I recently had the good fortune to be able to watch Steamboy- a movie from Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira). When I heard about it, I honestly expected something more dark from the maker of Akira. However, I see that this is a look at an almost equally dark future- one where war is constantly going on, and everybody loses, except for the people that make the weapons that nations kill each other with. As an end result, I believe that while it isn’t the best thing I’ve watched, it was a good movie, and not a waste of two hours like some movies are these days.

Steamboy takes place in Industrial Revolution-era Great Britain. The power of steam is the latest great technological advance. The leading scientists discovering steam is (with no coincidence) the Steam family. However, an accident claims the life of Edward Steam- leaving only his father and his son as the leaders of steam technology. Unfortunately, the O’hara Foundation (known for selling guns to both sides in the Civil War) is trying to use this technology to make more weapons of war in order to make huge amounts of money. Can young James Ray Steam keep his grandfather’s most prized and most potentially dangerous out of the hands of the Foundation?

I read a few of the reviews on IMDB, and found a number of good descriptions.

“It wasn’t a TOTAL waste of time. It at least had ambition. Reaching for the stars and falling on your face is infinitely better than the Hollywood tradition of diving straight for the pavement.”- Joe12321

“They are two totally different movies. That is like comparing Evil Dead 2 to The Ring Two. Yes they both are called “horror” but Ring was made for a wide audience with teens in mind, and Evil Dead was made to match gore and humor mainly for the elite horror fan.

Akira and Steamboy are very similar. Akira more like Evil Dead and Ring more like Steamboy. Steamboy was made to be a family film whereas Akira was an adult sci-fi violent action movie. You cannot really compare the two.”- willden21

As always, feel free to post comments. Until next time…