Repo! The Genetic Opera... is my trash

[Music] xidrate comes in a little glass vial [Music] yes i'm going to look like this for the entire video yes i know this is not in any way accurate cosplay i don't have the correct jacket and my hair is not long enough and the color is the wrong color don't care this is what you get and if you know the movie i'm talking about you get what i'm doing and if you don't i don't know i look like a knockoff of diamond haagen but anyways i've had a list of things that i wanted at some point to just ramble on about because i just really enjoy them and i've had that list sitting around for a while um and then it got reminded to me that maybe i should pick out something uh somewhat seasonal given that it is almost halloween thanks for the reminder carowind so yes because of that i'm now going to talk about repo the genetic opera a horror rock opera which is a film that i adore and also know why lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of people don't like it at all like this is this is a cult movie in the purest sense it was made by a bunch of people passionate about the idea for a niche audience that it didn't find it flopped when it came out it eventually found that audience over time on home video but let me tell you i get why this bombed that makes 100 sense to me that this thing did not land with general audiences and this is definitely a film that i am probably going to list a whole bunch of reasons why it's probably not for you and if any one of the things i talk about makes you go oh i'm not sure i want to watch that you know what that's fair i'm not going to sit here and go oh you should overlook that watch anyway if if what i'm about to talk about sounds bad to you you probably won't like it but you know what my friends this is my trash this is a film made in 2008 and starring a incredibly talented cast and that includes such luminaries as anthony stewart head yes giles from buffy the vampire slayer alexa penavaga who most people at this point still know as the older sister from the spy kids movies legend of the stage sarah brightman horror icon bill moseley an actual flat out rock star with nivek ogre from skinny puppy and in her finest performance no sarcasm paris hilton no matter what you think about her as a person or as an actress she is god damn perfect for the part she's in so is everybody else everybody really wants to be here and all of this pulled together and directed by darren lynn boseman who directed no less than four saw films he in fact filmed saw four while the musical pre-record for this movie was being done so what we have here folks is a violent vicious over-the-top in-your-face and absurd movie the core concept at the heart of this is that the entire film is set in a future where organ transplants have become so easy that they're actually done as fashion statements they're still very expensive but that's okay you can get your new organs on a on a payment plan but if you miss a payment the repo man will be sent around to reclaim geneco's property this might sound familiar there was another non-musical and far less interesting film called repo men starring jude law and forest whitaker this is much better or at the very least this is much more unique certainly compared to that so in this world we have anthony stewart head playing nathan wallace the repo man a man with a tortured past he tried to save his wife from a severe blood condition but his treatment that he was sure would work instead killed her and now he is left with their young daughter who inherited that same genetic condition as the repo man he works for roti largo head of the largo family owner of gene co played by paul sorvino of goodfellas fame largo has three monstrous children the insanely violent luigi the viciously narcissistic pavi and the surgery addicted amber sweet nathan's daughter shiloh is now 17 and very eager to get out of the house even though it's not safe outside throw into the mix the famous opera singer blind mag who owes her eyes to gene cohen therefore they effectively own her here's the main thing that i love about this as far as rock operas go this leans into the opera part of that way harder than i have seen most things do generally rock operas they have a tendency to basically come across like rock albums with a plot which kind of owes to their roots as being concept albums back in the back in the 60s and 70s before they actually started getting staged or filmed but this yes it's rock yes it's opera in the sense that almost no line of dialogue is just spoken and not in some way sung but honestly the way in which is opera is the scale and the absurdity of it this is everything up to operatic proportions this is every emotion requires being belted to the back of the theater nothing is small everything is huge and grand no matter how silly it is the film jumps from songs that sound like this [Music] two ones that sound like this [Music] [Applause] and it does not miss a beat because the thing to remember about opera real opera classic opera is they are tragedies tragedies of love revenge death generations falling apart all of that's here and all of it is dripping in blood and viscera because there's uh more than a few scenes that are frankly gratuitous organ removals well i say gratuitous they're there for the sakes of justifying the songs and that's another thing there's a whole bunch of things about this movie that if i were to apply my normal critical spectrum to it i would have legitimate issue with there's a whole bunch of songs that don't move the story forward don't really tell us all that much new about the character singing them and yet are here anyway and the scenes that are in these songs well that wasn't really necessary songs like night surgeon and even the iconic xidrit anatomy don't really do much to move the plot forward heck the grave robber himself played by co-screenwriter taryn zunik is frankly overdeveloped he adds almost nothing to the story he does a bit of exposition at the front end a little bit at the back end but that is exposition that's largely unnecessary and yet he gets way more screen time and way more songs than a character who does not actually actively impact the plot should be granted there's these comic book interludes to give us backstory which are cool and actually the way the whole thing opens is comic book ask and i'll kind of come back to that but the thing is it's clearly there to fill in audiences who were confused by just their they weren't totally following all the relationships of the characters involved in the thing and so these little interludes are there to cover the backgrounds of a number of the key characters and that's fine as far as fixes go except you can tell they weren't initially meant to be there because later on songs will relay the exact same information that was in the comic book stuff just maybe slightly more roundabout and less overt the tone is all over the place it will go from slapstick style comedy to vicious literally gut-wrenching gore at the drop of a hat and all of these are things that under normal circumstances i will probably dock points i don't do points but if i did points on a rating i dock points for these but not here the thing is this is not a movie meant to be judged in the way other movies are judged and i don't think that's just me making excuses because like i said this thing is very upfront with its intentions to be huge and operatic and a big thing about opera is that it be emotionally true not logistically true and as long as it has enough energy to barrel through any bumps in the road i'm not going to say any of the things that i just cited aren't faults but this thing has such energy i don't care i feel like that is the epitome of something that i identify as my trash more than anything else doesn't have problems sure but boy do i not care now i mentioned the opening it does actually open with a series of comic panels giving the background of the world and then going to the grave robber singing directly to camera following the repo man as he bloodily possesses some of geneco's property now this is an incredibly efficient and upfront way of laying out the film's intentions and i think it was a very good call because it is absurd and the comic book uh look of the thing should give you a clue as to the tone and the vibe and the level of nonsense we're going for here and then to immediately go into a kill of a character who we don't know it does not matter to the plot that establishes this is what you're in for in a way it kind of reminds me of the very first episode of black mirror which was the national anthem now that episode wasn't necessarily indicative of the specifics of the material that black mirror would tackle going forward but what it did is it was so abrasive it basically was a mission statement to anyone watching saying in his very first episode look if you can't handle this you shouldn't be here and i feel like the opening to repo is basically doing the same thing but like i said if you are turned off by this i get it in fact funny thing first time i ever watched this movie took me a little while to decide whether or not i liked it because there were some things throwing me off mainly some of the tone shifts uh particularly around characters like luigi and pavi all due respect to bill moseley he's not a singer like at all they're not all great singers but most of them can put enough energy and force behind it that it works he really doesn't and he has this scene with these sound effects [Music] and i had really enjoyed stuff that had gone on prior to that but then this happened i'm like i don't know about this but you know what i got locked in when this happened [Music] [Applause] [Music] and that was the moment that i realized oh okay we are working on wagnerian levels here we are going so big in every way even when even when we do comic relief that's going to be bigger than it should be just like the singing is going to be bigger than it should be the violence is going to be bigger than it should be everything is bigger than it should be but i think the variety of things like the injection of the comedy and the shifting from flat out opera songs to hard rocking songs to emotionally driven songs to completely superfluous songs that are still fun that keeps it from getting boring because it is true that if you just crank everything up to 11 and keep it there that actually gets dull it's basically the same as staying at one because nothing ever wavers and while the level of energy of this thing is pretty much constant what that energy is providing that does shift and change it makes it far more enjoyable certainly for me another thing worth pointing out this thing is short i rewatched it just before filming this and it's much shorter than i thought it was it's 93 minutes not counting the credits 97 if you do count the credits but it feels longer not because it's a slog but because so much is crammed into this thing it's bursting at the seams and yet it doesn't feel rushed because like any good opera it is incredibly simplistic story that it's actually telling yes there's twists and turns and motivations and this and that but ultimately it is a story of family and revenge and we all get that heck on the note of family the very end of this movie uh spoilers if you haven't seen it varian in this movie has shiloh forgiving her father her father who if you haven't seen the movie i should point out drugged her on a regular basis to make her think that she had the disease her mother had but she in fact does not he was just doing that so that she could never leave him and he wouldn't be left alone and who also not only is employed as the repo man to reclaim people's organs and leave the rest of them to die but it's has been demonstrated in a few songs actually kind of enjoys doing it as well and his daughter forgives him now i have gotten very pissed at things in the past for pulling this well you have to forgive them their family move but the thing is this entire thing is ratcheted up to such absurd levels i can't take it seriously i can't watch a movie where people are regularly being disemboweled for no story reason whatsoever and go boy i'm really worried about the the lessons that someone might take away from this no not this time and that's part of the magic balance of this movie that as committed as it is to absolutely everything and it commits at the same time you can't take any of it seriously and i think the movie knows that nobody will take it seriously but it's willing to take itself seriously so you don't have to now for one of a few points of criticism there are a number of songs that don't really work uh particularly well even by the sliding scale that i kind of grade this whole thing on 17 has a very clear mission but it doesn't quite resonate correctly and gold is a little bit of a slog but i tell you what legal assassin night surgeon chase the morning let the monster rise things you see in the graveyard at the opera tonight and of course xydrate anatomy these songs [ __ ] rule and there's something really pure about the way that these songs have the energy and the raucous nature and our propelling story and characters in absurd ways that honestly would never work for me if this wasn't sung these characters these events if this was done straight i'd hate it but the music elevates everything one because it's awesome two because the energy of the rock music is exactly what this thing needs to go down smoothly because without it this would this would be a jagged mess i'd hate it i guarantee you i would hate it if this was not a musical so it's not the story it's not the characters it's not even the the aesthetic of the thing although i have fun with all those ultimately it is the music that carries this entire thing so if you are wavering at all check out the soundtrack go on spotify and look it up give a listen because i'll tell you what there are a few things that will like latch on to me as a song that goes hard and i can hear the acting in it [Music] i'm a wannabe actor i'm a theater kid i love hearing songs that aren't just about sounding pretty it's about hitting an emotion as hard as you frickin can [Music] and that's what this entire movie is it is about hitting everything that it does as hard as possible and that is why i will always always love it will i recommend it um maybe to someone who i know maybe someone who i know who i know well enough to know whether or not they tune into the wavelength of this thing but to general audiences no hell no it's trash but man oh man is it ever my trash have you seen repo the genetic opera if you have i want to hear what you think about it and i want to hear your favorite song something other than xydrate anatomy that's the go-to pick honestly my favorite probably at the opera tonight but uh we started this opera [ __ ] close second and if you haven't seen it before what's your impression of this insanity what is your absurd trash movie that works for the halloween season feel free to share that instead of or in addition but whatever your thoughts are drop something down in the comments and let's talk about it i have a patreon if you care to support what it is i do and the nonsense that you see before you there are perks for every tier of support like share and subscribe help me out as well but you don't have to at the end of the day you are the council i'm just robbing the graves and until next time this council is adjourned [Music] and look at you sticking around through the credits i appreciate that well you know what you're about to be treated to a whole ton of names going by on the screen but there's a few of them that i want to give special attention to my special thanks to bookworm jared boyce mj tracy scrabbit vincent paul bartolucci kaelin schwartz edelen hannah acker robin moore ross schultz and shayla gourley if you want to hear me mispronounce your name check out the reward tears on the patreon but for right now thanks so much [Music] um [Music]

Channel: Council of Geeks

Views: 2,516

Rating: 4.9886684 out of 5

Keywords: repo genetic opera, repo the genetic opera, repo the genetic opera is great, repo the genetic opera is weird, repo the genetic opera review

Id: 7uvvjjWlJCk

Length: 20min 58sec (1258 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 30 2021