Love, Death and Robots Season 3 is Impressive, Gory, And Dark
Exit Strategies
Netflix’s sci-fi short series provides a rare product for viewers. Love, Death and Robots gives us the short story, a format common in literature but rare on screen. It is a unique experience, and one that impresses time and again. Volume 3 is no exception.
Volume 3 has only nine stories but several stand out in a big way. One should see all of them, of course, but with the knowledge that the quality of storytelling and animation is uneven.
Exit Strategies kicks off the Volume with another short with three comical robots studying the extinction of humanity after an apocalyptic event. This plays on the pessimism many have about the future of humanity, giving the perspective of robots trying to piece together how we collapsed.
The jokes don’t land as well as the previous robot episodes. A great premise that should’ve been a little more clever.
Kill Team Kill is low-brow, vulgarity-laden military action with a murderous robot bear. It is violent and loaded with cheesy jokes, some of which are actually funny. Night of the Living Mini Dead was also a violent comedy at 10x speed with cute chipmunk voices. Both are gory, nihilistic, and forgettable.
These episodes all set a misanthropic theme that permeates through most of Volume 3. The stories don’t think much of humanity and seem to gleefully kill human characters at a quick pace, as well as in creative ways. It often works, but in the stories above, it did not work that well.
Mason’s Rats
The funniest story is by far Mason’s Rats (based on story by Neal Asher). The battle between a farmer and a host of rats infesting his farm escalates rapidly. Bloody and dark, the story has a surprisingly funny and satisfying end. The exterminators using drone AI weapons with a sadistic smile delivers the anti-human angle.
Very Pulse of the Machine (based on story by Michael Swanwick) is a psychedelic space survival story on a moon-sized computer. Visually impressive with a more old fashioned animation style and plays wonderful music that makes up for a simple, somewhat predictable story.
Very Pulse of the Machine
The most impressive animation and stories was Bad Traveling, Swarm, In the Valley Entombed, and Jibaro. All four are horrific, terrifying, and absolutely beautiful.
Bad Traveling had the most nuance, with a hated crewman on a sailing vessel attacked by an enormous intelligent crab monster. The desperate crewman strikes a deal to bring the monster to a nearby island, in exchange for sparing his life. The deal results in the slaughter of the other crewmen. One is left asking if the survivor is a Machiavellian villain or the only man on the ship who acted selflessly, saving the lives of those who lived on the island.
Bad Traveling
In Swarm (based on a story by Bruce Sterling), we find a researcher brought to study an ancient multi-species space nest that appears to act as a single organism or ecosystem. His plan to exploit the nest is discovered and the swarm turns out to be much smarter than expected. The hubris and shortsighted view of the nest, an ecosystem that has been around far longer than humans, is the theme. Noticing a pattern yet?
In the Valley Entombed (based on a story by Alan Baxter) is a great Lovecraftian horror set in the mountains of Afghanistan. A small special operations unit chases Taliban fighters into the caves and find one of the Elder Gods, possibly Cthulhu himself. Horrifying, visually stunning, and classic Lovecraft. It is simple but effective in what it sets out to do.
Jibaro
Jibaro is by far the most striking episode in Volume 3. Utilizing a colorful, flashy, seizure-inducing animation approach, it tells the story of a deaf warrior who comes across a water siren covered in jewels. Visually stunning, the story will push your limits in terms of flashing lights, rapid movement, and high-pitched screetching. You won’t see anything else like it for a while. As with most of the stories, the humans are greedy, shortsighted, and don’t survive.
The collection is a dark, pessimistic view of humanity. Nearly every story is a depiction of humanity as foolish, shortsighted, violent, and arrogant. There are forces and beings in space, in the sea, in caves, in the river, and even in our own labs that strike back at us. The tone is definitely darker, misanthropic, and finding most of its human characters irredeemable.The message seems to be that we are small, flawed, and in dire need of a lot more humility.
Overall, Volume 3 compares well to the previous Volumes, although it is a little disappointing there were only 9 stories. It is also notable that this Volume has a generous helping of death and robots, but not much love. Audiences are enjoying it, which perhaps makes one wonder what that says about us.