Junk World

An absolute downgrade from Junkhead that honestly adds nothing to the world. I have the impression it is connective tissue for a third part that continues from Junkhead, but a paragraph would suffice for the little it did. Most importantly, the real voice acting and overreliance on exposition and explaining completely sour the great things done on the first movie. Even the humour which landed because the delivery was done swiftly in gibberish falls flat, despite staying the same, as there are actual words being spoken, some by very bad voice actors. By itself it's just a very boring uninteresting movie that goes nowhere, but as a sequel to Junkhead it's a bleak representation of what continuing a indie hit with a bigger budget does to one's creative vision: certainly easier for a general audience to swallow now, but it is devoid of flavor and wit.

Junk World is a prequel to the stop-motion cult classic Junk Head and while it takes place in the same world, it is a very different work with an entirely different feel to it. I am a huge fan of Junk Head, because it masterfully created a compelling mystery through giving very limited information about the world in terms of exposition, but showing incredible designs and animation instead. The whole film had a very dark and moody feel since it was set in an industrial post-apocalyptic world, yet it still had hints of whimsy comedy. The storytelling was kept fairly vague, but due to how captivating each scene was and how everything was really detailed, it kept me yearning to know more about the universe. Now Junk World, while still looking nice, lost a lot of that darkness and mystery. Instead, it felt like it consisted of non-stop action scenes, while the characters weren't as compelling. The regular dialogue also took away from that uncanny feeling. Since it's a prequel with a large time-gap, the character designs look a lot more 'normal' and less interesting to me in comparison to all sorts of weird mutants in the first film. Aside from the constant action, there is a lot more outspoken exposition, which cheapens the whole thing somewhat, it feels a lot more streamlined that way. So while Junk Head was a creepy and mysterious adventure in a really unsettling setting somewhat reminiscent of Blame!, Junk World is more of a sci-fi military action flick. It's enjoyable in its own right, but it feels weaker in comparison to its predecessor. At least it set up a fair amount of lore, which makes me curious how it will all pay off in the 3rd film.

I will preface that despite being a follow-up movie to Junkhead, Junkworld works perfectly fine as a standalone, by virtue of being a prequel set a millenia prior to the first movie. Honestly I had a lot of fun with this movie. There is a clear improvement on the first one. You can see that there was a lot more hands involved this time around, and as a result the stop-motion is much more fluid while keeping that eerie jerky motion we loved, the designs are so much more gorgeous in their eeriness, and even the voice acting has improved by leaps and bounds. I also want to point out that beyond the usual silliness, and grotesque, this movie has a much more cohesive plot than the first one. I loved Junkhead but truly there were issues of a scenario that was a bit messy or confused at time. In this one, that is not the case. It's cohesive, it's fun, and plays off its straight-forwardness by making the ability of the viewer to anticipate certain events, an actual part of the story. I am looking forward to the third one