The Flying Luna ClipperDreams take flight, and evaporate like a snowman in Tahiti. The Flying Luna Clipper is an experimental computer animated film about a flying seaplane--named "The Flying Luna Clipper"--which offers luxurious flights around the islands of the Pacific Ocean to anyone with big dreams. (That's a requirement on the application!) As the passengers and crew fly along the pathways charted over a thousand years ago by Polynesian voyagers, they are exposed to unorthodox programming on the "2000 inch" television screen while they drink fancy cocktails, and later parachute into a luau; the volcanic island starts singing shortly thereafter. Yep, it's that kind of movie.
|
|
The Flying Luna Clipper is an obscure novelty by today's standards. It was made in 1987 by MSX Magazine cover artist Ikko Ono, who is credited along with his "C-Staff" for the "story and dreams" in the movie, and it was made using 8-bit MSX computers. Subsequently, The Flying Luna Clipper looks outright primitive by today's sophisticated CG standards, but that's missing the point. Presumably, Ono understood the limitations of the software well enough to avoid trying to fabricate anything resembling reality. Instead, this is an artistic expression of a motion picture, one that tells some interesting bits of history (true or otherwise) about Polynesian culture with a bevy of hallucinatory imagery and nonsensical narrative. There aren't much in the way of true characters in The Flying Luna Clipper, although if there is a main character, it might be a hopeful snowman from Nome, Alaska who is referred to as "Mr. Yukio". Clad in a beret and sunglasses, there is something inherently anachronistic--but also idealistic--about a snowman taking a vacation to Tahiti...for obvious reasons. Others on this dreamy voyage include a sexy flight attendant named Grace, who resembles a banana, and sometimes has wings for hands. The prologue of The Flying Luna Clipper involves some kind of agent for a airways tycoon named Mr. Blackquill (both of whom are ducks, for some reason) discovering the long since presumed destroyed Martin M-130 "China Clipper" adorning the top of a gas station/bar called "Pelican". It is recovered and outfitted to fly again for "PHA", short for "Pan Holose Airways". Note: The real China Clipper did, in fact, crash in 1945; there are no surviving Martin M-130 seaplanes. But this detail only adds to the unreal quality of The Flying Luna Clipper. The movie has no delusions about being realistic, and runs head first into the absurd and fantastical.
The other passengers of The Flying Luna Clipper are (almost) all meant to resemble fruits and vegetables or anthropomorphic animal life. There is only one person in the entire movie who actually looks like a human being (who emphasizes that his name is "Jose! Jooosseeee!!!" as he waters his plants). The flight around the Pacific is punctuated by a few short films; ironic that these "great dreamers" on board The Flying Luna Clipper spend almost the entirety of the flight just watching TV. But the first two of these short "films within a film" do serve a purpose. They actually educate viewers of The Flying Luna Clipper (even if with somewhat questionable accuracy) about how Hawaii was founded 1300 years ago by brave islanders who canoed across the Pacific Ocean. The first short film is even called "Great Voyagers". The next one is more of a dissertation given by an almost unintelligible seahorse, who describes himself as a "professor who has devoted his life" to unravelling the mysteries of the mythical lost continent of Mu. This mumbling seahorse shares that although he doesn't believe that Mu really existed (am I really writing this sentence?), the concept of "Holose" as some kind of ancient trans-Pacific culture remains among the islands which The Flying Luna Clipper is destined to visit. The symbol used to depict Holose is a circle with a plus sign in it, and it is everywhere in this movie, from PHA's logo to a scratch mark which one of the passengers does to himself/herself after a mosquito stings his/her nose. There is also a recurring motif of a "golden bird" which supposedly guided the proto-Hawaiians to safety and prosperity, and which is also (repeatedly) compared to The Flying Luna Clipper itself. (Mr. Yukio pretty much hallucinates that the plane is a giant bird for about two minutes to emphasize this point for anyone who might have, somehow, missed this.) The last film shown to the passengers is the oddest one, ironically because it features live-action actors in something called a "Gravity Dance", which includes a naked baby falling over and divers constantly diving into the water. And for some reason it's broken up into two parts--"1. Fun Down" and "2. Parabolic Locus"--names which seem to have nothing to do with the content. But despite the befuddling inclusion of this montage, it still fits in with the overall aesthetic of dreamy, melting nonsense that makes up the entire film.
There is nothing about The Flying Luna Clipper that is meant to be taken too seriously...or seriously at all, for that matter. The movie feels more like an early era CG experiment. Strangely, the voices are all in English with Japanese subtitles, but to the best of my knowledge, this movie has never had any kind of official Western release. This means that for a native Japanese movie, it was dubbed in English deliberately. It's almost like it was determined to alienate or challenge the average moviegoer by depriving them of any sense of stability in it by defying the common practice of releasing a movie in its audience's native tongue. There is an immense amount of comedy in both the cheesy graphics and the silliness of the characters and setting. This is the kind of movie that thrives when viewed from the lens of unintentional humor. I found myself constantly poking good-natured fun at the movie, at scenes ranging from a protracted scene where a banana lady (there are a lot of banana ladies) delivers a weather forecast for basically the entire world, to a scene where a Chinese junk suddenly levitates in the harbor of Honolulu and flies away. I'm sure that there will be audiences out there who believe that you "have to be on drugs" to appreciate this kind of movie, but I suspect that any kind of sensory-altering chemicals would be redundant here. If nothing else, The Flying Luna Clipper is, like its dreaming passengers, a movie filled with boundlessly inventive imagery and defiantly weird content. It is the kind of movie that you won't just stumble across; seek it out if you are also a dreamer and want to experience this baffling, illogical, yet altogether colorful and buoyant dream captured on an antiquated computer and given cinematic life.
Recommended for: Fans of a truly unusual, computer-generated film that unabashedly wraps itself up in a blanket of weirdness. The Flying Luna Clipper is easily the most "vaporwave" movie ever made, and is a hoot to watch with some friends so long as you accept that they will always think of you as their "weird friend" from then on. (Which sounds kinda cool, now that I say it that way.)
The other passengers of The Flying Luna Clipper are (almost) all meant to resemble fruits and vegetables or anthropomorphic animal life. There is only one person in the entire movie who actually looks like a human being (who emphasizes that his name is "Jose! Jooosseeee!!!" as he waters his plants). The flight around the Pacific is punctuated by a few short films; ironic that these "great dreamers" on board The Flying Luna Clipper spend almost the entirety of the flight just watching TV. But the first two of these short "films within a film" do serve a purpose. They actually educate viewers of The Flying Luna Clipper (even if with somewhat questionable accuracy) about how Hawaii was founded 1300 years ago by brave islanders who canoed across the Pacific Ocean. The first short film is even called "Great Voyagers". The next one is more of a dissertation given by an almost unintelligible seahorse, who describes himself as a "professor who has devoted his life" to unravelling the mysteries of the mythical lost continent of Mu. This mumbling seahorse shares that although he doesn't believe that Mu really existed (am I really writing this sentence?), the concept of "Holose" as some kind of ancient trans-Pacific culture remains among the islands which The Flying Luna Clipper is destined to visit. The symbol used to depict Holose is a circle with a plus sign in it, and it is everywhere in this movie, from PHA's logo to a scratch mark which one of the passengers does to himself/herself after a mosquito stings his/her nose. There is also a recurring motif of a "golden bird" which supposedly guided the proto-Hawaiians to safety and prosperity, and which is also (repeatedly) compared to The Flying Luna Clipper itself. (Mr. Yukio pretty much hallucinates that the plane is a giant bird for about two minutes to emphasize this point for anyone who might have, somehow, missed this.) The last film shown to the passengers is the oddest one, ironically because it features live-action actors in something called a "Gravity Dance", which includes a naked baby falling over and divers constantly diving into the water. And for some reason it's broken up into two parts--"1. Fun Down" and "2. Parabolic Locus"--names which seem to have nothing to do with the content. But despite the befuddling inclusion of this montage, it still fits in with the overall aesthetic of dreamy, melting nonsense that makes up the entire film.
There is nothing about The Flying Luna Clipper that is meant to be taken too seriously...or seriously at all, for that matter. The movie feels more like an early era CG experiment. Strangely, the voices are all in English with Japanese subtitles, but to the best of my knowledge, this movie has never had any kind of official Western release. This means that for a native Japanese movie, it was dubbed in English deliberately. It's almost like it was determined to alienate or challenge the average moviegoer by depriving them of any sense of stability in it by defying the common practice of releasing a movie in its audience's native tongue. There is an immense amount of comedy in both the cheesy graphics and the silliness of the characters and setting. This is the kind of movie that thrives when viewed from the lens of unintentional humor. I found myself constantly poking good-natured fun at the movie, at scenes ranging from a protracted scene where a banana lady (there are a lot of banana ladies) delivers a weather forecast for basically the entire world, to a scene where a Chinese junk suddenly levitates in the harbor of Honolulu and flies away. I'm sure that there will be audiences out there who believe that you "have to be on drugs" to appreciate this kind of movie, but I suspect that any kind of sensory-altering chemicals would be redundant here. If nothing else, The Flying Luna Clipper is, like its dreaming passengers, a movie filled with boundlessly inventive imagery and defiantly weird content. It is the kind of movie that you won't just stumble across; seek it out if you are also a dreamer and want to experience this baffling, illogical, yet altogether colorful and buoyant dream captured on an antiquated computer and given cinematic life.
Recommended for: Fans of a truly unusual, computer-generated film that unabashedly wraps itself up in a blanket of weirdness. The Flying Luna Clipper is easily the most "vaporwave" movie ever made, and is a hoot to watch with some friends so long as you accept that they will always think of you as their "weird friend" from then on. (Which sounds kinda cool, now that I say it that way.)