War! What is it Good For?

Absolutely nothing, as you'll soon find out.

A while back I wrote about Lupin III: Green vs. Red, describing it as an interesting failure. Not particularly awful, especially compared to some TV specials (looking at you, Another Page), and even somewhat admirable for its lofty ambitions. It just fails to reach those ambitions. To its credit, it knew how to have a little fun along the way, which kept things from getting too pretentious. The same cannot be said of the 1982 film Future War 198X.

The concept is rock-solid. Based actual statistics and scientific projections, Future War 198X examines the circumstances leading up to nuclear war. Fictional characters are used, from common people right up to the bigwig politicians, but all named countries and locations are real. Everyone is drawn as realistically as possible, and despite a good bit of talking, we hear only the narrator's voice as he describes each event. Every aspect screams documentary, alternate future, serious business you guys.

With the unconventional format, though, comes a flaw inherent to most documentaries: it can be boring. There's just something about an all-knowing narrator explaining all the action, the sequence of cause and effect, and how the viewer should be feeling that took me out of the human drama despite the English narration itself being mostly well-written and performed. It doesn't let us form our own conclusions, and it hurts to be led around by the nose for two hours.

While we're on the subject of action, let's just say there's something to be desired in that department, too. The genuinely good battle sequences are few and spaced far between scenes of meetings and political maneuvering, all gratingly dialogue-free. The animation isn't cheap, per se; character designs are incredibly detailed, and a lot of different locations are used. It just limits its impressive moments far too much to actually impress. Oh, and the music choices during some of those action scenes? Pure cheese, played totally straight.

And speaking of cheese (man, I'm just on a segue roll, aren't I?), this brings us to the film's biggest problem: it's still dumb. Nuclear war, though not a light issue today, would have been such a deadly serious issue back in 1982 that the merest whiff of cheese would spell this movie's death. Yet all the more optimistic moments reek of it. The peace movement that organizes towards the end seems out of place given the film's overall grim tone. The narrator himself is involved in the story in a subplot that would make Michael Bay proud. It involves a love triangle and a civilian scientist who defies his orders to become mankind's only hope by the end. The narrator's own insistence that everyone involved was at heart a good person is completely trashed when a single, radical Soviet official clearly proves himself an irredeemable villain.

Bottom line: Future War 198X hasn't aged well. Its “what if” scenario is just too hard to take seriously so long after the Cold War's end, especially since the documentary bits are sabotaged by parts which belong in a lame Hollywood blockbuster. Maybe these parts were a comfort blanket to people of the time, who didn't want to feel completely powerless before the paranoid power of world governments, but we're too gleefully obsessed with deconstruction to do anything but laugh at such scenes today. In the end, that's the only way I can recommend this movie; more of an amusingly flawed snapshot into a different era's most intense fears and hopes than either the bad action flick it could have been or the serious, inspirational work of art it wanted to be. Oh well.

What are some anime that you'd call interesting failures? What are some things you've seen that wanted to be taken seriously, and what killed it for them? Sound off in the comments!