The first time I watched this film it was on the back of an airline seat and I do remember liking the story. Fast forward to 2018 and I just watched this in a beach chair outside at UCSB’s summer film series at the Santa Barbara Courthouse Sunken Garden. (And yes, we’d all been drinking wine and…well other things too.) Anyway, my takeaway this time was OMG this is an absolutely beautiful, stunning film. The spirit of Miyazaki (esp. Totoro) is strong in this one.
It’s like the animators set out in each scene to challenge each other with a lighting idea, and they are all one upping each other scene by scene. A discovery scene lit only by one flashlight? A robot-rebuild scene in essentially total darkness, with two colors (dark brown and black) in the palette? Mist? Headlights? Fire and smoke apocalypse? The light of the universe itself?
I just sat there slackjawed through it.
Seeing this again also made me loathe Ready Player One more.