Original subtitles

"War."

This episode was actually the first one that I had written...

for the second season of Liquid TV.

And this is an idea...

It's a very simple idea, I think...

of just letting the film...

build up one particular character as the hero...

and then...

just completely reversing your sympathies...

at various climactic points...

when you don't expect.

Musically, this followed that theme very closely.

With each character, we changed musical styles completely to support.

This was really the beginning of the Breen versus Monican musical styles.

So, at this point, we're still into kind of a...

ethnic, chaotic, technological sort of music.

And we are sneaking up with this character.

We think that Aeon's going to get out of this just fine.

She's almost cocky about it.

Yes.

We really play up this moment...

and it's a scene you've seen a million times in movies.

But...

No, doesn't go well.

But not that outcome.

And the idea was to stage those moments of reversal...

in a very neutral way.

My reaction was to the hairstyle, immediately.

So I thought this guy's got to be Wagnerian, over the top.

And, of course, it was a lot of fun doing all the screaming noises.

I got a whole bunch of my neighbours together to just yell for this bit.

And you chose different kinds of guns, also, for the different armies.

Guns. I had a lot of fun recording guns.

Around the time of the LA riot, I went to a firing range up in Altadena.

And, at first, they were very nervous about anyone with a microphone...

until they found out I was just working on cartoons.

Then they were incredibly helpful.

They let me record all sorts of things...

a variety of different guns.

And processed them and threw them in here.

And, yeah, eventually we were not able to use any of that for the series...

because she wasn't allowed to...

More of a dart-like plib as I recall.

Have a gun that actually shot bullets.

I do want to point out, this episode...

most of this was animated...

by a brilliant animator up at Colossal Pictures named Garett Sheldrew.

He and I had worked a lot on things like commercials and so forth.

He was the kind of guy who just had this incredible natural ability...

to portray movement.

He poses the swordsman like a ballerina...

almost, I mean, beautiful...

That's just amazing animation there.

None of this is rotoscope. None of it is...

He never even used photo reference.

We're immediately playing for sympathy.

He's obviously a father protecting his child.

So, it just grabs you immediately into sympathy for this character.

After you've been with...

What was his... Varsh Hockney? Was that his name?

- Varsh Lockney. - Lockney, sorry. It's been a while.

They all did have names, which, of course, were never mentioned...

'cause nobody speaks, but this is Romeo Svengali...

- the swordsman. - I love the way he hopped there.

One thing I always loved about the shorts...

and I think it really carried very well through to the half-hour series...

was the humour...

is that things would be presented seriously...

but then they would also have a tongue in cheek...

or a moment that would just throw you off as completely hilarious...

in the middle of something serious.

That played against the stereotypes of action films.

Well, this is just so over the top that it is kind of hard to take seriously.

I mean, it is kind of showing how absurd it is to...

Well, how easy it is, actually, to manipulate...

the audience or the film itself.

This was a wonderful moment here, where we continue on...

as though the action hero has continued on...

but he's obviously died already.

But it's completely at the whim of the director...

who he wants to survive and who he wants to kill off.

This is Donna Matrix.

- Yeah. - Okay.

Actually, this character was designed by Garett.

I actually don't like doing this kind of animation.

I mean, it's fun to do, but it's really not that challenging for me...

constant fighting and violence.

I mean, that kind of animation is actually the easiest to do.

It's the more nuanced...

kind of, slower moments...

which are more difficult and challenging...

and, ultimately, more satisfying, I think.

And here's where this all wraps up with a sense of ambiguity...

as the new set of heroes run off.

And we're set up to know that they're doomed as well.

As soon as they hit that oil patch, something awful is going to happen.

And that's where we leave it.