Love, Death + Robots Volume 3 Review: A Visceral And Highly Enjoyable Collection Of Shorts
Starring: Joe Manganiello, Rosario Dawson, Seth Green
Creators: Tim Miller, David Fincher, Jennifer Miller, Josh Donen
Streaming Platform: Netflix (click to watch)
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (four stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
A new selection of shorts arrives on Netflix with the third season of Love, Death + Robots. Enjoy a torrent of creativity, fantasy and reflections beyond our world. Netflix may not be going through its best moment in general terms, due to its falling shares and certain chaos in the organization of its content, but that does not prevent it from rewarding us from time to time with series that reminds us of its “golden age”. Precisely, one of its greatest strengths has long been the series Love, Death + Robots, whose first two seasons, despite their irregularities, have helped us enjoy fantasy, creativity, and the pleasure of animation in all its variants.
Love, Death + Robots Volume 3 Review Episode Wise
This volume 3 of Love, Death + Robots presents us with 9 shorts, between 7 and 21 minutes, although only one of them stays below the 10-minute mark. As usual, different styles of fantasy are played, from the robots that give the series its name to space travel or sea monsters. In addition, each one bet on a different form of narration and aesthetics. The technical level remains at high levels, the themes are confirmed as adults, as well as the staging that in many cases does not hold back when it comes to proposing violence and excesses, but compared to a year ago there is a greater presence of shorts with a lighter and more ironic tone, balancing the greater gloom of the previous season as if the second and third were two ideal halves that together ensure the variety that the first cycle had maintained. All without renouncing to deepen, where possible and unfortunately a little less than in the past, the human component, which emerges above all in a couple of more successful episodes.
3×01 Three Robots: Exit Strategies
The opening is entrusted to a return: that of the Blow Studio which had already made two shorts for the first season, but above all of its Three robots, also protagonists of this new work entitled Three robots: Exit strategies. The approach is the same, ironic and light, like the one already seen in the first year of the series, with the three funny robotic protagonists trying to understand the customs of a post-apocalyptic world and the survival strategies of humans that ‘had inhabited and are now extinct. Although light in tone, there is no shortage of food for thought in the work directed by Patrick Osborne, with the confirmation of the script by John Scalzi, and the 11 minutes fly away between bitter smiles and reflections.
3×02 Bad Traveling
With the second episode, we move to darker and more ambitious territories, as well as to a high technical level and an excellent graphic style that focuses on realism, for another welcome and awaited return: that of David Fincher, directed by Un bad voyage., taken from the story of Neal Asher and made from a technical point of view by Blur Studio, whose presence has also been substantial in the past, having been founded by one of the authors of the series, Tim Miller. The work is more full-bodied, it amounts to 21 minutes, and this allows Fincher to outline the atmosphere of the story and to deepen to a greater extent the human aspect of the story that is told to us, which takes us aboard a sailing ship used for hunting. sharks that must face a problem of a different nature: the attack of a giant crustacean that turns out to be intelligent as well as hungry and presents the crew with a very particular request that brings out the most subtle drifts of the human soul.
3×03 The Very Pulse of the Machine
Third short, third studio, third style: this time it is Polygon Pictures, at its debut in Love, Death & Robots, to take us into the world of the pulsation of the mask, 16 minutes directed by Emily Dean. Less dark visually, with the clear colors of the style chosen by the Japanese studio that makes original use of CGI, but tense in the story that takes us to the surface of Io, one of Jupiter’s satellites, for an exploratory expedition that ended badly, which forces an astronaut to save himself by dragging the body of his co-pilot, using drugs that affect the brain and allow her to deal with the pain of her injuries. Desolate environments, tension, and troubled dreamlike atmospheres for a successful episode and a style that was missing in the series.
3×04 Night of the Mini Dead
Also, for The Night of the Dead, we find ourselves in the presence of a debut in the series, that of the BUCK studio, with texts and directions by Robert Bisi & Andy Lyon (albeit on a subject by Jeff Fowler and Tim Miller). Compared to the shorts that precede it, the approach is light and disengaged, macabre in an ironic way, and based on wide fields that let us observe from a distance this bizarre zombie apocalypse, which starts from a cemetery and spreads to the rhythm of pressing music, worldwide. Approach and intent are satirical, with a fun 7 minutes, as well as an original approach to the genre, but it is one of those episodes that leave less at the end of the vision.
3×05 Kill Team Kill
Another new addition to the work on the series for the fifth episode, Death to the Death Squad. This is Titmouse, Inc. which boasts many productions known to the public, including the recent The Legend of Vox Machina by Prime Video, which puts together a more action-oriented story directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson and based on the story of Justin Coates. The visual style does not differ much from the Prime Video series just mentioned, as well as the language and the general incorrect and violent imprint in telling us about the clash of a group of American soldiers against a mighty grizzly bear genetically modified and enhanced by cybernetic grafts and lethal. 13 minutes in which the active component and the irreverent tone work properly, but there is little else that can tantalize from the point of view of the reflections that are expected from the series.
3×06 Swarm
Back to Blur Studio territory for Swarm, a 17-minute episode written and directed by Tim Miller based on a story by Bruce Sterling. But let’s also go back to dealing with that kind of episode with a deeper and more reflective approach, which takes us to the space frontier to follow two post-human scientists grappling with the study of an insect race that is only apparently without intellectual abilities. We are in the presence of great and profound science fiction because we talk about fears and there are philosophical nuances, in an imposing and rich visual system, which confirms the value of the study and perfectly embodies the spirit of Love, Death & Robots.
3×07 Mason’s Rats
Just under 11 minutes for Mason and the Rats, which marks the return of Axis Studios, already present in both the first and second seasons of the series. The director is Carlos Stevens, with a script by Joe Abercrombie from the text by Neal Asher, for a story with an apocalyptic flavor, surreal as well as disturbing, which stars a grumpy farmer forced to take drastic and technological measures to deal with annoying super-evolved rats. From a technical point of view, the CGI is excellent, with the construction of the environments and use of foreground lights, which is accompanied by an artistic style that instead emphasizes the features and winks at the caricature of the protagonist Mason and the human characters.
3×08 In Vaulted Halls Entombed
Imposing, violent, hard. And with an ending that leaves the chills. Buried in vaulted rooms is one of the cases this year in which we said to ourselves: here, we would like this to be able to develop in some way. Directing is Jerome Chen, for Sony Pictures Imageworks, which we had already met in the first season with Lucky 13, and for a visual style that relies on the purest realism and a truly impressive level of CGI perfection. 15 minutes of great atmosphere and tension as we follow a Special Corps team into caves in Afghanistan on a dangerous mission to rescue a hostage prisoner of terrorists. But the evil with which they will be confronted is of a much more ancient, omnipotent, and frightening nature.
3×09 Jibaro
We remain on graphics tending to realism for the final chapter, entitled Jibaro, for the signing of Alberto Mielgo and Pinkman. tv, who had already made Il testimony in the first year of the series. Dynamic direction, with the particularity of being a purely visual art, without speech to accompany the action but with incredible work on sound, and fantasy suggestions, more than strictly sci-fi, in reimagining the traditional folklore story of a siren that attracts men with her song, until her spell fails when she deals with a deaf knight, the title Jibaro, who ends up enthralling her. The result is a dance between two predators of different natures and a splendid conclusion to the third season of Love, Death & Robots, which already has great value in experiments of this type.
Love, Death + Robots Volume 3 Review: The Last Words
As a whole, this season 3 of Love, Death + Robots leaves the viewer very satisfied, although it is true that it falls back into certain “vices”, particularly in prioritizing aesthetics, and form, over substance in some stories, which ask louder closing screams. It seems as if they left certain plots open for a possible fourth season, although we would have appreciated something more conclusive. Even so, it is true that, compared to a season 2 which was more reflective and, perhaps, explicit, this one is more focused on feelings, on visceral, from ambition to hope or empathy towards those we believed to be our enemies.
They are very difficult concepts to capture merely with images, but this series achieves more than enough. Thus, although there seems to be a certain pattern in all the seasons that becomes somewhat predictable, these shorts are very, very worthwhile if you are lovers of the pulp and the fantastic or are you just robots? A new demonstration of talent and imagination, which appeals to the viewer who enjoys science fiction in all its variants. Some stories may seem somewhat trite, but the whole is very remarkable.
