Season Review: Love, Death + Robots Volume Three

Overview:

Netflix’s recurring collection of science fiction, horror, and genre experimentation returns for a third dose of mind-bending and eye-opening storytelling. Nine more animated installments highlight humanity’s growing humility towards technology, whether that means all-out war with alien species, thoughtful descents into evolution, or a bloody “rat-pocalypse.” Leave it to Love, Death + Robots to find so many ways to reiterate the fragile nature of mankind. Cosmic genocide has never looked so beautiful.

Our Take:

It’s never been a better time for anthology series and at this point it seems as if every streaming service has at least a few of these versatile programming blocks at their disposal. For several years now, Netflix’s Love, Death + Robots has delivered pint-sized doses of heightened genre storytelling, all while leaning into the limitless possibilities that animation provides. The 26 installments that make up the first two volumes of Love, Death + Robots are very much a mixed bag–which is the norm when it comes to anthology series–but they truly go above and beyond when it comes to diverse animation styles, the broad definition of “robots,” and literature’s rich history with science fiction. 

Volume three of Love, Death + Robots is definitely more of the same, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing when each story feels so distinct. Accordingly, there’s nothing in Love, Death + Robots that will turn someone into a fan if the first two volumes fell flat for them, but these new nine installments represent some of the best ideas from the entire series. Love, Death + Robots continues to indulge in the same explosions of  genre and style, but these new entries will leave the audience hungry for more rather than wanting to send this series to the scrap heap.

Volume two of Love, Death + Robots suffered from some growing pains and felt like the least essential of these sci-fi parables. Thankfully, these volume three episodes reverse this stigma and create a truly diverse collection of visual masterpieces. There’s a much broader range of ideas and tones that are on display this time around rather than the feeling of “space chaos!” that dominated much of volume two. Furthermore, this season thoroughly deconstructs the idea of what qualifies a “machine” and tries to dissect the concept in more creative and esoteric ways than some of the more direct approaches from the first two collections of episodes. The episodes themselves tackle all sorts of material, but they all reflect the running theme of humanity’s naivety, hubris, and how the species is at their best when our minds are open and accepting, not egotistical and proud.

These nine installments effortlessly ricochet between comedy, horror, action, and everything in between. “Three Robots: Exit Strategies” functions as a cheerful recontextulization of humanity as machines are left to interpret the folly of man. Beautiful ideas are juxtaposed against grim imagery, which feels like a poignant distillation of the series as a whole. “Exit Strategies” continues the ongoing “Three Robots” narrative that’s present in the previous volumes of Love, Death + Robots and it’s appreciated to get a recurring story that runs through the series.

“Three Robots: Exit Strategies” is more comedic in nature, which puts it in good company with “Night of the Mini Dead” and “Mason’s Rats.” The former is a playful, inventive subversion of a zombie apocalypse that feels like an old-scale disaster epic, albeit done with miniatures. It’s an entertaining experience, but it’s occasionally guilty of being more style than substance. The opposite is true for “Mason’s Rats,” which  feels more like a Pixar or Aardman film on bath salts as a farmer wages war against an intelligent cabal of rats. It’s arguably one of the more disposable entries of the season–literally–but it also contains what might be the most absurd visual from the entire season when a robot killing machine gratuitously shoots the life out of a random rodent.

Cosmic horror is very much alive and well in these installments, which segments “Swarm,” “In Vaulted Halls Entombed,” and “The Very Pulse of the Machine” break down through different lenses. These result in some enlightening thought experiments about the beauty of life, the infinite mysteries of the universe, and the eternal hopelessness of existence. “The Very Pulse of the Machine” is the most successful of these ideas and it morphs into a clever character study and journey of the soul that’s complimented by the most surreal visuals from the season. Polygon Pictures knock it out of the park with this entry, which could easily function as a companion piece to Prometheus or 2001. Many of the best-looking segments are the ones that reflect more traditional animation as opposed to the grandiose photo-realistic spectacles that can have a tendency to just wash over the audience.

“Kill Team Kill,” an action-heavy installment from Titmouse that makes Predator look like a children’s film, delivers slick carnage, animated mayhem, and explosions of blood. It’s easily the most violent and extreme of this volume’s stories, but never feels gratuitous either. This “man on a mission” structure is also turned to in “Jibaro” and “Bad Traveling,” albeit in completely different contexts. “Jibario” is absolutely incredible in motion and it honestly feels as if Tarsem Singh directed a cutscene for Onimusha. It progresses into a kaleidoscopic bloodbath that’s depicted in a raw, voyeuristic manner that better accentuates the mayhem and mass fatalities. There’s such an undeniable voice that’s present in every frame of “Jibaro” and it’s the most effective story of the season (although “Bad Traveling” and “The Very Pulse of the Machine” aren’t far behind). .

Finally, “Bad Traveling” is a particularly important contribution to Love, Death + Robots because it’s the only entry that’s directed by executive producer, David Fincher. Any fresh content from Fincher is cause for celebration, but “Bad Traveling” also reunites the director with his longtime screenwriting collaborator, Andrew Kevin Walker. “Bad Traveling” comes across as Fincher and Walker’s take on Pirates of the Caribbean as an unsuspecting sea vessel is under siege by an Old God-esque lobstrosity. A Faustian bargain is entered between man and monster and it’s easy to recognize Fincher’s meticulous touch to the “wet” look of the animation. This distinctly feels like part of Fincher’s oeuvre and not just some staffer job for him. If this does turn out to be the end of Love, Death + Robots, then at least it got some fresh gonzo horror content out of Fincher.  

Some of these installments are more effective than others, but none of them pad out their runtimes or feel egregiously long. The average segment length is 15 minutes, which means that all nine episodes can be watched in succession and feel like a feature-length anthology movie instead of breaking all of this up into bite-sized pieces. This new batch combined with volume two works out to be the same length as the show’s first volume. These two volumes, when grouped together, do reflect a much more varied picture that can hold their own against the superior volume one.

After some previous doubts, volume three of Love, Death + Robots is the firmware update that this anthology series needed. These are all an entertaining expansion to the existing collection of episodes, but it’s still somewhat expendable in the grander scope of Netflix’s programming and edgy animated content in general. There are a few fresh voices who are brought in as directors and writers this time around, but mixing things up even more in the show’s future would help Love, Death + Robots avoid repeating itself. If this turns out to be the end of Love, Death + Robots then it’s done a successful job at telling some extremely strange, unconventional, and aesthetically gorgeous stories, but hopefully there’s still more of this high-minded mechanical madness on the way. May humanity collectively buffer in the meantime.