LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS. Image courtesy of Netflix.
I realize Netflix is struggling a bit at the moment. The once unstoppable giant has shed US subscribers (2 million of them) for the first time, the competition from other streaming platforms is increasingly dramatically, and their prices have steadily ticked up, causing us still-loyal subscribers to wonder at what point we should bail. I do find myself wondering this more and more, as Netflix is losing the rights to big movies, Disney has frozen them out, and a lot of their original content is pretty mediocre or just outright garbage. But LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS shows that, at least for now, Netflix still has some fight left.
Right, so this is a sci-fi anthology rendered with animation and CGI. Some of the stories were written or drawn from the work of pretty famous sci-fi writers like John Scalzi. It features a total of 18 vignettes dealing with artificial intelligence mostly, but also just a bunch of other out-there sci-fi shit. There are boobs and blood and cursing galore, so it is basically targeted right at the prime nerd demographic. Fortunately, that includes me! I loved this anthology. It was like sitting down in the library with a sci-fi anthology book and flipping through a bunch of short stories that vary in tone, style and theme from one entry to the next.
You’ve got photorealistic CG, hand-drawn animation, weird funky stylized stuff. You’ve got a story about three robots who come to Earth after Man has gone and crack jokes about how stupid we are (cats feature prominently in this one). You’ve got pretty straightforward entries about how AI and biotech can be used to upgrade conventional fighting forces, and you’ve got a story about some kind of bionic cat god rape victim (I might be remembering that wrong).
The point is it is out there, it is daring and it is a great cacaphony of noise and style and ideas. They don’t always land, and everyone will have different rankings and opinions and favorites - that is the nature of anthologies. But I was really impressed with how Netflix took a chance on a property like this, and I wish they would do it more often. It might help prop up their subscriber exodus to pursue off the wall creative stuff like this rather than, say, another middling Netflix Original Series that ends after 2 seasons.