Review: Death of a Rockstar

I am all for rock operas. The Who’s Tommy was a fantastic movie, and helped shape my musical (and cinematic) tastes for years to come. Moving forward, the quintessential rock opera of this millenniums , Metalocalypse‘s Doomstar Requiem. With Doomstar Requiem, it reignited my love for the rock opera, and it was a landmark in both a rock opera, and animation.

Death of a Rockstar is a movie that doesn’t really hit as hard. But it doesn’t have to be. We don’t need to tell the epic of a mute child becoming a pinball wizard. We aren’t trying to tell an entire season of a tv show to cap of a series prematurely. Watching Death of a Rockstar feels more like a fun ride. I can sit back, and pretend I’m listening to some old 60’s and 70’s rock with my dad. It’s honestly the nostalgia feel for me.

Right out of the gate, hot topic buzzwords like “thought police” is thrown around rather liberally (no pun intended). Meanwhile, in the next sequence, there’s a break in by someone in the Museum of Unnatural History. Things like trans-fats, the incandescent light bulb, a straw, and Joan Rivers are all on display. Yeah, this ends quickly. The premise is so silly, yet the point

There’s definitely an anti-thought police, anti-religion feel here. That’s especially so with the enforcers for the thought police from earlier carrying “volunteers” to…somewhere. Yet this same character is freeing them. That said, there’s definitely some play on both sides, and can definitely see a big line of ambiguity being drawn here. And then, there’s science creating the next great rockstar.

The entire premise of Death of a Rockstar is not that different from a lot of movies like this. The first influence, is another crazy rock opera, Pink Floyd’s The Wall. There’s a lot of similarities. For example, there’s the rebellion against the machine. The only difference is what, exactly, is the machine to rebel against? The Wall is about being thrown through the meat grinder of the terrible school systems in Great Britain. Yet, Death of a Rockstar is about rebelling against what people who enforce their rules and wants on you. If you want a broad scope view, to the point that this is almost a parody, Death of a Rockstar is just for you.

Later on in the movie, we get the actual meat of the story, and the motivation Creigh A. Tohr has to create his rock star, Röcky Stähr. And, yes, it’s all about the thought police, their hammers, and Creigh A. Tohr’s dad getting absolutely destroyed by C. Czar’s hammer squad. So that led him to revolt, and start the revolution. This is almost normal, but the brutality is something I haven’t seen in a cartoon in quite some time.

The animation in Death of a Rockstar is insane. There isn’t anything I’ve seen like it. The animation is simple, yet the nuance like mouth movements being so on point. You think that the voice actor’s mouths were animated in using CG. The body details aren’t there as much, but I’m very impressed with the attention to detail for the mouth animations. There are so many beautifully animated scenes, that I was truly surprised.

The truly beautiful animation, however, happens with the lyrics to each song. Every single lyric is animated on screen, but the coup de grâce is during “Just Like Magic.” The entire song takes place in the head of Röcky Stähr. His mind just plays different scenes from so many movies, and the lyrics manage to find their way on screen. This scene is insanely well put together. I was expecting a lot of nonsense, but it all fit. The fact that Röckët Stahr wrote, performed, and animated this is an achievement. This man is a talented motherfucker. With the exception of two and a half songs, this man did everything. For the songs that Stahr couldn’t sing, Abby Ahmad picked it up, and slayed it.

The pop culture references run amok here. And just like the story, I’m all for the nostalgia. Everything from Spider-Man, to King Kong, Star Wars, The Shining, Guns and Roses’s Appetite for Destruction, Slash, Freddie Mercury, David Bowie and about 25 other references litter Death of a Rockstar show how they all helped mold together into this gem of a movie. The amount of references and callbacks is staggering.

The ending of the story I never saw coming. I played what I thought was the ending of the movie, thinking of every single possible outcome. I just couldn’t do it. Röckët Stahr created a movie that subverted expectations for me. I thought this movie was going to be slapstick, with little to no substance. But what was given to us was a great fucking movie. It’s been a long time since I’ve been hooked on a rock opera, let alone an animated one. But fuck me, Röckët Stahr nailed it.