Stolen Life is a product of machinima from Nanoflix Productions, written and produced by Peter Rasmussen and directed by Jackie Turnure. It’s an entertaining film.
What is machinima? According to the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences, “Machinima (muh-sheen-eh-mah) is filmmaking within a real-time, 3D virtual environment, often using 3D video-game technologies. In an expanded definition, it is the convergence of filmmaking, animation, and game development. Machinima is real-world filmmaking techniques applied within an interactive virtual space where characters and events can be either controlled by humans, scripts or artificial intelligence.” So it’s a movie made via game engines. It’s an interesting concept, fascinating technology, and promises some unique films, as evidenced by Stolen Life.
It’s set in the future, on an asteroid that is a refueling station for deep space missions. The station is run entirely by robots. It was shut down by the “company.” In fact, it seems that the company is shutting down many of their stations. On this particular one a robot has gone missing, apparently “murdered,” and the company is missing thousands of dollars of property. An investigator, a robot named Pi, is dispatched to find the truth. And so a unique noir style movie begins.
Pi arrives at the refueling station and awakens the commander, Kieru, voiced by Stargate’s Claudia Black. She begins explaining the workings of the station and reactivating crew members. And, of course, acting very suspicious. As Pi begins to investigate, we are introduced to the other members of the crew. Each character is fleshed out well and adds their own comedic or sinister flavor to the story. In fact, they all have something to hide. It might just be something detrimental to the company, even to Earth itself.
The story itself has a strong theme. It deals with reasons for living, meaning in life, even if the lives depicted herein are robotic. Do we exist just to work? Or should we have some other purpose? It’s plotted very well and contains some good twists. It’s well paced and fun to watch.
Article comments
1 - Farscapefan
Great review. Agree completely that Claudia Black (who completely stole my heart as Aeryn Sun in Farscape series and later as Vala in Stargate SG-1 series) did phenomenal job voicing Kieru, after just 5 minutes of listening to her you care very much about the character she gave her voice to. I hope Kieru's adventures are going to continue in a sequel to Stolen Life in the future :)