My Thoughts on "Boy Kills World"
I wasn't even sure if I was even going to be able to do this one or not, but I did. I managed to get my hands on Boy Kills World, the independent dystopian action movie from first time director, Moritz Mohr, and starring Bill Skarsgård in the titular role as Boy. I actually almost bought this movie over Mars Express. Like, I saw them both at Barnes & Noble when I went there one time, and I almost bought this movie thinking that Mars Express wasn't available, but it was, and I chose to buy that movie instead because I really wanted to review it. I did, and you can go read that if you want.
But, I wasn't sure if I would ever get the chance to buy Boy Kills World, and watch it and then review it. It's not a particularly widely available movie, a lot of stores don't have it. So, I figured that the only way that I would ever get the chance to buy it and watch it is if I bought it online, like on Amazon or something. And of course, I don't have the means to buy movies online at the moment, so it would inevitably take awhile. But, luckily, I managed to find it at Walmart. It was a lucky find, I didn't expect to see it there, and I was able to buy it for $19+tax 💵 of course.
I did almost get the 4K release because the 4K was stored in the same rake as the standard Blu-Ray 💿, and that lead me to believe that the 4K was $19 💵. That's a bargain for any 4K, believe me, so I thought that I had to buy it then. Where else would I find a 4K that was only $19 💵? But of course, when I went to go buy it, it turned out, it was more like $24 💵, which is the standard price for a 4K release. I guess it was a little bit too good to be true. So, I had to take it back, and buy one of the standard Blu-Rays 💿, since we were trying to stretch our dollar 💵 because we had plans to go see my aunt at her art show in Santa Fe. She makes pottery, and sells it at the Indian Market.
But, because of some car trouble caused by my dad (he was trying to change the oil, but end up spilling the transmission fluid, amongst other things by mistake), those plans have kind of put into question. We don't know for sure now if we'll be going to Santa Fe or not since we don't know if we'll be able to get our car up and running again. So yeah, thanks dad, for ruining our car potentially 😤. That was our only mode of transportation 😒. But, I'm not going to lose hope, I have faith that it will be fixed, hopefully 🤞. So, this cost saving measure may have been for nothing.
But you know what? It's always good to budget it, and save money 💵 whenever you can. You never know when you might need extra money 💵, especially if you're like my family who's almost always broke, and always strapped for cash 💵. We take what we can get, we survive off of whatever money 💵 we can find. That be how it is for a lot of families, especially where I live.
But still, I like buying the 4K releases over the standard Blu-Rays 💿 because whenever I do get the chance to buy a 4K player or a PS5 (since those things can play 4K discs 💿), I won't have to buy the same movie again, but on 4K. And it's okay because a lot of them do come with Blu-Ray discs 💿. That's why I was a bit bummed that the Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire 4K didn't come with a Blu-Ray 💿 because it meant that if I do get my hands on 4K player, I'll have to purchase that movie again just so that I can actually watch it in 4K. The Boy Kills World 4K did come with a Blu-Ray 💿 which is why I was so excited to buy it when I thought that it was $19 💵. Maybe someday I'll buy the 4K.
This is a movie that I had been wanting to watch for a while now, ever since I saw the trailer. I happened to come across the trailer while watching videos on YouTube, as I do. This is also how I came across the trailer to Weekend in Taipei, that upcoming French action movie 🇫🇷 starring Luke Evans and Sung Kang that's set in Taiwan 🇹🇼, specifically the capital city, Taipei. It was produced by Luc Besson, who kind of had sexual assault/harassment allegations against him 😬. I don't know if those allegations were proven true or not, but either way, I'm surprised Luc Besson still has a career by this point since he's kind of a disgraced figure in the eyes of many people 😔.
But hey, I guess if John Lasseter can keep working, then I suppose Luc Besson can as well 😒. At least, Brian Singer and Brett Ratner are no longer working after the allegations against them came to light. Weekend in Taipei does look like a good movie, and I do plan on reviewing it for this blog when it comes out and whenever I get the chance to see it. It might be one of those movies that I might end seeing well after it's out of theaters, just like with Boy Kills World. But until then, here, watch the trailer.
When I saw the title to Boy Kills World, I was initially confused. I thought, "Boy Kills World? Is this like a parody of Boys Meets World, that Disney sitcom that aired on ABC?" And then I clicked on it, and no, it's nothing like Boy Meets World. It wasn't a parody. It's just a coincidence. Or maybe it isn't, and they did know about Boy Meets World, and decided to title their movie, Boy Kills World as a little joke and a play on words since their main character is named Boy. Kind of like how cartoons will have episodes with titles that are like parodies of movies, but the plots of those episodes have nothing to do with the movies they're partially named after. The Loud House does this a lot.
But, besides the funny title, the movie looked really cool from the trailer. It looked like it had some amazing action, it was produced by Sam Raimi and Roy Lee, the guy who produced Barbarian, the song choice they used in the trailer was perfect, it had an amazing cast, and it had the involvement of one H. Jon Benjamin, the voice of a couple of famous adult cartoon characters, Bob from Bob's Burgers and Archer from Archer.
I've never seen either of those shows, but I am pretty aware of them, and I am pretty aware of H. Jon Benjamin and his distinctive voice. I did watch a few clips from those shows here and there, but never full episodes. But, speaking of Bob's Burgers, there's an actual local fast food chain that's called Bob's Burgers in Albuquerque, though the show really has nothing to do with that chain.
The makers of that show were probably unaware of the Albuquerque Bob's Burgers' existence. It was likely just a coincidence. Just like how the people who made The Simpsons named the town it takes place in, Springfield, when there's several towns in America 🇺🇸 called Springfield. Though, in that case, the makers of the show did kind of embrace that, especially when it came to make the movie, and they held a contest to see which Springfield would premiere the movie in the United States 🇺🇸.
But, it is cool to me that there's an adult animated series, an animated sitcom named after a fast food chain that I go to on occasion whenever I visit Albuquerque. If you're not from New Mexico, and you're not from Albuquerque, and you're reading this and you visit Bob's Burgers, try their taco burgers, they are out of this world 😋. I usually have at least two or three, and then whatever my grandma can't finish. Her stomach has shrunk in her older age, and can't eat as much as she used to, but I, I'm 25 years old at the time of me writing this, and I have a pretty huge appetite. I can eat a lot.
The movie looked like it would a brilliant mix of comedy and action, as there seemed to be a lot of quirkiness, and a lot of weird and silly moments that were supposed to be funny. Kind of like Bullet Train 🚅, which is a movie that I love 😍. I might not like the director of that movie's other movie, Deadpool 2, in fact I've never seen Deadpool 2, but I did like at least one of his movies. That's how it is with me with certain directors. Sometimes I might like one movie of theirs, but then I may not like their others. David Leitch is one of those for me, as I really only like Bullet Train 🚅 and nothing else. Luc Besson is sort of like that for me where I only really like The Fifth Element and nothing else, though that might change if I ever see Leon: The Professional.
Oliver Stone is also like that for me where I only really like Platoon, and none of his other movies. Even though Platoon does have a lot of historical inaccuracies, military inaccuracies (there's a reason why the Pentagon didn't participate in the making of that movie and didn't approve it), and does push the now thoroughly debunked but still widely accepted orthodox view of the Vietnam War 🇻🇳, and really only exists for Oliver Stone to express his own personal political beliefs about the war. All of his movies are just soapboxes for him to vent about his own political beliefs, and try to push them onto other people.
But, I guess Born on the Fourth of July 🇺🇸 and Heaven & Earth have all the same problems as Platoon but way worse, and I guess World Trade Center was alright, but I barely even saw that movie. I've only seen bits and pieces and clips of it here and there, so I don't count it. I will never watch Natural Born Killers, you can't convince me to. That horrible Edward Snowden movie he made, just called Snowden, completely turned me off to his work to where I refuse to watch any of his other movies. No matter how critically acclaimed some of them are, and no matter how much some people still kiss his ass to this day.
I don't know, I just can't stand Oliver Stone, he's a horrible guy with horrible beliefs. He's a conspiracy theorist, who was one of the main people who helped push the JFK assassination conspiracy theory, which is the only other conspiracy theory that's actually socially acceptable to believe in besides Jeffery Epstein not killing himself. It's the point where if you say that you actually believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President John F. Kennedy and acted alone, which is the only correct and actually historically accurate belief about the JFK assassination, people will look at you like you're the stupid one.
Well, Oliver Stone helped push that conspiracy theory that the JFK assassination was an inside job, or that Oswald wasn't acting alone, or even that Oswald wasn't even the true killer, and popularize it with the general public, and make it the most commonly accepted theory about the assassination with his stupid JFK movie. He's a Russian apologist 🇷🇺 and a Putin apologist, even going as far as to make a documentary about Putin which was nothing more than propaganda, a puff piece meant to make Putin look good. And he's very much one of those "America bad 🇺🇸" leftists that I've gotten sick of, especially ever since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine 🇺🇦 happened.
A lot of those leftists have exposed them as nothing more than Russian apologists 🇷🇺 and Russia supporters 🇷🇺, and possibly worst of all, apologists and supporters of the Putin regime. A lot of them are also supporters of and apologists for the Assad regime in Syria 🇸🇾, but that's a whole other can of worms that I won't get into here. The point is the mask slipped off, and these leftists have been exposed for they truly are, which are supporters and apologists for authoritarian regimes and terrorist organizations. Anyway, I know I'm not the only one in thinking that way about certain directors and their work. I'm sure you dear reader have a director who you only like one specific thing, and nothing else. Like, I'm sure people only like the Rush Hour trilogy and none of Brett Ratner's other movies.
Speaking of not being the only one, I wasn't the only one who liked the trailer to Boy Kills World, and thought the movie looked really cool. A lot of other people did as well. Some people were only interested in it because it had Bill Skarsgård, and a lot of people like him, especially for his role as Pennywise in the "It" movies, and also because people were kind of thirsty for him 🥰. They still are, I mean, a lot of people out there (women ♀︎, gay men ⚣, bisexual men ♂︎) think he's hot.
I mostly know him for his role as the main villain in John Wick: Chapter 4, the Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont. He didn't do any fighting in that movie, he was the talkie bad guy, who has other people do the fighting for him, and then immediately dies when his plan to make someone kill John Wick for him fails spectacularly. Well, now he's the main protagonist in this movie, he's one who gets to kick ass.
Some people only interested in it because it had H. Jon Benjamin in it as the narrator or rather, the inner voice in the protagonist's head, and people love him as well, mostly for his roles in Archer and Bob's Burgers. So, it seemed as if the movie had an audience that was ready and willing to see it.
But apparently, that audience wasn't quite big enough, as this movie kind of just came and went with very little fanfare. It just seems like when it came out in theaters, hardly anyone saw it. The thing about this movie is that it's technically a 2023 release, but it was only released on the film festival circuit. So, the only people who saw it when it originally came out were industry insiders, critics, and film festival bros. It didn't get a wide release until earlier this year in April, the same month that Monkey Man 🐒🇮🇳 came out, in fact they were kind of released weeks apart. So did their trailers.
BTW, I don't plan on watching or reviewing Monkey Man 🐒🇮🇳, mostly because my interest in that movie had diminished since my grandma saw it and said that she didn't really like it. I tend to her trust her opinion over the opinion of some random film critic on YouTube, so I won't go for it. Sorry to disappoint anyone who was expecting me to review Monkey Man 🐒🇮🇳.
I mentioned it a few times in a couple of my previous posts (in the forewords) one of the entries in my 2024 New Year's Eve Recap, as a movie I was initially interested in when I first saw the trailer (which is still an awesome trailer BTW), but lost interest in after it came out and I saw all the reviews, and after my grandma gave me her first reactions to it. Yes, I do write my New Year's Eve Recaps months in advance. It's a lot easier for me that way.
So, even if Boy Kills World did technically come out in 2023, I'm still counting it as a 2024 movie since that's when the majority of people will have seen it. I mean, think of it like this, a lot of movies are filmed the year before they're released, and yet, we don't consider them movies of the year that they were shot, we consider them movies of the year that they were released. Like, we don't consider The Matrix or Galaxy Quest 1998 movies even though they were both likely shot in 1998, and we don't consider Godzilla (1998) a 1997 movie even if it was shot in 1997. We especially don't consider Godzilla vs. Kong a 2019 movie or a 2020 movie even though it was likely shot in 2019 and was originally supposed to come out in 2020. The same goes for the myriad of other movies that were delayed during the pandemic 😷🦠, and weren't released until 2021 or 2022.
I don't even know if the movie really did all that well or not. The Wikipedia page says that it grossed $3.2 million 💵 worldwide, but they didn't list the budget, likely because the budget for the movie has never been disclosed, so we don't have anything to compare it to see if it did turn a profit or not. Given how few people saw it or talked about it when it came out, I'm guessing that $3.2 million 💵 probably wasn't a great box office take for whatever the budget of this movie was. By the looks of it, it appears to be a mid budget movie at the very least. You know, this doesn't look like some cheap $1 million or less picture 💵.
But who cares about box office takes? The movie's already out on home media, and whatever money 💵 it made at the box office while it was in theaters no longer matters. How is the movie itself? Did it live up the intrigue or the hype? Yeah, I would say so for the most part. I thought it was a good movie, and I did enjoy it. Probably the best aspect of the movie by far is the action. This movie has some really good action, some of the best I've ever seen in a movie.
There's a lot of martial arts in here than I initially expected from watching the trailer, and it has a lot more martial arts than the last two action movies that I watched, which was Bad Boys: Ride or Die and Mars Express which had more gunplay. There's still some gunplay in this movie, but the gunplay isn't really the main focus, since our protagonist, Boy is more of a martial artist and hardly uses a gun in this entire movie. I mean, he does use guns, but he mostly relies on martial arts to kill his enemies.
The thing I liked the most about the action is how bloody 🩸 it was. This is one of the bloodiest and goriest action movies 🩸 I've seen in a while. Even though Bad Boys: Ride or Die was rated R, didn't have blood 🩸 or gore like this. Neither did Mars Express, except for that one scene towards the end. It was a bit like The Night Comes for Us in terms of how bloody 🩸 and gory it was, although unlike that movie, Boy Kills World goes for a much more sillier tone and throws realism out the window rather than trying to be dark, serious, and grounded like The Night Comes for Us. The director himself, Moritz Mohr said it himself in one of the behind-the-scenes featurettes on the special features that the movie's basically a fairy tale. So obviously, it was never going to be grounded or realistic.
My action scenes in this movie include the Culling scene, where Boy gets captured by the Van Der Koy forces, and forced to participate in The Culling which are these live televised public executions that the Van Der Koy regime does every year to cull the population of the city, and also instill fear in the population to make them not want to resist. All of the executioners in this year's Culling are dressed up as cereal mascots, since this year's Culling was sponsored by a cereal company. That was a really fun sequence, especially when Andrew Koji's character, Basho and Isaiah Mustafa's character, Benny get involved.
Speaking of Benny though, they do this running gag throughout the film, where Benny is pretty speaking gibberish, or at least, Boy perceives him to speak gibberish. Because Boy can read lips, that's how he's able to understand what people are saying despite being deaf, but apparently, Benny mumbles his words, or he speaks in a way that Boy cannot read, and therefore he cannot understand a word of what he is saying. And since the entire movie is from Boy's perspective, we never actually find out what Benny is actually saying at any given time that he's on screen.
I also liked the final battle after the plot twist is revealed (more on that later), and Boy and the Van Der Koy assassin, June 27 join forces and take down all of the remaining Van Der Koy forces. That was a really cool sequence, especially that part when Boy kills one of the Van Der Koy soldiers with his own minigun, that part was glorious. The final fight between Boy, June 27, and the Shaman was also cool too, and was quite possibly the most brutal fight in the entire movie. It was certainly the most intense fight since both Boy and June 27 were brought to edge of death fighting the Shaman.
And I also liked the kitchen fight, was probably the second bloodiest fight scene 🩸 in the entire movie after the final fight. Not since TENET has a cheese grater been used as a weapon in such a brutal and efficient way 😬. Except here, since it's rated R, you actually see when the cheese grater cuts through the people's skin whereas you didn't in TENET, since TENET was a PG-13 movie. Can't believe it took until Oppenheimer for Christopher Nolan to make another R rated movie after Insomnia.
My only complaint with the action is that we didn't really get much of an action scene with Sharlto Copley. I wish we got to see Sharlto Copley kick ass since we've seen him kick ass in other movies like District 9, Elysium, CHAPPiE, and even The A-Team (2010) to a certain extent. But, I get it, that wasn't the kind of role that he picked for this movie. It was mostly a talky role, where Sharlto Copley's character, Glen was just want to be a figure head, the public face of the Van Der Koy regime. He was groomed to be the host of The Culling by his wife, Melanie Van Der Koy. So, he wasn't that much of a fighter, and he just fires a gun a few times before he's killed, albeit it by accident since Basho accidentally dropped an avail or a cinderblock on his head, or whatever that thing he dropped on his head was, while him and Boy were interrogating him. But, even if he didn't really get to fight, Sharlto Copley was a treat in this movie. He played his role well.
Speaking of Sharlto Copley though, another disappointing aspect of this movie, and probably the biggest disappointment of all is the lack of lore. They never really delve into the Van Der Koys themselves, how they got into power, and how long they've been in power. We know it's been years since they've been in control of this city that the whole movie takes place in, but we don't know how many years exactly. We also don't know much about the resistance that Basho and Benny were leading either.
It's not even clearly where the exactly where this city is located, but given that Sharlto Copley's a South African actor 🇿🇦 and they mostly shot this movie in South Africa 🇿🇦, I'm going to guess that it's probably somewhere in South Africa 🇿🇦. Like, it's a fictional South African city 🇿🇦. There's no way that it takes place in the United States 🇺🇸 given the presence of jungle around the city, and the complete lack of jungle in the US 🇺🇸, unless you count Hawaii, Puerto Rico 🇵🇷, or Guam 🇬🇺. I guess it could take place in Latin America somewhere, but it'd have to Argentina 🇦🇷 given the huge amount of white people here. But even then, they all speak English, and not Spanish, so it can't be a Latin American city. So, I'm going with South Africa 🇿🇦.
But, that just leads to the other issue which is that we don't know the full extent of the Van Der Koys' power, like do they just control this one city or they control an entire country? It's unclear. My personal fan theory before the movie came out and before I saw it was that this was a city-state, not too dissimilar to the Vatican 🇻🇦, Monaco 🇲🇨, and Singapore 🇸🇬, and that it just happened to fall under a fascistic authoritarian government run by a crazy family. That could still be the case, but we just don't know because the movie never delves into any of that stuff. Maybe they will in that animated series that they announced after the movie came out, if that thing even still comes out.
But, as for the movie itself, it was pretty lacking in lore. I'm not saying every action movie needs to have really fleshed out lore, but it's always appreciated when they do, especially when the movie takes place in a dystopian future like this does. I would like to know how this future world became dystopian in the first place. There is enough here that they could potentially expand upon in a future project like that animated series I mentioned, but I'm not sure if we will get anything else out of the Boy Kills World universe after this movie, like I'm not sure if that animated series will even come out, given the movie's iffy box office performance.
The voice over by H. Jon Benjamin was not as comedic as I was expecting it to be. From watching the trailer, I expected the voice over to be a lot more ironic, jokey, irreverent, and snarky, like basically if Archer was Boy's conscience. But no, that's not really the case. Yeah, there are jokes, and there are funny moments that involve H. Jon Benjamin's voice over, but it's not jokey 100% of the time. They really did try to make the voice over match Boy's emotional and mental state at any given time throughout the film, and make it feel like these are things Boy would be saying if he could talk.
That finally brings me to the big twist of the movie, where it's revealed that Hilda Van Der Koy, the woman ♀︎ that Boy has been after this entire movie, and was built up as the main villain, was actually Boy's mom the entire time. She didn't kill his mom because she was his mom, and she didn't kill his sister either because well, June 27 is his sister.
Boy had just been manipulated by the Shaman into hating her so he could use him as an instrument of revenge against her because as it turns out, it was the Shaman's family who were executed that day, not Boy's, and in fact, Boy participated in the execution. Hilda forced him to shoot the Shaman and his family, although, he ultimately decides to not go through with killing the Shaman in that moment after being so traumatized about his killing his family.
Then, the Shaman kidnapped Boy, took away his hearing and his voice, leaving him a deaf-mute, and he basically brainwashed him. He created entire false memories for Boy, making him forget that Hilda was his mom, and making him think that his mom was some other lady ♀︎, and that Hilda was responsible for her death and the death of his sister. All for the purposes of making Boy so angry and hateful that he'd be willing and able to take out Hilda and the rest of the Van Der Koy family. For the Shaman, this was all about revenge, and he was more than willing to use Boy to get it. Kidnapping a child, deafening and muting him, and training him to be the ultimate killing machine while also manipulating him into hating his own mother.
However, despite revealing that Hilda was Boy's real mom, they never once try to redeem her or forgive her or act as if she's a good person and is on Boy's side, she's not. She's still an evil psychopathic dictator who's killed thousands of people by this point, and the movie doesn't try to make you think otherwise or that she's okay despite those things. And she ends up dying anyway, since June 27 (now revealed to be Mina) kills her after she tells her to kill Boy, which she doesn't want to do.
Hilda's sanity has declined so badly, and her psychosis has worsened so much that she's willing to kill her only son when he doesn't act exactly the same way that he did when she last saw him, which was as a child. I mean, the guy's deaf and mute, so it's not he could respond to her even if he wanted to. She wasn't thinking straight if she ever did to begin with, and she had to be taken out.
So, with Hilda gone, that means we're left with the Shaman as our main bad guy, and he's the one that Boy and Mina both fight in the final fight of this film. Even in a Hollywood movie, Yayan Ruhian can't seem to escape playing the bad guy. I mean, I guess wasn't technically a bad guy in The Raid 2, but he still he was still working with the bad guys, and he still did plenty of bad things even if in the end, he wasn't rewarded for doing so. He proves to be a formidable opponent, more than Boy and Mina can handle even together. He almost succeeds in killing Mina, and Boy just barely manages to kill him after being severally injured.
It was this plot twist, and this whole final fight that showed just how tragic Boy's story actually is. He basically lost everything, and even the things he did have before weren't all that great either. So, he was left in a position where he had no where else to go, and he no longer had a purpose, let alone an identity, since he had his identity stripped away over the course of his life, and then had bits of his old identity restored in the matter of one day. And his purpose was just someone else's purpose that they had forced onto him. Meaning that he has no life purpose of his own. The only person he has left is his sister, and now they must depend on each other more than ever, now they've both been critically injured, they've toppled the regime, and have inevitably left the city in chaos due to the large power vacuum they created by killing the Van Der Koys; except each other of course.
I am surprised to see how much they've expanded the franchise past this movie. They released a tie-in video game after the movie was released called Super Dragon Punch Force 3, which is the in-universe arcade game that Boy and Mina played as kids and the game where Boy got his inner voice from. So now, you can play that game too. Then of course, there's that animated series that I've mentioned twice now, and is said to be in development according to Wikipedia. I don't know if it's still coming out or not, given the low box office gross and the somewhat mixed reception from critics, but we'll see.
I also don't know if it'll be a prequel or a sequel. I do sort of hope that it's a prequel, and it delves into the history behind the Van Der Koys and how they got into power, and also delve more into Basho, and get into his backstory, and show what his whole deal was prior to meeting Boy. Like, what's the story behind his girlfriend or that resistance that he's apart of before he got captured and forced into forced labor. How long has that resistance been around? How big was it? And was Basho even the leader of it like he said to Boy?
The movie kind of does make it seem like Basho is a bit of an unreliable narrator because he is kind of insane himself, and he misremembers things all the time, so maybe the truth behind some of his claims is something completely different. Maybe something a bit more nuanced. I also want the animated series to be a prequel just so we can finally understand what Benny says rather than hear Boy's interpretation of what he's saying through his inability to read his lips accurately. But, even if it's not a prequel, and is instead a sequel set after the events of the movie, and centers around Boy and Mina as they are now a team, a dynamic sibling duo, I guess that could be cool too.
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Here's the trailer to Boy Kills World:
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