Interstella 5555: the 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem (part three)
A lone, cloaked figure looks out over the nighttime city lights of Possibly New York City.
Probably Sonic. Guess he escaped Area 51, stuffed his organs back into his torso, and spray painted his face beige or whatever. If there's one thing working in his favor, it's that the villains' plan involves making the victims very famous. Which makes them easy to find, even from clear across the planet.
The silence gives way to a soft, atmospheric instrumental piece, barely audible over the sounds of rainfall.
Track 6: "Nightvision"
as we cut over to Robotwig and his thugs emerging from their limo and taking the elevator up to see the Crescendolls in the luxurious penthouse he's imprisoned them in. The four of them are pulling a late night signing hundreds of albums and posters, with the guards physically forcing them to keep going whenever they start to collapse of exhaustion. It's not clear if it's just natural tiredness they're suffering from, or some side effects of being controlled by the glasses for too long. If nothing else, the emotional draught they're being kept in has got to take a toll eventually, even if they aren't lucid enough to act on it the way they normally would.
Back down on the street, the cloaked and hooded figure makes its way through the rainy night, moving from homeless camp to homeless camp and avoiding the headlights of suspicious police. The camera cuts up to focus in on a TV billboard advertising the Crescendolls' upcoming performance, and we have a great panning-out shot that spirals downward to bring the cloaked and hooded Sonic back into frame.
He get a face shot a moment later, and he's not even spray painted beige. Somehow he's managed to make it here with his teal hanging out. Sure, he's wearing a hooded cloak, but it's not like no one would ever be able to see his face through that. Maybe we're supposed to think he just took a mask off or something.
Also, when the screen focuses on S'telha in particular, he raises his hand up and closes it into a fist in front of her image. In a manner that looks more possessive than triumphant. It's...more than a little creepy, to be honest. I'm starting to think that Sahn'hik over here might not end up playing a straightforwardly heroic role after all.
As the sun rises over the skyscrapers, a military-sounding drumbeat begins, heralding the next song.
Track 7: "Superheroes"
Seventh track on the album. Halfway through by song count, but not yet by runtime. The last couple are long ones, it seems.
Big open air stadium. The Crescendolls and their master are flown in by helicopter as the venue - huge as it is - is packed, and traffic outside is a nightmare.
I don't know how typical it is for a band's agent to come out onstage and do their announcements. Or for people to be clapping and cheering for him before the actual artists even appear. The creepiness of the Crescendolls offstage existence has got to be noticeable.
It looks like the morning framing was sort of deceptive, though, because it's actually not until the following sundown that the concert begins. Scores of backup musicians with old school orchestral instruments (erm...if the Crescendolls are supposed to sound anything at all like Daft Punk in-universe, those classical violins and harps are going to be a sort of a clash ) take up positions on the main stage's flanks. Robotwig appears to be preparing to conduct them with an old fashioned orchestral baton, which is...also something.
We get some closeup shots of the Crescendolls' own instruments awaiting them onstage, with an oddly metallic gleam in the spotlights. The TV screen overhead displays a countdown to the bands' appearance, each flick of the numbers intercut with the crowd's eager cheering and hollering. It's definitely evoking public execution imagery, with the gleam on the instruments suggesting a guillotine blade or a headman's axe. It gives the impression that this might be the Crescendolls' final performance, if the evening goes as Robotwig planned.
I might be reading too much into the execution-ish imagery. I'm not sure at all WHY Robotwig would want to kill them off after this concert, in particular. Then again, I still don't get what his angle actually is to begin with, if it really is more than just a convoluted moneymaking scheme as some previous imagery implied. And, well, if it really is just money Robotwig is after, he wouldn't want to kill off his cash cows anytime soon, would he?
Yeah. Whatever he's using this whole plan in service of, it's something weird.
The countdown reaches zero, and the Crescendolls materialize onstage in a massive pyrotechnic display. Making the scene even more ominous is the silvery, teardrop-shaped blimp that's begun circling overhead looking suspiciously familiar.
The spotlights and blue-leaning color scheme of the stadium external shots also have to be evoking the abduction scene on purpose. More implication that Robotwig is going to do something big and dramatic again, likely ending the phase of his plan that requires the abductees to remain alive.
Well, it's the perfect time for Sahn'hik to pull off a daring rescue then, isn't it!
As if hearing my cue, he drops down from the sky on what looks like an improvised bat-glider, swooping down right passed the disguised Shark and into the stadium. At some point he ditches the homemade-looking glider, and reveals that he still has some high tech personal equipment even if his ship itself is totalled.
Explains how he stayed out of Area 51, I suppose.
Granted, I wonder how he got up to that altitude he glided down from in the first place. If that jetpack was strong enough to do that on its own, he wouldn't have needed the glider to do most of the descent. Maybe the glider was to just avoid detection, if he recognizes that "blimp" and is afraid of lighting up its sensors mid-descent.
Sahn'hik lands right on the edge of the stage, hood thrown back to reveal his alien appearance (though granted, the audience might just think he's a stuntman in blue makeup), and pulls out a...flashy memory thing? It looks a lot like the flashy memory thing.
Turns out it's a bit more like a sonic screwdriver, though. It releases a kinetic pulse that causes fractures in fine glassworks and similar materials. The actual lenses of the glasses they're wearing are too thick to be effected, but the tiny electronic components in their frames are splintered. Sahn'hik either just freed the four of them, or gave them brain damage. Depends on how failsafe those mind control glasses are; I'd assume "not very," but then again Robotwig might have decided to prioritize accident prevention over reliable slave control. He did go through a lot of trouble to nab these four, after all, and they're not exactly replaceable. Well, anyway, I guess Sahn'hik didn't really have a better option, so this risk was worth taking.
Granted, I'm not sure how he figured out that the glasses were controlling them in the first place. Or even that the control was being done via a fine device on their persons in general, nevermind the glasses specifically. Robotwig clearly isn't operating from the same techbase as the Tealosians, and probably not from the same one that Sahn'hik's mysteriously advanced superhero ship is from either. *We* have been shown that the glasses are part of the mind control setup, but I'm not sure if that would be apparent to a distant observer. Hmm. I guess I'll just have to roll with it for now and hope there's an explanation at some point.
Sahn'hik disables Arpajas, Brheel, and Oc-Tavoth's glasses. Before he can turn to hit S'telha with the pulse as well, though, Robotwig gets up and starts turning a concealed weapon in Sahn'hik's direction.
Implied to be an invisible death ray or something. X-ray laser type of thing, perhaps.
Sahn'hik has to dive off the stage and put himself in the middle of a crowd that Robotwig can't murder without giving himself away in order to evade it. Arpajjas, Bhreel, and Oc-Tavoth might not 100% remember themselves yet, but they understand that this isn't where they're supposed to be, their skin is the wrong color, and that there's a member of their own species (and possibly a famous superhero that they know by face) leading them away. So, they jump into the crowd after him and use the chaos of the confused fans and guards to elude Robotwig and his henchmen. They manage to make it to the parking levels, where they steal a van (I guess the sahn'hike screwdriver can hotwire vehicles or something, lol) and make a break for it. The other three slumping into exhausted, brain-blasted unconsciousness as Sahn'hik drives away from the city posthaste.
Unfortunately, Robotwig has some way of tracking them. His ship being overhead likely has something to do with this. A pair of black cadillacs full of henchmen overtake the van on the highway, and the roads are empty enough that they can start a shootout and be gone before it draws too much heat.
Those guns of theirs turn out to be quite a bit less subtle than I suspected. The beam is invisible, but it blasts a big, obvious chunk out of anything it hits. Their van starts getting big craters blown in it, but fortunately the henchmen are trying to take the three in the back alive, so they can't be too indiscriminate. After failing to snipe the driver, they try coming alongside the van, and make the oldest car chase mistake in the book by failing to watch the road ahead of them in addition to the target.
I thought there were two cars full of baddies, not just one? Weird. Anyway, one or both of the pursuers just got ploughed into by a big truck and completely destroyed. The van shoots away, carrying four of the five Tealosians currently on Earth to freedom, at least temporarily.
A few minutes later, the henchmen stagger jerkily out of the flaming wreckage of their car(s?). They survived, somehow. Or...ah, I see. Their movements' "jerkiness" isn't of the typically shell shocked or wounded kind. More like a damaged machine. Some bits of skin have also been torn off to reveal the extensive cybernetics beneath.
Honestly, I'd assume they were full-on androids rather than cyborgs at this point, were it not for the details of the abduction scene. If Robotwig used fully synthetic henchmen, he wouldn't have needed to put them in enclosed suits and helmets for the raid. So, either they have fleshy bits as well, or he uses a mixture of robot and human minions with these guys happening to be robots.
Unfortunately, the escapees might not have gotten away unscathed. There's a pool of yellow-colored blood on the floor of their van, and Sahn'hik is clearly struggling to stay conscious and driving.
Looks like he wasn't completely outside the blast radius of the shot that hit the driver's seat. And I'm not sure if any human doctors would know what to do for him even if going to a hospital wouldn't lead to them being dissapeared.
...hmm.
Obviously, genre conventions stand in the way of this, but I feel like at this point there best bet might actually be to just go loud. Make a big public display of their technology and Sahn'hik's undisguised physiology, tell the public everything, and hope the government doesn't just do something even worse to them than Robotwig did now that the public's eye is already in place.
I can understand them not wanting to risk that. But it might be a smaller risk than any of the alternatives.
Well, anyway. The van drives away, crippled but moving just like its occupants, as the final electronic underplay of the song fizzles out. That's the end of the song.
Track 8: "High Life"
The coldly glamourous, pulsing beats of "High Life" open with those two cyborgs or androids or whatever being repaired in Robotwig's base, and then them, him, and S'telha riding a limo through the city streets again. S'telha is under *heavy* watch now, with minions sitting on either side of her on the car cushions. In the row behind them, Robotwig looks surprisingly unperturbed, considering that he just lost three of his four captives and learned that their people have somehow followed them here. Like, seriously, if one Tealosian had the technology to follow him to Earth, he should be extremely worried about more being on the way, unless he somehow found out that Sahn'hik piggybacked on the Shark's hyperdrive. I don't think he could know that, if he didn't already (which he clearly didn't). And yet, look at that smug mug:
Maybe he's just keeping up appearances while doing a good job of hiding his fear and rage. The movie could have done more to visually indicate this if so, though, since visuals are pretty much all it's got as far as storytelling goes. I guess maybe he thinks he can finish whatever he was planning to do at that big concert with just one Crescendoll, somehow?
Well, that may or may not be reasonable on his part, depending on what the hell he's even trying to do.
As the synthvocal beats continue pounding away like a steel hammer covered in rainbow LED's, Robotwig, S'telha, and the terminators drive up to a very fancy looking venue being attended by many other ridiculously rich and fashionable people and enter, keeping S'telha flanked and watched every step of the way. Robotwig drinks and rubs shoulders with music industry bigshots, seemingly doing a good job of being - if not legitimately charming - then at least only slimy in the typical entertainment industry way that doesn't raise red flags with this bunch. As the party warms up, there's a runway fashion show, with model after model filing along the path in time with the beats like carcasses on factory meathooks. The many tiered rows of cameras flashing on either side evoking cannons firing broadside as they twitch along the runway.
I don't think these ladies are supposed to be more of Robotwig's synths or captured victims, but their presentation sure as hell makes them seem like it. It's one of the most unsettling bits of imagery of the movie so far, in large part because of how it matches the music in both movement and in feel.
At a couple of points in the show, a strangely small, stylistically unfitting looking man is seen looking through a camera at the models, and managing to isolate S'telha in the audience in between them. There's also a...fashion designer?...who gets up on stage at one point who looks like it could also be a disguised Brheel. Either him, or a random crossover from Dragonball Z just happened:
You can decide for yourselves which it is.
While possibly-Brheel waits among the guests and/or entertainers, Robotwig brings S'telha to a locked hotel room, where the guy who is either a disguised Bhreel or an undisguised Master Roshi brings them a fancy gown for her to wear. Huh? She gonna be a runway model too, now? Robotwig switches from music to fashion to better suit his remaining assets? Well, if that's actually Bhreel then the gown is going to have a sonic screwdriver concealed in it set to go off in a few minutes. If it's just Roshi doing his fashion design side gig though, then probably not.
Robotwig at least has the courtesy to leave the room while S'telha changes, though I'm sure all possible exits are being kept guarded. As he leaves, a tag falls off of his own fancy suit and onto the floor behind him. It's hard to tell if that was actually accidental, or if he did it on purpose while making it look unintentional. In either case, after he leaves S'telha picks it up. Either acting on a brief flash of resurgent curiosity (perhaps brought on by loneliness now that she's lost the others), or just randomly fixating on it in her dreamlike daze. In any case, it has this written on it:
Either a very unusual brand name, or a delivery address. If the latter, does that mean that Robotwig's real last name is actually Darkwood? Fucking hell, how can you not grow up to be a supervillain when you're born with a name like that?
Well, she changes. We get a brief look at the outside of the venue again, where another screen announces what this event is
I'm guessing this is a play on the Korean "golden disc" music award. Anyway, in this version of Earth it's apparently a very prestigious music award, and this is its ceremony. As the pre-party ends and the real event begins, Robotwig von Darkwood leads his captive and minions back into the main room.
There's an opening music show, and then the announcers step out and name the final short list of Golden Record nominees. There's a band called the Blackbirds who look like a cross between Counting Crows and a band of JoJo characters, a three-man-band named Trilogy (a play on Journey, maybe? They have the hair for it, idk), the Crescendolls, and...Daft Punk.
Yeah. They're up onscreen doing the robot. And yeah, their present selves are sitting in the front row seats along with the other nominees, in full regalia.
Um. That raises...questions. Such as "did the Crescendolls steal 'One More Time' from their brains from multiple galaxies away, or did Daft Punk steal it from the Crescendolls?" Maybe that's the real reason for those silly helmets; they got tired of telepathic aliens plagiarizing their songs and started wearing protection.
The final winners of the award for this year are...the Crescendolls! Not exactly a surprise. Robotwig leads S'telha up onstage to accept the Golden Record. No one seems to find it weird that the agent rather than one of the artists is the one taking it by hand.
I kinda want to know how the hell Robotwig even saved that last fiasco. Even if he somehow managed to convince everyone that the flying blue man was just part of the show and this was all a stunt to preface the three other band members' unfortunate temporary absence from public life or whatever, what about all those (many) people who bought tickets for a Crescendolls concert? It sure looked like Sahn'hik rescued them right at the beginning of the show rather than right at the end, which kind of makes whatever story Robotwig could have invented strained to say the least. And angered a hell of a lot of people.
Maybe we're supposed to infer that they were playing for a while offscreen, and it really was toward the end of the planned show time that Sahn'hic did the rescue. I hope? Like, otherwise this flies in the face of the movie's internal dream logic, not just general verisimilitude.
Well. Whatever.
Everyone claps. Including Daft Punk, who seem to be very proud of themselves just for having made it onto the short list.
...
Okay, that detail actually gets full points from me.
Band movies are often insufferably egotistical. Like, sure, enjoy "Yellow Submarine" all you want, but the Beatles casting themselves as these messianic evil-defeaters whose music is so divinely powerful that it can save the kingdom just by existing was fucking cringe, even for a band as historically and culturally important as them. Remember the Tenacious D movie? Remember how they ruined the entire self-deprecating joke behind "Tribute to the Greatest Song in the World" by actually playing the alleged greatest song in the world onscreen, and it being unintentionally shit?
Well, in this movie the only boast being made is that "One More Time" won major musical awards. Which it did. There's no autofellatio going on here, just an accurate depiction of real life fame. The added joke of that song being someone else's in this timeline and the Daft Punk members still being elated at even having come close to it could come across as false modesty, but it doesn't. It's like the opposite of the dreaded Self Insert Sue.
So yeah, I fully applaud this cheeky little slice of humility. Not least because, aside from anything else, it's honestly just a pretty funny gag.
...
As the applause and camera flashes take place, it turns out that Bhreel really was disguised as a photographer this whole time, and had nothing to do with the fashion designer. Maybe humans also have a Peanuts morphotype in this world. He gets close enough to the stage to shoot S'telha with a sonic screwdriver concealed in his camera, and then signals her to escape backstage when she snaps out of it.
For some reason, the cyborgs aren't guarding her anymore. Even if Robotwig couldn't bring them on stage with them, you'd think they'd still have their eyes on her and/or be waiting by the nearest exits. But they're not, and the Archduke Robotwig Eggtoven von Darkwood isn't paying attention to her either.
This seemed convenient to me, but then this shot happened:
That kind of makes it look like Robotwig just doesn't care anymore now that he got what he's been after.
Was he really that desperate for a band under his thumb to win this award? Is this over some stupid music industry grudge or something? All this use of incredible supertech, all this risk, all this abuse and cruelty, just for something this fucking petty?
I guess it kind of had to be a petty personal thing like that, though. This guy is powerful enough that anything material that he wanted from his fellow earthlings would be trivial to take by force. If it's something related to his reputation from a pre-supervillain career or something, then that's something he can't just demand from other humans at lasergun point. No grand stakes at all then, despite the many visual red herrings to the contrary that the movie has baited us with; just a sad, bitter old man obsessed with some ancient humiliation that literally nobody besides him probably remembers.
Still. That's an awful LOT of red herrings. The whole thing with his shadow over the map of the world was just...yeah, I dunno. Ditto the execution imagery in the "Superheroes" scene, and the very strong sense it conveyed that something bad would have happened had three of the Crescendolls not been rescued in time.
Also, this is only the halfway point of the movie.
Hmmm. Dunno. Maybe there's more going on with the villain's motivations yet. In any case though, it appears that he has no further use for the Crescendolls now that he's holding that trophy. Which I guess explains why he didn't look more worried on the drive to the awards ceremony; if he was able to explain away the disappearance of the other three to the public's satisfaction, and they were already slotted to take the prize, then the plan wasn't in jeopardy.
S'telha makes it outside. It's raining again, and there's this ominous shot of the moon rolling out from behind the clouds that takes up a weirdly long time and therefore must mean something, but I don't know what.
Is someone else about to land, perhaps?
A cab pulls over, driven by Oc-Tavoth and Bhreel. S'telha hurriedly gets in, and they drive her away. The moon and storm continue, and the song disappears beneath the sound of raindrops on pavement.
All four band members are free, now. However, Sahn'hik's condition probably hasn't gotten better in the day or so since he got shot, and the Tealiosians still have no way back home short of stealing the Shark and figuring out how to fly it. And...well, the villain's operations and motivations keep getting more extravagant and inexplicable. So, there's plenty of stuff left to happen in the second half of the film.
