"A martial artist's hands are not only used to defeat his opponent... Work on improving every form to its limits, and then you will be able to use it as a means of expressing your soul... Then you can express the path you have taken with your own hands."
- Master Asia to Domon Kasshu in Mobile Fighter G Gundam
Thought about that quote a lot during this movie. It kicks a lot of ass for such a chill take on a martial arts film.
I want to call this a perfect movie, but my wife had a nightmare afterward that the building László was working on turned out to be the Twin Towers, and I think she unlocked the missing piece.
What a bizarre jump from the OVA and first film. So much to unpack. It's more a commentary on Japan's quiet military presence and "peacekeeping" throughout the latter half of the 20th century than it is a Patlabor sequel. But I respect the hell out of it.
Kinda fumbles the landing in the third act as it suddenly remembers there are other members of the SV2 besides Gotoh and Nagumo, and it leans into weirdly sentimental melodrama before abruptly rolling credits. But up until that point, it's a truly fascinating ride. It's absolutely fucking gorgeous too.
What a weird, badass, and silly movie. Hard to imagine deciding to cap off your career-defining, genre-establishing franchise with this ostensible non sequitur, but I'm glad Yoshiyuki Tomino did.
I also just feel really lucky to have been able to see this and the OG movies on the big screen over the past few months. This original run of the franchise had already peaked and effectively concluded several years before I was even born. Pretty cool that it's getting fairly widespread screenings almost 40 years later on the other side of the world.
Trades in the first Avatar's incredibly lean (albeit hackneyed) plot for, essentially, no plot at all!
A sensible narrative direction up-front gives the movie good starting momentum, but Cameron quickly abandons that plot in favor of 90 minutes of meandering worldbuilding and mild character development. It's all capped off with a stunning action climax that's pretty cool until you realize it has nothing to do with the initial premise. The film's final moments leave you thinking, "THIS is the note…
Being that this was a pandemic production, Taika must've opted to work remote... because he really phoned it in here.
This feels less like the guy who made Ragnarok cutting loose with his second entry in the franchise, and more like a B-team hastily assembled in the wake of that movie's success to superficially recreate its magic. L&T leans hard into Waititi's more juvenile comedic impulses, dragging out jokes for the whole runtime and resurrecting bits from its predecessor that…
