Appleseed Ex Machina
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| Appleseed: Ex-Machina | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Shinji Aramaki |
| Produced by | John Woo |
| Written by | Haruka Handa Tsutomu Kamishiro |
| Music by | Haruomi Hosono Tetsuya Takahashi |
| Studio | Micott & Bassara Digital Frontier |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures Madman Entertainment |
| Release date(s) |  October 19, 2007 March 11, 2008 |
| Running time | 105 min. |
| Country | Japan United States |
| Language | Japanese English |
| Preceded by | Appleseed |
Appleseed Ex Machina is a 2007 CG anime film and is the sequel to the 2004 Appleseed film, similarly directed by Shinji Aramaki, and was produced by Hong Kong director and producer John Woo. It was released on October 20, 2007 in Japan and made its American premiere at the Jules Verne Adventures Film Festival in Los Angeles on December 15, 2007[1]. The MPAA has Appleseed Ex Machina rated PG-13 for action/violence and brief strong language,[2] though the first film was rated R for some violence. It was released in North America by Warner Bros. Pictures on March 11, 2008, for DVD and Blu-Ray, and released for HD DVD on April 1, 2008. It was released in Europe on May 30, 2008 on DVD, with HMV releasing a 2-disc DVD special edition box set in Ireland and the UK, while Blu-Ray edition was released on June 2, 2008. In July 2008, the film was released theatrically in Australia as part of an anime film festival screening known as REEL ANIME hosted by Madman Entertainment, however it was the Japanese version. The film was shown theatrically along with other films such as Vexille and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time in various selected cinemas throughout the country. The film will be released on DVD in Australia in September 2008.
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[edit] Plot
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This plot summary may be too long or overly detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (August 2009) |
The setting takes place in the year 2133, following World War III, which was a non-nuclear war that killed half the world's population. The city-nation of Olympus stands as a beacon of hope in a world of chaos and conflict. The utopian metropolis is governed by 'Gaia', a vast artificial intelligence, and administered by genetically engineered humanoids known as bioroid, whose designer DNA suppresses strong emotions. With bioroids being half of its population, peace and order are easily maintained.
The movie opens with Deunan and Briareos being deployed as part as an E.S.W.A.T. operation to recover E.U. officials taken hostage by combat cyborgs. Deunan infiltrates the church (3D model of the Prague Castle) and quickly subdues the cyborgs in a short firefight. She secures the hostages as other E.S.W.A.T. members arrive. She then follows some cyborgs into a worship hall when Briareos arrives. The cyborgs surround them, but the two kill them all easily. Briareos goes up to a fatally wounded cyborg and asks who sent him. When the cyborg's body counts down to detonate, he grabs Deunan jumping out of the chapel as it explodes. Briareos is unfortunately injured while saving Deunan and is taken to the hospital. The movie then goes to Deunan riding her motorcycle on her day off when she hears a police report of a recently fired construction worker who had take control of a construction landmate and goes on a rampage. Deunan is able to disable the landmate with its killswitch. Just as E.S.W.A.T. arrives and Deunan is about to leave, she sees someone with a face eerily similar to Briareos before he became a cyborg; Commander Lance introduces him as Tereus, a bioroid assigned to Deunan as her new partner. Deunan then goes to Athena's adviser, Nike, and complains to her about getting a new partner. Nike tells Deunan that he is a new generation of combat bioroid, based on Briareos's human DNA and E.S.W.A.T. wants her to evaluate him.
Deunan meets up with her bioroid friend Hitomi after leaving the facility. Hitomi then takes Deunan to the cyborg hospital to see Briareos, and along the way, Deunan notices people wearing devices that cast a holographic ring around their eyes. Hitomi tells her that they are called Connexus and that everybody has them, then Hitomi takes out a pair and Deunan tries them on. Hitomi tells her to open a message: it's a message inviting Deunan to her birthday party. Later on at Hitomi's birthday, Deunan arrives slightly depressed, but she perks up when she sees Briareos at the party; they have a short conversation until it is interrupted with the arrival of Tereus. Deunan and Tereus then sit down and have a conversation in which he asks Deunan to accept him as her partner until she gets Briareos back. The scene then goes to Aeacus and Briareos talking and discussing what it's like to be cyborgs. Briareos asks what Aeacus is wearing on his ear, and Aeacus tells him it's a Connexus.
The movie then goes to an international conference discussing putting all the nations' satellites under Olympus' control. There is massive security banning cyborgs from the premises. But a bus blasts through a checkpoint and is destroyed, but there are incidents like that at every checkpoint, and civilians mobs are fighting the police. Soon, E.S.W.A.T. is deployed, but Aeacus, feeling sick, stays on board the ship. The police, not realizing the rioters are human, engage them. Deunan arrives in a landmate and disables one of the construction landmates. When she opens the hatch, she finds out that the rioters are humans, not cyborgs, as well as a burnt out Connexus and takes it for keeping. The scene then goes to Aeacus, mindlessly walking up to the flight officer and shooting him; Briareos, now fully engaged in his landmate suit, sees the ship explode and Aeacus fly off in a landmate towards the building in which the conference is being held. Briareos tries to calm Aeacus down, but unable to calm Aeacus down, Briareos shoots Aeacus, who then, in his final moments, seems to return to normal as he falls out of the sky.. Inside the conference, the delegates become worried, but are asked to return to the meeting. It then cuts to Aeacus' funeral, in which Briareos questions his decision to shoot Aeacus.
Briareos goes to his cyborg doctor, Dr. Kestner, who assures him that he is not insane; Athena discusses the attack with a Poseidon corporation executive, Yoshino, who denies any involvement in the attacks; E.S.W.A.T. discovers that robotic doves that were nearby during the conference were sending the signal that caused the riots, so Commander Lance orders all cyborg operatives off duty. Deunan, Briareos and Tereus go out for a drink and to watch the inauguration of all the satellites joining, creating a green olive tree, as a symbol of peace. There, an unmanned vehicle crashed into Briareos, destabilizing him. He connects to a terminal, but in doing so he sends a virus that attacks Olympus' main satellite control, forcing them to switch to backup. Tereus and Briareos recover in a hospital. Hitomi researches cyborg viruses and finds Project HALCON, which was originally to help brain damaged veterans, but was taken over by Kestner. However, all data on HALCON is mysteriously erased. Briareos breaks out of the hospital and goes to find Kestner, with Tereus in pursuit. Meanwhile, the mechanic Yoshitsune analyzes a chip found on one of the rioters and reports that it is a piece of Connexus that can take over a person's mind, human or cyborg when the right signal is played. Realizing that the Connexus is all over the city, the authorities try to round them up.
Kestner arrives at his apartment to find Briareos waiting for him. Kestner tells him that with the uniting of the satellites and the Connexus (which works directly with the nervous system), Kestner believes that he and the others will create a slaved human and cyborg race united by a hive mind and connected through the new satellite network. Those chosen through natural selection will survive; those who are unworthy will be taken care of. He also explains that his Hecatonchires systems were too advanced to control remotely. So while Briareos was being repaired, he infected him with nanomachines, that activate when Briareos' adrenaline passes a certain level causing him to enter an uncontrolled rage. Just before the police arrive, Kestner pulls out a gun and commits suicide to protect his data, expecting to be reassimilated into HALCON. Briareos goes into a rage fit and jumps out a window. From there, he makes his way to a rooftop where Tereus expects him to come. Tereus is about to take him in when Deunan arrives in a Landmate with a cyborg virus antidote just as Briareos goes into a rage. Deunan gets the antidote in him, but it's not permanent. Unfortunately, an unknown signal takes control of the satellites, changing the olive tree into the symbol of HALCON. Anyone wearing a Connexus (which was almost, if not all, of the population, despite the government's best efforts) gets mind control and forced to head towards Tartarus (Olympus capital) in the hundreds of thousands. Immediately, this happens around the world and Olympus loses contact with the other countries. E.S.W.A.T. works in conjunction with the police to suppress the riots but there are too many to stop and are overwhelmed. Briareos figures that HALCON is behind this and Poseidon knows something about it.
The three then journey into the ocean and intercept a Poseidon ship to ask about HALCON. Yoshino tells them that HALCON Labs were obsessed with mind-control and their operations had to be stopped, especially when the project leader, Elizabeth Xander, was killed. But by covering it up, it only motivated Kestner into completing his goals. They traced HALCON's transmission coming from an abandoned research facility. Supplied with new Landmates, Deunan, Briareos, Tereus, and a Poseidon task force fly off in ships towards to HALCON Zero Gravity One. They go into the main hatch and are met by drones that kill off most of the task force. Most are killed except for Argus who continues to assist them. They fight their way to the core, where they find the source—the cyborg form of Xander, who has Kestner controlling her mind. Kestner/Xander goads Tereus into shooting him/her and warns that if he/she is dead, then all those connected to HALCON will be lost. Deunan uses the last anti-virus serum and stabs it into the cyborg's neck, allowing Xander to regain control of herself. She manages to reset the signals controlling the civilians and asks Deunan to shoot her to prevent the virus from taking over her again. As the virus takes control again, Deunan shoots her through the head, destroying HALCON. The virus lets go of Briareos, as well as anyone wearing a Connexus, and the three run as the facility falls apart. They get to a ledge and Tereus asks them to leave him, but they deny it just as Argus shows up with the ship, and they escape the collapsing facility.
Back in Olympus, the rioters were released and collapsed en masse. They later woke up, not remembering a thing that had happened. With Athena watching from her office window noting that "Humans have a tendency to self-destruct but their spirit always manage to hold them from the brink, that's why they should be saved". The English version has her saying "Man seems to yearn his own destruction. But his spirit somehow pulls him back from the brink each time. Perhaps they are a race worth saving."
Deunan and Briareos share an intimate hug together with Deunan promising to protect Briareos. Argus asks if Tereus is okay and he replies by saying, "He was her partner first. She'll have him and I'll find my own girl"; Argus jokes that they could just make one. Their transports then speed off to Olympus.
[edit] Differences between the Japanese and English releases
- The most notable dub has Briareos saying, in the Japanese version, : "How do you like the new model?" to, in the English version, saying: "If it wasn't pink, I'd be riding it."
- The opening sequence in the English version is more descriptive.
[edit] Cast
The English version dub was produced at Amusement Park Media in Houston, Texas. The cast were made up of actors from ADV Films.
| Role | Japanese seiyū | English voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Deunan Knute | Ai Kobayashi | Luci Christian |
| Briareos Hecatonchires | Kōichi Yamadera | David Matranga |
| Tereus | Yūji Kishi | Illich Guardiola |
| Athena | Gara Takashima | Allison L. Sumrall |
| Nike | Rei Igarashi | Shelley Calene-Black |
| Hitomi | Miyuki Sawashiro | Hilary Haag |
| Commander Lance | Shinpachi Tsuji | Chris Hutchison |
| Manuel Aeacus | Kong Kuwata | Mike MacRae |
| Dr. Riharuto Kestner | Takaya Hashi | John Gremillion |
| Yoshino | Rika Fukami | Melissa Davis |
| Arges | Takaya Kuroda | Quentin Haag |
| Dr. Xander | Naoko Kouda | Alice Fulks |
| Yoshitsune | Yasuyuki Kase | Chris Patton |
[edit] Motion capture actors
| Role | Mocap actor |
|---|---|
| Deunan Knute | Toyoe Sekita |
| Briareos Hecatonchires | Moki Ogawa |
| Tereus | Yoshiyuki Kamata |
| Manuel Aeacus | Taisuke Nishimura |
| Commander Lance | Michihiko Kuwagaki |
| Athena | Miyoko Hanai |
| Nike | Hideka Suzuki |
| Yoshino | Junko Hiratsuka |
| Dr. Riharuto Kestner | Inaho Miyazaki |
| Hitomi | Naoko Ito |
| Yoshitsune | PEPE |
| Aeacus' son | Tomoki Mure |
[edit] Costume design
In this film, two of Deunan's costumes were designed by Italian fashion designer Miuccia Prada.[3][4] Prada was apparently already a fan of the first Appleseed movie, and she jumped at the chance to work on the second installment. At a press conference for the film, she said:
| “ | Watching the previous 'Appleseed,' I thought that the expression of contrast in man and machine, violence and love was wonderful. | ” |
[edit] Marketing
Warner Home Video created a trailer remix contest[5] in December 2007 to promote the release of the film. The contest's aim was to have fans remix the Appleseed Ex Machina trailer into new short videos, using clips from the film and songs from the soundtrack. Fans could put these assets together into new short videos within an editing program on the contest site. Visitors to the site then voted on their favorite video, with the creator of the winning video winning a trip to WonderCon 2008. The contest ended February 7, 2008.
Following the release of the film, Hot Toys released 1/6th scale poseable action figures of Deunan Knute and Briareos Hecatonchires.[6]
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Official Australian DVD release (English) Appleseed Ex Machina (2007) movie website
- Official North American DVD release (English) Appleseed Ex Machina (2007) movie website
- Official (Japanese) Appleseed Ex Machina (2007) movie website
- Official DVD release contest homepage
- Official webpage announcement on Twitch
- Ex Machina (anime) at Anime News Network's Encyclopedia
- Appleseed Saga: Ex Machina (2007) at the Internet Movie Database
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