Cowboy Bebop: The Movie

(This is the 14th and final installment of my biweekly recaps of Cowboy Bebop, the TV Tokyo animated series that ran from 1998 to 1999 to cult fascination and critical acclaim. I hadn't seen it until I watched it for these articles. These recaps are only available to paid subscribers.)

• Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door, a.k.a. Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (released September 1, 2001 [Japan], and April 4, 2003 [United States])

‎The vast majority of movies built atop the infrastructure of TV shows hit the vague target of "pretty good." For instance, the recent Bob's Burgers Movie blows the world of that show up to a cinematic scale, creating what ends up being a thoroughly enjoyable "big" episode of the show, with a few speed bumps along the way. (One musical number goes on seemingly forever.)

The expansiveness of the film can be felt in ways both big — the TV series rarely features as many locations or characters as the movie does — and small. When the characters in the movie dance, they do so in a way the TV series would never waste time animating. In a film, though, we expect all the bells and whistles. So the Belcher family dances with a loose-limbed glory, spaghetti noodles liberated of their physical need to collapse.

Dig deeper into film and TV history, and you'll find plenty of other variations on this theme, and they're all, by and large, pretty good. Occasionally, you'll get a Star Trek II or a South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut or something, where a movie really does use the expanded canvas to attempt something the TV show simply couldn't have done. But more often, you'll end up with something like The Simpsons episode "Kamp Krusty," originally intended to be a movie before all involved realized it could just be a TV episode. That's how so many of these projects feel, in the end.

So even the best movies built atop TV shows struggle to answer a fundamental question: Why? Beyond the capitalist imperative to keep making stuff... why?

The Cowboy Bebop movie has a better reason to exist than many of these films. After all, it's a continuation of the series, made because director Shinichirō Watanabe kept getting asked to continue the show, and he decided he'd rather do a movie than another season. The movie also pulls off the unenviable task of telling a story that will entertain fans while holding back the curtain to allow everybody who's never watched the show to enter the tent with minimal fuss.

As a first-time Bebop experience, I can imagine this movie working quite well. But if you've seen the series, then... you might have questions about how this film could exist because... isn't Spike dead?

Yes. The ingenious thing about Cowboy Bebop: The Movie is that it understands that with such an episodic show, it's pretty easy just to do a new adventure with the characters and say, "Yeah, it probably just happened at some point when you weren't paying attention." And that's exactly what the Bebop film does. The events of this movie take place between episodes 22 ("Cowboy Funk") and 23 ("Brain Scratch"). So Spike's still alive, Faye hasn't yet found her missing past, and Ed and Ein are still on board the Bebop. The film never tells you this fact, and I had to look it up myself. But even if you didn't know, it would become apparent quickly that the movie takes place somewhere within the season one chronology.

‎Now, if you think too hard about the events of this movie, they would drastically alter how the characters approached the show's final few episodes, if only emotionally. Would a Spike who's been through all of the near-death experiences of this movie go after Vicious quite as ruthlessly as he does in the finale? My guess is no, but you could also argue that seeing this movie makes Spike's choice to go after Vicious hit even harder. After the movie's events, Spike knows viscerally how easy it would be for him to die, but he can't seem to give up his death wish entirely.

However, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie doesn't need to do anything to further the characters' development. Their journeys in the series mostly brought them to a place where any additional material in the movie might feel like laying it on a little thick. So the film instead leans into the fact that it's nice to see these characters on that spaceship one last time. When that initial scene with Jet and Spike playing shogi is interrupted by Ed and Ein, it made me grin. I didn't realize how much I wanted to spend a little more time with all of these people in this particular configuration.

And, like, this movie's plot goes pretty hard when it wants to. The midway point — when Spike loses that fight against Vincent in a convincing fashion — goes to a darker place than the series typically did. And the overall plot, though convoluted in places, offers a surprisingly adroit and thoughtful take on the psychology of a terrorist. As antagonists from the series go, Vincent is one of the better ones, and Elektra is similarly compelling in her femme fatale role.

As the plot twists and turns all around Mars, I also appreciate how it finds ways to give the main foursome their own little elements to contribute to the investigation, which leads to some thrilling sequences for all of them. Even as the story of Vincent and Elektra is core to the film, the crew of the Bebop constantly takes center stage, subtly. The TV show sometimes struggled with that when telling particularly complicated stories. In that way, the movie offers a broader canvas that benefits the series substantially.

The movie goes out of its way to work in lots of other nods to the series as a whole, from the old timers in their crop-dusting plane to Laughing Bull, who appears here to essentially offer a watered-down version of his vision from the series finale. Some of these beats hit harder for me than others, but they all added to the movie, reminding me how much I adored this TV show and how nice it was to spend another two hours in that world with these characters. The film doesn't particularly add anything to my understanding of Faye Valentine, for instance, but she's one of my favorite characters in anything ever. Why wouldn't I want to hang out with her just a bit longer?

So it goes with this movie, which would definitely be in my top third of Bebop episodes were it an episode but never quite hits the heights of my absolute favorites. That makes it, well, "pretty good," though pretty good Bebop is terrific stuff indeed. The plot meanders here and there, mostly thanks to how stretched out it is, but if it didn't meander, not all of the characters would get something fun to do. When it comes to choosing a completely satisfying cinematic experience or offering fans of the show one last ride with these characters, it skews toward the latter every time.

I think that's the right choice. I don't need a movie made from one of my favorite shows to reinvent the wheel. Most of the time, these movies are just fine if all they aspire to be are really big episodes of the TV shows that spawned them. Cowboy Bebop: The Movie is more Cowboy Bebop than movie. Some would quibble. Indeed, I found myself quibbling here and there when I felt like the movie could have gotten to the point a little more readily. And then I realized: I can get movies just about anywhere. I can't get Cowboy Bebop anywhere else. Which would I rather this movie give me? The answer isn't hard to figure out at all. "Pretty good" is more than good enough.

‎Other thoughts I thought:

• Seriously, if you were a fan watching this movie back in 2001 or 2003... how were you supposed to figure out that it took place between episodes 22 and 23? "Somewhere in the long part of the run where Ed and Ein were still on the Bebop"? Sure. But that specifically? I can't even begin to understand.
• I watched the dubs for the movie simply because that was what I had access to. I think I finally get why some people swear by the English language cast, who all give outstanding performances in this film.
• It wouldn't be Cowboy Bebop without some Weird Gender Stuff. The scene where Ed talks to a person who appears to be a trans woman sex worker who solicits Ed when she thinks Ed is a little boy is... yeah. I mean, it's a throwaway moment, but it didn't make me feel great.
• I absolutely cannot believe this movie was released 10 days before the September 11 terrorist attacks, especially when I try to consider watching it in that environment. I keep talking about how those attacks shifted release plans for the show (and then the film), but I'm constantly amazed by how bound up in those events the entire run of Cowboy Bebop was, by simple accident of timing.
• The scenes of various terrorist attacks are brutal and terrifying in the way such acts are in real life. There's a randomness to them that helps underline how horrible they are, and I love that the first time we see one, it's from Faye's perspective as she passes by overhead.
• Jet is evidently an expert on how blood functions. Good work, Jet!
• The depiction of Vincent's dissociative disorder was obviously dramatized for effect, but within that space, I thought the metaphor underlying it was really well handled.
• Favorite action sequence: probably the fight on the train that leads to the release of the nanobots and Elektra realizing she's immune. It's brutal, enthralling, and bloody. For me, the movie lost a little steam from how it just couldn't match up to it.
• I like how the movie ends with a simple scene between Jet and Faye, the two characters presumably still taking the Bebop around the solar system after the series' events.
• God, I would love to see more Cowboy Bebop stuff, but I hope they don't ever try a live-action remake.

Thank you for joining me these last several months to talk through this series! I regret to inform you that they did do a live-action remake, which I will be watching for next week's free edition of the newsletter, but...

On August 22: We're taking a five-week trip TO THE HIGH SEAS, as I cover the first season of the highly acclaimed HBO Max series Our Flag Means Death, at least as long as HBO Max doesn't abruptly pull it from the service. Avast, ye landlubbers!