Battleground (Srazhenie) , directed by Mikhail Titov. A.K.A ” The first Stephen King animated movie”
A Dollar Baby that you can watch on Youtube!
I love animated movies! And Stephen King is my favourite author. So, when someone talks about animated movies based upon a Stephen King short story, man, you got my attention.
When I got to know the SKSM website and saw the list of Dollar Babies, man, I went nuts! It was a huge list of short movies based upon my favourite author’s work. Buuuut there was this annoying thing that most of the movies we can’t find on-line. This is something that really pissed me off (still does).
And among those “secret movies” there were also some animated ones. Duuuude, I needed to watch them! When I saw the poster of “Home Delivery” directed by Elio Quiroga, I got hypnotized. I searched a lot for that movie, but let’s face it: I am not that good at searching the way Bernd and Óscar are. But in my defense, I focused on a certain name on that spanish poster while I was searching for it, but I could not find anything about a short movie from Guillermo Del Toro based upon a Stephen King short storye. So, I let it go. I started to believe that there was not such a thing as an animated Dollar Baby.
Later I got to know about “Beachworld” , a Russian animated short movie directed by Maria Ivanova. I watched the trailer and I just fell in love. At that point I already had my Dollar Baby Film Fest and reached her to invite the movie to be part of the film fest. She politely declined. For the second time I was frustrated, would I ever see an animated movie based upon a King’s story.
One day, before I joined the SKSM team, I was searching for short movies to invite to the film fest and I saw a Soviet animated movie from the 80s. And it was released on YouTube, so I could not only watch it but also download. I got excited, buuuut after that I got frustrated again: it was in Russian, without subs. So, I did not pay much attention to it for a while. Rookie mistake, because this movie was incredible. That short movie was Srazhenie, also known as “Battleground” directed by Mikhail Titov. The 4th Dollar Baby ever made. And the first animated one.
One year later I was already part of the SKSM team and told the guys that I was considering trying to translate this Soviet short movie from the 80s so I could screen it at the film fest. Óscar Garrido gave me a presente then: he had subtitles for the movie, in English and Spanish !! Once again, I need to thank him: Óscar, gracias chico.
So I finally paid due attention to this movie and realized that I had been really stupid by not trying to even watch the movie before I had the subs, because not only are there just a few dialogues, but also some dialogues are in English and Russian. Aaaaaand nowadays YouTube does automatically subs. So, how dumb was I? Don’t make the same mistake I did, watch it! Now! I will wait.
By watching the movie for the first time, the first thing I thought was that it reminded me that G.I. Joe is an old cartoon that used to screen on TV, also from the 80s. For me it had that vibe, it reminded me so much of those old cartoons that I loved when I was a kid and this made me like the short movie even more. But, it happens that I was wrong again: until today every single time I watched or thought about “Battleground” I automatically thought about G.I Joe. But before I started this review I decided to watch some vídeos from G.I Joe and I realized that this animated series has nothing to do with “Battleground”. So, why did it remind me so much about American cartoons? Then I got: it is because of the toys!
You see, “Battleground” is about an assassin that kills a toy maker and later receives at home a pack full of toy soldiers. And the soldiers are alive. So that is why I related the two things, because of the toy soldiers. Instead of thinking about an evil version of “Toy Story“, I reminded G.I Joe cause when I was a kid I was a sucker for these toy soldiers from Hasbro. And I do think that maybe King himself got inspired by the series and the toys to write the short story, cause he had 2 young boys at home. Maybe they were playing with those little fuckers one day and King thought “man, these little bastards have everything. Imagine if they started to shoot at me. Wait a minute, there could be a story here…”.
The original short is fun! Real fun. There are no hidden critics, King is not talking about a fear that some people have, he is not talking about society or politics, he is just writing a fun short story. And I bet he had a lot of fun writing about it too.
But let’s get back and now focus on the movie: Did you guys notice when I said that it is a Soviet movie? Yeah, baby, it is a movie made in the Soviet Union in 1986, a country that does not even exist anymore.Why is that important? Well, it was made during the Cold War!!!!! Now we have some layers to discuss in this short movie! You see it is a Soviet movie based upon an american writer’s short story aaaand there is war aaaaaand an atomic bomb in the story! Thank you Mikhail Titov, Spasibo!
The short movie is very faithful to the original short story, but Mikhail allowed himself to show us a little bit more, things that King could have written, but chose not to. Any filmmaker who would read the short story would think that having the murder scene in the short movie would be awesome. Mikhail was not different, his screenplay showed us that and some other new cool scenes that not only helped to get the audience hooked, but also made his short movie to become a gender movie, a spy movie! Because right at the beginning one new scene shows us the assassin having a secret meeting inside of a car. At the car we see a small TV and his “friend” (contact) puts a small tape in it so they could watch information about the target.
A Volkswagen with spy gadgets inside of it?How cool is that? Reminds me of that “Ethan Hunt vibe” from the old Mission Impossible TV show, you know? The soundtrack also plays well to set this vibe. And different from the original short story, in the movie we can actually watch the assassin killing the toy maker. So, showing all this, until the madness of living toys starts, man, the
The audience thinks that it is a spy movie. And that helps to surprise the audience a lot when the turning point arrives and the damm toys start to shoot at the assassin, because the surprise becomes even bigger.
So, a Soviet animated short movie during the Cold War that starts with a murder (which maybe has industrial reasons) and boom, there is a war happening at a hotel room and there is a satellite used as a weapon aaaaand nuclear guns!!!!! Could it be aaaaany cooler ? (please, do read this question imagining Chandler Bing’s voice. Spasibo.)
As I said before, Mikhail Titov was faithful in adapting the short story, but he also wrote a good screenplay in the process. A screenplay where it almost has no dialogues, but we still have a good rhythm during the movie. There is action, there are funny parts and also a good closure. The editing should be mentioned in here too, cause it sure helped the rhythm too.
When the movie is over we think: “man, it was real fun. Ten minutes? It sure looked faster than that.”And it does, we don’t see as the time goes by, we can’t feel it while watching this animated movie and this is a good thing, a good complement to the filmmaker and everyone else involved in it. Dudes, companions, spasibo!
Well, we don’t have many animated Dollar Babies, I only had the chance to watch a fews ones until today (Home Delivery is a masterpiece!) and I regret I took my time to watch “Battleground”. It is a great short movie, an animated movie that looks like the 80s, sounds like the 80s and, damm, it smells like the 80s too. Do yourself a favor and watch it. And share with friends who also enjoy King’s work, cause it is an amazing Dollar Baby by itself.
The Dollar Baby’s grade? We from SKSM give 5 fingers from the dead guy’s hand. And maybe also a thousand other fingers from the old G.I Joes toy soldiers I used to collect, the fingers that every single time broke and left them defenseless against the Cobras. Was it only me or your toys that also had finger problems?
See you next time, guys.
Leonardo Granado
