Manborg film critical review

of Manborg- a critical review Manborg is a movie that adheres to certain norms of movies of the science fiction genre. Owing to the low budget that it was filmed on, however, there are inadequacies in the kinds of effects that it is able to offer its viewers. This was one of the main flaws that were detected in the movie by viewers. Apart from this, the movie was also found to have a plot that was outdated and too far-fetched. This paper shall look at certain aspects of this movie that shape its ideological viewpoints and the audience that it was aimed at. The movie talks of the return of the Nazis who reigned over Germany during the era between the two world wars and during the Second World War. The movie depicts a demonic version of this set of people and the only way out for the people of the world is in the efforts of a man who is also partially a robot. The rise of this man from an ordinary foot-soldier to a manborg, or a being who is part-human and part-machine is something that is not completely explained in the movie. The rise of this man is not something that does not need to be problematized. The resistance of the world to the problems that affect the whole of humanity is located in Euro-America. This is to say that the hero and the messiah fall within certain frameworks of eurocentricity. The inability of the movie to move beyond this is also seen in the conventional nature of the villains. The villains collectively represent the Nazis of Germany who inflicted unspeakable damage not only on the Jewish populations of the world but also on the world’s notion of humanity. The villain is also called Count Draculon (Manborg), a reference to the character of the vampire in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This character in turn was based on certain feudal lords and monarchs of certain eras who were known to practice extreme forms of cruelty on their subjects. They were then also symbols of a certain form of feudalism that did not acknowledge the rights of people. This is thus a movie that seeks to situate itself in the present where past horrors may have a chance to reappear. This is extremely relevant if one takes into account the fact that there are several dictatorships that still exist in several parts of the world that need to be tackled. These dictatorships still denigrate entire populations and make living with dignity an impossibility for large sections of humankind. This deplorable situation may be something that the movie hints at. This is an interpretation that one may arrive at if one extrapolates the existing plot structures of the movie and its formal elements. It is however, the very form of the movie that makes its critique not very effective. The ineffective effects of the movie make it an experience that is at moments laughable rather than watchable. This is a serious flaw in the movie and id said to be a direct effect of the extremely low budget that it was made on. Apart from this, the fact that there is no direct reference to the present relevance of the movie also makes the demonic figures of the Nazis funny rather than effective. The trope of laughter is then not used for exploding the myth of Nazi power as in the case of certain movies but is unintentional. Also, the fact that the protagonist of the movie is racially unambiguous and is of a certain gender belonging makes the movie one that does not challenge conventional notions of the hero in any possible way. The onus of the rescue of the planet falls squarely on the shoulders of the white male. This then falls in a tradition of exclusion where the racial and gendered other is not provided with any agency or power in larger geopolitical destinies. Here too, any possible subversion of dominant authority may arise from the technical flaws that the movie suffers from and hence they cannot be considered to be a part of the movie’s subversive potential. This then makes the movie one that does subscribe to certain codes of conventional hierarchical society as it exists in the present. Despite all these flaws, one may say that Manborg is a movie that may be important for certain reasons. If it spawns a number of better-made movies at extremely tight budgets that seek to speak of important events and themes, it would be a landmark movie. Works Cited Manborg. Dir. Steven Kostanski. Canada: Astron-6, 2011. DVD.