It is surprising that Netflix has not made a more important promotional effort with the second season of ‘Love, Death & Robots’ after the good reception that the first volume of this short film anthology created by Tim Miller had. Especially if we take into account that they also announced very recently that we will have a third next year.
From the outset, it would be easy to think that they had prioritized quantity over quality when seeing that this time there are only eight short films, less than half of those that shaped the first season. Once seen, it is clear that the technical and visual display is once again top-notch, but it is also that I have been more satisfied with what I saw despite the fact that the balance between form and background has not been completely achieved.
Lights and Shadows of Volume 2
It is striking that this happens because this season there is a tendency to tell stories with a more personal touch that do not resort to excesses to try to seduce the viewer. In them there is some very striking premise like that society in which most adults prefer to live forever at the cost of not being able to have children, and it is appreciated that there is again a great variety, feeling that each of the stories wants to breathe for itself instead of being a more or less curious piece in an anthology.
Although the second season opens with a more comedy-oriented episode, most of the episodes of this second season have a more dramatic and sometimes thoughtful approach, relying on visual power as the main support instead of worrying about the scripts having robust enough to explore the issue raised. It’s a shame that that happens, because, for example, ‘Evolutionary Response’ has a hooked start and a very suggestive visual finish with certain echoes of ‘Blade Runner’, but as it progresses it loses strength.
It is not something that happens in all cases, since ‘The Drowned Giant’, adaptation of a story by JG Ballard, knows how to balance at all times the importance of how and what you are telling, being without a doubt my favorite of this second volume from ‘Love, Death & Robots’. In other cases, that more reflective element that I mentioned before seems empty and capricious, but here it does have that necessary dimension to keep me thinking about what I had just seen.
I also appreciate simpler and more direct proposals such as ‘The tall grass’ or ‘Shelter’ they know how to squeeze the material at their disposal from pure intensity, with the former also including a successful tribute to Lovecraft. In fact, I would not mind knowing more about the world of ‘The tall grass’ without having the feeling that something was missing, which happened to me often in the first season.
Of course, above any type of personal preference, the best thing about this second season is that it is more compact than its predecessor without this implying seeking greater uniformity between them. Each short has its own stamp, especially in the visual section, and every time one begins to play it becomes clear that we are going to see something different from the nexus that unites all of them.
In short
Despite the fact that the scripts are still not the strong point of ‘Love, Death & Robots’, the second season of this anthology is more satisfactory than the first. There are fewer stories that leave the feeling of being left half and technically it is just as impressive or even more.