Lensman

Festival Magazine
March 6 – April 30, 1992

By Noah Cowan

Ever wonder where Star Wars came from? Did it ever occur to you that Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader and the whole gang seem much more groovy than what usually comes from the minds of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas?

It turns out that Star Wars is heavily based on a six-part serialized novel, “Galactic Patrol,” written between 1934 and 1936 by E.E. “Doc” Smith. The Boskone have built a devil planet (Death Star), a killing orb designed to bully other galaxies. Only the heroics of young Kimball Kinnison (Luke Skywalker) along with hard-living ship merchant von Buskirk (Han Solo), can save the Galactic Alliance from the evil Boskones.

The genesis of Lensman began in 1979 when the well-monied Kodasha company of Japan optioned Smith’s work. They spent five years and millions of dollars working on (then) new computer animation technology. The result was a hybrid animation form, borrowing equal amounts from 3-D computer programs and traditional cel animation.

The film was completed in 1984, and was slated for a North American release the following year. But the entire project was shelved when Tomy—the toy manufacturer—reneged on its promise to support the film’s release with a toy line. Only now, after five years sitting in limbo, has Lensman secured distribution, thirteen years after the project began.

It is difficult to understand why it took so long to get here. Even with the recent spectacular advances in animation technology, Lensman still looks great. It moves at lightning speed. And because of its own oddly fractured history, it serves as a valuable history lesson as well.

Visually. the film bridges the gap between great cel-animated films like Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards and more recent computer-generated work like Akira. For those interested in recent developments in animation technology, Lensman serves as a useful textbook: the animation ranges from the painfully simplistic (fortunately in only a few spots) to the truly spectacular. Had it actually been released in 1984, it most certainly would have blown everything else off the screen.

The only animated film I have seen which nearly approximates Lensman’s look is the underground classic Legend of the Overfiend. Both films are manically paced and saturated with special effects and visual trickery as they desperately try to hide the awkwardness of their cel animation. The result is unquestionably manipulative, but in a thrilling sort of way.

Lensman also serves as a textual history lesson. Its narrative—like Star Wars—is a throwback to a mostly forgotten type of science fiction. In the 1980s, led by William Gibson, Blade Runner and Akira, the first and last word in science fiction became “cyberpunk,” a gritty, technology- obsessed style that talks hip and watches too much TV. Although some of its elements are intriguingly modern, Lensman is not a cyberpunk film. It comes from a different tradition, occupied also by Tolkein and Arthur C. Clarke: the futuristic epic. Told in broad strokes and with big language, this stuff has a readily accessible structure: nasty villains battle modest hero(ine)s, quirky androids toot along; in defense of the Good, everyone must travel to strange lands, with tons of weapons in tow.

Lensman succeeds in making all these devices work, but, be warned, it does take a few minutes to get going. One of the problems of bringing Japanese animation to North America is that the Japanese tend to enjoy a broader, more slapstick sense of humour than Canadians and Americans. This stuff tends to pile up at the beginning of movies. A few minutes of patience invested at the beginning of Lensman pays off later on, however; the set-up, as contrived as if may seem, becomes essential background material long before the film’s slam-bang ending. Some (including a reviewer for Weekly Variety) have taken issue with the film’s music, a kind of amalgam of disco and Japanese synth-pop. Personally I find it charming—it adds to the film’s historical feel. Besides, in 1992, what is more hot and happening than disco? Nothing, man.

Nevertheless, if you are intrigued and excited by great animation, do not let these caveats cause any distress. Lensman is an extremely entertaining movie by anyone’s reckoning. Hey, it runs, it jumps, it laughs, it cries. What more do you want?