CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
Profile continued . . .

ARCHIVES!
YOSHIMI BATTLES THE PINK ROBOTS: THE MOVIE

Monday, March 21, 2011

this entry brought to you by the flaming lips, "fight test"


I don't know if you've ever heard Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips before, but years ago as I was listening to it, a very, very distinct movie idea started forming in my head. Pink Robots is not a concept album, in fact, robots only come up in two songs, and Yoshimi herself only comes up in the title track. Still, certain ideas brought up in specific songs really formed an entire world in my head. And as time passed and I heard the record more and more, the idea became more elaborate and concrete, and I've always thought, goddammit, that would be a really fun movie.

And it just sat there in my head for years, mostly because it's a lark. I'll never be able to make such a movie-- even if I am ever afforded the ability to write a movie, it certainly wouldn't be this one, as I am just a guy with a blog, and not a Hollywood writer, or friends with the band who can slip this idea in their pocket so they can start talking to Hollywood writers.

Still, every single time any Flaming Lips song comes up on random-- not even just the ones from Pink Robots-- I can't stop thinking about this idea. I finally decided, you know what? Why not just write the fucking thing down?

If you know the record very well, you'll note that the bulk of the plot is inspired by the songs "Fight Test", "One More Robot/ Sympathy 3000-21", and of course "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots", but if you've never heard the record before, I still think you'll be able to keep up.


YOSHIMI BATTLES THE PINK ROBOTS

 It's 2033, and we are in a city called Neo-Tokyo, a retro-futuristic world with hyper saturated colors (such as found in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World). Sky-scrapers reach to the sky, there are neon-colors everywhere, and the movie is almost entirely shot during the daylight, giving everything an almost utopian glow. This is what you expect when you think of anime being translated into real life. The entire cast, including all extras, is about 45% white, 45% Asian, with the remaining 10% being other minorities. Most people have spiky anime-style haircuts, dyed every imaginable color.

The movie opens with gorgeous swooping shots of this hyper-pristine city with a voice-over newscast-- live on the scene!-- of a new musical opening in downtown. As we watch the news reporter interview various cast members and producers outside of the theater, we cut to an office building where the TV is on, playing the news cast. This is obviously the floor of some sort of ad agency, and the camera settles on our main character, Garnet. He is unassuming, white, and currently working on some sort of design, deeply lost in thought. The office floor is bustling.

Suddenly there's an enormous, earth-rattling crash just outside the window, and there is panic in the office. All the workers scramble to the window to see what's happening outside. The news reporter is in front of the theater which, coincidentally, is across the street. She tries her best to narrate exactly what's going on to her live telecast.

In the middle of the boulevard is a two-story retro-style robot, menacing in every way except that it is colored bright pink, and as it shouts "DESTROY! DESTROY!", it begins to stomp around and smash into buildings as people scatter in fright. The news reporter keeps narrating, informing the viewer that it's another one of these giant pink robots that have come to destroy Neo-Tokyo, and that the last time this happened it was just six months ago.

With that, all of the sudden, a brightly-colored ninja wearing a motorcycle helmet does a backflip off a building and lands in the street dramatically. We cut up to the window of the ad agency with our main character, who smiles gently. We go back down and the ninja removes her helmet, letting out a long mane of beautiful jet-black hair. This is Yoshimi, a sexy, svelte, yet appreciably cute Japanese woman in her mid twenties, and as she whips her hair around she poses, looks at all the civilians around, who are now still with silence as they look on. She smiles and gives a thumbs up. The crowd goes apeshit. Suddenly we cut to a poster on the wall of Yoshimi giving that exact smile and thumbs up in an ad for soda. We have several more jump cuts around the street of Yoshimi giving variations of that same smile and pimping various different products on advertisements all across the city.

The robot stops and sets its sights on her. We see its Robo-vision, TARGET: YOSHIMI. THREAT EXTREMELY HIGH. DESTROY WITH IMPUNITY.

Yoshimi pulls out a bottle of vitamins and, being sure to pose with the bottle for the crowd, pops a few-- we cut to another poster of her pimping said vitamins. Then she gets into a battle pose, runs at the robot, and unleashes fury. Despite being much smaller than this hulking behemoth, she is able to run up along buildings and, with a flurry of awesome ninja moves, destroys the pink robot. The crowd cheers again.

Yoshimi poses a bit, waves at her audience, then looks up into the window where Garnet is, winks and blows a kiss. Garnet smiles and blows back, then waves. Yoshimi runs up a building and disappears.


This is the opening to Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. The plot of the story will be about Garnet, who is in a long-term commitment with Yoshimi, the super ninja badass, biggest celebrity in the entire world. Over the course of the movie Garnet will have to deal with how emasculating it is that he's a nobody-- just a guy at an ad agency, shit on by his boss and largely ignored by his coworkers, while his girlfriend is the most beloved person on the planet.

Living in Yoshimi's shadow for as long as he's known-- they were childhood friends, dated in high school, and now, in their mid twenties, are engaged to be married-- Garnet is living in a state of perpetual lack of ever having to be responsible for anything concrete other than his relationship. Yes, this particular theme of being a man and learning to grow up has been dealt with a lot in movies, especially lately, but here we have a story of a man not just learning how to be a man, but how to be his own man, and not just a thing that is standing next to his girlfriend when the paparazzi show up and take pictures. Garnet is frequently humiliated by looking at the papers and seeing that he has been cropped out entirely from the photo, often leaving just his disembodied arm around hers.

Furthermore, Yoshimi, being this super-awesome ninja, hasn't just overshadowed his existence in the world, but also fights all of his battles. Not because she is overbearing, but because Garnet does not have much of a spine, and, well, Yoshimi isn't afraid of confrontation.

One of the things that always interests me about stories is the idea of the supporting character. What if you knew that you were the supporting character, the second banana in the story of your life? And what if the story focused on that character, even though all the major events followed the top character? What if Harry Potter was written from Ron Weasley's perspective? What if Godfather was written from Connie Corleone, Michael Corleone's little sister's perspective? Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots would be about Garnet realizing that there is worth in being second banana, that he can be a supporting character in his own life, so long as he is still a fully rounded person as himself.

Meanwhile, there's the problem of these giant robots that keep showing up and attempting to destroy Neo-Tokyo, and initially the city doesn't seem to mind much because they always have Yoshimi there to turn them into scrap metal. As the movie progresses, the robots that show up start getting bigger and more elaborate, giving Yoshimi a run for her money. What exactly is happening here?

At the end of the first act, we will cut to a dangerous, smoldering volcano on an island somewhere, and we find out that, indeed, these robots are being made on an assembly line, and they keep coming faster and faster, larger and larger, to the point that it's inevitable for Yoshimi to become overwhelmed. A computer AI has been making these things, each one better than the other, and what was a faulty part from the previous model gets thrown into a ditch, replaced with something new. Eventually these parts become sentient and put themselves together-- it turns out that the parts that didn't work were the parts that make sentience, ergo, not parts that work well for killing machines. This is Robot 3000-21, who is appalled that its creator is hell bent on destroying humanity, starting with Neo-Tokyo. He heads there to help out, and discovering that, were he to introduce himself to Yoshimi, would probably be immediately destroyed, he decides to approach the next best thing: Garnet.

Along the way there will be scenes of Garnet not sticking up for himself, learning to become a man. At the climax of the movie, while trying to get to the AI to help a quickly-becoming-overwhelmed Yoshimi, Garnet will get in a fist fight with a character that he's alwayshated-- a high school "friend" that has known him and Yoshimi since grade school, and has been dogging him throughout the movie. This guy has always had the hots for Yoshimi, and has always been there to bust his balls way past the point of comfort, and when she and Garnet get into arguments, is always there to tell her she should dump him. Of course, Garnet has never told this guy to fuck off because he's been too much of a wimp up until this point, always trying to be the better man, always trying to play it cool. But here, in this crucial moment, Garnet has had enough, and after all the insane pyrotechnics and crazy stunts from the ninja Yoshimi destroying things three, four times her size through the first two acts, the most nail biting moment in the movie will be a normal, run-of-the-mill fist fight, mano-a-mano.

Of course, Garnet wins, is able to destroy the AI from making more robots, giving Yoshimi the breathing room to get a second wind, and completely and utterly kick ass.

Also, somewhere during the middle of the movie, before shit really hits the fan, there will be a slow, romantic moment where Garnet and Yoshimi are in a club, in a dark corner, smiling and looking into each others eyes. The Flaming Lips are playing live in the club. They are finishing "It's Summertime", and as the last notes fill the room, Yoshimi tells him that she wants to be close to him. They stand up and take each other in arms, as The Lips start up "Do You Realize???", and it's as if the entire room disappears, and it's just the two of them, holding each other.

I'm not kidding, I just teared up thinking about it.
-----



with love from CRS @ 3:58 PM 

0 Comments:

Post a Comment