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Steamboy: Director's Cut (2005)

Anna Paquin , Patrick Stewart , Katsuhiro Ôtomo  |  PG-13 |  DVD
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (107 customer reviews)

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Product Details

  • Actors: Anna Paquin, Patrick Stewart, Alfred Molina, Anne Suzuki, Masane Tsukayama
  • Directors: Katsuhiro Ôtomo
  • Writers: Katsuhiro Ôtomo, Sadayuki Murai
  • Producers: Hideyuki Tomioka, Shigeru Watanabe, Shinji Komori
  • Format: AC-3, Animated, Color, Director's Cut, Dolby, Dubbed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
  • Language: Portuguese (Dolby Digital 2.0), English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 2.0), Japanese (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0)
  • Subtitles: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese
  • Dubbed: English, French, Portuguese, Spanish
  • Subtitles for the Hearing Impaired: English
  • Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
    PLEASE NOTE:
    Some Region 1 DVDs may contain Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE). Some, but not all, of our international customers have had problems playing these enhanced discs on what are called "region-free" DVD players. For more information on RCE, click .
  • Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
  • Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
  • DVD Release Date: July 26, 2005
  • Run Time: 126 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (107 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B0009P42S2
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,733 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
  • Learn more about "Steamboy: Director's Cut" on IMDb

Special Features

  • Director's Cut of the feature film
  • "Re-Voicing Steamboy" Featurette
  • Interview with Katsuhiro Otomo
  • Multi-screen Landscape study
  • Ending Montage
  • Production Drawings
  • Animation Onion Skins

Editorial Reviews

Additional Features

The many extras on the DVD have been overproduced but underthought. "Animation Onion Skins" shows five scenes in various phases of production, but there are no captions or commentary to explain the significance of the stages or their relationship to each other. Several artists talk about the production in the "Multi-Screen Landscape Study" (a split-screen making-of for an exhibit in Japan), but nothing tells the viewer who they are or what they did. The interview with Otomo is less than a one-quarter as long as the very standard "Revoicing" featurette. --Charles Solomon

Product Description

Victorian London is attacked by an army of futuristic, mechanized war machines, and only Ray Steam - the brave, young inventor who knows the astonishing secret behind the invasion force's incredible power - stands between the city's survival and ultimate destruction. Voice talent is provided by Anna Paquin, Alfred Molina, and Patrick Stewart. Extras include director's cut, subtitled and dubbed versions, featurette, interview with Katsuhiro Otomo, production drawings, animation onion skins, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Worthy successor to Akira July 29, 2005
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
In Steamboy, Director Otomo turns his attention to the Steampunk genre, and the result is a gripping Victorian era techno-thriller. The macguffin of the plot is a ball that is supposedly able to store steam at enormous pressure and density. It doesn't make much sense, but it manages to drive a plot with a lot of action, engaging steam-puffing war machines, and some moderately sophisticated debate about the uses of science and technology.

The characters are engaging, although hero Ray is the usual somewhat generic plucky adolescent. The spoiled adolescent aristocrat Scarlett is considerably more interesting, as are Ray's father and grandfather, who personify conflicting ideas about the uses of technology.

The animation is, of course, wonderful, as expected from the director of Akira. The film is full of strikingly original action scenes, which are both well conceived and well executed. Destruction abounds. Reputedly, the film used quite a bit of computer graphics, but it is extraordinarily well integrated. The hand-drawn characters do not have the "pasted in" look that has characterized most previous attempts to combine hand drawn and computer generated art, and I was hard put to tell where the traditional animation ended and the computer animation began.

The DVD includes both the original Japanese version (with English subtitles available) as well as an English dubbed version. The English dubbing is extremely well done, with top notch talent including Anna Paquin (Rogue from the XMen movies) as the adolescent boy hero, Patrick Stewart as his grandfather, and Alfred Molina as his father. The English dubbing was overseen by Otomo himself, and is arguably better suited to the story than the original Japanese, as it is set in Victorian England. There are, however, a few moments where the words do not quite mesh with the mouth movements--which is a bit of a testament to the quality of the animation; in most animated films, you can't tell what language the characters are supposed to be speaking, anyway.

Although this is an animated film, it is not a kid's movie, and some parents will probably find some scenes inappropriate for small children. There is a lot of violence and destruction, at least as much as in a typical theatrical action thriller, but relatively little gore or overt killing--less than in Akira. There is, however, a moment when young Scarlett comes face-to-face with a dead soldier. It is an important and necessary scene, but might be troubling to some children.
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36 of 45 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Anime for a mainstream audience June 16, 2005
Format:DVD
Background:

Steamboy is the first movie directed by a giant from Japanese anime Katsuhiro Otomo since his ground breaking movie Akira from 16 years ago. Unlike most anime fans I saw Steamboy before seeing its more famous partner. If you are expecting another Akira you will be disappointed since Steamboy is a 180 degree opposite in ambiance although both movies explore similar themes. Instead of Akira's dsytopic nihilistic Neo-Toyko Otomo re-creates a romantic optimistic Victorian England. Steamboy has the feel of a more mainstream Hollywood style action/adventure movie. Steamboy presents a fascinating intersection of history and sci-fi as its backdrop. The DVD is the director's cut with your choice of having the dialogue in English, Japanese and various Romance languages. Also, one can have subtitles in English, and the other languages.

Non-spoiler Plot:

Steamboy takes place in Victorian England in 1866. Although Otomo rewrites history by throwing in many elements not yet existing in 1866 but are from that overall period including Tower Bridge and battleships not built till the last decade of the 19th century. The movie is centered on the ownership of a Steam Ball which can generate the power equivalent to a small nuclear reactor. The movie, as typical in many Japanese anime and fantasy movies, centers on the issue of what is the proper use of this new breakthrough technology. This conflict is represented as an intergenerational conflict within the Steam family. The elder Steam, Lloyd (voiced by Patrick Stewart) has become deranged seeing his invention being put to what he sees as evil uses, his son Eddie (voiced by Alfred Molina), who is half man/machine, in a Nietzschian view sees the Steam Ball as a showcase of the power of science for science sake to push humankind to new heights. Eddie's 13 year old son Ray (voiced by Anna Paquin) is caught in the middle trying to save his father and grandfather and London from the consequences of their invention. A nefarious corporation, the O'Hara Foundation wants the Steam Ball, and the British are interested in acquiring it too sending Robert Stephenson, a tribute to the namesake who with his father invented the railway locomotive and built the first rail line from Liverpool to Manchester in 1830, to gain control of the Steam Ball for the sake of national security.

The movie spends the first part in Manchester and the surrounding countryside, including a panorama showing to borrow Dickens "satanic mills" dominating the city spewing black smoke into the air. The movie shifts to London centered on a park on the bank of the Thames. Otomo accurately animates the atmospheric effects of London's fog and smog. The park is home to the Crystal Palace, magnificently recreated in this anime movie, housing the Great Exhibition and the O'Hara Foundation Pavilion, using the design of Royal Albert Hall. [In history, the Crystal Palace, one of the great architectural achievements of the Victorian era, was built in 1851 to house the Great Exhibition of that year. The Great Exhibition in what might be considered the first World's Fair organized by Queen Victoria's consort Prince Albert the Exhibition invited all the nations of the world to showcase the technologies and applications that came about from the Industrial Revolution.] The O'Hara Foundation sponsors the research of Eddie and Lloyd Steam that resulted in the invention of the Steam Ball. As we learn in the film the O'Hara Foundation has darker purposes for attending the Great Exposition besides showcasing the latest benevolent inventions. The titular representative of the O'Hara foundation is Scarlett O'Hara (voiced by anime regular Kari Wahlgren), around the same age as Ray, who is the sole heir to the O'Hara fortune. We immediately get the idea the Scarlett is a spoiled brat who complains about the smell and soot of London and enjoys bossing around the head of marketing for the O'Hara Corporation Archibald Simon. (PETA members might not like what she does to her poor Chihuahua Columbus). Although Scarlett is the one character who undergoes the most change as she sees the consequences of the her family's firm inventions. The movie is filled with action and adventure including chase scenes, and battle that breaks out at the area around the Crystal Palace where Otomo introduces many of the "futuristic" elements of the movie, and the reveling of Eddie's vision of science in the Steam Castle (Steam Tower in the english subtitles).

Analysis:

The main strength of this film is the gorgeous combination of traditional hand drawn 2-D and 3-D CGI animation. From what I have read, Otomo and his creative design team spent time on England, visiting London, Manchester and York, and studying steam locomotives and machinery from the Victorian era to beautifully recapture Victorian England, the motifs of that era, and the mechanical designs of the machinery down to the last rivet. For example, the Royal Navy ships in the movie are accurate recreations of real warships from the Victorian era. This research paid off in the stunning detail of the movie. You are starring at the screen just to soak up the details of the machinery Otomo created. I enjoyed how the movie used real historic events and places, mentioned above, as the backdrop for the movie. They showed great imagination in designing the "futuristic" elements which retains a 19th century appearance and mechanical design. Unlike other Japanese anime with their convoluted plot lines this is a straight forward action/adventure movie. The movie is dominated by browns and has a sepia tone to it. There are some wonderful animation effects including how lenses distort images, from what I understand this is a very difficult effect, to scenes with tons of falling confetti, to a scene where glass is shattered and on each chard you see an imprinted moving image from an earlier scene.

There is not much character development in this movie except for perhaps Scarlett. Most of the characters are representations of the different uses of science and technology. Eddie is the personification of science for science sake without any moral/ethical considerations. Lloyd takes the opposite view that science must be looked at in terms of the moral/ethical impact and science should be restricted if it leads to a "bad" outcome. Ray is caught in the middle conflicted about what he should do and shows concern for both his father and grandfather. His actions and decisions are based on what he learns about the motives of the characters and his underlying desire to save his father and grandfather. Robert Stephenson sees science as being used for national security reasons. Scarlett espouses the economic rationale for scientific advancement. Although the characters are not quite so black and white. Eddie is perhaps misguided but he is not evil personified. When one sees Lloyd's vision of the uses of science for frivolity you might find yourself believing his view is just as extreme as Eddie's but in the opposite direction. Scarlett has the obvious rich girl spoiled brat attitude but Otomo shows underlying this façade is a sensitive, and intelligent girl. Otomo has these characters espouse their beliefs explicitly in their dialogue which often become monologues and lectures.

Otomo uses the several characters to present different philosophies on the use of science but leaves it up to the viewer to make their own decision. The plot could used some improvement and the action can get a bit overwhelming at times. The machinery tends to overwhelm the story Otomo is trying to tell.

I very much enjoyed the classical soundtrack by Steven Jablonsky. He developed wonderful themes for Ray and Scarlett and utilizes them throughout the movie.

Overall, Steamboy should appeal to a both anime fans and a more conventional audience. This movie is far superior to Hollywood's recent attempt at Steampunk with Will Smith's Wild Wild West and Sean Connery's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.Time magazines Richard Corliss listed Steamboy, along with Akira, as one of the top 5 anime movies available on DVD. A side benefit of this movie is the educational opportunities this movie provides in further explorations of the Victorian era and the Industrial Revolution.

The movie is rated PG-13 for the action. The PG-13 is more to the PG side than R side. There is one scene with blood but there is no objectionable language or suggestive sexual scenes.

DVD Features: The transfer to DVD is excellent with great sound and picture quality. The aspect ratio was 1.85:1 so the transfer does not take full advantage of widescreen TVs, the wide screen version of Star Wars has an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. The DVD features are pretty bland. There is no director's commentary which is understandable give the language barrier. There is a 5 minute interview with director Katsuhiro Otomo. There is a 15 minute featurette about the challenges of re-dubbing the movie in English with Anna Paquin, Alfred Molina, and Patrick Stewart. The 20 minute multi-screen landscape study splits the screen three ways. First there are scenes from the movie mixed with real life shots of London. 15 minutes of this featurette are interviews with the creative team discussing how they made the movie. The ending montage shows the images from the end credits of the English dubbed theatrical release without the text. Although this ending was a condensed version of the director's cut ending, which is the ending for the movie on this DVD. The production drawings are still shots of paintings used to develop ideas in the movie, some of which are pretty interesting. The animation onion skins shows the process by which five scenes are built combining hand drawn and CGI techniques although there is no dialogue explaining the process.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Through the Past Darkly June 30, 2007
Format:DVD
Taken on its own, this is a dazzling film. Fans comparing various anime might find reason to cavil, but I probably like it for reasons others don't. It doesn't mix and match CGI effects or use up its bag of tricks. It's not given to constantly shifting camera angles merely because computerized cameras can do that, which still seems a novelty to live action producers. It stays largely to its color palette, the dark, forbidding tones of a Dicknesian Victorian England. By comparison I found the preview for Final Fantasy VII, which some fans probably consider state of the art, extremely boring.

Steamboy plays like a filmed book, very deftly showing more than it tells. When there is speaking, it rarely clears things up, but merely adds more red herrings to the story. The film obviously owes a lot to Sherlock Holmes, as well as the earlier mechanical (as opposed to later electronic) ingenuity of The Wild Wild West TV show. But it draws subtly from these inspirations. Steamboy ends as it has to, in the epic fashion of Jules Verne and all Victorian and Edwardian visionary novels. One scene is also quite similar to the visually arresting opening of Chesterton's 1905 novel, The Ball and The Cross, although the story line is entirely different. I expect that except for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the future visions of this era are largely unexplored as film territory. The ending also suggests that a sequel, or even a series could follow. But instead it does something else: depict the "continuing adventure" in poignant scenes behind the closing credits. Choosing one of the extra features runs this imaginative portrayl without the credits.

The main characters are all inventors, and all in the same lineage. The father and grandfather's long- winded speeches about Science are hard to take seriously, but the same optimistic view of a rosy future exists in numerous Victorian era books. The show also revolves around the London Exhibition and the famous Crystal Palace, then the showplace of British and world progress. But what else is the film? A parable? A puzzle? An exploration? Does the use of steam for military purposes echo other sorts of energy harnessed for destruction, as foreshadowed in the aeroplane sequences during the credits? Is the economic thralldom in which Britain was held in the nineteenth century meant to resonate in our own? If the denouement seems predictable and the ending somewhat forced, the issues that puzzle the characters nevertheless remain "live" questions in this visually spectacular and intriguing film.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars i saw it and wanted it
I just wanted this movie in my collection. I saw it and this movie is great. The shipping and condition on it is good.
Published 2 days ago by Lum Lum
5.0 out of 5 stars it's a classic
this movie is awesome. its no studio ghibli movie but still great. i love that i can watch it anywhere on my psp.
Published 1 month ago by Subway
5.0 out of 5 stars Good
I was very satisfied the product and the speed I received it I would do business with them again, I was very satisfied
Published 3 months ago by Jerry L. Wescott
5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous animation and a bold vision
The piece is set in the mid-1800s, during the first great surge of the industrial revolution. The filmmakers succeed in making us see the huge, overwrought machines of the day as... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Richard Hunter
4.0 out of 5 stars Very nice follow up to Akira
.... and one of the better Steam Punk movies out there. Great visuals and sound and I don't usually like to play the dubbed soundtrack but it was well done.
Published 3 months ago by Steven Schreier
1.0 out of 5 stars Streaming version only has subtitles
If the streaming version, which is also available for download, has subtitles only and does not offer the English translation featuring Patrick Stewart, Anna Paquin, and Alfred... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Scott
5.0 out of 5 stars great
This product was great and the concept of the pricing was ideal for
the product type! This was great !
Published 4 months ago by Mario cavett
1.0 out of 5 stars Not in English!!!!!!!!
I bought this movie with the understanding that it was in English. It even describes the movie add using Anna Paquin and Patrick Stewart voices. Even the preview is in English. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Ottimus1
4.0 out of 5 stars Great Anime!!!!
This is one of the first in a series of Anime adventures from the pioneer of the industry. It is a great kick in the pants wonderland with awesome interactions and story line so... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Michael T. Brennan
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Animation!
I enjoyed Steamboy very much. Great plot and action. Animation was very, very detailed. Loved every second of this film.
Published 6 months ago by RevCraig
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differences in versions
DVDPacific.com has more detailed descriptions
http://www.dvdpacific.com/item.asp?ID=669677

The Gift Set has:
"Re-Voicing Steamboy" Featurette
Interview with Katsuhiro Otomo
Ending Montage
Multi-Screen Landscape Study
Production Drawings
End Credits Without Text
Animation Onion... Read more
Apr 27, 2006 by Modena F360 |  See all 2 posts
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