The Gene Generation is a cyberpunk/steampunk kind of thing which consists
mostly of actors performing in front of green screens, with the
superimposed backgrounds supplied by comic book art. The result is similar
to a rotoscope film, except that the humans are portrayed by
three-dimensional actors rather than two-dimensional posterized images of
the same actors.
That is if you are willing to accept Bai Ling as a
three-dimensional actor. Debatable, I admit.
Unlike speculative future fiction, which takes place in a future human
society in which some dangerous modern trend has not been properly
regulated, steampunk and cyberpunk adventures take place in some alternate
universe in which a human-like society has developed with different styles
and technologies. The most common conceit involves the extension of the
19th century's obsession with enormous machines, as used in a
post-industrial society that could never quite get the "post" right
because it never figured out how to miniaturize or transistorize the
machines.
If you think about it, you'll realize that we had some periods in human
history which played out sort of like steampunk adventures. For the first
thirty years of the 20th century, we had recorded voices and silent films,
but nobody seemed to be able to put the two together, even though it would
have been almost as simple as playing a record while the movie was being
projected. Steampunk and cyberpunk writers love to imagine exaggerated
versions of these sorts of crazy gaps in technology. The people in their
imaginary dystopias have advanced computers, but they operate them with
rusty metal keyboards, and their monitor outputs are eternally stuck in
the era of green text on black backgrounds. They can alter a human's DNA
with a bracelet, but they don't have cell phones, and all of their
gargoyle-festooned buildings look like the kinds of places where the
Phantom of the Opera would like to snuggle up. They have the advanced
technology required to fill the skies with traffic, but the airborne
vehicles look like the Chinese junks one might have seen in the Hong Kong
harbor in 1890. Their inventions have brought them all the drawbacks of
technology, but none of the conveniences. Part of their world is derived
from Blade Runner and another part of it from Conan the Barbarian, and the
fun of it all derives from the mixing of technologies which should be
centuries or even millennia apart.
The Gene Generation has all of those elements I just described, and
they serve to create a fairly interesting backdrop for the action, but one
cannot build an interesting film solely on backdrop. Like this film, Sin
City basically put an alternate comic book universe on screen with live
actors, but Sin City would not have been worth the watch except for some
interesting story lines, a lot of heart, and an authentic film noir
sensibility. In contrast, The Gene Generation is basically just a routine
B movie about mobsters and assassins, except with an odd alternate
universe in the background. The original premise about DNA re-programming
is virtually abandoned, and the little of it that remains is about as
scientific as an episode of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Mostly the
DNA reordering just involves turning humans into things that look like
skeletons occupied by some writhing snakes, and even that bizarre conceit
never really becomes central to the action, other than that the assassins
will occasionally overpower somebody with a magical snake bracelet instead
of bullets.
Strangely enough for a movie with plenty of imagination in the animated
portions, the costuming is completely unimaginative. The good people of
their world, as well as the evil, all wear leather Fonzie jackets pretty
much all of the time. I guess that 1950s bad boy style is supposed to look
"punk," but as I surveyed the bleak and sunless landscape of their world,
I had a hard time imagining the areas where they raised all the necessary
cattle. (Fonzie grew up in Wisconsin, where there is no shortage of cows.)
Of course the logic never matters in cyberpunk, but the imagination does,
and one thinks the director might have benefited from employing some
costume specialists who could have made the people in his foregrounds as
outré as the cartoons in his backgrounds.
The bottom line on The Gene Generation is that some good concepts
remain undeveloped, and some imaginative background details go unsupported
by what the humans are doing in the foreground. The director (who also
write the comic book, ala Frank Miller) showed some impressive talent in
some areas of film creation, but desperately needed a better story.
