Volume 4 of Love, Death & Robots hits Netflix with ten more episodes for the Emmy-winning anthology, with series creator Tim Miller and executive producer David Fincher among the episode directors, a list that also includes Jennifer Yuh Nelson, Patrick Osborne, Robert Valley, and Emily Dean. Once again, science fiction is the catch-all bucket for LDR, where comedy and fantasy, biology and technology, violence and human tragedy all add volume, and the animation – from studios including Blur, AGBO, and Polygon Pictures – consistently takes big swings. Love, Death & Robots Volume 4 also features voice cast work from John Boyega, Ed Skrein, Mr. Beast, Melissa Villaseñor, Amy Sedaris, John Oliver – as the voice of a robotic valet – and in its first episode, all four of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Opening Shot: Swirling darkness, and the murmurs of an excited crowd. Suddenly, the opening notes of “Can’t Stop,” from the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 2002 record By the Way. OK, we’re at a large outdoor rock show. But what are those thin, glistening strings ascending by the thousands into the air?
The Gist: Were you one of the 80,000 people who were there for RHCP at Ireland’s Slane Castle in 2003? Do you remember if either you, your friends, or the band were attached to strings? Because that’s how the concert is reimagined in director David Fincher’s opening installment of Love, Death & Robots Volume 4. The lights come up, and as “Can’t Stop” kicks further in, Anthony Kiedis, Flea, John Frusciante, and Chad Smith appear on stage, rendered as plasticized, rubberized, segmented puppet versions of their rock star selves. Heads, limbs, even their instruments – it’s all attached to marionette-style strings, which race upward into the darkness. And as Puppet Kiedis works the stage thrust – “East side love is living on the West End” – it becomes clear that he’s performing to puppet versions of Chili Peppers fans. Who or what is above this scene, in control of the attached cables? Some grand marionettist of the universe? In the gloom over the concert and RHCP’s funking yawps exists the threat/allure of fear/excitement, a feeling that drives to the core of Love, Death & Robots as an anthology.
This time around, LDR is going places. Like returning for an episode to the planet we saw in scary Volume 3 entry “Swarm,” series creator Tim Miller directing an ep featuring fighting dinosaurs in outer space (!), tapping animator Diego Porral (Vol 3, “Kill Team Kill”) for an evil-tinged, WWII-set thriller complete with Nazis and B-17s, and setting grand visions of humanity’s post-apocalyptic future. As an anthology, Love, Death & Robots has always embraced being boundary-less, and V4 is back in business and raring to get weird.
Back on stage at Slane Castle, Fincher’s camera is emulating the style of both a music video and a concert film until it decidedly is not, like when it whips in impossible close-ups between the Red Hot Chili Puppets. Flea’s leopard-print hair fills the foreground as he leans backward across the puppet fans in the front row – the bubble the bassist pops is one thing not marionette string-controlled – and when the camera lands on Frusciante, his puppet form emulates his persona of longhaired six string prophet with a damaged angel’s voice. In the world of Love, Death & Robots, even personalities as already outsized as this band’s get uploaded to an ambitiously strange master file.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The animation style of “Can’t Stop,” known as Supermarionation and originated by British animators Gerry and Sue Anderson, was famously riffed on by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone for Team America: World Police. In Secret Level, also from Love, Death & Robots creator Tim Miller, the environments of classic video game titles like Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer are anthologized. And while Max canceled Scavengers Reign and the animated sci-fi adventures of the crew of the Demeter 227 – maybe the execs over there were too busy trying to pick a name to worry about quality programming – at least Netflix picked up its first season.
Our Take: Kicking off Volume 4 of Love, Death & Robots with what amounts to a music video got us thinking about a previous time in media history – before streaming, before social media; so, so long ago – when that format thrived. David Fincher, of course, directed videos before he directed films. But we flashed on two others, the startling 1993 clip for “Sober” by Tool, directed by stop-motion animator Fred Stuhr, and the claymation of “Sledgehammer,” which was part of Peter Gabriel’s run of memorable videos for his 1986 album So. They’re examples of the fertile ground for creativity offered, ground ready and willing to cultivate any variety of plant and seed. Back then, a stretch of videos on MTV could act as their own anthology, bouncing unique and unexpected angles off the established form. Today, while music videos still exist, it’s very cool that Love, Death & Robots is around. As a relentlessly imaginative collaborative series, it extends the same kind of invitation to directors, writers, animators, and actors to get crazy with the cheese whiz.
Sex and Skin: Not sure if anyone needed puppets in the crowd flashing their plasticky bits at an Anthony Kiedis puppet on the stage, but there you go.
Parting Shot: Now Puppet Kiedis is kaiju-sized. No, not like that. He’s just depicted on the giant stage-side screen. Though it wouldn’t be out of bounds for Love, Death & Robots to transform a band into city-stomping monsters. Maybe in V5.
Sleeper Star: At least for the opening installment of LDR V4, it’s the cheeky reference to an RHCP group practice that predates this century: appearing on stage or in public generally, wearing nothing but a strategically-placed tube sock.
Most Pilot-y Line: “Can’t stop, addicted to the shindig” – we all know that line. But Puppet Kiedis also gets loose on this spacey boho couplet, where the Red Hot Chili Peppers house style somehow gets “All on a spaceship, persevering/Use my hands for everything but steering” stuck in your head.
Our Call: STREAM IT! Volume 4 of Love, Death & Robots again makes tremendous use of its anthology form, allowing space for left-field thematic choices and story adaptations, a rich palette of animation styles, and a streak of mischievousness that keeps the whole thing consistently interesting.
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.