I figured what better way to start off the new year on my blog with a review, and this time I've finally gotten around to watching the Mega Man Fan Film by Eddie Lebron. Is it everything we could have hoped for in a Mega Man Movie or nothing more than a glorified Live Action Fan Fic? Well don't just take my opinion below, see it for yourself on Screwattack!
Plot Synopsis
The story of Mega Man is far from a complex tale, after all it fit into about a paragraph or so in the original game's instruction manual. Dr. Thomas Light, genius in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence, constructs 8 new powerfully advanced robots with the assistance of his long time confidant and lab technician, Dr. Wily. After introducing his robots to the world, and being adored by the media, Dr. Light decides the next robot he'd like to create without Dr. Wily's assistance, due to a complication relating to their first prototype. This of course infuriates Dr. Wily, who hatches a nefarious plot for revenge and world domination!
The new Robot turns out to be Rock, programed and designed to be the most human like in both body and mind of all Dr. Light's robots. After only a day of being built, Rock goes through a mid life crisis, unable to find purpose with his existence. This goes on FOREVER until Dr. Wily finally kidnaps Dr. Light's robots and sends them loose on the city.
Knowing he is the only one who can stop Dr. Wily, Rock convinces Dr. Light to upgrade him into a super fighting robot, now known as Mega Man. Mega Man initially struggles to defeat each robot master but then is aided by the mysterious prototype robot who had fled from Dr. Light's lab. This robot, Blues, through a mistake in his core design, somehow managed to have free will, and for now, has decided to aid Mega Man in his quest against Dr. Wily.
Eventually Mega Man defeats all of Dr. Wily's robot masters, but is then trounced by Wily's war machine, The Yellow Devil. Blues destroys the monster and takes Mega Man back to Dr. Light where, broken and battered, he tries to recover.
Meanwhile, Dr. Wily has stolen Mega Man's schematics, and sent in a Copy Machine to kidnap Roll to use as a hostage. Roll is easily deceived by the Copy Machine and captured just as Mega Man recovers. Dr. Wily threatens to kill Roll if Mega Man doesn't come and surrender at his floating skull fortress of doom! Mega Man eventually beats the Copy Machine, defeats Wily, and saves Roll. Dr. Wily surrenders and begs Mega Man to not hurt him just as the police arrive.
Mega Man and Roll are then seen looking at the city from a park bench, with Mega Man stating that he now feels fulfilled. The two then spot Blues from a distance as they are leaving, while Mega Man gives an approving nod.
Critique
From the off-set this movie has many things going against it. First, being an independent film, it has some horrendous acting in it! Truly the most robotic performance here is that of Dr. Light. Edward X. Young has a great voice, but is so deadpan and emotionless that his character is so hard to care about. Most of the acting is stiff as it is, with Mega Man and Roll being particularly bad as well.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, Dr. Wily gives a hilarious, if a bit hammy, performance that I think single-handedly saves the film! It's insane, it's over dramatic, but damn if I couldn't wait to see what the guy would say next!
The second problem with the film is that it is based on a franchise of which the auteur is, if anything, fellating, rather than adding to. There is a lot of tongue n' cheek references, humor, and camp added to this movie that not only feels unnecessary, but I think ultimately hurts the film. Much of the film has representations of Mega Man using his 8-bit sprite, and there is a particularly groan inducing sight gag (which you would only get if you had played the games) where Dr. Light suggests tracking the robots using the select screen from the first game. Of course this never comes up again, so it only serves as a pointless reference.
The robot masters themselves are also ripped straight out of Mega Man Powered Up, exhibiting the exact same personality traits, such as Ice Man's split personality, and Fire Man's BURNING JUSTICE! The characterization here though isn't done for the purposes of the story, but to nod and wink to all those fans that "got it."
That said, I love the direction they went with Proto Man, and the orchestral remix that was done with his theme is a huge highlight to the film. It really fits the mood, and Proto Man's dilemma between death and free will easily makes him the most interesting of all the characters. If the cast was as interesting as Proto Man, this could have been a much better film.
Next, working on a low budget means cruddy special effects, and bad fight choreography. While there isn't a lot an independent director can do about some of this stuff, the cheese factor is off the charts with the badly rendered 3D models of some of the robot masters. Perhaps if all the robot masters were 3D rendered, this wouldn't have looked as bad, but Mega Man vs. Guts Man for example, looks just so silly.
On top of this, the fights are extremely quick, incredibly anti-climatic, and lack creativity in the weapon usage. I grant the games don't give much wiggle room in say doing something like, using the Rolling Cutter to cut a tree down so it falls on somebody for instance, but this movie had every opportunity to keep the fights from being "Mega Man blasts robot, robot blasts Mega Man." Unfortunately for the majority of the fights, they decided the back and forth shooting was the route to go.
There was one really good use of the special effects, and that would be Ice Man's surfing freeze move, which was done quick and not focused on heavily enough to detract from the effect. Good movies disguise their faults, but this one seems to take no issue with it.
Finally there's the writing. There's a story in here about the humanity of man and what it really means to be alive... except it's really hamfisted in here and painfully delivered. So blatant are the characters emotions, the dialogue may as well be "Beep boop, I am sad." "Boop Beep, I am sad too."
There's a lot of milling around in this movie, especially at the beginning as the director tries to establish these characters for the audience, and they really eat up a portion of the movie. The characterization doesn't come off very well, as the cast redundantly goes over the same issues, from the same perspective, the same way. Scenes not dedicated to Mega Man's post-activation depression feel like the characters are quizzing each other on plot holes. A typical scene plays out like this:
Mega Man: Dr. Light! Why doesn't Dr. Wily do this?
Dr. Light: Oh Mega Man! Because of this technology thingie!
Mega Man: Well how bout I do this?
Dr. Light: Sorry Mega, you're stuck with this other technology babble thing!
By contrast, the actions sequences are incredibly brief, as if the director was feeling the need to rush through them to get back to the character scenes.
At the end of the day, this movie doesn't stand on it's own legs. It's made for Mega Man fans, and that's it. So absorbed is this movie in it's own franchise that it's really impossible to enjoy knowing nothing about Mega Man. Take that away and you've got a badly acted drama about robots with some fight scenes glossed over. The movie celebrates the franchise but brings nothing to it. This movie isn't going to bring new fans to the table, or bring back fans of the classics. While it's not the worst movie I've ever seen, at best, the enjoyment of the film comes at it's own expense (in the so bad it's good way) and at worst, it's a hero-worship title without any ambition to do the series any favors. Maybe worth watching if you're insatiability curios, but you won't miss anything by skipping it either.
