The Big Gundam Watch, Part 18: G-Saviour
I'll cut to the chase here and say that G-Saviour is really only notable for the fact that it's far and away the weirdest entry in the Gundam franchise I've seen thus far. But, critically, "weirdest" does not mean "worst", and I went in ready to be fucking pissed after absourbing Turn A Gundam- the other Gundam 20th Anniversary project- into my heart. Considering my expectations were so grim, it was actually refreshing to be hit with something that inspired feelings closer to bewilderment than anger or, possibly worse, boredom.
For those totally uninitiated, G-Saviour is (as of this writing) the sole live-action entry in the Gundam franchise, produced in a joint effort between Japan, Canada, and America. The pictures I've used for the header were made for the novelization(s) that, as I understand it, strip away a lot of the unique weirdness of this story in favour of a more "standard" Universal Century story. From this point forward, it's all standard definition screenshots of Canadian actors doing their very best. And, since I imagine G-Saviour is among the least watched and least readily accessible entries in the Gundam franchise, I thought it would be helpful to begin with a recap:
A Plot Summary of G-Saviour (1999)
G-Saviour takes place in the Universal Century, year 223 (i.e. far enough in the future that you don't need worry about anything that came before), and the state of the Universal Century in 223 is that there is a Hunger Crisis that is Going Bad, especially for the colonies. The story begins with Mark Curran, former pilot for the Congress of Settlement Nations (a.k.a the CONSENT), now working as a mobile suit operator for Hydro-Gen, a research facility attempting to provide a solution to the Hunger Crisis via deep sea agriculture. Mark rescues a CONSENT soldier who crashed into the ocean, and when he returns to the Hydro-Gen facility, he finds it has been occupied by the CONSENT's armed forces, led by his former CO, Jerid Messa Jack Halle. It turns out the reason the CONSENT wound up down there in the first place is because they were pursuing rebels from Side 8 (a.k.a. Gaea), who were breaking into the facility to steal... something. After gunning down one of the unarmed infiltrators, Mark stops Jack and his goons from gunning down the other one, and she is instead taken prisoner. There is then a bizarrely inserted flashback showing Mark had some tragic accident while serving as a pilot that involved Jack.
After the flashback ends we're now one day later, and Mark is preparing to go to a ball hosted by the CONSENT as a plus one for his girlfriend, Mimi Devere, a politician (?) who is angling to move up within the CONSENT. Upon arriving at the ball, the viewer learns that Gaea is not formally integrated with the CONSENT, hence their status as "rebels", and Mark butts heads with Jack again for a little bit before being approached by General Garneaux, who asks Mark to try to speak to the prisoner in his capacity as a civilian. He obliges, and finds out the prisoner is Dr. Cynthia Graves, Gaea's Chief Bioengineer, who had been collaborating with Dr. Riva, the former Chief Bioengineer at Hydro-Gen, on a solution to the Hunger Crisis. Cynthia implies the CONSENT had been conspiring to prevent their collaboration, for some reason, and Mark decides to escort her through the facility to see if she can produce results. The results turn out to be SUPER BIOLUMINESCENCE, which would fully enable the deep sea agriculture Hydro-Gen has been trying to achieve.
Meanwhile, back at the ball, General Garneaux has a conversation with Jack about how they are both Hawkish Military Guys, and tells Jack "hey big dawg, go kill that Gaean prisoner *wink wink, nudge nudge*", seemingly forgetting he asked Mark to go there just a little while ago. Jack, who just loves extrajudicial murder, hurries over to the prison and gets even more excited when he realizes he'll also get to murder Mark. Mark and Cynthia escape through what appears to be the viscera chute for the prison morgue, Mark contacts Mimi to rendezvous with him so he can borrow her security clearance to escape Earth, and Cynthia reunites with her interns Deiter and Kobi (!). Despite earlier objections, Mimi arrives, and reveals that she did some digging herself and found that Cynthia was right and there is a conspiracy, because she dug up a CONSENT report on Dr. Riva's research on SUPER BIOLUMINESCENCE that the CONSENT tried to bury (please hang onto the fact that it was Mimi who found and presented this to the rest of the group, without being prompted to do so).
I should note that while this is all going on it occasionally cuts back to Jack and the General being villains, doing villainous things, but for the purposes of recap it can be described as just "being evil". The gang escapes Earth on a shuttle and head to Side 4 (a.k.a. New Manhattan), and there, Cynthia introduces them all to Gaea's main collaborators, the Anti-Earth Union Group Illuminati, represented by Phillipe, who used to be a CONSENT pilot alongside Mark. Phillipe explains the philosophy behind the Illuminati (they are a kind of Anti-Earth Union Group), and then brings Mark to another facility to show him their ultimate weapon... the G-SAVIOUR!!!
Phillipe asks Mark to pilot the G-SAVIOUR!!! but he's too haunted by his tragic past to do so and runs away. Later, on the shuttle from New Manhattan to Gaea, Mark explains to Cynthia that his tragic past is that Jack ordered him not to rescue another pilot during a training exercise, and did the worst thing he could have in that scenario, which was obey orders right up until the point where it was too late to actually make a difference. But then the shuttle encounters space debris, and the only way to get around it is by launching the G-SAVIOUR!!!. Please note that this is the first action scene involving a mobile suit in this movie, it takes place 54 minutes in, and the grand climax of the scene is the G-SAVIOUR!!! doing a single, very slow slice to cut a giant piece of wreckage in half.
Upon arriving on Gaea, we find out that Cynthia is the daughter of the leader of Gaea, and has been acting against his wishes because now the CONSENT is sure to come down on them as hard as possible. It's also at this point that Mark and Cynthia realize they are hardbodies in a tense situation and start making out, but OH NO MIMI WAS OUT FOR A WALK AND IS LITERALLY IN LINE OF SIGHT!!! Mimi was already being tee'd up to be the self-interested/morally ambiguous girlfriend who gets dumped in favor of the pluckier and more heroic Cynthia, but this leads her to go full evil by hijacking Gaea's defense systems and firing on a CONSENT warship.
The Gaeans scramble to evacuate civilians, and Mark tries to guide Mimi to a ship as well, but she just straight up tells him "oh no baby boy, I did a false flag for us, and by the way: I forgive you for cheating on me". He changes his mind and tries to lock her in her quarters, but she eventually escapes. Mark then tries to coordinate a bunch of Gaean engineers and farmers to fight in old GM-style mobile suits to protect Gaea during the evacuation, as they don't have any kind of standing military. It goes worse than I think it has ever gone in any of these.
So, Mark launches in the G-SAVIOUR!!! to try to save whoever he can, and at the exact same time, General Garnaux arrives at Gaea and is led by Mimi to Cynthia and the remainder of the gang. Cynthia accuses the General (and the CONSENT) of actively sabotaging solutions to the Hunger Crisis, and he just goes "Yup!" in front of everyone. Kobi (!) is shot trying to keep the SUPER BIOLUMINESCENCE away from the General, and then as he's handing it to Mimi for safekeeping she goes "so, like, you're not serious about the military using starvation as a weapon, you just want the CONSENT to have control of this incredibly valuable resource, right?" and he just goes "Nope!" and lets her keep holding it.
Meanwhile, Mark is effortlessly waxing CONSENT mobile suits until he encounters Jack, and they have a big long fight on the outside of the colony that is... kinda impressive for 1999 budget CG? They fight fight fight until Mark has Jack at beam saber point, and he chooses not to kill him because he's a heroic cool guy who wants to see him Brought To Justice, and then the Illuminati's mobile suit forces show up to completely turn the tide of battle. The General is informed of this and orders a retreat, and while he and his soldiers are distracted, Mimi hands the SUPER BIOLUMINESCENCE back to Cynthia and says "hey, my bad" and also leaves. The General then has the brilliant idea of using a Gaean craft to escape, in order to avoid being shot down or captured by the Illuminati.
Mark drops into the colony and- no shit- there is a transformation sequence for the G-SAVIOUR!!! to be in "terrain mode", and he destroys the remaining two CONSENT suits on the ground. This is the last major action scene, and from start to finish it lasts 40 seconds. The General finds out Mimi no longer has the SUPER BIOLUMINESCENCE, calls her a stupid bitch, and then their Gaean craft is blown up by some remaining autonomous CONSENT mobile suits in what is probably the single funniest scene in this movie (please keep an ear out for the inexplicable monster noises).
Mark reunites with Cynthia, confirms they have the SUPER BIOLUMINESCENCE, and everyone finds out Kobi (!) is gonna be ok!!! We then cut to some indeterminate amount of time later where Cynthia's father formally announces Gaea's intent to be independent, and Mark and Cynthia decide to go to Earth; together.
The End!
THE STUFF I LIKED:
Broadly speaking, I actually enjoyed the main plot of G-Saviour. This is, bizarrely, the most emphasis that has ever been placed on a specific humanitarian crisis in the Universal Century, because the entire plot is about that crisis. It is also notable for the fact that it doesn't even attempt to imply any moral ambiguity, so the Gaeans are The Good Guys and the CONSENT are The Bad Guys, the simplicity of which lends itself to this exact kind of movie. Admittedly, a backhanded compliment is a kinda rough way to start, but I think if they had tried to do anything resembling the typical moral greys of Gundam proper, they would've fucked up real bad.
I was actually surprised by how much I liked some of the costuming in this. Mark's suede normal suit with the bomber jacket collar is kinda stupid but it really captured my attention, and the CONSENT dress uniforms are solidly evocative of the Titans.
Also, on that note, the emblem on Gaea's flag (as seen above with Mark's costume) being so evocative of Zeon's emblem is a fun, smart reference.
Similarly, calling the villainous faction the "CONgress of SEttlement NaTions" seemed long-winded and stupid, and it is, but once I realized it was a backronym to arrive at "the CONSENT", I found it pretty endearing.
No idea if this was intentional but I did the point at the screen and hoot a bit when the script has this specific wording in this scene. I'm choosing to believe it was a tasteful reference.
I'm glad Kobi lived :)
THE STUFF I LIKED LESS:
Never before in Gundam have the mobile suits felt so completely ancillary to the entire plot. Prior to the first action sequence with the G-SAVIOUR!!!, you do get to see mobile suits, but the only reason they are in this movie at all is because they gotta. And this is kind of a thing about the mecha genre in general ("are they ever really necessary?" can be answered in a number of ways), but I don't think it's ever felt as pointed as it did in G-Saviour.
The music sucks. I was kind of optimistic for the title theme because it was giving me Deep Space Nine vibes, but then once the movie started proper it was very... I guess I'd have to describe it as Penis Music.
Someone was really proud of their ability to do this spinny shot, and they just kept fucking doing it during this scene. I can't include another video, but they literally spin the camera for 45 seconds, do a cut, and then do it again for like 20 more seconds. I thought it was really funny in F91, but this was so much more egregious and stupid.
On the flipside of costuming, I couldn't get the Mr. Plinkett "Earth tones, people! Browns and beige! Because they live on a planet colony." bit out of my head once they got to Gaea because that's literally what it was.
And, on the flipside of naming, calling the group that opposes the CONSENT "The Illuminati" goes past silly and goes into fucking stupid. Surely, if they could change the Earth Federation to the Congress of Settlement Nations, they could've found a better way to interpret the Anti-Earth Union Group into a cutesy name instead of one of the most obnoxious secret society names they could have chosen.
OTHER OBSERVATIONS:
Mimi Devere is the Reccoa Londe of North America, but infinitely funnier. I highlighted her arc in the recap but I really want to stress how frequently she fluctuates between "self-absorbed psycho bitch" and "kinda cool action girl", because she is the one who brings evidence of the conspiracy within the CONSENT before deciding that's based, actually.
I really though "not-Alex Borstein in the Miss Swan wig and leather trenchcoat" was going to figure into the plot, at all. Alas.
Speaking of characters who show up once: the movie tries to reveal that General Garneux is evil by having Isla, She Wolf of the SS show up for literally just this scene.
When they get to Side 4 and "New Manhattan", I thought the flyover of New York City in a Gundam-style colony was cool, only to very abruptly crossfade into a bar from Vampire: the Masquerade, and when this motherfucker showed up to really drive home the VtM of it all I nearly threw up laughing.
I skipped over a bit in the recap where Jack murders the prison guard on duty to cast blame on Mark and convince the General he's a dangerous element (which is a weird thing to have to do considering the General is unambiguously A Bad Guy), but there's a funny bit later when Jack is giving a press conference at the Hydro-Gen facility and one reporter goes "actually Colonel, about that murder, the guard was murdered with a CONSENT service weapon, but nothing was found missing from the stockade, so it wasn't possible for Curran or the prisoner to have killed him?" and Jack just goes "Nah, nah, don't worry about it."
In the scene where Mark is trying to coordinate the Gaean defenses, the murmuring of the crowd is bizarrely loud, so you can basically hear them going "call sign, foxtrot, squad leader, who's who", and because they have Whedon-esque comedy bits, there's a good five seconds of total silence where there is literally nothing to listen to but the extras before Mark dismisses them.
It is so funny and so inherently Western that the big happy ending of this movie is the founding of the Principality of Zeon. Like, of course Candians and Americans would be like "YES, we LOVE declarations of independence, this rules!!!" but in the wider context of Gundam it's typically the thing that happens before everything gets even worse.
IN CONCLUSION:
I don't think G-Saviour is secretly great, or that it has an unfair reputation, or anything like that. On its best day its a passable sci-fi (SyFy) television movie, and would still undoubtedly make for one of the worst "entries" to Gundam because it has so little to do with the wider franchise and especially the Universal Century setting. I do think it's worth a recommendation to anyone who may be checking out Gundam as a franchise, both as a curiosity and to really drive home "this was being produced at the exact same time as Turn A Gundam".
I realize its placement here may be controversial, but I do think it's coming out ahead of Wing if only by virtue of the fact that it's a 90 minute movie versus a 50 episode television series.
Next up: It's time.
More than anything else I've watched for this to date, I am the most apprehensive about SEED, because in addition to having a particular reputation among people in my age cohort, there's also just so much of it. 50 episodes of SEED, 50 episodes of SEED Destiny, C.E. 73 - Stargazer, SEED Freedom... I'm going to be in the Cosmic Era for a while.
You may also be able to tell from that screencap that I will be watching the original, non-HD version of SEED (and SEED Destiny), on the basis that I want to watch what I would've seen back in the day on Toonami, complete with the Ocean dub. Also, honestly, I've seen the character designs for SEED characters, and they are a very specific kind of early 2000's style that should be bound to Standard Definition.
