The series is a re-imagining of Fincher and Miller's long in-development reboot of the 1981 animated science fiction film Heavy Metal, which was originally planned to follow the feature length format of the original film but one that could be better adapted for the new generation.[4] The project however was in development hell for eleven years due to the creative differences between the crew and the studios as well as the lack of interest of the latter. Soon, Netflix became interested in the idea and agreed to be the distributor of the project, but instead of a film it would be released as a television series.[5]
The animated series consists of a collection of short films, produced by different casts and crews, though some episodes have some overlap in certain crew members. The series title refers to each episode's thematic connection to one or more of the three titular subjects. Beyond the themes and genres, there are no story connections between any of the shorts with the exception of Season 3's "Three Robots: Exit Strategies", which is a sequel to Season 1's "Three Robots".[13][14][15]
Astronaut Alexandria Stephens attends to a faulty satellite in Earth's orbit. During a spacewalk, her old-model EVA suit is hit by a stray screw from orbital debris, casting her hopelessly adrift with only 14 minutes of oxygen. She seals the upper left arm of her suit using her watch strap, then removes the left glove, exposing her left arm to the vacuum of space. Throwing the glove pushes her back toward the satellite, but she narrowly misses grabbing hold. As she drifts back past her beaten-up maintenance vehicle The Anthem, she decides to break off her now frozen left forearm and throws it in the last-ditch attempt to make it back to her ship. Back on board, she performs emergency self triage then radios Bill, her ground controller, who asks with relief if she "still needs a hand".
Multiversity, an alternative history research simulation app, shows a user six different timelines involving the death of Adolf Hitler in 1908 instead of 1945. Potential consequences of each death include different outcomes from WWI and WWII; various individuals reaching the Moon first; time travel paradoxes; and post-apocalyptic scenarios. Exiting the demo, the user selects a possible alternate timeline where "Lincoln shoots first".
The project evolved from a late 2000s meeting whereby David Fincher and Tim Miller decided to make a remake of the 1981 film Heavy Metal. Announced in 2008, the project was to be produced by Paramount Pictures although Fincher and Miller had trouble getting the funding necessary for the project.[17] The project was originally intended to be a film with a budget of around $50 million, with several directors involved with each one directing different short segments and Blur Studio handling the animation for the film. The directors lineup included Miller, Fincher, James Cameron, Zack Snyder, Kevin Eastman, Gore Verbinski, Guillermo del Toro, Mark Osborne, Jeff Fowler, and Rob Zombie.[18][19] The film was expected to have over eight or nine segments and to be rated R like the original Heavy Metal film.[20][21] On July 14, 2008, however the production for the film stopped due to Paramount Pictures' decision to drop the film.[22] The film was switched to Sony division Columbia Pictures, due to an ongoing fight between the former studio and Fincher during the production of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.[19] On 2009, Eastman revealed that he reunited with Jack Black to make a comedy segment for the film.[23] The former also revealed that Fincher and Cameron were originally intended to serve as executive producers of the film.[24]
However soon after, the production of the film stalled indefinitely, as no film distributor or production company showed interest in distributing or producing the remake after Paramount Pictures took the decision to no longer distribute the film.[25] It was revealed that the real reason for this is due to several film studios considering the film "too risqué for mainstream audiences."[26] Miller commented that: "David really believes in the project. It's just a matter of time."[26]
In July 2011, it was announced at the Comic-Con that filmmaker Robert Rodriguez had purchased the film rights to Heavy Metal and planned to develop a new animated film at the new Quick Draw Studios.[27] On March 11, 2014, after creating his own television network, El Rey, Rodriguez decided to instead develop the film as a television series.[28] However, Eastman revealed that he sold Heavy Metal and that the deal with Rodriguez was unlikely to stay standing.[18]
Following a long decade to bring the animated anthology, Netflix took interest on the idea and decided to greenlit the series: "Well, David Fincher and I had tried to get a Heavy Metal film made for years and years. I mean, hundreds of meetings. The original movie came out in 1982 and it was very inspirational to a lot of animators who wanted to do adult animation. So when I met David, we wanted to do something together and we said, 'What about doing a new Heavy Metal film?' because he was an animation fan, but the world just was not ready for it at the time. But in the ten years that we did meetings and tried to get the project going, the world came around to see adult animation as viable, and Netflix was the one that was willing to take a chance. And so here we are."[29] The studio gave Fincher and Miller a total freedom to allow them to "breathe life into their vision".[30] The series would be taking the name of Love, Death & Robots instead, and it would consist of 18 episodes ranging from 5 to 15 minutes including a wide range of animation styles, from traditional 2D animation to photo-real 3D CGI.[31][32] While working in Netflix for the series House of Cards and Mindhunter, Fincher discussed his wish to break free of the half-hour and hour-long format for the animated series: "We have to get rid of the 22-minute [length of a half-hour show with commercials] and 48-minute [length of an hour-long show with commercials] because there's this Pavlovian response to this segmentation that to me seems anathema to storytelling. You want the story to be as long as it needs to be to be at maximum impact or entertainment value proposition."[33]
Screenwriters include co-creator Miller and Philip Gelatt (screenwriter of the film Europa Report), the latter who wrote more of the series' episodes than anyone. Many of the short films are short story adaptations, including sixteen of the eighteen in the first season[17] (most of which are adapted by Gelatt). Initially this was not planned, with the duo envisioning a variety of methods by which they would have developed the series. Miller originally suggested a longer list of stories that he wanted to adapt.[34] Miller primarily wrote outlines and drafts for each short and allowed for scripts to be changed as studios saw fit in order to aid the production.[35] Authors who have had their work adapted include Harlan Ellison, J. G. Ballard, Alastair Reynolds, Joe R. Lansdale, Neal Asher, Michael Swanwick, and John Scalzi, who also adapted several of his stories into scripts himself (except some of which are adapted by Gelatt).[36] Miller in an interview revealed that they are free to choose the story they want, but admits wanting to get the storyline of the episode right in order to give them their original flash of brilliance to a story that would not exist if it were not for the authors having ideas.[37] The third season includes more varied screenwriters with Philip Gelatt only writing four episodes of nine. Filmmaker Jennifer Yuh Nelson and Miller revealed that they chose to involve more screenwriters due to busying schedules of Gelatt. However, they also revealed that the writers managed to keep the episodes original to the short stories to make them more like them and ensure that they work.[38]
Netflix released the first trailer for the series on February 14, 2019;[50] the trailer featured Matt Green's industrial hardcore remix of AMBASSADOR21's "We Are Legion".[51] The episodes of the show are displayed in different orders to different users, which differ from how most shows are displayed on the service.[52] The first season consisting of eighteen standalone episodes, was released worldwide on Netflix on March 15, 2019.[53][54] In response to an accusation that the episode order was based on the streaming company's perception of a user's sexual orientation, Netflix responded that there were four unique episode orders, released to users at random.[55][52] On April 19, 2021, Netflix released the teaser trailer for the second season;[56] it featured Colin Stetson's track "Reborn" from the Hereditary film soundtrack.[57] The eight episodes of the second season were released on May 14, 2021;[58] four days earlier Netflix released a 45-second long Red Band trailer of the series.[59][60] On April 19, 2022, a teaser trailer for the third season was released which featured footage from previous seasons of the series as well as footage from other The Crown and The Queen's Gambit also distributed by Netflix.[61][62] Another two trailers were released on May which featured footage from the shorts for the upcoming season and confirmed that there would be nine episodes instead of eight. The official trailer was released on May 9, 2022, while the final trailer was released just four days before the volume 3 premiere.[63] On May 18, 2022, Netflix released the premiere episode "Three Robots: Exit Strategies" for free on their YouTube channel while the entire third season was released on May 20.[64][65]
In The Tall Grass- it looks old timey and I think what the episode is dealing with is that there are things in this world that we just cannot understand in full. Alternatively, it feels like a thematic exploration of death. Bare with me here: the train they are on is the train souls get on to cross the veil. We also learn that the creatures in the tall grass are believed to have "been human once". This reminds me a lot of spirits that were perhaps not ready to cross the veil and have instead opted to roam, "lost" on earth (aka. The lovely grass). And that is also why the conductor then tells our protagonist that he shouldn't mention this to anyone because "no one would believe him", just like people tend not to believe in ghost stories.
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