Customer Reviews

Heavy Metal 2000 (Superbit)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

The first installment of Heavy Metal was far superior to this movie, but Heavy Metal 2000 is a very respectable effort. True, the storyline is similar (there's even a part that is a direct copy of the Taarna battle suit dressing sequence) to past plotlines in movies of this genre of films, but the story and action is enough to keep and hold your interest.

The video graphics in this movie are incredible, a seamless blend of cgi and traditional animation. The sound quality is excellent. I am not a heavy metal music fan of any sort, but the music in this movie is great.

If you're the type that likes women whose bodies defy gravity, this movie has it, the women are incredible. There is nudity spread thoroughout, but the sex is not graphic in nature. This film is extremely a parental discretion advised, I strongly recommend it for the 18+ crowd. The violence on the other hand is very graphic, even more so than the first Heavy Metal movie.

I've read the other reviews so I'll not repeat the plotline for this movie. I recommend this movie to those who enjoy a "different" kind of movie. This is an adult animated comic book well worth viewing if you enjoy the Heavy Metal magazine offerings.

I have the DVD version and highly recommend this movie (or any movie for that matter) in this format for the extras as well as the superb video and audio quality.

I'll give you a measure of how forgettable this film was- I bought the new release of the original Heavy Metal and Heavy Metal 2000 at the same time. I found myself remembering almost every scene in the original movie, even though I hadn't seen it in over 20 years. Then I watched HM2000. About halfway through I vaguely recalled that I had seen it before, but there wasn't one single scene that I clearly remembered- and I probably only saw it about three years ago. It was that forgettable, that ordinary.

Don't get me wrong; this isn't necessarily a bad film. The animation is very well done, very slick and seamless. The writing and voice acting is competent and professional. The sound track is certainly better incorporated into the animation and story than it was in the original. Everything was competently done, it was just.... ordinary. Nothing jumped out at you. It was like a Saturday morning cartoon episode- just with a little more violence, and a lot more animated nudity (animated nudity- I mean what's the point?)

Personally, I'd save my money and buy the new release of the original Heavy Metal. Sure, the animation looks crude by today's standards- but it was done the old, time-consuming, expensive way of drawing one cell at a time. The original was also crammed full of a variety of different animation styles and story lines. Perhaps that was because it was the first big budget science fiction animated feature and the people involved had so much enthusiasm that they tried to do too much. In contrast, I don't think anyone got too enthusiastic about this film. Sure, they did a solid job of craftsmanship, but where is the originality, the fire, the spirit? Kind of reminds me of the original heavy Metal magazine, it started out fresh and new and just slowly petered out to nothing....

I have been a reader of HM magazine since I was a boy. I was and still am a great fan of the first film. HM2K is a big disappointment for me. Instead of offering some of today's best sci-fi writers an opportunity to contribute a compilation of short stories for the new film, the film makers went with a poorly developed feature length tale that is as predictable and boring as a merry-go-round at the county fare. Despite the aid of modern computers the animation lacks in style and detail as compared with the original film. Even the music is poor this time around! The first film was a successful attempt to translate the style of the magazine to the big screen. HM2K is clearly an attempt to provide the publishers wife (Julie Strain) with star billing in her own film. Trust me on this one......THIS MOVIE BITES!!

Watch the last segment of the original Heavy Metal called "Tarna" instead. The plot scheme of HM2K is lifted directly from that. They took a tight short story from one film and stretched it out needlessly here.

The details have changed, but it's still the same story.

The same major plot points exist: "Joe Nobody" encounters weird green object that turns him evil. Newly evil bad guy slaughters docile people without warning. Babe in high heel boots hunts him down for payback. Bouncy cleavage shots ensue.

Don't get me wrong, I dig the cleavage... but no one actually got down and dirty. Onscreen nudity without sex = BORING.

Several scenes were torn DIRECTLY from the original movie's "Tarna" segment. Why do angry babes bent on revenge always catch the bad guys drinking at some dive bar?

The one scene that brought home the lack of originality was when our heroine FAKK2 takes a dip in a pool and gets dressed in a leather bikini to do battle near the end. It was a shot-for-shot remake of Tarna taking a dip in a pool, then dressing in a leather bikini to do battle in the original movie. I do not exaggerate, they both put on their Victoria's Secret battle gear the SAME WAY. That would have been fine if this was a true sequel connected to the previous story.

But this is not the case.

HM2K is boring. The attempts at jokes all fall flat. You can get more bawdy humor from an episode of South Park on TV. The action scenes are clunky. The ... shots do nothing to stir the libido. There are many other faults, but the main problem is that someone thought this was a great idea and decided to waste their money to make it.

I really tried to like this movie since the first Heavy Metal was favorite in my household along with a more obscure Rock & Rule movie which really no one has seen but me and other weird people. Anyway, the plot is almost non-existent like in the Fast and the Furious but I can at least I can that movie without feeling nausated not so for Heavy Metal: FAKK2... Julie Strain looks great as animated "shero" unfortunately she doesn't get naked but only once and that's when she first tries to kill Ironside's voiced antagonists. I've forgotten the character's name because he made that much of an impression on me. Infact I've forgotten all of the character's names and all I can recall is the bloody fight scene towards the end as the bad guy was about to enter this temple and get some water so that he could live forever or some such nonsense and they were using swords and bows and arrows. Yeah, this takes place in the future...okay what's with the swords? Oh and the monk turning out to be the REAL bad guy at the end...Gee I wasn't expecting that.
The first Heavy Metal was more of the rock opera and certainly enough adult situtions to keep even the lowest male life form interested but this sequeal to the classic seems like a rush job like getting a small Healthy Choice Meal after a long day of playing flag football when you were expecting maybe a Swanson's Hungry Man. Don't even this stinker. Though I must admit the little rock dude was cool.

The story of this film would have been better had they used the so-called film adaption of the summer 1999 magazine...when i read that i was blown away and couldn't wait for the film to be released. Now i can see why this film was never released theatrically. The 2D Animation reminds me of saturday morning cartoons.. The 3D animation for the spaceships doesn't blend well with the 2D stuff. What's with all the fade to black after every other scene ? Felt like i was watching something on tv with the commercials missing. Music snippets didn't last too long.. all around crap... I love the sndtrk... I still buy the magazine... And yeah I own the DVD and wouldn't give it up. Heavy Metal collector the last 15 yrs. the 1980 film was by far better

The appeal of the original was that it was an animated version of the magazine. The appeal of the origial magazine was the mixture of styles, and the effortless "bad boy" attitude it exuded as a whole. As to the meandering plot? That was part of the appeal. If you didn't like one approach, there were at least three or more others that would turn you on! Heavy Metal 2000 misses the point entirely. It was flat, boring and felt like "Walt Disney Gets a Woody". I mean, it even had the same visual style of "Beauty and the Beast". The effortless adolescent raunch of #1 was replaced with the forced, "Aren't we bad? tee-hee!"
And get a load of the hero, a whiny genXer that the original Den would have snapped in two. He wasn't cool, he was a pain! The heroine just kept missing the mark. The whole thing was kid stuff!
Don't waste your money, rent the second one and buy the first one and prepare to leave your brain at home!

The main problem with this film, at least in my opinion, is that it isn't a conglomeration of stories like the original was. Its all one story, one set of characters, one group of animators...and it therefore doesn't have the "epic" appeal the original did. It would have been nice, knowing so many American animators out there who wouldn't mind having such an innocent start in their career, to have had different stories done by different people. Why can't we have an American version of "Robot Carnival" or perhaps more recently "The Animatrix"?

That being said, lets talk about this movie. A miner working on a meteor discovers an evil glowing rock that turns him evil and makes him do evil things. He promptly dubs himself the evil "Lord Tyler" and takes over the ship making the crew do evil things.

OK, listen, who the hell decided to name him Lord Tyler? That is the dumbest, most unthreatening name in film history. It sounds like a 98 pound dweeb who's been going at Dungeons and Dragons too much.

"Gna! I am Lord Tyler! Fear me! Gnaaaaaa!"

Any way, Lord Tyler takes his evil crew and quickly attacks a peaceful, defenseless planet because he can. Sadly, he fails to kill Julie and her sister, the latter which he kidnaps obviously so he can do evil things to her. Julie picks up an annoying sidekick because every needs one, and together they go to a space station.

What follows is one of the worst animated action scenes in history. Julie stands and shoots her gun, the villains stand and shoot their gun...and every dies except either of them. Clearly the bullets are hurt that these two groups of people would want to kill each other, and must kill others to show them that violence is stupid. Or maybe the director just stinks at making action scenes.

Lord Tyler gets away casting "magic missile" and lands on a planet inhabited by lizard beings and six-eyed weenies. The six-eyed weenies hold the water of eternal life, but Lord Tyler is scared by six-eyed people so he just goes with the lizard people instead, hoping to let them do the fighting for him. Julie tries to seduce and slaughter him, but some how the rock care bear in the story runs in, pulls her out, and the movie continues another thirty minutes.

Then there's the climactic battle between the lizards and weenies. Julie and archnemesis Lord Tyler duke it out in a poorly choreographed fight before he's finally killed (actually, his mom tells him to stop playing "Everquest" and asks him to come up for dinner). The movie could end, but then one of the good guys turns out to be a CG monster and the movie continues another five minutes. Then it ends. Finally.

So what is this storyline? Well, like reviewers before me have said, its basically the last story in the original film but stretched out for another hour and a half. It could have been cool but...no it wasn't.

Loosely connected to the first HM of '81, this sequel has a single tale of lust and immortality in place of the anthology of the older movie. While mining an asteroid, one of the miners finds a crystal shard - the key to a fountain of immortality. The fountain itself is on another planet thousands of light years away. Unfortunately, the miner is played (okay, "voiced") by Michael Ironside and, faster than you can say "Oh No, General Katana is approaching!!" the key consumes the miner's soul and sends him off on a quest of conquest to find the well. First off, he must ravage a remote planet whose few human inhabitants contain traces of an element that staves off death. While successfully carting away most of the population of this distant planet, he misses Julie - a six-foot hottie with a big gun and a bottomless reservoir of rage. The two battle across the galaxy - first to satisfy her thirst for revenge, but then for the sake of immortality itself.

Even having been warned, this flick is still a big disappointment. The first movie was guilty fun - catering and yet lampooning the rock-fan in each of us. The animation was crude, yet in a charming way that today's assembly-line animation or CGI will never know. (Imagine a story built on all those way-out 1970's album covers, and you get the idea.) With animation reflecting an era that predated Japanimation, "Heavy Metal" grew better with age - a time capsule of bad music and laughably bad humor. The new movie offers none of that - no memorable lines, images or characters. Though patterned largely on "Taarna, the Terakien" from the first movie, HM2 has none of the spirit or wit of the earlier story, and Julie emotes less character (which is bad when you remember that Taarna was mute). In short, the movie offers less than a fraction of the entertainment value of a single episode of "Heavy Metal" the magazine.

...to see just how bad it is. Unlike it's predecessor Heavy Metal 2k has one single 90 minute story arch talking place in the far future, using both hand drawn animation and very bad CGI, bad even for 2000. The basic plot is that a miner named Tyler (Michael Ironsides) stumbles across a green glowing crystal that is a literal key to the fountain of youth. The only draw back is that the moment he touches it Tyler goes completely bonkers and starts killing a lot of people.

The "Key" draws Tyler to a settlement called Eden, full of people who haves traces of the life giving compound in them, giving them a healthy good looking looks, Tyler probtly kills half of the population and kidnaps the rest, a lone survivor of the raid Julie (Julie Strian) begins a blind quest of revenge.

Everything that could be bad in any given movie is bad in HM2K, the dialog is terrible, both written and performed, the camera work is terrible, there's no back story to speak of, tere are loop holes that even a baby can see, not even a connection to the first firm with the Loc-Nar, which the key is suppose to be a shard from, except that it's green. Also there are not special features on this DVD!!!!!

I don't mind the violence or the nudity, in fact I want to see more of that in western animation, but this movie is just as forgettable as any other movie that Julie Strian stars in.