Main cast: Michael Jai White (Balt), Michelle Lee (Gas), Silvio Simac (Sant), Darren Shahlavi (Mel), and Fabien Houssaye (Mécamorphe Leader)
Director: Guillaume Lubrano
In a distant planetary colony called UMA 61, a new energy source called the Mécadrome was discovered. This discovery spurred the company that manages the mining on that colony to use it to create automated miners, called Mécamorphes, as a way to cut costs and improve its profit margin. As anyone who has seen these movies can testify, this is a bad move. The Mécamorphes gained sentience when the Métal Hurlant asteroid whizzed past the planet, decided that they’d like to be the boss instead, and now, when this episode begins, the human colonists are waging a desperate war against their machines.
The remaining colonists, led by Balt, are running low on everything (ammo, food, etc, plus with so many dead), so it is time for one last push. Down to four adults, the colonists’ plan is to escort a boy and his pet rabbit to the Mécadrome, as apparently only the “young and innocent” can step into that device and undergo the mutation necessary to transform into a “golem”. This “golem” may be a powerful weapon to turn the tide against the machines, apparently. Apparently, a similar golem was created in this way to help the humans colonize this planet in the first place, so who knows, this may work again. But not if the Pinhead-expy Mécamorphe boss can help it, of course.
The Endomorphe looks and feels like a really low budget take on a generic post-apocalyptic evil-machine-overlord story, and the fight scenes can look fake at times. Still, Michael Jai White can always be counted on to play and look as cool as can be while kicking ass, and I really like the twist at the end. Okay, the golem looks ridiculous, but given that this episode looks pretty low budget, I can’t expect anything more.
On the whole, this is a rather average episode but the pretty neat twist makes it more memorable than it otherwise would be. I wish the episode has been executed in a way that allows the transition from generic sci-fi action to cool-absurd to take place more gracefully. That would have made that twist leave more of an impact.
