3 Short Paragraphs: Space Sweepers

 2020, Sung-hee Jo (Phantom Detective) -- Netflix

There is an early 2000s anime I am fond of, called PlanetES, about the Space Debris Section. They are tasked with the cleanup of NEO (near Earth orbit) as it has become increasingly full of junk that can endanger satellites and orbital stations. Its a rather low-tech near-future kind of story, about the crew of a small ship that goes about collecting nuts & bolts before the become hurtling projectiles of doom. This movie sort of hinges on the same premise, but only in the thinnest of uses. They collect, competing with many other crews & ships, the massive scrap that seems to be out there, derelict ships and space stations and whatnot. The movie never really gets into why there is so much debris, as it focuses on the melodrama of the scrappy crew finding a possibly walking bomb, in the shape of a little girl, left behind in an abandoned ship cargo hold.

Space Sweepers is a bombastic, over the top, often silly, scifi spacer flick along the veins of Luc Besson meets Michael Bay. Its the distant future, Earth has become near uninhabitable, but few living in the orbital structures can afford more than subsistence living. There is a rebel force against the ruling body / corporate force that controls everything and a scientific endeavour to ... transform Mars? Replenish the Earth? To be completely honest, I lost track of the plot very early on, eventually only looking up from my phone for the action sequences or any sequences with the sentient robot who was a member of the scrappy crew.

Don't get me wrong, this movie looks incredible and if I can enjoy the visual pleasures of space operas like Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets or Jupiter Ascending then I can enjoy this. It was just that there was soooo much going on, so many nods to other movies, so much on the screen competing with the family melodrama of the ex-govt/corp soldier who just wants to raise the money to find the body of his little girl, in amongst the space junk, that I short-circuited and tuned out. Still, there are so many enjoyable set pieces, characters and scenes in this flick, it was still an enjoyable watch, and maybe even a more-focused rewatch will come in the near future.

(Kent's view in among the 10)