Heavy Metal 2000 (2000)
There's a new warrior in the galaxy.
I once bought a sword off of someone I worked with because I recognized it as the FAKK sword. One might then find it odd that the first time I have seen the movie from which it comes was just now. Granted, I had watched the original Heavy Metal long before this, and find I went in wondering if it would be more of the same thing, better or worse than what I knew already. Throw on your spikes and lace up your boots, it's time to find out if you'll be banging your head while throwing the horns or just banging it against a wall.
Now, I'm going to be completely honest here and admit that I don't think I can really draw out the rather straight forward plot of this movie to three paragraphs without repeating myself a lot. Instead, let me do a "difference to it's predecessor" paragraph at the end of it alright? Two workers stumble upon a glowing green crystal as they tear through an asteroid gathering some core samples. Against anyones better judgement, Tyler decides to reach on in there and grab it, starting an instant change to crazy, as the key invokes within him an impossible to resist urge to return it to it's lock and the prophesied immortality contained within. After murdering a good number of his coworkers, they start off towards their destination, finding the planet Eden that through a scan Tyler discovers traces of immortality within it's small number of residents.
Murdering most and keeping some to siphon out the immortality for himself (to last him until he reaches the door for which the key compels him to reach), and leaves behind a snivelling coward of a man that he has grown to not like. This backfires a bit on Tyler, as our hero Julie (a survivor of the people that were just wiped out) runs into this sniveling coward and "convinces" him to lead her to him for revenge. A chase follows, and ultimately ends with an enormous battle between the guardians of the immortality waters and the army of lizard men that Tyler converts into his army (by murdering their leader). Tyler is a bad, bad man, but is Julie bad enough to beat him for her revenge, in turn saving the entire universe?
A couple of changes from it's predecessor have happened for sure. Although both focus a glowing green thing that drives people crazy (or outright murders them), the second is more of a singular tale in the veins of the last tale from the first - of which plenty of references or throw backs could be found. As our story progresses, things are very straight to the point - a very linear from A to B to be had really. The amount of nudity seems to have been amped up as well, leading the entire thing to feel more B-movie than the first as well - whether it's good or not is really up to the viewer.
Why? Because it's hard to find a decent SFW image of this movie, and they named the sword I own this.
Animation quality is pretty good here. Things are smooth in transitions (mostly), and consistency between the characters individual qualities is pretty well placed. There's even one instance of "slow motion" being used to a decent effect - but wait, that's not all! There's certainly moments that are computer assisted in execution - probably most noticeable anytime a spaceship is on screen, but also around some lighting effects and a single character. Unfortunately, although most of those said instances are well handled and not too dated, the mentioned single character is rather...poor in execution (reminds me of a making a plastic army guy "walk" using imagination).
Soundwise we do have a decent hard rock / metal soundtrack (with a few instrumental pieces). It's certainly no rock and roll fantasy, and most the time the songs could really be more easily referred to as "clips" considering their length. Voice actors do a fine job, and you might even recognize some of the names (I had not realized Michael Ironside was in this) that you wouldn't really expect in it. Guns, ships, cuts, steel, and other sound effects sound quite suitable and never really make you look at the screen as though someone made a terrible decision with the sound.
The movie starts off pretty heavy science fiction action, what with spaceships and machine guns and aliens and the likes. As we go on, it starts to change over to more of a swords and spikes routine, which is certainly right in line with the old metal album covers of old. Character development is next to nil, and the one attempted plot twist is rather "too late, don't care" in it's presentation. Admittedly, the "B" type shlock kind of makes the movie feel slow and unnecessary in many parts, even though I get the whole heavy metal fantasy, violence and sex kind of thing - but the balancing of it in this one just feels like they wanted to fit naked drawn people in as often as possible.
A final showdown.
I really wouldn't recommend this to most people. I mean, the main people who would enjoy it the most have probably already watched it or known about it, and although I appreciate the change to a single tale and some of the action sequences I just can't really get behind most of the movie. The quantity of violence, nudity, or sexual innuendo is most likely put a lot of people off (and that's not even taking into account the animated nature of it all). If your looking to have a watch of something that's essentially an animated B-movie that ends as a Heavy Metal fantasy flick, then you might wanna take a look, otherwise you should probably rock on over to the next flick.