Some Thoughts On…Love, Death & Robots

The greatest thrill that I got from watching the new Netflix series, Love, Death & Robots is the moment when the intro is over, and you wait in anticipation to see what kind of animation is going to be used for the next episode. While the target audience is certainly different, and there was perhaps even some overlap during production time, this feels like the next step forward in animated storytelling that only would’ve been possible because of the success of Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse. It brought a verve and kinetic energy to every frame, utilizing the colors and style of comic book illustrations to deliver a form of animation that has never been done before, especially on such a scale.

Love, Death & Robots, in case you didn’t know, is the brainchild of Tim Miller (of Deadpool and the upcoming Terminator: Dark Fate fame), and David Fincher. It’s an adult-oriented animated anthology series that explore the ideas of love, death, and robots in various scenarios from filmmakers around the world. It’s eighteen episodes in all, and their runtime ranges from six minutes to seventeen, which does make the viewing experience a bit odd, and I do wish they just made it formatted into a film. But that’s neither here nor there.

It’s impossible to not be immediately struck by the animation here. Literally every frame of this is stunning, and I found myself absolutely adoring all the work put into it, as well as being in awe of the sheer variety of styles. Some episodes will be drawn in expressionistic 2D, some are damn near photorealistic 3D renders, and others are somewhere in between. They’re beautifully made, they’re effectively tense, funny, scary, and the voice artists are great as well.

I won’t go over all the episodes, but I will say that my favorite was – and by far – “Suits.” It’s a fairly early episode (unless Netflix shuffled the episode order like they did for some), but I was in love mere seconds into the story. It’s a charming, but increasingly suspenseful tale of a bunch of farmer who operate mechs as they are in danger of being overrun by these alien bug monsters. It’s amazing, and it’s structured in such a way where it felt like I was watching the climax to a childhood favorite film that never even existed. I loved the hell out of it, and out of all the shorts, it’s one of the very few that I think would make a genuinely great feature length film, and I’m curious if something like that is in the cards for the people behind the series.

Unfortunately, there is a really big problem with the show as a whole. Before this project came to be, Fincher and Miller were initially trying to get a reboot of Heavy Metal , but that didn’t work out, so they ended up retooling their ideas into what eventually became Love, Death & Robots. In a way, you can really see that attitude and aesthetic when you see this, especially in the first several episodes (again, assuming Netflix didn’t reorder the episodes for you). It seems like that artists having grown and evolved the aesthetics of cyberpunk since it was first fully realized, and that goes double for its treatment of women. The female characters in this show are more often than not vessels for gratuitous nudity, trauma, and violence.

Look, I’m a guy who can appreciate the hell out of some sleazy art. I can dig it, but when everything about the form is pushing things forward, it seems weird to see it hold onto ideologies and conceits that feel wildly outdated. If you want to make a sleazy cyberpunk future story, that’s awesome, but it’s 2019, and I think it would seem far more realistic if the male form was equally as exploited, objectified, and made vulnerable. There’s maybe a few brief shots of dicks here, but plenty of breasts and full frontal shots of women, even when being brutalized. I feel like we should be past that kind of framing by now.

This issue can be rooted in the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any women working as either the writers or directors on any of these shorts. The directors are mostly white men, and fifteen of the eighteen episodes are written by Philip Gelatt, whose work I appreciated in stuff like Europa Report and They Remain. Yet, I find it baffling that he has written so many of these since it kind of goes against the whole point of the show. How am I supposed to experience all these distinct visions and stories from people around the world when most of them are ultimately written by one white, American dude. The lack of cultural specificity in some of these shorts do end up making them a bit less substantial than they could’ve been. This isn’t me saying this show is bad because mostly dudes made it, but considering that they seemed to be aiming for with the series, it feels like a missed opportunity at a lot of points to not bring in more marginalized voices.

I do love what this show is doing for adult animation, even if it doesn’t go by the most mature route in doing so. I love that it plays with interesting ideas, and bold themes. And I cannot be more excited to see them continue giving animators the freedom to go nuts with the form. I just hope they broaden their reach next time around, with more women, more people of color, and maybe we’ll get something that’s as refreshing in its ideas as it is with its animation. I do ultimately recommend this for anyone who loves science fiction and animation. There are elements that are regressive and crude, but there is more than enough visceral satisfaction delivered just through the breathtaking animation that I was able to enjoy myself despite my issues with it. It’s very good, but it can very easily be great, and I hope Miller and Fincher take the necessary steps to do that if Netflix gives them a second season.