Directed by Katsuhiro Otomo
Screenplay by Sadayuki Murai, Katsuhiro Otomo
When I attended the screening of Steamboy, my friend and colleague Caballero Oscuro and I were given the opportunity to see the subtitled version or the dubbed version, which was 15 minutes shorter and featured the voices of Anna Paquin, Alfred Molina and Patrick Stewart. Since C.O. is such a serious anime fan, we chose the subtitled. I was going to describe him as a "hard-core anime fan," but that term has a different connotation, though is no less accurate if his bachelor party was any indication of his proclivities.
Steamboy is set during Victorian England. Our hero, Ray, a young boy from a family of inventors, is sent a package containing a mysterious silver ball by his grandfather who has been working in America. Within moments of its arrival, men from the O'Hara Foundation show up at the family's doorstep, looking for the package. Ray's grandfather also appears and tells Ray to take the ball to a man named Stephenson.
Ray is captured and taken to the O'Hara Foundation headquarters where he finds his father at work. His father explains the power contained inside the ball is compressed steam and the building they are in is a castle powered by steam. Ray helps his father only to discover that his grandfather has snuck into the steam castle and is sabotaging it. His grandfather tells Ray the nefarious plans the O'Hara Foundation has. Ray is stuck in the middle, not sure who to trust.
The film presents intriguing ideas about the arms race and the responsibility of science, which are certainly timely, but they aren't fully executed. Rather than watch a great story unfold, the film becomes sensory overload, a series of escalating battles with increasing levels of carnage. Of course, the weakness of the story was foreshadowed at the beginning when no explanation of how putting steam into a metal ball could create a force on the scale of nuclear fusion. It was crucial to the plot and could have used a little clarification.
Article comments
1 - Chris Beaumont
That's a shame, I've been looking forward to seeing this for some time now. Though, if it were playing by me, you'd be sure to still find me there :).