10 Great Sci-Fi Villains Trapped In Terrible Movies

On paper, Appleseed has everything going for it. An adaptation of Masamune Shirow’s most personally prized manga (this is coming from the guy who wrote Ghost in the Shell) in the hands of Studio Gainax who went on to produce such sci-fi masterpieces as Neon Genesis Evangelion and FLCL. But this film is a mere shell of its source material, derailing its more intricate content and filling the gaps with unnecessary amounts of profanity

Set in Olympus, a post-World War III utopian society, Appleseed follows the buddy cop pairing of Deunan and her bioroid partner Briareos as they tackle the terrorist threat of a freedom-seeking cyborg named A.J Sebastian. You can catch a whiff of some interesting ideas here, exploring the human nature and the unfulfillment of a life without challenge, and a Greek mythology motif which implies there are some more thoughtful concepts hidden deep within the '80s anime corniness, but the film’s short run time snuffs these elements out.

Sebastian’s partner in crime, a double-agent named Charon, is the only character who carries some of the manga’s conceptual depth with him. After his wife, dissatisfied with her sheltered life in Olympus, commits suicide and the state hack into his memories to discover why, he grows to resent the stagnancy and totalitarian rule of paradise. Charon's belief that struggling for advancement is a part of the human condition, which spins out into violence as a result of his trauma, lay the foundation for an engaging and sympathetic villain. But Appleseed’s disregard for dialogue which doesn’t include F-bombs leaves little time for him to flesh out his ideals on the big screen.