating airships, let them drive a zeppelin to save the dying hero and heroine, and took them to visit the center of the earth in the hollow.
The world here is a variety of high-tech airships developed by the dwarf civilization. In addition, there are flying fish and many other exotic animals that can fly.
In 1908, HG Welsh's very influential "War in the Air" drew a huge air fleet into the war, and it successfully predicted the coming world war.
In 1910, French writer Georges Clavigny's "Pirates of Spaceships" created a classic image of arrogant and crazy spaceship pirates.
There is even the most representative "Moon Colony" among the early Chinese sci-fi works. Long Menghua, a literati from Hunan, boarded a Japanese airship due to an accident, and finally flew to the moon. People who had no hope for the world established on the moon. A new utopia emerges.
At that time, even though there were already zeppelins, but limited to technology, airship travel was not yet common, and airships were still more of a part of romantic fantasy.
In the 1960s and 1970s and beyond, more airships became symbols of nostalgia for steampunk works.
Well-built aircraft are sometimes tools of imperialism and colonialism, as in Michael Mucock's 1971 novel God of War.
Its creative inspiration comes directly from the First World War, and the aircraft in the novel has also become a tool of war.
But more often, the airship is actually a symbol of freedom and beauty.
For example, in [Predator City], including its original work, the male and female protagonists ride on the red Jennifer Humph airship, which can temporarily escape the harsh predatory city environment, and can also be used as an anti-war tool.
For example, in most of Miyazaki's works, [City in the Sky], [Porcupine], etc., which one is not the pursuit of freedom and romance, or the banner of anti-war?
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Author / Curly Hair
This article was first published on the WeChat public account [Broken Word]
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