Yamasong: March of the Hollows (2017)
Would You Lose Everything to Save the World?
I’ve found an interesting looking movie for this week. At one point I was watching a show on Netflix that was essentially a fancy Taiwanese puppet show, and the trailer for this reminded me a lot of that. Of course, there’s some complications that arise when something is designed to be a puppet show, and I’ve got those limitations and complexities in mind before going into the movie. What I didn’t realize is that I’m not starting at the beginning - there was a short film that came before this. Well, buckle in and check your strings, tonight we look at Yamasong: March of the Hollows.
What we have here is a blend of typical fantasy and a bit of science fiction. On the one hand, we have a warrior turtle on a adventurous quest. On the other hand, we have a race of robots that want to turn everyone else into robots. Meanwhile, over on the foot we have a race of something that’s just over there in an asteroid field throwing dust at the planet that eats up fleshy bits. Slide a little to the left and you have a race of goat-people that warship the robots and might find out it’s not as good a deal as they thought. It can seem a bit convoluted - but to be honest, considering I didn’t realize there was another one that came before this I chalk up most of the initial slight loss and feeling of confusion up to the fact that I had a initial movie recap of events that left me feeling like maybe that should have been its own movie to explain things - just to find out I was dumb and there theoretically is.
It’s the kind of thing that’s simple enough it’s easy to understand, but you might find yourself a bit lost if it doesn’t have your full attention at the start. There’s a lot of threads going on, but it also still easily boils down to “heroes need to save the world” in that classic adventure way. The world itself is pretty neat, being rather familiar but different. Yes, we still have little villages, but filled with turtle people. Snowy mountains are totally still a thing, but these ones have little mouth breathing creatures that make clouds and fog sitting about on them. The moon is actually a space ship prison filled with the robots for their past crimes, until it breaks and crashes back to the planet and gets the movie started in earnest. Really, the only parts that require attention to follow is just the recap - and that might be a lot easier to follow if you watch the short film (I don’t know, I haven’t actually seen it) and it covers what happened to the adventuring pair and species relations a little better.
The characters can, pardon the pun, feel a bit wooden. Part of it might be from the fact that the puppets don’t have quite the elaborate body language of a person or well animated thing - or even perhaps some more elaborate puppets. Line deliveries fair better, with a fair breadth of voices coming out of people - such as Whoopi Goldberg and Nathan Fillion. This means that lines can carry plenty of emotion as desired, and are all quite recognizable as to who should be talking when you get them - something that can be important considering how a few characters don’t have mouths to move when talking. There’s also a bit of variety in the character traits themselves - from goal-oriented to a fault, one that’s a bit of a coward, things like that - they aren’t all just carbon copies of themselves.
Death dust and sky robo-fish.
Story and actors aside, the world is nice and the entire movie is technically effects department in one way or another visually. Depending on your expectations and how much you enjoy something like a puppet show will vastly influence how you feel about the visual effects. The entire thing feels like a puppet show - including how the puppets move. As mentioned, it’s a bit of a negative impact on body language, but it is quite authentic feeling towards that puppet show feel, which could be a big positive if that’s your jam. Action scenes can also feel a bit simplistic, much like the old “bonk the head” puppet shows you’d see being joked around in old timey shows. Character animations aside, they do all have plenty of detail and look good regardless. Little things like flying metal fish, or beach sands and snowy mountains all look quite good and help it feel like there’s a world that this story is taking place on with it’s own history to be found.
Then you get to things like the mouths - which on the turtles seems a bit sock-puppet like, which is fine and kind of expected. On some of the other things - like the goat-type people, it can look a little South Park-ish, which might take you out of it a little bit. There’s also a few effects in there when it comes to putting parts of scenes together that the eye can catch as being a bit of a green screen style composite shot. None of it is really bad - but you can pick it out either way. Other bits, like electricity effects or giant fireballs or breath all look quite nice. Really, the movie is a feast for the eyes, especially if you can temper your expectations before hand to a puppet show - in which case it’s like a puppet show advanced, complete with computer aid!
Sound is balanced well. There’s a few lines that I didn’t quite catch - but that’s less to do with volume and more to do with the fact of how a character was talking. The background audio does it’s job, but in typical me fashion none of the music really stuck around after the fact. Of course, some of the voices stick out to me more than others because my memory can recognize them.
The discovery of truth.
Are you interested in some lovely puppet theater? Do you like fantasy tales with robot involvement? Well, this could be something for you then! It’s pretty imaginative, and presents plenty of interesting looking things, although perhaps not everyone will really enjoy the puppet-show nature of it.