There are many films that add many different elements together to make something unique.
Just look at Captain America: Winter Soldier. Combines the superhero genre with political intrigue. Ghostbusters is probably the most famous example of combining horror with comedy, which is hard to pull off, considering how different the two genres are. The movie I’m going to be reviewing today, the 2009 Japanese animated film Summer Wars, directed by Mamoru Hosoda, is another one of those movies.
t combines elements of cyberpunk science fiction with slice-of-life family drama. The film handles both of these two genres extremely well, weaving two parallel plots together to make something new and really awesome.
Ok, let’s get the intro out of the way. In the near future, almost everyone in the world uses a huge virtual reality online network known as OZ. People do everything in this virtual world. Socialize and date using their crazy and weird online avatars. Conduct business meetings and auctions. Play games, go to school, even get married.
Kenji Koiso, a high school math genius who works on the OZ network as a moderator/maintenance worker in his spare time with his friend, is suddenly asked by the girl he’s secretly sweet on, Natsuki Shinohara, to come with her to attend a huge family get-together out in the country in honor of her great-grandmother Sakae Jinnouichi, who is going to be celebrating her 90th birthday in a few days.
On the way there, Natsuki fills Kenji in on a few details about her family. One, they are very large. Two, they are very proud of their heritage, being able to trace their family history back nearly 800 years. Three, they are very close-knit. So all poor Kenji can do now is just go with the flow and try to make it through the next four days.
She neglected to mention that she needs him to pose as her fiance in order to appease her meddling aunts, uncles and cousins, and to make her great-grandmother happy that she has finally found someone to bring home.
If things couldn’t get anymore complicated, Kenji accidentally lets loose a super-virus called “Love Machine” after breaking an encryption puzzle anonymously sent by email, which goes out into the cyber playground of OZ to wreck havoc on the world, real and virtual. Even worse, he’s branded as a cyber-criminal on national TV by the police in front of the whole family. Once everything is explained, it’s up to Kenji and his newfound family to save the world from history’s biggest cyber attack.
Before I get into why I love the film so much, let me bring up one of my major nitpicks about the story. While the design and scope of the “OZ” network is visually stunning and creative, it doesn’t feel like something that would ever exist in real life. Don’t get me wrong, everything you see people do in made-up virtual world, does happen on the real Internet.
But think about this. Twitter, Youtube, Twitch, Instagram and Facebook are all extremely popular Internet services. But they’re not on the same “network” or provide every type of service to everyone that uses the internet, and they are owned by different companies, who compete in separate markets. We’re never told whether OZ is some kind of a joint project run by every major internet company. So that means that whoever created OZ has a monopoly on the world’s online activities. Sure, we can speculate on explanations as to how OZ works, but with not much in-universe explanation, the way OZ works just bugs me a lot.
Also, other aspects of the movie are dated, even if it came out only 7 years ago. That’s not really the movie’s fault, to be fair. But it feels really weird to see something as advanced as OZ, and see everyone using flip-cell phones of all things to access it. It’s not just the fact that there are no smart phones in this world;. there’s no AR, or any futuristic technology besides OZ. Every piece of tech, like computers, phones, etc. is what was currently available in 2008/2009. It’s sort of disconcerting to me, since I read a lot of sci-fi. But it shouldn’t be a problem for most people.
Now that that nitpick is out of the way, let’s talk about what I actually like about this thing. The movie depicts family life very realistically. When I say “realistic”, I mean that, even if you don’t have a large family or attend many family gatherings, you will see interactions, personalities and dialogue, that immediately feels familiar and natural to you over the course of this story.
The best example of what I’m talking about happens during the big family dinner, which also marks the end of the first part of the story.
The really little kids running around the table yelling excitedly, a few babies crying over the noise of conversation. High school and college age kids getting into old arguments with their parents. The aunts are swapping anecdotes while they needle the poor boyfriend for info about his background and career prospects. The dads and uncles are talking about work and joking around. A small group is clustered around the TV, because one of the other kids is participating in the Koshien baseball tournament (which in Japan is a REALLY BIG deal). Sakae, the woman of the hour and family matriarch, is holding court at the head of the table, calm and soft-spoken.
It’s a depiction of family life that seems to be occurring less and less in TV and film. Not too sappy sweet, but not too depressingly dysfunctional either. Almost every member of the family is loving and supportive, but they also squabble and and have their differences.
Of course, every family has their black sheep. This is one of my problems with the movie.
Uncle Rinnosuke crashes the party, and things get really tense, really fast. Of course, Natsuki is completely oblivious to all this, because all she sees is that her cool, easy-going “uncle Suke” is back in her life. It’s clear that the guy has a genuine soft spot for his niece; their interaction is genuinely sweet to watch.
Ok, so what’s the problem? Well, here it is. Rinnosuke is the bastard child of Sakae’s late husband, the product of an affair. After the old man died, the kid ran off to America with his share of his father’s inheritance.That’s it, that’s the whole “scandal” with this guy. The way all the adults react the second he appears at the party, you would think he did jail time for selling crack to children, or stealing from a hospital fund. All he actually did was a) be born out of wedlock and b) he acted a bit like a selfish jerk. Yes, we do find out later that he made a main contribution to the crisis happening with “Love Machine”, but even then, it’s unclear what was the writer’s intent here. Are we supposed to side with the family from the outset, or are we supposed to side with Rinnosuke, because his family is being unfairly judgemental? Maybe this is just a part of Japanese culture that doesn’t translate well to a Western mindset like mine.
Another aspect of the movie that I will praise, with all my heart, is the animation and visuals. Everything looks great and all the movement is fluid and feels natural when the human characters move around and interact with each other. Everyone has their own unique look and way they express themselves. That amount of subtle realism takes a lot of work, and I applaud the staff for taking the effort.
The cast is great in both the original Japanese and the English dub. No matter how small the part, everyone brings their A-game to make each character come off as a real person, and all these people feel like part of a real family.
At the heart of this movie are two themes, one familiar, one more specific and much more urgent.
“Always treasure and respect the bonds you have with people, no matter if they are family or not”. By the middle point of the movie, the family is split between dealing with a big loss to the family, and focusing on stopping “Love Machine” from destroying humanity. The point the movie makes is that neither side is in the wrong for feeling or thinking the way that they do. A loss is meaningful and important, no matter how many people it affects. A crisis is a crisis, no matter if it is personal or of national importance. When something is in front of you at home, it’s hard to think of the world at large. But everyone is a part of a family, and human society is composed of families.
The second theme of the movie “Don’t adopt new technology without knowing the possible dangers involved, or get too comfortable with it.” I feel that this is a very important cautionary part of the story. You may think that “Love Machine” is a fantastical invention of the screen writers, but computer viruses in real life, like Stuxnet, can and have created that much damage and chaos in the world today. The Internet is shockingly vulnerable to cyber attacks, and it will only get worse the more people become part of the online community. It’s not that technology is itself a bad thing; it’s that our ignorance and our irresponsibility are as much to blame for what happens, and technology can help us fix the problems that it creates.
So in conclusion, what we have here is a beautifully animated, well-acted family drama with a fair bit of inventive sci-fi action. Regardless of what gets your attention first, the genuine human warmth of the movie will win you over. The actual plot points and story may have been done before, but they haven’t been done quite like this yet, as far as I know.
The result, is a smile on your face when the credits start rolling. You’ll keep smiling no matter how many times you watch this movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment