Some scenery that appears for virtually no time onscreen betrays evidence of hours upon hours of detailing. One feels almost guilty, like a pauper passing as royalty at a feast, enjoying such a visual treat so lightly-as scene after scene reveals the colorful and evocative evidence of the creators’ attention to detail, in the service of complete evocation of a world. To watch this film is to revel in its vibrant, sometimes stunning visuals. Part carnival, part apocalyptic-noir fable, Metropolis would feel much like Blade Runner or Dark City if it weren’t so much fun to take in.
Laughton, and the chaos that follows leads the characters from the clean beauty of upper Metropolis down through the social and technological strata of the city to confront disturbing truths about the nature of humanity, and its progress forward. Rock’s interference in Duke Red’s plan for Tima serendipitously coincides with Detective Shunsaku’s search for Dr. Unfortunately for Tima, Rock-not the wrestler, but an angry young man (angry, perhaps, at his being drawn with a Shoney’s Big Boy haircut) who calls Duke Red father and who leads the Gestapo-like Marduk party-has other ideas. Tima, as the humanoid is named, is destined to sit on the “throne” of the Ziggurat. Laughton, has built the final piece of the Ziggurat: an artificial being with an esoteric purpose. Meanwhile, at Duke Red’s behest the rogue geneticist, Dr. Metropolis’s action begins as an elderly detective and his nephew Kenichi, seeking a renegade genetic engineer, arrive in Metropolis just in time for the city’s grand unveiling of the Ziggurat. The film opens with this last element: as if watching an old war-time newsreel, we see in black and white film of Metropolis’s mastermind figure, Duke Red, standing proudly atop the pinnacle of the so-called Ziggurat, a skyscraper-plex of near-stratospheric height, and billed as the zenith of humanity’s scientific and intellectual progress. If you’ve seen Fritz Lang’s early silent film Metropolis you’ll recognize some thematic and visual influences on Osamu Tezuka’s animated Metropolis: society divided into strict caste divisions of one form or another, the attempt to create a beautiful world via the sweat of the impoverished and outcast, worker rebellions, and of course, a misguided faith in technological and social progress.
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