Pictures: Netflix
Humor, weapons, violence, aliens, dying, and most significantly of all, chaos. Those are the central themes of episode 2 of Love, Death and Robots, which serves as a follow-up to an episode from Volume 3. Here’s a breakdown of the places you go to within the speedy episode depicting an alien invasion, a number of the references we noticed, and the way the ending is a callback to that aforementioned episode.
Directed by Robert Bisi and Andy Lyon, that is their second foray into the world of Love, Death and Robots, following Night of the Mini Dead in quantity 3 episode 4. In interviews, the pair mentioned Close Encounters of the Mini Kind is a “spiritual sequel” to that exact episode, with the Earth equally going by some troubles throughout that episode, resulting in a quite damaging finish, aka nuclear holocaust. Like that episode, Close Encounters of the Mini Kind is finished in an isometric 3D animation fashion with all the things sped up in order that the people have high-pitch voices.
The duo chuckled in most interviews about what message they needed followers to remove. They mentioned the teachings are much like the primary: “It’s about unity, about everyone coming together to fight against something even though it might be all our fault. ” The duo added in one other interview that there’s “a lot of stupidity that is bringing us all down.”
If you’ve now completed the episode and are questioning what the aliens have been even saying all through it, you in all probability ought to activate subtitles and rewind to the start, “Humans, we come in peace,” the alien in his purple gown begins with though it does change into garbled earlier than finally saying, “… together” opening his arms up with loving embrace and revealing that he’s… ahem… properly endowed. Believing he has gone, the US law enforcement officials exactly shoot on the alien’s “weapon”… earlier than main a wild goose chase that sees no person left standing.
From there, a message is transported to the opposite alien vessels in orbit, mendacity in wait. That message just isn’t good, thus resulting in an invasion the world over, starting with a farmer who has one thing probed into him earlier than additional abductions and loads of killing. He arguably deserved it, on condition that he himself was trying to go probing on an unsuspecting cow.
Much of the episode sees the people mounting a resistance towards the aliens, utilizing humanity’s out there weapons (and even a crane at one level) and adapting the aliens’ weapons for their very own use. The resistance works for probably the most half, driving a number of the smaller ships again as much as the mothership, however people need to rid them as soon as and for all, in order that they use a baseball stadium to assemble a mega weapon.
Another fast level I needed to make is that the episode implies that humanity has united towards this menace, with Air Force One being labeled “United States of Earth”. In this future conflict, the President of the United States could be very a lot on the middle of this new world alliance. No feedback there.
They fireplace that large weapon, and it backfires after a human misfires their weapon, inflicting a Rube Goldberg chain of occasions which causes the tremendous weapon to level inwards on the Earth and fireplace. That, in flip, creates an exponentially rising rift that finally turns into an enormous blackhole that kills all of the aliens with the caveat that everybody else dies too. As we zoom out, we in the end see the photo voltaic system disappear from the milky method and thus comes a momentary fart sound impact which is a particular callback to Night of the Mini Dead on condition that ended equally…
Cut to credit.
Locations in Close Encounters of the Mini Kind
The episode options some iconic (and fewer identified) landmarks such because the Hollywood signal Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, California, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Picacadilly Circus in London, Veterans of Foreign Wars “VFW” Post 9236 in Hernando Beach Florida, Greyfriars Bobby’s Bar in Edinburgh Scotland, the Status of Liberty in New York City, Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, and Tokyo, amongst different places.
What references have been there in Close Encounters of the Mini Kind?
There have been a bunch of pop-culture references discovered all through the episode. Here are just a few I noticed:
- Outside the Veterans membership, the alien might be discovered “teabagging” the people—a preferred time period that got here from video video games wherein you crouch and stand repeatedly over your fallen enemy. It’s maybe most popularized by Halo.
- At the airport, the President of the United States is giving a speech akin to the one seen in Independence Day.
- They’re instantly crushed by an alien walker that has a really robust resemblance to War of the Worlds.
- The race throughout the desert gave me some Mad Max vibes.
- ET will get a point out in one of many indicators within the baseball stadium, with one signal saying, “ET GO HOME.”
Animation for this episode was dealt with by BUCK with further animation by Little Zoo Studio.