The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Mecha refers to human-piloted giant Robots. These are often confused with Transformers, which are giant robots that can rearrange their shape. By contrast, mecha stay in one form and are directed by human operators.
Mecha first appeared in Japanese Anime tv series of the 1960s from which they derive their name. Anime puts out a reasonable body of shows and occasional films devoted to mecha where they are usually machines employed to heroically defend against aliens or giant monsters. There have been some live-action films dealing with mecha, in particular Pacific Rim (2013).
James Cameron’s follow-up to Alien is one of the few sequels that matches its predecessor. Adding a troupe of Marines, Cameron creates a powerhouse of a film that sustains itself with seat-edge tension throughout
The first anime film to be based on the manga, this is set in a future where the heroine is the head of a heavily armoured SWAT team fighting terrorists. Several different incarnations followed.
A dazzling reboot of the earlier manga/anime made with stunning photorealistic animation design and breathtaking action scenes that made this a benchmark for modern anime. Sequels followed.
Shinji Aramaki returns to the Appleseed franchise for a third time with this prequel. Though it abandons the Cyberpunk milieu, Aramaki crafts action scenes with a stunning realism
Shinji Aramaki’s immediate sequel to his reboot of the Appleseed franchise. This lacks the visually stunning qualities of its predecessor and seems more conceptually muddled but Aramaki eventually gets it together
When Guillermo Del Toro made Pacific Rim, The Asylum conducted their own copy simply by switching US seaboards. While not exactly Oscar quality, this is one of The Asylum’s better mockbusters
When Guillermo Del Toro made Pacific Rim, The Asylum switched US seaboards to make Atlantic Rim. With the release of the Pacific Rim sequel, The Asylum followed in kind
The idea of Jennifer Lopez in a transformer suit kicking robot ass has an outlandishness to it. The surprise is that this is a really good, well written SF film of planetary survival
James Cameron’s film was a smash phenomenon. Cameron has relocated the plot of Dances With Wolves on another planet and uses motion capture to create one of the most dazzlingly realised alien worlds on film
This gets full marks for a WTF set-up, an anime that imagines Batman and most of the villains transplanted back to feudal Japan. There is fun to seeing the familiar characters reinterpreted in terms of Japanese imagery
Neill Blomkamp’s film about A.I. turns into Short Circuit dropped into the militarised future of RoboCop. Of all the rich possibilities in the idea, all we get is a goofy comedy with a pimped-out carjacking robot
An amusingly tongue-in-cheek horror comedy that is a throwback to the1950s featuring an attack by giant crabs. With some surprisingly good crab effects too.
The Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film is a genre filled with gore, madcap combat moves, bizarre bio-mechanoid transformations. This concerns itself with a game of baseball that has become a blood-drenched combat sport
More from the world’s cuddliest super-villain and those manic ritalin-deprived kids that are the Minions. Is there are life and creativity left in a franchise that has been milked for six films now?
Neill Blomkamp’s first film starts well as a strong, highly politicised work about human-alien prejudice. However, Blomkamp loses steam about halfway through where it feel as though he didn’t know where to take the story
The first in a series of film reboots of the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime tv series. Epic animation but you need to the part of the fanbase of the original to understand what is going on
The second of the Neon Genesis Evangelion reboot films, this gets the essentials right and delivers some stunningly epic anime action scenes
Third of the Neon Genesis Evangelion reboot films. These films are frustrating – filled with stunning scenes of mecha battling cryptic alien machines but baffling as to what is going on
This was the fourth film in the Neon Genesis Evangelion reboot film series and concludes the saga. Rather than offering any answers or solution to the cryptic world we are in, this opts for a major letdown of a wrap-up
Reboot of the Ghost in the Shell series in a quartet of prequel stories. This funnels the essence of Cyberpunk superbly, creating a dazzling world with cyborgised security services fighting terrorists hacking people’s brains
The 26th Japanese Godzilla film, the fourth pitting him against Mechagodzilla. After a slow first hour, the film delivers all the exhilarating mass destruction sequences we expect of it as the monsters go head to head
One of fantastic cinema’s great titles bouts is a spectacular effects show. At the same time, it also has one of the single most ridiculous script I have ever come across in the entire time I have been running this site
Space Godzilla is one the strangest nemeses to turn up in these kaiju films – a blue counterpart of the Big G with a giant glowing mass of crystal on its shoulders. One of the more routine entries in the modern Godzilla series
A live-action Japanese-made mecha/transformer film that creates a dark industrial world as setting and fills it with some stunning effects
A compilation of shorts from anime directors set in the Halo videogame universe. The first two episodes have a breathtaking scale but the others are bitsy stories but nothing standout
Third of the animated films based on the Lego toy line. This has the same fast-paced humour and witty fourth-wall breaking gags as its predecessors, even if you suspect the Lego Movie brand is starting to fade
Third of The Matrix sequels and the weakest of the series. This offers one showstopping effects sequence, on the other hand it also leaves a host of unanswered questions dangling
Giant mecha robots beating the crap out of giant monsters – what’s not to like? In comparison to the Transformers films, Guillermo Del Toro looks to find the soul of the robot jock – in essence, Transformers for grown-ups
Pacific Rim wasn’t Guillermo Del Toro’s best film but it was a fun attempt to imagine giant Japanese mecha robots battling giant monsters. This is a sequel but without Del Toro it is reduced to no more than one of Michael Bay’s Transformers films
Early anime from Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame about a police squad set up to deal with giant robots gone amok. All of Oshii’s visuals and fascinating play of ideas are present
Anime that has clearly been modelled along the lines of Neon Genesis Evangelion Initially, the animation is conducted with a dazzlingly realistic textured look but once the giant robot action scenes take over, these seem increasingly absurd in their anthropomorphism
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers with its ridiculous rubber monsters and dementedly over-the-top acting as one of the key pop culture phenomena of the 1990s. The question is what audience do producers possibly think that there might be for a dark and gritty cinematic reboot?
Part of the fad for gonzo Japanese splatter films we had in the late 00s, featuring absurdly over-the-top splatter effects and demented action sequences.; Concerning cyborg-enhanced geisha who wade into battle going through a deliriously silly range of bio-mechanical transformations
One of the earliest works from Katsuhiro Otomo, the cult director of Akira, although he only contributes one episode to an anthology of anime tales with the common theme of robots. The collection contains some impressive and visually striking episodes
Stuart Gordon, the cult director of Re-Animator, turns his hand to making a live-action Transformers film way back before anybody had ever head the name Michael Bay
Sequel to the hit videogame adaptation, this offers up fairly much the same mix of elements as before – a cutely anthrompomorphic creature and Jim Carrey going to rafter-rattling excess
The third in the series is no longer even a Spy Kids film but a Virtual Reality videogame film. Robert Rodriguez has some fun creating the virtual worlds but the parody that the other films engaged in is missing
George Lucas’s first sequel to Star Wars and a work that holds up every bit as well as its predecessor, in many places betters it. The story darkens the mythos and introduces new characters, while the special effects sequences are the peak of the series
A disappointing end to George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy. The script lazily wraps up loose ends while sidelining the new characters introduced the last time, and the climax rehashes the climaxes of the two other films
Sequel to the animated The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which was the second highest grossing film of 2023. From the people behind the Despicable Me films, this exists as little more than eye candy for five-year-olds
An animated film that seems premised on not much more than bringing various obscure DC Comics characters out of mothballs for one giant-sized punch up
Time travel, Nazis in UFOs and a Nazi-ruled alternate timeline, giant robot spiders – ok, I’m sold. A surprisingly good little film where the fact that this is also made on a low budget and with a good deal of conceptual constraint makes it all the more creative an effort
The big screen remake of the 1960s Western/spy mashup tv series is transformed into an overblown and painfully unfunny Will Smith vehicle that loudly signals it is taking none of itself seriously
Takashi Miike conducts a live-action adaptation of a 1970s anime tv series with completely madcap results. The effect is like drowning in multi-coloured candyfloss flavoured with LSD