Not enough love for robots

The latest volume of Love, Death & Robots falls short of greatness

Netflix recently dropped the fourth volume of acclaimed animated anthology series Love, Death & Robots,.created by David Fincher and Tim Miller. Since 2019, Fincher and Miller have crafted this sleek universe where opportunities for top-of-the-line animation and exciting, genre-bending stories are in abundance. However, after six years and four volumes, it seems that the series is running out of original ideas.

Standouts

While Volume 4 of Love, Death & Robots still delivers absolutely beautiful animation and keeps its diversity in terms of the different visual styles, it’s the storytelling that suffers.

The first three volumes were hugely successful because they always had a few standout episodes. The series has always been structured to offer a few episodes, usually 10 to 15 minutes, which have the strongest story concepts backed by the most stunning animation. These episodes offer a banger beginning, middle and end to each volume, which is sprinkled with shorter, usually comic experiments.

The first volume – with its 18 episodes, the highest of any so far – offered the most gems. Episodes like Sonnie’s Edge, Good Hunting, The Witness and Zima Blue blew away the audience.

Sonnie’s Edge was a revenge tale set in the underground ‘beastie’ fighting world while Good Hunting explored the bond between a shape-shifter and the son of a spirit hunter in a rapidly industrialising world. The Witness follows a woman fleeing through the city after she witnesses a murder while Zima Blue recounts the journey of the artist Zima and his true identity in a story that leaves your jaw on the floor.

While the eight-episode second volume saw interesting ideas like genetic modification in Ice and themes of immortality and loneliness in Snow in the Desert, it was Jibaro in volume three which deserves a spot in the all-time great episodes of the series. Alberto Mielgo’s masterpiece became a cultural phenomenon due to its hypnotic CGI work and brilliant characters and story, all told without words. You could see its influence as tons of fans recreated their own versions of the iconic ‘dance of death’ sequence with all the makeup, jewelry and costumes.

The purpose of all this is to say that there are no episodes in the latest volume which achieved this level of emotional resonance. This volume consists mainly of filler episodes that are rehashed from filler ideas of previous seasons.

Night of the Mini Dead (Vol. 3) became Close Encounters of the Mini Kind. The Other Large Thing serves as a prequel to Vol. 1’s Three Robots. Micro experiments like Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners, while funny, are not strong enough to be complete episodes. They are test exercises at best and feel too short to have any substance.

Even Can’t Stop, a Red Hot Chilli Peppers concert with animated puppets, directed by Fincher himself, seems underwhelming.

This is something that Neill Blomkamp’s Oats Studios also did back in 2021. The District 9 director experimented with his own collection of strange, fascinating world building and concepts. Love, Death & Robots Vol. 4 faces similar issues as Oats Studios did: exciting concepts which are left half-baked almost as teasers to full-length films which never come about.

In love with death and robots

This is not to say that Vol. 4 offers nothing. It offers just enough to keep it going. There are some great ideas in episodes such as Spider Rose, The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur, How Zeke Got Religion and For He Can Creep.

The first three of the aforementioned episodes come close to scratching the signature Love, Death & Robots itch. Spider Rose, set in the same universe as Swarm from Vol. 3, explores a grieving woman’s pursuit of revenge with the help of a furry companion.

The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur offers a race-slash-fight between genetically modified gladiators atop custom-bred dinosaurs on a space station above Jupiter. It follows the same tropes of dystopian sci-fi where the poor die for the entertainment of the elite until it backfires. Despite the rehashed narrative and a feeling that perhaps more could have been done with the story, the world-building and characters make this episode a worthy addition to the series.