Human Head: Prey 2 - Bounty trailer

Human Head created a world by mixing the best of sci-fi western so far (most people identify the genre with Star Wars and Blade Runner which is a good guess but it still oversimplifies the issue). Primarily I would distinguish sci-fi western from the genre of Cowboys and Aliens. This is not the type of world where cowboys wear hats and ride horses. It is the future of that world where people and culture are the same but adopted to  a more advanced technical level.

They begin with a 20th century airplane scene, we do not know why we are there but clearly we are on a journey. Airplanes are the symbols of many things and I think it is a very strong thing for an overture. In one hand the airplane is the symbol of safe travel. This aspect is very strong in the trailer. In the other hand airplanes are the tools for conquering the world and make it similar to the wild west globally. This is less important here. And thirdly airplanes and the ability to fly altogether is the symbol of human capability to face and overcome any (sometimes impossible) challenges. This can be read into this but not a necessary part of the thing. 

However strong the different aspects are I believe that all are present among these cuts. 

On the airplane, we are safe and calm, this is emphasized by showing the air-marshal on the first shoot walking between the line of seats. We watch people looking out of the window. There are empty seats so we know that there is no emergency, just an ordinary Sunday flight from LA to New York (or whatever). By having the air-marshal on board we see that it is (still) the wild west where they had Marshals to accompany and defend the property of the state on travel (mainly cargo owned by the treasury or criminals as he does here). Just to clarify some confusions about this concept let me give a short historical summary of these services. United States Marshal Service was founded in 1789 while Federal Air Marshal services started by Kennedy (1963) to secure important or high risk flights. An air marshal in this sense is not to be confused with an air marshal in the military ranking system which is a high responsibility rank.  

The wild west aspect is emphasized by a historical confusion in the trailer. Our hero has the Federal Marshal Service badge instead of the Air Marshal Service badge. This can be considered as a mistake but since we are in the future the two services could have been merged by that time so this is not necessarily a mistake. I would understand this as being the artistic expression of the above detailed complex symbolism and therefore an alteration by intention. 

The two different badges

Of course suddenly something terrible happens and our Deputy U.S. Marshal crashes with his plane to somewhere out of Earth. Now this part is a little bit confusing. It looks great when earth is way behind the horizon but the audience just needs to make an intellectual jump about where we are at the moment.

This intellectual jump creates the atmosphere of being lost. We feel exactly the same as one would after such a crash. The only possible crash site seems to be the Moon. But wait a minute. On the moon our hero could not really survive. So where we are? And how a plane crashes to the moon. That thing cannot be that simple. Then comes the relief: "ah the aliens... that explains everything". 

Now if we stop for a minute. The highest expectations from the human capability to fly was to reach the stars or at least the moon. This was at the top of the twentieth century's technical advancement. We could say that we almost crashed into the moon (metaphorically speaking) by the speed of the technical development of the last few decades. There are people out there in their 40s who just could not catch up and are still shocked by the new world just have been built. A great number of people could not adapt to this new world and they feel like our hero in the trailer. They remember where they came from (Earth in the trailer, wild west of the '60s-'80s in their minds). If one thinks that this is an old generation one should think about the origin of the education and cultural heritage of our generation. Kids born around 1990 still played more cowboy games back in the garden then WOW. Now these kids face those aliens who were raised on e-mail, facebook, x-box. What can a wannabe cowboy guy do on this new planet? I think this is the question through which this genre should be understood. I know its sounds oldish but hello (!!!) its a PG18 game. 

So we are crashed into the future, where there are only aliens... and Johny Cash so the wild west survives as it always does. By the opening shot on this new world our deputy marshal jumps into this messy jungle and starts to kick ass. I think, but this is not the strongest claim about the trailer, that there is something supporting my interpretation in the appearance of the aliens he hunts down. Both suffer from the stereotypical physical symptoms of being an info-mage.

Our old-fashioned marshal arrives to a city merged from classic sci-fi visions like Blade Runner, Judge Dredd, Star Wars (Coruscant), Fifth Element. The interesting thing is that not much transport is present in the city so its a perfect site for freerun or parkour. 

This feature of the set is fully exploited later. The streets have several levels and they are more like little islands to gather on not real routes for handling everyday business or sell or serve any functions. It is true that at the beginning (at 1:36) there is a spot in yellow light what can be a bar or a small shop but it is clearly empty and nobody is there making it completely dead. Of course on could say that after a shootout its normal for the staff to hide but the rest of the civilians seem to be quite ignorant to the gunfire. If this is so then I would assume some of them would continue shopping as well not just standing around the gunfight. This calmness is a little strange though and its only function could be to make the criminal push them out of his way. Since there is even a pause of shock after the murder of the bodyguards one cannot say that they just have no time to react. So either the shop should function as well (even a shocked shopkeeper would be satisfactory) or everybody should break into panic. This all matters because despite the walls and some big functionless boxes I cannot pick any life on the street. Even if it is a getto there should be some citylife. The only people we cross are thugs. But thugs standing around does not make profit without the civilians being terrorized. This is like a bad video game. You reach a point, kill the thugs who just stand there without doing nothing and move on to the next stage. Of course this is a video game trailer but even if the game itself does not create a living city just a jungle of thugs to shoot at, the trailer as a short movie should be more realistic. 

The run through the city is really mad (in a good sense) and clearly shows a great deal of obsession. We don't even think about how this guy is going to get back where he started. That seems to be an other matter.
Thanks to the graduation of introducing new features of the world we are touched with the obsession of the bounty hunter all along the pursuit. First we see that electric bola then suddenly we see the target to teleport forward then a little shootout and the slow-motion/anti-gravity grenade. Then the railway system and finally the capturing device. This all happens under approximately one minute. This much information makes people tired and we feel that after the successful catch we had enough of action. We have that "oh not again" feeling when we see more thugs approaching. Fortunately our hero has additional new devastating weapons so our attention is at the top level again: "now he will blow them!". This is required for the final joke to hit. When we see the big monstrous alien approaching we think we are screwed, this is too much. But then the computer tells us that this is a target and from that time on its just an other job to do and it should be a piece of cake. And this is the point where we are bought completely.
The best novelty is the use of the camera and the cuts. The airplane scene is live action. The crash site is blurred out but its clearly CGI we just do not care because we cannot even see what is on the picture. At the opening pictures of the animation we have unusual lights so we cannot compare it to our everyday experiences. Actually they have a pretty nice leather texture there. At 1.10 when we look down before the jump the interaction of the different lights is just amazing. That richness of lights is taken back when we face the first target. I think that is the point when they switch back to the ordinary CGI visuality. Fortunately we have the helmet-camera to distract this experience.
At the closeup of the alien (1.25) they show its beautiful anatomy but what I miss is some imperfection. Not necessarily on the face but at least some on the clothes. However I love the blood spill onto the camera at 1.31. But if you check 2.36 you clearly see that the clothes of the villain are still sterilized after such a chase. I think this hangs out of the script. He was running, jumping, falling crashing in a getto. He cannot be so clean no matter what they made his clothes of.
About the lights I already mentioned that at 1.10 they are really pretty. Not just pretty but very realistic. But that ends when the villains get some focus. At 1.33 if you freeze its clearly the lighting of a video game. Whites spots are overemphasized and burnt out. This is clearly a conceptual problem since if they put lower lights onto the street this does not happen. If you check how realistic his cap is at 2.08 with only a little shine on it you know what I mean. That much of light intensity could have been enough (for shades not for the whole run).
On the final pictures (at 3.00) we see a very difficult task to accomplish. If you see the big monster's stomach there are smooth shadows while on its head there is a shining burnout surface. It is very difficult to make such a scene to be realistic and I think they did a very good job. But I am still puzzled why did they put so much light around and why are those so strong. I think they still did a nice job at 3.04 on the marshal's shading. But that is clearly not the artificial lighting we saw before. It is more like sunshine (since its completely white).
I think the render is almost perfect, no big mistakes, no messy parts. For the anatomy its funny that they have cut out almost the full brain of the aliens. People usually put more brain to aliens to explain why they are smarter than us. I agree with the creators that this is a stupid assumption. They might have been around for only a thousand years longer and then they could have built up a more advanced culture than we have. Its a good point. And emphasizes the brainless criminal metaphor as well. The design for all the aliens are very original which is a hard work nowadays. I am not  really convinced about the flat-head ones at the beginning though but anyway you never know what nature can produce (I think star wars legalized this type of biology).

The lights (despite the concept) are very consistent and the particle systems are very nice. The background is all deeply detailed even when you see a great landscape or a long tunnel in the background. A lot of leading companies don't do that, they cover up complex details with 2D visuals. 

The only mistake I have discovered in animation is at 2:32 when the marshal jumps onto his target from the train and they both fall back. I think this is not proper physics there. If the target falls into the wall (several meters forward) the marshal should have landed there as well. It is conceivable but I think people notice that it is at least rare to happen. Actually on this part, I just have to note that I love that the villain has some accent. This is a great detail however unlikely it is for an alien to have a Russian-like English accent. (Maybe when they first arrived to earth they considered Russia as the main market?)

Story: 9/10 (Not too much happening there but it still has a lot to tell in metaphors, definitely more than a simple shootout but we barely know anything about the people or the world or even what is happening there)
Director: 9/10 (Great smooth symbolism, nice gradual storytelling, its a shame that the city is that empty of real life)

Modelling: 10/10 (Great, creative anatomy, perfect details)

Animation: 9/10 (One minor mistake with the jumping capture, otherwise perfect)
Render and lights: 10/10 (I have not found any mistake, still looking. Great job)
Material/textures: 10/10 (Same thing for the materials and textures but hey its easy for a sci-fi)
Photography: 10/10 (Dynamic camera movement. I love the switches between first person and ordinary cameras. And it is used creatively.)
Editing/effects: 10/10 (I think the switching between the different types of cameras is very demanding for the editor. More would have been too much since the action is already very exhausting to watch.)
Music: 7/10 (Not the greatest toon, but perfectly fits to the rest of the movie. However it gives too much resemblance to chasing scene from Public Enemies. The reference is very nice, its the too much part only which could have been avoided.)
Visual concept: 8/10 (The overall visual concept is not that original however it uses great reference and I love it. The anatomy is super-original but the city itself does not really show anything new. Its really similar to Star Wars and especially the video games. This is supported by the lack of real life of civilians. I cannot even see real doors on the street. How these people get there where they are? The embarrassing thing is that a few more detail would have been completely enough. But our job here is to push these things not to overlook them. And I still insist that they should have lower the lights of the city a little bit.)

___________________

Overall: 9.2