The Alien franchise has confirmed surprisingly resilient since its humble beginnings as a standalone area horror movie almost 50 years in the past. Since then, it is spawned a number of sequels, prequels, and now a TV sequence, Alien: Earth, set simply earlier than the occasions of the primary movie. Ridley Scott’s terrifying authentic has lingered within the public creativeness for generations, and an IP-hungry Hollywood has been eager to provide the individuals what they need.
For some followers of the franchise, ready years between motion pictures (or an entire week between episodes) may be too lengthy to get their repair of grotesque creature designs and gritty, dystopian sci-fi worlds. Should you may be certainly one of these followers, then there is a latest movie you could not have heard of that would simply match the invoice: Junk Head, the 2017 stop-motion masterpiece from Japan that owes a transparent debt to the world of Alien and the immortal creations of artist H.R. Giger.
The Unlikely Origins of ‘Junk Head’
Junk Head is the work of director Takehide Hori, and an enlargement of his first brief movie, Junk Head 1. With a background in inside design, sculpture, and illustration, Hori had by no means tried to make a movie earlier than taking over the unique brief, kicking off his directing profession on the age of 40. Impressed by Your Title director Makoto Shinkai’s debut brief Voices of a Distant Star, Hori determined to make the movie solely on his personal, dealing with every part from puppet design and animation to voice appearing and music.
Making the brief on his personal took Hori 4 years, and when it got here time to broaden it to function size, he employed a small crew of simply three extra individuals to hurry up the method, a minimum of a bit of bit. The complete movie lastly noticed launch in Japan in 2017, with a re-edited model reaching a world viewers in 2021. No much less an authority than Guillermo del Toro praised the unique brief, calling it a “work of deranged brilliance” in a tweet.
All animation is a labor of affection, and Junk Head is not any exception. It reveals a exceptional degree of craft and dedication, significantly as a debut function. Hori and his crew have been in a position to create an expansive, totally lived-in world, wanting a lot larger than what its restricted funds may counsel.
‘Junk Head’s Future Dystopia
So what does Junk Head need to do with the Alien saga? Whereas the 2 aren’t associated in any canonical sense, the world of Junk Head feels very a lot according to the one envisioned by Scott and Giger all these years in the past. The movie takes place in a distant future the place humanity has found the important thing to immortality, however misplaced its skill to breed within the course of. Residing in cities excessive above the bottom, the decrease ranges have change into the area of the “Marigans,” artificially created life types who’ve been in a position to evolve and adapt in every kind of how over the millennia.
One human, bored together with his existence, volunteers for a mission to journey to the floor to review the Marigans’ reproductive capabilities. On the best way, his craft is shot down, leaving his artificial physique in ruins. He is discovered by a ragtag group of Marigan scientists, who put his head on a brand new robotic physique. He finally ends up altering arms by way of a sequence of mishaps, shedding his reminiscence within the course of earlier than regaining it once more.
It is within the creature designs the place the Alien connection feels most obvious. Whereas the Marigans take many types, a few of them look extraordinarily Xenomorph-like, albeit a bit of extra fleshy, with prolonged heads and rows of sharp enamel. Others take the type of carnivorous worms, springing out of holes to eat no matter has the misfortune of crossing their path. It is clear Hori took some inspiration from Giger’s uniquely horrifying work for his personal creations.
Junk Head’s world has the identical type of dirty really feel because the Alien universe, the place the long run is much from gleaming surfaces and glamorous utopia. The movie’s underground realms are a sprawling industrial wasteland with seemingly no backside, every layer revealing one other unusual type of existence. However whereas the movie’s world is undeniably darkish, Hori’s contact is surprisingly mild, with a goofy humorousness that blends the grotesque with the whimsical. The entire thing is spoken in a goofy nonsense language that feels like Donald Duck with a head chilly, initially finished to disguise the truth that Hori was doing a lot of the voices himself.
Junk Head is a very exceptional achievement and a testomony to what can occur when an artist totally commits to their imaginative and prescient. Hori supposed the movie to be the primary of a trilogy, and the second installment, Junk World, was simply launched in Japan this previous June. Whereas no worldwide launch dates have been introduced but, the Japanese-language trailer makes it appear like a way more formidable challenge. If Alien: Earth’s two-episode premiere piqued your curiosity in additional skin-crawling visions of the long run, Junk Head may be simply the factor to fulfill your starvation.
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