Each year, I eagerly awaited the release of Neil Clarke’s The Best Science Fiction of the Year. It was a cornucopia of sci-fi short stories that, hopefully, reflected the best of what was out there. It was easy to knock out a story a night before falling asleep.
Very few movies have attempted the anthology format. The 80s flicks Heavy Metal, Creepshow, and Cat’s Eye come to mind. Now, however, in the age of streaming entertainment, the anthology format marries up well with on-demand bingable content. Like my Neil Clarke book, I could knock off a story each night before going to bed.
Netflix’s Season 1 of Love, Death, and Robots was eighteen short episodes featuring love, death and/or robots. Many of the short stories were recognizable, previously published by well-known sci-fi authors. Season 1 was, however, excessive in its nudity and gore, and it seemed the point of some episodes was simply to titilate. Season 2 dialed it down to eight longer character-driven stories. Indeed, one episode of Season 2 was simply about a scientist observing how townspeople reacted to a dead giant man who washed up on their beach (and it was strong episode, not relying on machine guns or explosions to keep the viewer’s attention). So, when Netflix announced Season 3’s release, the million dollar question was: what format would they follow?
Fortunately, Netflix paid attention to their Season 2 reviews and followed suit with Season 3, releasing nine episodes on May 20, 2022. Similar to Season 2, there is almost no nudity, although they did dial the gore setting up several ticks. Nearly every episode has graphic violence, and I will admit that I became a bit numb to it by the end of my binge-fest. Like previous seasons, there are a variety of visual styles ranging from hand-drawn cel-shaded traditional animation to photorealistic CGI real enough that you’ll wonder if they subbed in live-action actors. You will immediately recognize several of the shorts as classic sci-fi stories by names such as Asher, Swanwick and Scalzi. There are no bad episodes (although there is one episode that isn’t my cup-of-tea, but that doesn’t make it bad), and all of them are memorable in their own way. Similar to Season 2, I have no best/worst list because the quality of all of them is excellent; instead, I’ll give my thoughts on each.
Three Robots: Exit Strategies
There is always a Scalzi story in Love, Death and Robots. This one is a sequel to the Season 1 episode featuring three robots touring a post-humanity wasteland. It’s classic Scalzi humor: a bit political, snarky, and dry. I was ambivalent about the Season 1 version of this episode, and Season 3 felt like more of the same, so for me I was tempted to skip to more interesting episodes about half-way through this one. Not bad, but I personally have never found the three robots very funny.
Bad Travelling
Based upon a Neil Asher story, this a fantasy flick set nearly entirely upon a sailing vessel. When a sea monster occupies the ship’s lower decks and demands human meat, the crew faces some bloody and savage decisions about how to proceed. Everything happens by torchlit-night and the vibe is gothic horror. A morality play drenched in blood.
The Very Pulse of the Machine
There always is a breathtakingly-cel-shaded episode in Love, Death, and Robots, and The Very Pulse of the Machine is gorgeous, set on Jupiter’s moon Io. After a rover wreck kills her companion, a woman must drag her companion’s body kilometers across Io’s landscape to rendezvous with a shuttle. When she starts hearing the slain woman’s voice, she’s unsure if it’s drug-induced hallucinations or something else. Surreal and trippy, this episode is a winner worth watching more than once.
Night of the Mini Dead
If you’ve ever played a 4X computer strategy game, you’ll recognize the bird’s eye view as you watch hordes of tiny soldiers class with enemies. Night of the Mini Dead is just that: the zombie apocalypse on fast-forward shot with a tilt-lens effect as if you were looking down on a diorama. It’s fun and zippy, a little snarky, and something that will leave you with a smirk on your face.
Kill Team Kill
Based upon a story by Justin Coates, this episode is hand-animated in a style and tone reminiscent of Heavy Metal. The opening of the episode features a man urinating directly on the camera’s view, the man relishing in what he’s doing, complete with visible cartoon-drawn genitals. That’s pretty much the tone of the entire episode. The story is about a special ops unit that encounters a “honey badger” - a cybernetic grizzly bear killing machine. It reminds me a bit of the grizzly bear scene in Annihilation, if the grizzly bear were a T1000. The violence and gore is dialed up to eleven, and the F-word is used like breathing. It’s intended to be so overly-macho that it slips into parody, spewing out lines like, “Sarge, can we have permission to die now?” On the plus side, though, I was impressed by the directing of the action. It’s difficult to portray chaotic action clearly in a way that the viewer knows exactly where everyone is and what is happening, but Kill Team Bill does a great job at this. When a character scampers back on all fours, dodging snapping jaws and claws, it has a realistic chess-like logic to it with the viewer anticipating when he’ll run out of moves. The ending credits song features a death-metal verse “F-you, honey badger” shouted over and over, which, once again, emphasizes unapologetically that this episode is just what it is.
Swarm
Based on a story by Bruce Sterling, Swarm is classic sci-fi with weird aliens, future humans, and humanity’s tendency to exploit others. There’s a slight shade of Avatar with a woman who has been studying an alien swarm that lives inside an asteroid and a man who arrives to try and exploit them. The story is interesting for both its visual beauty and its tonal shifts. It starts out magical and wondrous as they two humans swim through the alien environment, discovering its amazing workings. It shifts to a brief romance, providing one of the fleeting nudity scenes in Season 3, before plummeting into a dark abyss of horror. It reminds me of an Outer Limits episode, where mankind’s arrogance always leads to its downfall. It’s worth watching more than once (although the ending horror scene is the stuff of nightmares).
Mason’s Rats
I’d read this story before by Neal Asher. A farmer with a rat problem notices his issues have escalated when the rats evolve to use crossbows and weapons. When he turns to a technological pest-control solution of mechanized rat killing machines, an all-out war breaks out in his barn. The result is The Secret of NiMH meets Saving Private Ryan, and the graphic violence is of the rat variety but is still nonetheless bloody and gory. It’s an excellent episode with a satisfying ending.
In Vaulted Halls Entombed
I’d describe this military story by Alan Baxter as Seal Team Six meets Call of Cthulu. When a military unit is tasked with rescuing a hostage from insurgents in Afghanistan’s caves, they find a brutal and otherworldly horror. Where Kill Team Kill was an over-the-top Kill Bill approach to marines versus monsters, In Vaulted Halls Entombed is a serious take. I appreciated that the military team moved and talked like a military team, and the photorealism of the the CGI was superb. The violence is very Starship Troopers: graphic, bloody, and dismembering, and the story’s resolution was unsettling.
Jibaro
Last year, Netflix stuck the landing on Season 2 by ending with the Drowned Giant. This year they chose well once again, concluding with Alberto Mielgo’s Jibaro. A fantasy piece, the story features knights in plate mail catastrophically encountering a bejeweled siren in the river. The main character, Jibaro, is deaf and consequently immune to the siren’s power, but he is also greedy, coveting the siren’s jewels. The photorealism of this story is simply unbelievable and had me questioning whether live-action actors had been subbed in. Even the best CGI often has characters with lifeless eyes or skin that doesn’t quite reflect all of the subtle muscle movements of the human body. The siren in Jibaro, though, has eyes that look completely real, filled with intelligence and emotion. I recognized the frantic style of the director immediately, as he had done Season 1’s The Witness.
Season 1’s The Witness
The Witness was a gratuitous nudity romp where a mostly-naked woman runs through the entire story pursued by another man. It was one of my least favorite Season 1 episodes. Jibaro, even though it also is a bit of a pursuit story, reels it in. There is no nudity, although there is a fair amount of violence. What’s interesting is that there is no spoken dialogue. The story conveys everything through the actions and expressions of its characters. The directing is manic and jarring, but when it settles down it is quite impactful. Memorable (in a good way) is the way I’d describe Jibaro. It’s on my “watch again” list.
So that’s it! Season 3 is solid and easily bingable in one setting. It’s a mark of quality that I intended to watch a few of the episodes a second time. Well done, Netflix.