Good science
fiction takes a single aspect of what we recognise in current society
and refracts it through a prism of an alternate setting in order to
question what we take for granted as natural in the social order.
So just like with
comedies, sci-fi films work best if they have a good gimmick and a
better twist. Library Wars takes the bleeding heart liberal premise
of Fahrenheit-451 (censorship is evil and fascist) and marries it to
the conservative impulse: freedoms worth defending must be defended
by force of arms. Hilarity ensues when the jackbooted methods of
Japan’s heavily armed censorship board provokes the national
library board to create its own paramilitary force to protect itself,
its holdings, and in extension, the freedom of information in wider
society.
The result is as
absurd as it is engaging. In a stroke of mad genius, Library Wars
marries the weighty philosophical pinnings of its premise with high
entertainment. Unlike most scifi films, Library Wars doesn’t do
regime-changing revolution as much as fulfil your annual quota for
silly imagery. Ever wondered what kind of paramilitary force
librarians would put together, how a boot camp movie with librarians
would feel, or what a war film would look like if the battleground
was your state library? This movie has the answers to all those
questions that might have plagued you years ago in that brief moment
when you drifted in between restfulness and sleep.
As a film, Library
Wars is an all over the place mix-and-match of
incongruous genres. It’s a comedy (the protagonist is a klutz with only one good skill), a sci-fi thriller, a
boot camp drama, a war movie, and a romcom (the protagonist has something going for a mystery paramilitary librarian who turns out to be the boot camp instructor from hell). It plays its various
genres competently but it’s the audacious marriage between its
liberal gimmick and its conservative twist that will stick with you.
What’s weak though is the film’s worldbuilding, which hardly
fleshes out the wider social implications of its premise.
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