Space Goblins: I’ve Seen the First 20 Minutes — A.I. Or Not, This Is My Kind of Madness!
This is going to be an awkward article in the current climate of social media critics ripping into Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man for using a few snippets of A.I. Oooooh, now everyone hates the film, everyone hates A.I., everyone wants to be someone important online for a brief day in their lives. FYI, Ice Cream Man is trash, and it knows it’s trash. It’s fun, stupid, drags a bit here and there, but worth a watch.
Anyhow, when have I ever cared what anyone thinks? Me and Severed tend to swim fast against the tide of watered-down diluted shit that’s flowing past. I’m 51, I’ve been wallowing in horror and cult hell since the age of 7, I’m cranky, I’m still a fan of films, I write and review from a fan POV not a critical one, so fuck all of you who want to give me the side eye!
Here’s something else about the upcoming Space Goblins A.I. epic that’s hitting us (possibly) next year or the year after. Director Ams Overton recently sent me the first 20-minutes of the film to check over. A little bit of history: I genuinely avoid A.I. the best I can in my day-to-day life. I don’t use Chat GPT, or anything that’s a full A.I. advice or design tool. Unfortunately, A.I. is in a lot of things undetected so I have probably come across it unknowingly, but hey-ho. In this day and age, especially in the UK, with a potential race war looming, it seems no one who’s angry can tell what’s an A.I. video, or pic designed to rage bait anymore as opposed to actual humans.
Ams Overton (aka Amer Shihab)’s Space Goblins started life as a short animation (see The Goblin Before the Storm: Ams Overton’s Space Goblins Review) and for a while he’s been working on a full scale epic monster of a film which I’ve covered in a few articles (see articles Space Goblins Will Be Returning Soon and Space Goblins Is Finally Crawling Out of the Wasteland — And It’s Going Full Grindhouse) and it’s a dye in the wool hundred percent A.I. creation with human actors voicing the parts. “Creepy! You’ve sold out! You are contradicting! You’re a UK pussy ‘ole!” Yeah, whatever. I admit on first learning of this, as Ams will attest, I told him I wasn’t a fan of A.I., then after a few laughs and jokes, he sent me a couple of unfinished clips and I was like, “Okay, this is interesting.” It reminded me of the comics and animations I grew up reading/watching — as I’ve stated in previous articles and the original Space Goblins review.
Watching the first 20-minutes I was hit by the massive Blade Runner and dirty NYC back-alley flicks influences. The story is generally the same (apart from Sellers who isn’t around) as the first Space Goblins short wherein the brother duo of bounty hunting Goblins is tracking Marvin the punk grungy pig. Marvin looks incredible in this version, though and his gang are all so diverse. Be like Marvin. He doesn’t discriminate; he’ll hire all sorts of crazy ugly looking creeps. If Ams hasn’t read a few Strontium Dogs stories from 2000ad, then the coincidence is shocking.
They sort out Marvin and head back to their boss, Captain Rhodes (yep, he still looks like Demon’s Bobby Rhodes) then they jump on their bikes and head to a small pleasure town in the middle of the wastelands. The story continues…
I’ve enclosed a load of screenshots that will probably make you all frown, then hopefully smile as, A.I. or not, this is inventive, fun, creative and gory. The voice actors get the characters to a perfect tee (in fact, the cast on IMDb are pretty cool). I’ve also seen a load of scenes involving a humongous battle in a wasteland which also includes Severed regular, Rob Ceus (in fact, I’m in the film as well along with my late right hand man feline, Crowley).
Anyhow, if you haven’t seen the trailer yet (it’s on YouTube and the extras of Rob Ceus’s Cement DVD) then here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZcAPSlNQAs
Additionally, Ams has just released a music video for Rob Ceus’s alter ego, Johnny Kashmir. Check this out. I thought it was just a documentary on his life at first: https://youtu.be/3Gu-eDdD3xc?is=e_LSJWgt8BbWmvk9
