Free Movie Time: Wings of Honneamise

An overlooked film from 1987, about an alternate history space program. It comes off, to me, as a precursor to Contact but without the latter’s stupid heavy-handedness of the conflict thesis binary. Science and religious elements play hard in the story but their treatment is far from Hollywood’s childishness.

Like Magentic Rose, the mechanical designs are flawlessly detailed, as is the rest of the background art. I found myself rewinding a lot to see the neat blinky colors and physics in action. All before CGI was a thing. There also a pervasive undercurrent of humor the entire duration—the screenshot of part 2 you see below was from a rather serious scene.

There’s some bad language, violence, and a scene with boobies. If you listen to the Matti’s voice you’ll hear Bryan Cranston, way before he became Malcolm’s dad and a meth dealer.

EDIT: I received an email about a print fanzine called Royal Space Force: 25th Anniversary Fanzine, that has essays from authors and primary-source material about the movie:

One essay specifically addresses Yamaga’s use of religion in the film and his somewhat personal motivations behind it, the complicated real-life role faith has played in space exploration (citing the experiences of William Anders, Buzz Aldrin, and James Irwin) and how Riqunni is as much the main character of the film as Shiro–in fact, at one point the film was to be called “The Wings of Riqunni.”

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