Astro Boy (film)

Last updated

Astro Boy
Astro boy ver7.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by David Bowers
Written by
Story byDavid Bowers
Based on Astro Boy
by Osamu Tezuka
Produced by
  • Maryann Garger
  • Kuzuka Yayoki
Starring
CinematographyPepe Valencia
Edited byRobert Anich
Music by John Ottman
Production
company
Distributed by Summit Entertainment (United States)
Panasia Films (Hong Kong)
Release dates
  • October 8, 2009 (2009-10-08)(Hong Kong)
  • October 23, 2009 (2009-10-23)(United States)
Running time
94 minutes
Countries
  • Hong Kong
  • United States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$65 million [2]
Box office$42 million [3]

Astro Boy is a 2009 animated superhero film loosely based on the manga series of the same name by the Japanese writer and illustrator Osamu Tezuka. Produced by the Hong Kong-based company Imagi Animation Studios, it was directed by David Bowers, who co-wrote the screenplay with Timothy Hyde Harris. The film stars Freddie Highmore, Kristen Bell, Nicolas Cage, Donald Sutherland, Bill Nighy, Matt Lucas, Eugene Levy, Samuel L. Jackson, Charlize Theron and Nathan Lane. In the film, Dr. Tenma (Cage) creates Astro (Highmore), a teenage robot implanted with the memories of his son after he is killed in an accident. The pair face Stone (Sutherland), the president of Metro City who is running for re-election, for their betrayal.

Contents

The film was first released in Hong Kong on October 8, 2009, and in the United States on October 23, 2009. It received generally mixed reviews from film critics, but a financial failure, earning $42 million worldwide against its $65 million budget. As a result of the film's bad performance, Imagi was shut down on February 5, 2010, and as a result, it became the last film produced by the studio.

Plot

In the 22nd century, Toby Tenma is a teenager who lives in the futuristic city-state of Metro City, which floats above the polluted surface on Earth. His father, Dr. Tenma, works at the Ministry of Science, alongside Dr. Elefun. They create the Peacekeeper, an advanced defensive robot fueled by using two powerful energy spheres with opposite properties, respectively in colors blue and red from a star fragment discovered by Elefun. The two scientists brief the President of Metro City, Stone, who is running for re-election. Against the scientists' warnings, Stone loads the negative red core and Peacekeeper becomes hostile immediately. Toby is accidentally killed by the Peacekeeper, as it attempts to violently leave the research facility before Elefun disables it.

A distraught-driven Tenma revives Toby as a robot programmed with all his memories, along with built-in defences, flight, and the ability to talk to silent robots. Powered by the positive blue core, the robot activates and believes himself to be Toby. Though the robot has Toby's memories and a similar personality, Tenma realizes nothing could replace the original Toby and so disowns him. Stone has his forces pursue Toby in an effort to claim the blue core, but the chase leads to him falling off the city's edge when Stone's flagship blasts him with missiles. Meanwhile, Tenma escapes arrest by agreeing to disable Toby and give up the blue core.

Toby awakens in an enormous junkyard populated by robots dumped from Metro City. He meets a group of orphaned children, Zane, Sludge, Widget, and Cora, accompanied by a dog-like robot named Trashcan. Toby also meets the members of the Robot Revolutionary Front (RRF), Sparx, Robotsky, and Mike the Fridge, who plan to free robots from mankind's control, but are very inept and bound by the Laws of Robotics. While attempting to recruit him for their cause, they renamed Toby "Astro". Hamegg, the former head of the Ministry of Science and caretaker of the orphans, takes Astro in. The next day, Astro comes across an old, offline construction robot named Zog, whom he reactivates through sharing some of the blue core's energy. After restoring Zog, Astro has a heart-to-heart with Cora, discovering that Cora is from Metro City, having run away from her parents, but is regretful of her decision out of love for her parents. Hamegg scans Astro, discovering he is actually a robot, and knocks out Astro with his electric blaster to use him in the fighting ring for his tournament, the Robot Games.

Astro reluctantly defeats Hamegg's fighters until Zog gets deployed. Astro and Zog refuse to fight, and Hamegg attempts to disable both of them, but Zog, who predates the Laws of Robotics, almost kills Hamegg until Astro saves him, shocking the crowd. Moments later, Stone's forces arrive to take Astro back to Metro City, and he willingly surrenders himself. Astro reunites with Tenma and Elefun, and the former disables him. Realizing that he loves Astro as much as Toby, Tenma steals back the core, and stalls Stone to reactivate and free Astro. Outraged, Stone powers up the Peacekeeper with the red core, who absorbs him and many other objects to grow to a gargantuan size, prompting Astro to return to the city to battle it. Metro City's power station gets destroyed during the fight, causing the city to fall, and Astro uses his superhuman strength to help it land safely.

The Peacekeeper tries absorbing Astro to get his blue core using the red core, but are separated due to the cores' repulsive reactions. Tenma tells Astro that the cores will violently destroy each other on contact, thus, killing the Peacekeeper and Astro. The Peacekeeper captures Astro's friends from the junkyard, who were searching for him, and he shares a farewell with his father before flying into the Peacekeeper's core, sacrificing himself to destroy it. Stone survives and is arrested. As Elefun and the children find a destroyed Astro, Zog revives him with a surge of blue core energy. Reunited with his friends and father, Astro is hailed as a hero, while Cora is finally reunited with her parents. When a monstrous cycloptic extraterrestrial attacks the city, Astro leaps into action.

Cast

Freddie Highmore and Kristen Bell promoting the film at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con. Astro Boy press conference at 2009 SDCC (3767496517).jpg
Freddie Highmore and Kristen Bell promoting the film at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con.

Production

Development

In 1997, Sony Pictures Entertainment purchased the film rights to Astro Boy from Tezuka Productions, intending to produce a live-action feature film. Todd Alcott was set to write the screenplay, but the film halted in 2000 when Steven Spielberg began A.I. (2001), another film with a robot boy who replaces a dead child. [5] In December 2001, Sony hired Eric Leighton to direct an all-CGI film, with Angry Films and Jim Henson Productions producing it for a 2004 release. [6] A screenplay draft was written, but the film did not go into production, and Leighton left in early 2003 to pursue other film projects. In June 2004, animator and Dexter's Laboratory creator Genndy Tartakovsky was hired to direct a live-action/animatronics/CGI feature film. [5] After writing the script, the film didn't go into the production, and Tartakovsky left next year to direct 3-D-animated feature films at a new studio, Orphanage Animation Studios. [7] Few months later it was revealed, that he was set to direct The Dark Crystal (1982) sequel, The Power of the Dark Crystal , another co-production with Jim Henson Productions. [8] In September 2006, it was announced that Hong Kong-based animation firm Imagi Animation Studios would produce a CGI animated Astro Boy film, [9] with Colin Brady directing it. [10] A year later, the studio made a three-picture distribution deal with Warner Bros. and The Weinstein Company, which also included TMNT (2007) and Gatchaman . [11] In 2008, Summit Entertainment took over the film's distribution rights. [12] The same year, Brady was replaced with David Bowers, who previously directed Flushed Away (2006), the last project under the relationship between DreamWorks Animation, the creators of the Shrek and Madagascar franchises and Aardman, the creators of the Wallace & Gromit franchise and Chicken Run . [13]

Design

Image of Astro Boy and Zog in early CGI footage AstroBoy(CGI).jpg
Image of Astro Boy and Zog in early CGI footage

Like what Imagi did with TMNT in 2007, the film was CGI animated on Maya and rendered on Pixar's RenderMan at Imagi's Los Angeles facility and its main studio in Hong Kong. Some changes to Astro's design had to be made in order to appeal to a western audience and making the leap to CGI. The more challenging was his kawaii portrayal, part of which were his large eyes and curly eyelashes, features that the filmmakers thought made him too feminine. Imagi had several discussions on how round and curvy Astro's body proportions should be and in the end they were made slimmer. The by-product of these changes was Astro's Caucasian look. [14] In early development Astro's design was young, resembling his iconic design of a 9-year-old boy. The design team changed that and made him look like a 13-year-old to appeal to a larger audience. [14] They also gave him a white shirt, and a blue jacket since they thought it would be strange to have a normal boy running around without one. [15] They also replaced his heart-shaped energy core with a glowing blue one. [16]

Music

The score to Astro Boy was composed by John Ottman, who recorded his score with a 95-piece orchestra and choir at Abbey Road Studios. [17] A soundtrack album was released on October 20, 2009, by Varèse Sarabande Records. Songs in Astro Boy not composed by John Ottman are as follows: Breezy Day, composed by Roger-Roger. Alright, written by Daniel Goffey, Gaz Coombes, and Michael Quinn and performed by Supergrass. Marching Down the Field, composed by Harry Edwards.

Marketing

Summit Entertainment partnered with McDonald's to produce marketing tie-ins for Astro Boy. [18] [19] Beginning in May 2009 and continuing through September 2009, IDW Publishing published a "prequel" and comic book adaptation of the film as both mini-series and in graphic novel format to coincide with the North American release of the film in October 2009. A model of a motionless Astro Boy waiting to be powered up was set up at Peak Tower, Hong Kong, outside Madame Tussauds Hong Kong in September 2009. A panel of the film was held at San Diego Comic-Con on July 23, 2009. [20]

Prior to the film's release, Francis Kao stepped down as Imagi's chairman and CEO due in part to his disapproval of the marketing budget allotted for the film, adding that "I knew the movie would be bad and decided to leave the moment I saw the poster. It was just Astro Boy flying in the sky. It didn't tell a story; it had no feeling." [21]

Release

Box office

The film was a flop in Japan, appearing at the bottom of the opening week's Top 10 rankings and earning only $328,457. Conversely, the film was very successful in China, breaking a box-office record for a CGI animated film. This follows the same pattern as Dragonball Evolution (2009) and Speed Racer (2008), other American-produced films based on Japanese sources that were not big hits in the land of their origin but were very successful in China. [22] The film also was a box office bomb in the U.S., opening at No. 6, grossing $6.7 million, [23] losing out to the similarly retro Where the Wild Things Are (2009). It remained in the Top 10 for three weeks. When it closed in January 2010, it had a total gross of $20 million. [24] Due to these factors, Overall, the studio took a loss as the film would only produce a worldwide gross of $44.6 million against a $65 million budget.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 50% based on 139 reviews, with an average score of 5.6/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "While it isn't terribly original, and it seems to have a political agenda that may rankle some viewers, Astro Boy boasts enough visual thrills to please its target demographic." [25] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 53 out of 100 based on 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [26]

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B and wrote that it had a "little too much lost-boys-and-girls mopiness", but "Astro Boy is a marvelously designed piece of cartoon kinetics..." [27] Glenn Whipp of the Los Angeles Times gave the mixed review claiming "The kids won't get it but will enjoy the big, climactic robot rumpuses, which owe a heavy debt to Brad Bird's The Iron Giant (1999)". [28] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times gave it a mixed review, criticizing the film's confused tonal mixture of darkness and "commercially motivated" optimism. [29]

Conversely, Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, stating that "The movie contains less of its interesting story and more action and battle scenes than I would have preferred. [...] Still, 'Astro Boy' is better than most of its recent competitors, such as ' Monsters vs. Aliens ' and ' Kung Fu Panda .'" [30] Richard Corliss, writing for Time , also gave the movie a positive review, writing that "Any purely reasoned critique of Astro Boy would note that it does not advance the art of animation, and that some of its humor stabs miss their mark. But Bowers knows how to infuse emotion without just ladling it out in Act III; it is at the core of the story, as Astro Toby teaches his father the verities of love, heroism and family feeling." [31]

Home media

Astro Boy was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United States on March 16, 2010, by Summit Entertainment. Both releases include two new CGI animated sequences, a featurette with the voice cast, three other featurettes about drawing Astro Boy, making a CGI animated movie and getting the Astro Boy look, and an image gallery. [32]

In Japan, a limited edition Astro Boy premium box set was released on April 2, 2010. It featured the same content from the American release with the exception of it spanning two DVD discs (one containing the film, the other containing special features with two that are exclusive to Japan) and has both English and Japanese dub (along with English and Japanese subtitles.) The box set also comes with a DVD (containing a single story on Astro's first flight and an image gallery), Dr. Tenma's Project Notes (featuring 80 pages of CGI models, character art and set designs from the film), a Micro SD (featuring the motion manga Atomu Tanjo (Birth of Astro Boy) originally written by Osamu Tezuka), a postcard of 1980 Astro Boy flying, a small bookmark (a reel from the film inside a plastic cover), and Astro's blueprints from the film. [33] [34]

Accolades

At the 37th Annie Awards, Astro Boy received nominations for Outstanding Achievement for Storyboarding in a Feature Production (Sharon Bridgeman) and Outstanding Achievement for Writing in a Feature Production (Harris and Bowers). [35] [36] Linda Lamontagne was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Casting – Animation Feature at the 2010 Artios Awards. [37]

Video game

A video game based on the film was released on October 20, 2009, by D3 Publisher to coincide with the film's theatrical release. [38] The Wii, PlayStation 2 and PSP versions were developed by High Voltage Software, and the Nintendo DS version by Art Co., Ltd. [39]

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