Before I start ragging on it, let me quote what it says on the back. As far as I can tell, it's in a font close to "David" or "FrankRuehl" in MS Word. It looks awkward.
"A HYPOCRITICAL RULER OF THE ZINBA EMPIRE, WANTS TO EXPAND HIS TERRITORY AND TURN THE EARTH INTO HIS OWN COLONY."
That's it. That is the entire description.What's the movie about? That one guy, right? And his desire to take over the world?You'd think that, wouldn't you?
No.
It's not even about Earth for most of the movie. It's about saving a city called Aurora, which has already been destroyed by the evil villain guy.
Guess what the evil villain guy's name is. No, really. You'd say something like Zanborggggggg or Xrggrerrgyg or some crazy evil-sounding name, right? Surely not Nicholas.
But that's his name. And his empire is never ever called the Zinba Empire in the movie. It's called the "kingdom of Nicholas", which made me laugh out loud.
So the movie starts with the evil guy destroying the city of Aurora. Nobody really cares. a robot flies straight through a building. These guys don't understand how an atomic bomb works, because they had like five mushroom clouds pop up and then die down in succession, all from one bomb.
Then we cut over to some weird scene where these kids are playing baseball really, really badly and this girl is harping on them. Her name is Mary, and she shows up throughout the movie. She's in love with this guy named Henry, who is of course the baseball captain and can fire a gun and will eventually save the world by stealing Mary's thunder. But we'll get there.
You figure out where these random kids tie in when they are upset that Aurora has been destroyed. Oh, you lived there? Thanks for telling us that sooner.
They get out of their spaceship and find a stereotypical German scientist guy who is never really explained and tells them to go find the Phoenix King to save their planet. Because apparently the fact that the city was destroyed doesn't matter. It can still be saved. So Henry and Mary take Daddy's spaceship and go for a joyride to Earth to find the Phoenix King under a rock. A rock... shaped like a phoenix. Wow. Real imaginative there.
Evil Nicholas realizes that people are still alive and promises his two generals that whichever one of them rids Aurora of the remaining humans can marry his daughter, who is cleverly named Medusa. He didn't even ask her opinion on this. It's worth noting that all of the evil people are blue. Except Medusa, who is as white as a tissue in bright sunlight in the snow. Someone slept with the milkman.
This is the point where you start to notice that the animators really don't like animating, and they don't work together very well. Their styles are really quite different. Also, it's really obvious where they reused and loop scenes because they didn't mesh up their backgrounds. So you see a huge jump from one section of cloud to the next and it's distracting.
The music is really weird, too. It's some kind of weird synth-pop, and at times it's really inappropriate for whatever is happening.
Anyway, Mary and Henry arrive at the Phoenix Rock. There's this scene where they're looking at the world from the spaceship and Henry looks really stoned and goes "The Earth... is so beautiful". I feel like he should have added "Dude" or "Man".
They land, and you'd expect them to have some kind of trial to get to the Phoenix King. Maybe the enemy found its way there, or therre are ancient traps, or there is evil afoot...
No. Stairs. Lots and lots of stairs. And then bats. Lots and lots of bats. And then a bunch of falling rocks and Mary screams obnoxiously.
Then Henry steals Mary's necklace and uses it as a key to awaken the Phoenix King, who is a big-ass red robot, but also this floating thing that looks like a cross between Jesus and a giraffe. Seriously. I don't even know how that's possible.
So they hop on board and head back to Aurora. It was at this point that I realized that by "save the planet", the old German guy had just meant "get rid of the invaders so we can stop being shot at already".
Have I mentioned yet that the sound effects suck? The bombs sound like radios, the planes sound like bombs, and the falling rocks sound like bouncy balls being dropped on a table. The voices are pretty bad, too, and they don't match up with the mouth movements most of the time. And they always sound so excited. Why yes sir I will defeat these humans and I will not be a traitor. Thank you sir long live King Nicholas.
Anyway, to make a long story short, Phoenix King kicks everyone's ass and saves the day. Then the enemy ship falls burning to the ground and... he transforms into a fire truck. It is an exact ripoff of a Diaclone toy, which was the toy series that led to Transformers. Both Transformers and this insane thing came out in 1984, incidentally. (I read the Wikipedia page. Defenders of Space was originally South Korean, and was crappily dubbed into English, which explains the voices.)
So yeah, woo, saved the day. The last minute of the movie is just various shorts of Phoenix King zooming around in space, and then a big red screen that says "THE END" like something big just happened.
Now remember that cover I told you about? The one with the smiling boy and robot? Well, the boy is Henry, but the robot isn't Phoenix King. It's one of the enemy robots (the one that flew through a building, incidentally). That's like putting Simon from Gurren Lagann with Crazy Pirate Lady's (her name is Adiane) sea scorpion ship. It's just wrong.
The back cover has a creepy yellow smiley face with awkward hair that has text around it. The text reads, "For children of all ages to enjoy!" I dunno about you, but I actually did enjoy this steaming pile of gold. Especially the part where I write a scathing review on my blog. Lolsauce.
Next up: Space Thunder Kids, which incorporates scenes from Defenders of Space along with other movies. I can't wait to see how much I hate it.
Tschau!
~Pigeonmeister
YES! YOU WATCHED IT!
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