Movie review: Appleseed: Ex Machina (2007)

• May 25, 2008
• James Skemp
• dvd / movie, review

The release of Appleseed: Ex Machina (2007) came as a bit of surprise to me, since I hadn't heard it was coming out (not that I generally look very hard into these things).

Initial reviews seemed mixed - pretty and featuring direct John Woo influence, but no story. When I saw it was available for Netflix instant viewing, I couldn't resist.

While it's true that the story is pretty simple, i.e. you'll know generally what's going to happen before it happens, the story really wasn't that bad - after all, the most important part is how they move from one point to another. We see both of our true favorites, Deunan and Briareos (voiced by 'Togusa'), along with old and supporting cast.

Visually, the movie is extremely pleasing. The ~9 minute intro isn't quite as quick or stunning as Appleseed (2004)'s (IMO), but it's pretty dang close (and may be more of an impact because it was the first featuring this style of animation).

The character models in the 2004 version did get a bit of grief about movement, and you'll still see some of that here. However, seeing as how Japan excels at life-like animation, it's no surprise that they've made some improvement here.

As an aside, I already mentioned that I watched the Netflix instant version of this movie. I was amazed and rather pleasantly surprised by both the quality of the video and it was presented with Japanese audio and English subtitles.  

I gave this movie 5 of 5 stars, since I can see adding this to my collection in the near future.