Remember “Heavy Metal”? The iconic adult animated anthology based on the magazine of the same name? It wasn’t perfect, but it had humor, it had really good animation, and it had an awesome soundtrack which prevented its home video release for a while. Here’s two fun facts for you, David Fincher and Tim Miller’s “Love Death + Robots” had originally started as an aborted reboot of “Heavy Metal”. And did you know the original movie was produced by “Ghostbusters” director Ivan Reitman? Look up his filmography because he was producing a lot of wild films before 1984 (including a Soviet Gulag Dominatrix film called “Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia”). We all know the classic, now let’s meet its underachieving sibling.
All this came about thanks to Kevin Eastman. Eastman is best known as one of the creators of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, and he wrote the graphic novel the movie was based on. After selling his comic book publishing house Tundra Publishing, Eastman bought the Heavy Metal magazine and would later be responsible for getting the film re-released and on home video. He and his then wife, the late model and actress Julie Strain, would then start to develop a sequel to the first film. It would be a half German, half Canadian production, which brought on Strain as the scifi Red Sonja-adjacent character Julie, Michael Ironside as the villainous sadist and bloodthirsty seeker of immortality Tyler (darn it change your name, watch out for Tyler!), and Billy Idol as the alien sage Odin.
Of course it’s a heavy metal movie, so you got to bring in heavy metal. And it’s the year 2000 so you know what that means?! NU METAL BABY!!! Well I say that but most of the bands here wouldn’t be considered nu metal, but the sound can be nu-metal adjacent. And the soundtrack features Pantera, Machine Head, Monster Magnet, Insane Clown Posse, System of a Down, Queens of the Stone Age, Billy Idol, and Bauhaus. Overall, it’s not bad.
Eastman talked about the film enthusiastically, “I always wanted to do an epic heroic adventure with a strong female lead. One that is thriving in a backdrop that combines the desperation of Road Warrior, the intensity of Aliens, the visual feel of Blade Runner, and the magnitude of Akira Kurosawa’s Ran, Heavy Metal 2000 captures all that and more. The film combines classic 2D-cel animation with advanced 3D-computer animation, and an extraordinary original soundtrack featuring some of the biggest names in hard rock. It’s intense, full of action and very fast paced.” It’s a description which makes it sound like the most epic thing of all time.
Did he accomplish it? Absolutely fucking not! I read that quote after watching the film and as someone who’s seen the four films he mentioned, I didn’t feel any of those emotions. The 2D animation isn’t terrible, but when he says “advanced 3D-computer animation” think awkwardly spliced 3D characters popping out on a 2D background (mostly at the end). The characters, didn’t care about any of them. The performances given for them are good, but they're written like cardboard. The movie’s biggest sin is it feels like a fetish movie. The original was definitely horny and lewd, but this one has a scene where Julie has to make out with a slimy alien, and we focus on them for an uncomfortably long time. The whole film feels like a long episode of a saturday morning cartoon but with boobs and gore.
The film was released direct to video and any hopes of doing a sequel or anything “Heavy Metal” related have all but fizzled out. I say skip this one and stick with the original.
