Love Death + Robots / Beyond the Aquila Rift

 I admit that at the start of this second tale from the Netflix series, it felt very much like the opening of a video game. The story, too, felt very standard science fiction. A trio inside a ship enter their cryo-chambers for a deep sleep travel, seemingly awakening way far off course from earth. The captain of the ship, Thom (who looked like Hugh Jackman in the face to me), wakes up to a flame from the past named Greta, who tells him his ship was 100 years into the future of the earth he left. Thom's science officer, Suzy, is woozy, nauseous, and dizzy, awakening out of her sleep as if the effects just refuse to wear off. Also, Suzy rejects the idea that Greta is who she and Thom says she is...she also doesn't believe they are in the sector Greta initially tells them. Where they actually are and what Greta actually is...Thom might have preferred not to know at all. The truth is nightmare fuel.

This, to me, is about the incredible visionary scope of those behind its making. Outer space, the ship, the asteroid belt, the ship machinery, the inner workings of the ship, the operations of the ship, etc. All of this including the characters and how special effects and motion capture have evolved so much. I sort of sighed, though, because I wish my uncle was alive to see how far science fiction has come. He died too young. All of this pops right off the screen and just deserves to be seen on as big a screen as possible. I know I'll be watching this again because I viewed it on my HP Chromebook. 

The answer to actresses no longer having to perform nudity is for female characters created via special effects. There is an actual sex scene between Thom and Greta, with her even dunking champagne on her naked body for him to lick it off. Thom even lifts Greta off her feet, fucking her against a wall passionately. The vivid quality of these characters, their form, at a distance and up close, is very impressive. I'm watching this in awe, with mouth agape, realizing that even if the story is familiar and not particularly profound, a screen pulled up without physical buttons, a map that can reach across the universe by characters, an entire animated tapestry digitally painted for our minds to be blown. Just an experience to be truly appreciated. I didn't leave this short film necessarily knocked for a loop by the sci-fi story, but that didn't matter considering I was knocked on my ass by the entire visual overload. 5/5