Heavy Metal 2000

• Directed by Michael Coldewey and Michel Lemire
• July 20, 2000

Voice Cast

• Julie-Julie Strain
• Germain St. Germain-Pierre Kohn
• Kerrie-Sonja Ball
• Zeek-Rick Jones
• Tyler-Michael Ironside
• Dr. Schechter-Arthur Holden
• Odin-Billy Idol
• Lambert-Brady Moffatt

When a strange artifact is discovered, its possessor goes mad and a woman seeks revenge upon him for the evil he has done.

If anything, Heavy Metal 2000 is just a spiritual sequel to the classic 80s film Heavy Metal. While both are adult animation, they are two different films and they’re only really linked by the title. While the original Heavy Metal was a series of thinly connected stories this is one single narrative. The closest similarity is that both feature a magical evil object.

Heavy Metal comes off more as a film attempting to piggyback off those fond memories than it does a story in its own right. While entertaining it is far weaker than its predecessor. It has the pre-requisite gore and violence and general nudity found in the original film. Despite the high stakes nature of the story and revenge driven narrative it doesn’t feel very vengeful and events don’t feel very significant.

Our hero Julie is driven to seek revenge upon the villain Tyler after he wipes out the people on her planet. Exactly why isn’t revealed at first but given that the villain lashes out randomly just to keep the blood and guts flowing it seems a bit like just more violence.

For his part Tyler is just driven insane by touching the object referred to as a ‘key’. That’s it. He starts out as a concerned worker and after simple contact with the key becomes a long-haired power crazed maniac given to extreme violence and a strong desire to conquer everything. It just feels like weak motivation. He is evil for the sake of being evil.

The music choices in the original film connected in some way to the narrative and felt well chosen. What we get here feels shoehorned in and rather random. They don’t do anything to highlight a scene or much of anything. It is as if those behind this felt too much time had gone by in the story and another song needs to play. 

The twist at the end is completely out of left field. There is no hint that it’s coming. I’m not saying you need to know something is coming before it comes but there is no indication when you look back on the events in hindsight that it was coming. It was just a twist to stretch things out. I know you can argue that is the case with all twists, but the story was over. The villain was defeated but wait! There’s another villain you never knew about! It’s not as if the character is manipulating things. Rather he’s just hanging around and watching.

Mediocre is probably the best description I can give of the story but that might be a touch on the generous side. Stories don’t have to be about the fate of the world or the fate of the universe but they should at the minimum affect the fate of the world of the characters or the fate of the universe of the characters. This just never feels like it rises to that.

I think if it had a name other than Heavy Metal 2000, I might feel differently about this movie. In that it reminds me of The Magnificent Seven remake they did a few years back. That film as well as this one needed a name other than the name of something else. It suffers as much from its own flaws as it does by association. 

Heavy Metal 2000 is not a complete disappointment but it’s nothing that you’ll go crazy over nor revisit again most likely. This is something to view for curiosity purposes but not for a great moviegoing experience. I think you can just skip it.