User Reviews

Only a meme master like Joel could make this amazing film, with great jokes and surprisingly, a good plot for a meme movie.

Did I say a meme movie? Haha, sorry! I MEAN T H E M E M E M O V I E

or is there gonna be another?

When Mario said "ROLLING RAVIOLI" I felt that...

The multi-layered narrative, deep characters, atteniton to detail, amazing cinematography. This movie is the definition of a masterpiece. Our human minds cannot create anything better than this, this is the ultimate movie experience.

"The Blue Shell Incident" by Joel is a fantastic film. When I first watched him make this film, I felt a personal attachment to these characters, this will be important later. So when I saw the completed movie, I was quick to watch it.

The film shows Joel's skills of 3DMM throughout the movie. It starts very simple and basic, then moves on to higher quality, finishing with the most astounding part of the movie, the fight scene at the end, filled with camera panning, sfx and immersive music. This type of scene I'm pretty sure was never seen from the likes of day in the 3DMM community.

The character development is great, especially the bond between Luigi and Duck. Luigi first meets him as he holds Lasagna Ocelot's gun to Mario. Luigi is confused by this. When Mario escapes the restaurant, he and Duck have a conversation on why Duck's helping Luigi and not Mario. This comes into the last scenes, where Duck sacrifices himself to end Metal Gear McQueen. He speaks his final words to Luigi, "You were the bro I never had." before disintegrating into dust. This actually shocked me and made me feel sad, as I had known Duck from the very start, when he was first put into the movie. The after-credits scene is great at creating mystery, as it shows only one side of the conversation with Garfield, leaving me guessing until the very end, where he finishes off with 'Scatman John', who was previously in the movie and presumable killed.

In conclusion, this film moved my emotions and was very immersive throughout the movie. The only part I have trouble with watching is the start, as it is very basic and has no pull-in factors, which could kill a large audience.

"The Blue Shell Incident" is an animated short film from November 2019, so this one is not yet half a year old. The writer and director of these 26 minutes is Joel Johannsson (as Joel Vargskelethor) and (according to imdb) this is his first filmmaking work. He basically did everything here and normally I'd say it is a pretty impressive feat if this applies to a movie, but here I cannot say the same because the quality is simply not there. Instead, the filmmaker gives us one famous character after the next while never really constructing a good story around these. Of course, some character are more famous than others and some also get more screen time. The best example is Garfield early on, who may be the third biggest character here after Luigi and Mario and I somewhat liked that because I am a big Garfield fan. Yep, the two plumbers are at the center of the film, most of all Luigi because he is the hero here and Mario the antagonist. And still it feels as if Mario is featured more prominently here, has more screen time (or at least the same) and also many more lines of dialogue. Luigi barely talks. Oh wait, there is this random duck, who may have more screen time than Garfield. Anyway, back to the two stars here: I should have liked this more because I always found Luigi at least as interesting as Mario, but I didn't. One reason is the animation. I read people say we should not be too harsh on this aspect because given the program Johannsson used here, this is as good as it gets. Maybe this is true, but then I say: "How about you use another program?" So this is not an apology. Like I said in the title of my review: You will find many familiar faces in here: Be it the M&Ms, Marge Simpson, Garfield, Toad, Link, Donald Duck and so on. Many many more. The problem is just that some of these are featured very briefly and killed off immediately, sometimes also in a fairly graphic manner, while those who do have more screen time (no matter if they live or not) feel really forgettable too, simply because their inclusion is not justified by a quality story line.

The perhaps weirdest cameo comes from Scatman John, who is disguised as Mario on one occasion so we think Mario is not actually evil, but we are wrong as we find out not much later. Anyway, as for Scatman John, it was really weird, but I did not like it at all. Not classy at all. (Not sure the word "tasteless" applies in the English language the way it applies in German.) I can deal with actual people being used in animation and it is even alright if you kill them off, but the way it was handled here was just tasteless and don't tell me that was a tribute and the filmmaker is a fan or so. South Park shos how it needs to be done. Not the way it happens here. The title of this film is a reference to Mario Kart by the way and the inclusion of this scene that fueled Mario's anger was certainly among the better moments of the movie. Music is also a crucial component here as you will get a familiar tune here and there, like at the very end when Mario is killed by the duck. Not by Luigi. There you get the standard tune that is always played when Mario dies and just so familiar and famous. Okay, what else can I say about this one? Oh yeah Johansson/Vargskelethor also does all the voice work himself and well what can I say there? He is no Lorenzo Music, that much is safe. So not a good job from him here either. I am pretty certain this is not gonna stay the only filmmaking credit and maybe eventually he will even make a sequel to this one we have here, but if he does I have little to no interest to watch. Even for me as a fan of all these (Nintendo) games featured in here, I cannot say I enjoyed the watch overall, even if here and there this film had an okay moment. And these moments were not even frequent enough for a film that run for under half an hour. So best is to skip the watch. Don't be tricked by the high rating here on imdb. This one is not better than the Godfather franchise. And certainly not better than the video games it originates from and yes well these exist here on imdb too and have lower ratings. Enough said. I suggest you watch something else instead.

In a modern world were movies aren't but entertainment, Blue Shell Incident is a true piece of art as I've never seen before. Pulp Fiction? The Godfather? Netfork? Those are nothing compared to this amazing experience. Scenes like Luigi crying for the death of his brother as his tear broke as a glass is just an example of the kind of movie this is, which is also a deconstruction of action films. The animation, music, sound effects, voice acting and narrative are on top, and all of this acompained by a beautiful message shared in a really subtle way.

Master piece, 10/10. We'll never seen anything like this ever.