Dissenting Opinion: Summer Wars

You might be expecting that I unsoundly dismiss Summer Wars, a universally praised and championed animated movie, simply as bad to seem different or unusual for the sake of being different or unusual. Now don’t worry I don’t work for The Village Voice or the New York Post. While that would make my life easier in writing this blog and your life easier in dismissing my thesis and personal feelings the truth is that things are not as simple as they seem. I have to and should outright concede that Summer Wars is not bad, and let me state that first and foremost. In fact I would concede that overall it is a good if not great movie. However it ranks on my personal list of movies that I consider good but don’t really like. I believe the clichéd term is that the film did not “click” with me. Now it may sound like an oxymoron to say that a movie is good but not good, but let me use this article to explain myself…and trust it will get complicated, but hopefully it will always be entertaining.  

Summer Wars is in fact a quality made film. It’s flashy, action packed, well made, has a cast of character that were effective, and it kept my interest for most of the time. Now your brain doesn’t get that much out of the film in terms of actual science fiction but at least it was a lot of fun. I wish I could hoist and waive the bloody shirt to simply dismiss the movie as a whole but as I have already mentioned that simply isn’t the case. All around Summer Wars is good animated action that isn’t as insulting as the average Hollywood cash out.   

So where’s the beef? Now I guess it is time that I come clean. I’m a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to my genres. This is a position that most would dismiss as arbitrary and unfounded. However I have always enjoyed hard science fiction over say space operas or science fantasy. This has always been my personal preference when it comes to film and literature. I like my science fiction slow, methodical, mathematical, and deliberate. Part of the reason for this is because I like movies where I can just walk away for a minute, make a bacon sandwich, grab some cola, maybe a can of peanuts and not feel like I missed a major event in the movie that puts me at a disadvantage for the duration of the film… wait God damnit now I’m hungry. This doesn’t mean that I enjoy movies where nothing happens and there’s no actual point to the experience. I mean for God’s sake even HAL killed a couple of humans here in there. You can still have themes of change, self discovery, and finding your place in society in these types of films. However what I like in my movies most of all is when character development is gradual, guided and purposeful. There can be action sprinkled on top of all this but I like my action in moderation so is that when there is drama it feels special.

I like action movies and fantasy films as well. I like to have fun every once in a while. You know especially after watching a psychologically taxing or highly metaphorical art house movie. Not every film needs to be Ben-Hur to keep me watching it. However I’m still not convinced that anyone will ever discover a good way of finding a nice clean fifty-fifty split between slow hard science fiction and fast paced fantasy action. All the attempts that I have seen in trying to broker this theoretical happy medium have either been extremely disorienting or …bad.

What I’m trying to get at is that I consider Summer Wars pure fantasy action, and it is fine in its fantasy action, but I was hoping it was something else. I would in no circumstances or under any condition (even if I was drunk off my mind) group Summer Wars with the works of Isaac Asimov or even Gene Rodenberry. You remember when science fiction was about a realistic and peaceful vision of the future? Remember? In that regard Summer Wars in part represents what is quickly making people like me archaic and mostly nostalgic. People want their action when in the movie theater more than a meth addict wanting to get rid of the flying snakes that are attacking him. Huh…that didn’t really work…sorry for the shtick it won’t happen again, but it probably will. So personally I feel like Summer Wars missed a good opportunity here to make something I could truly attach myself to. In this regard the failure can be placed not on the shoulders of the product or the designers but on the shoulders of the consumer, that being me the author. I doth protest too much on this matter so let us move on.

 Hooray for Ensemble Dark Horse...Again.

Now let’s get into the meat and bones about the actual story telling. Now I want to say that overall I like the characters. They were efficient in serving their roles and in progressing the story as well as blurting out the occasional emotional line when prompted in order to add some brevity. It’s just that I’m not really getting why people think that Kenji Koiso is like some sort of outstanding character that they could relate to. Then again I don’t relate to Holden Caulfield. He’s competent as a character and nothing more in my honest opinion. Now this leads me to another point I would like to talk about and that’s the the cast of characters in this film really don’t work for me. The characters do a good job in being goofy and acting kind of crazy but I’m not completely sold on half of the movie being about a soapy and more personal family comedy drama and the other half being an action fantasy story. I’ll be perfectly honest with you I started to really dislike the family sitcom shtick rather quickly. Now I understand why these scenes are here. Judging from the dialogue the director and writers tried to add some emotional brevity with these sequences and also to provide a breath of fresh air from the jittery action sequences (maybe a tad bit too jittery for my tastes). The problem is that this part of the movie ventures into the land of the melodramatic and corny more often than I would like. Life at Grandma's house, and the humdrum of the real world just shouldn’t have taken as much precedence over the nail-biting possibility of the imminent apocalypse as it did in the film. Seriously? You people are the best hope we have? Well that’s a crapshoot! 

On top of all of this Kenji and his female companion, Natsuki Shinohara, just always seemed to act in the most frenzied and unrealistic manner possible when put into the various situations they find themselves in (if this were TV Tropes I might just be daring enough to call it a case of Flanderization). However most of all Kenji and Natsuki are easy characters and this is why I find it so hard to praise them or the writing that entails them. Yes I get it. The guy likes the chick but the chick doesn’t really notice him at first. As the story progresses he gains confidence and their relationship gets better. Congratulations, now the Greek playwrights from the Classical period would like their royalty check. In fact when you break it down Kenji is in many regards simply The Hero with a Thousand Face. Again this is why I call the characters effective, and not stellar or original.  So what is the purpose of the remaining cast? To appeal to as many demographics or common denominators as possible to increase the potential audience of this movie. It’s the slice of life characters that people really find themselves attached to, but again the writers took the easy way in making us relate to the cast. Other than some notables few of these characters are actually described or detailed in any important way. On top of that there were all of these "Of Course" moments that really rubbed me the wrong way. Of course Kenji's lucky card was a Chekhov's gun. That stone rarely goes unturned in movies. Now I’m not vehemently criticizing the writers for doing this and I’m trying to pick my words really carefully here. This is a problem not simply isolated to Summer Wars but the writing of all movie scripts on the planet. You can’t really get too complex in less than two hours so you usually have to play it safe with the cast and story. In fact if Joseph Campbell is correct (and I believe he is) this is all excusable due to the fact that we love these types of stories and have them hardwired into our mental conscious to prefer them. So….Wait whoa…am I getting into comparative mythology in this article? I’m going to stop myself right here and just move on to the next topic. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar….

 Why are You Always Surprised...at Everything?

Now I want to say one more thing that I really like about hard science fiction…subtly. Summer Wars is not subtle and the characters are just way too electrified. Now it’s more of a necessity to hypercharge the characters because this film is only about 110 minutes. You could also probably say that the characters are a tad bit jittery due to them being young and less mature, or you can say that movie audiences are too impatient to grasp subtle character development…well actually all are kind of true. The characters yell, run, beat up bad guys, rag on each other, and do all sort of action stuff. They just don’t do it with distinction or tact and again maybe behave a tab bit too melodramatic in some situations. In its rather short span I would say that Summer Wars tried to cram in too many emotions in its span. Like anger, fighting, happiness, death, sadness, teasing, more fighting, punching/dueling, hostility, unrequited love, determination, guilt brought on by a complex, shouting, humor, defiance,  emotional distancing, awkwardness times a million, confrontation, emotional breakdowns, laughter, and then at the end we suddenly have love, confidence, stability and order. I don’t buy this. This to me is lazy and the easy way out when writing a story. Secondly this is makes the cataclysmic ending of the film far more exhausting than it should have been especially considering that it followed what I would describe as a fairly significant lull. It’s its rather inconsistent structure Summer Wars felt disorienting and even confusing and I doubt that this was what the director and writers intended. 

I could nitpick the various scenes and individual moments that I didn’t like but that never seemed like the responsible thing to do in this feature. Nor do I ever intend to become the Angry Video Game Nerd of anime. What I want to do is convey my personal experience as well as my feelings and theorize why Summer Wars didn’t really click for me. The times they are a changing, but the hell if I change with them. More importantly I remain unconvinced that movies are these perfect little crystals that shatter when you point out blemishes. It’s called journalistic criticism for a reason! Anyways I end this by saying that my heart tells me that Summer Wars is one of the easiest movies I can recommend to movie goers and anime fans everywhere. My brain tells me why this is true.