Speaking of Cars in Space – Heavy Metal was a terrible movie

So while Elon Musk has opened the topic of astronauts driving cars, it is worth noting that the 1980 movie Heavy Metal was very bad. Let me count the ways:

• The animation was bad, even for the time period.
• A lot of the art was just bad.
• The stories were at best weak and often just plain dull.
• The music wasn’t terrible but despite the range of talent involved it was all mediocre.

And of course, it was a galumphing stereotype of wanky sexism with a boob obsession.

The premise was a set of animated shorts joined by a common framing story (a green globe of concentrated evil) and musical numbers by bands like Cheap Trick and Nazareth. The stories were animated by different companies, which cut down production times and meant that each sequence had its own style. I assume that variety of styles is why the film manages to maintain a reputation. No story or sequence lasts long enough for people to really remember what the storyline was, which leaves an impression of a mix of ideas and images.

I’d only seen the film in bits and pieces. A friend had a VHS of it but it wasn’t something I watched all the way through until much later. I assume the novelty of it also added to its reputation and its limited availability on video meant many people had only patchy memories of it. The idea of a ‘grown up’ sci-fi/fantasy anthology animation is certainly appealing and at the start of the 1980’s comics were heading into a new period of appealling to older audiences. Yet, the shallow story telling is so poor in that film compared to what you could read in comics of the time, that I remain puzzled that a film of that length couldn’t manage at least one interesting story. The only added element beyond using a variety of visual styles (poorly executed) was the emphasis on naked breasts.

What an odd lost opportunity.