It’s the year 2000, and I’m in the living room having just finished an episode of Dragon Ball Z on Cartoon Network’s Toonami when my mom calls me for dinner. Just when I’m about to get up, the host, TOM, cuts in to talk about a new series that’s premiering next week. The iconic voice of Optimus Prime, Peter Cullen, describes a show where giant robots called mobile suits battle to save space colonies from an oppressive government; transfixed, I sit back down as he ends his promo on the words that still send a shock down my spine when I rewatch it – “suit up.”
That show, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, would join the ranks Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon as one of Toonami’s highest rated shows and popularize the Mobile Suit Gundam brand to a new generation in the West. Though it was mentioned in the trailer, I wasn’t aware of the franchise’s history at the time.
When Yoshiyuki Tomino’s Mobile Suit Gundam premiered in 1979 it helped to pioneer a new style of mecha anime known as “real robot”, which stripped away the idea of a hot-blooded protagonist shouting voice commands at the top of their lungs during battle and replaced it with pilots whose machines performed much like real world weapons of war. While the stories for each entry in the Gundam metaseries may differ, two themes persist in nearly every installment: that war has no heroes or villains, and that the only path to true peace is through understanding.
In 1995, to capitalize on Gundam’s 20th anniversary celebration, Sunrise, its parent company, would enlist the help of Canadian studio Polestar Entertainment to produce the first live-action feature film in the Gundam universe; the movie would be part of a suite of products that included a radio drama, novelisation, and video game. Four years later their work would theatrically release to an eager Japanese audience in the summer of 1999.
G-Saviour (2000), set in Gundam’s main continuity the Universal Century, would find the Earth and its surrounding colonies on the precipice of overpopulation, global food shortages, and political unrest. We follow Mark Curran (Brennan Elliott), a former military pilot for the Congress of Settlement Nations (CONSENT) now working in an underwater research base to try and solve world hunger. After saving a crashed mobile suit pilot, his research rig is commandeered by CONSENT who capture a scientist from the neutral space colony, Gaea, named Cynthia Graves (Enuka Okuma).
Curran, tasked with interrogating the prisoner, learns that she worked alongside one of his former scientists to create a bioluminescent enzyme that produces heat underwater, which can solve the hunger crisis. However, the leaders of CONSENT want to suppress the technology by force, and it’s up to Mark, his fiancee Mimi (Catarina Conti), Cynthia, and others to get the enzyme to the space colony Gaea, aided by the Illuminati, a rebel organization dedicated to maintaining peace in Earth’s sphere. Their journey culminates in a climactic battle between Mark and his former commanding officer on the colony’s solar panels.
Though the plot sounds particularly Gundam-esque, in an attempt to distill the core themes of the series into a theatrical runtime, and incorporate many familiar elements and story beats from other series, the film never embraces that it is part of that universe, not even saying the word “Gundam” once during its entire runtime.
In an attempt to streamline the usual season-length worldbuilding done in a traditional Gundam story, the movie lays out its heroes and villains very clearly, hoping that the audience won’t ask further questions. CONSENT are willing to kill their own citizens to control the flow of information to the public and maintain the status quo. While we are shown that within CONSENT there are people working towards fixing societal issues, the film portrays the Gaea colony as freedom fighters who want nothing but their independence from oppression. However, given CONSENT’s swift appearance after the infiltration of Mark’s research station and their working relationship with the Illuminati, who secretly created weapons like the G-Saviour, we can infer that Gaea is not without their own faults; there just isn’t time to explore them.
Like other Gundam media, G-Saviour tackles the theme of understanding through its characters. Mark, like other series protagonists before him, doesn’t realize the effect one person can have on the world, and it isn’t until the enzyme is discovered and he’s thrust into conflict that he takes any action. Though he does pilot the G-Saviour in an attempt to make the world better for everyone, his characterization falls short in the last scene of the film. After a final battle between CONSENT forces and Gaea, the colony decides to maintain its independence. Rather than continue to fight against an unjust regime, he willingly gives into the system and decides to stand trial for treason, meaning that the people of Earth will continue to suffer under CONSENT.
Surprisingly, it’s Mimi who shows the most progress towards understanding. She is presented throughout the film as self-serving, even going as far as to use the Gaean space cannons to fire on CONSENT forces kicking off their final battle and taking the enzyme from Christine to give to the military. However, upon learning that they don’t plan to stop their starvation practices despite the breakthrough, she sneakily gives the enzyme back, making sure that the conflict isn’t meaningless and that Gaea still has hope to save the people of Earth.
This surface level exploration of what makes Gundam so beloved led to lukewarm reception from fans and critics alike. While I’d like to think that the new medium is the reason the story wasn’t fleshed out, the film did succeed with its overall worldbuilding; it creates a time in the Universal Century that feels lived in and gives us a glimpse into a larger conflict brewing within the world. Despite being approached by Sunrise, at times it feels like Polestar Entertainment had a generic sci-fi film on their production schedule that they tacked Gundam elements onto – and haphazardly at that. With only a 2002 DVD release, which I’m proud to own, and its titular mobile suit only making minor appearances in other Gundam media with a wink and a nudge, it’s not hard to see why the film has been relegated to obscurity even amongst fans.
In 2018, nearly two decades after G-Saviour’s release, Legendary Pictures would announce that they had secured the rights to produce their own live-action Gundam movie, tapping Godzilla vs. Kong director, and noted Gundam fan, Adam Wingard to direct the upcoming film.
While I and many other Gundam fans are buzzing with excitement at the new project, I hope he takes a lesson from this film.
Embrace the complexities of conflict, provide that glimmer of hope that humanity can change, have your main characters shouting their ideals at each other in the midst of battle, and show us that this truly is a Gundam movie – something that G-Saviour avoids saying entirely.
