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SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Vol. 4 of “Love, Death + Robots,” now streaming on Netflix.
Netflix’s Emmy-winning animated anthology series “Love, Death + Robots” is back for a fourth outing – and this balls-to-the-wall collection of short films is more outrageous than ever.
Whether it’s a mockumentary about fed-up smart devices, a demon attack on unsuspecting WW2 soldiers or a strings-attached Red Hot Chili Peppers concert, the series’ signature bleeding-edge animation coupled with smartly-adapted short stories makes for an unforgettable new batch of tales.
Ahead of Volume 4’s premiere, several creatives behind the series sat down with Variety: creator and executive producer Tim Miller, supervising director Jennifer Yuh Nelson and “400 Boys” director Robert Valley.
This volume has two cat-centric episodes, “The Other Large Thing” and “For He Can Creep.” Was that an intentional choice to highlight our feline friends so much this season?
JENNIFER YUH NELSON: It just turned out that way. Themes show up after the fact. Cats are a big part of it. [“The Other Large Thing” writer] John Scalzi, who wrote “The Three Robots” and is the funniest author, has a thing for cats. We love them, so they’re in the stories!
TIM MILLER: And Siobhan Carroll’s story, “For He Can Creep,” was just a great story. I honestly don’t think about the cats. I don’t like cats at all! And somehow we keep ending up with it.
NELSON: This season is cats and babies!
Cats, babies and a lot of exploration of faith ideology.
MILLER: Not a big fan of religion as a whole. Even though I thought we treated it fairly with “How Zeke Got Religion” at 20 thousand feet.
If we’re on the subject of religion, we’ve got to discuss “Golgotha,” one of the series’ rare forays into live-action. Why was that the right choice for this story?
MILLER: We planted a stake in Season 1 in “Ice Age,” with Topher Grace and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. The story felt really grounded, and I thought that telling it with live action felt like it was the right medium for the story. We literally just drove up the street to Malibu and shot it on the beach in two days. I love the way it turned out. The story is this really nice, contained beginning, middle and end. It felt like it wouldn’t get away from us if we did it in live action.
Another standout episode is “400 Boys.” I don’t know what I expected the Boys to be, but giant babies wasn’t it. Why was that the right fit for portraying the invaders?
ROBERT VALLEY: That was built into the short story and in the script. You’re kind of lulled along a certain direction in the story.There’s a point where you’re expecting one thing, and it turns into something else. Being a parent of one kid myself, I recall those days when my little shit son was a kid doing all sorts of crazy stuff. I was able to sort of reminisce on that stuff a little bit.
MILLER: I read that story originally back in 1982 or ‘83 or something. I love the warrior vibe of it, but I don’t think I would remember it and have pulled it back all these years later if it wasn’t for the giant babies. It’s the thing that took it from a good story to an exceptional story. Marc Laidlaw, who wrote that story, said, I had this idea for the open that I didn’t do for some reason.” I said, “Well, let’s do it!” And so he wrote that, which is not in the original story the beginning, where they’re psychically charging the bullets that he puts in the gun. We’ve never had an author go, “I want to change something in my story!” That was super cool.
VALLEY: I was wondering where that came from!
I immediately recognized John Boyega’s voice as Slash in that one. Why was he the right pick?
VALLEY: We probably went through no less than 20 different possibilities for that main character. Nobody was quite able to nail it. That was the last voice to be cast. And then I think Tim suggested, “Why don’t we just try John Boyega?” He came in and he nailed it. It was a very painless thing.
MILLER: I don’t think it was me! I suggested Ed Skrein, who voices Hilo. Robert had made this decision to go with British voices, which was cool. Ed was a friend because he was the villain in “Deadpool.” Ed is like a real guy from the streets, so I sent him the script, and I said, “Take a look at the way they’re trash talking each other. Give me any ideas on how you would say that.” Ed gave me one of my favorite lines: “My boy, you look mash-up!”
NELSON: John came into it because he was actually a friend of the casting director, and when she mentioned him, I was thinking, “That sounds like the voice in Robert’s head that he was thinking about for that character.” It was so amazing.
We have to talk about “Spider Rose,” because I’ve fallen in love with Nosey. He’s my son now. I would kill for him.
MILLER: But would you eat him to save your own life?
I wouldn’t eat him, but I’d make the same decision as Spider Rose and let him eat me, if it came to that.
NELSON: That’s very interesting, because the original short story that it came from had that ending! She actually chooses herself over the pet. What we show visually, it can hit differently. If we had ended it that way, I think you wouldn’t have been happy.
No! It was a beautiful sacrifice for the creature who gave her final days meaning. I’m curious how you chose the design for Nosey, because he’s adorable, but also a little scary.
NELSON: I think the fact that you said, “He’s my son now,” is great, because that’s the feeling that I wanted to get. But I hate cute things, because it’s too sweet. You’ve got to have the hideous, to make it really cute for balance in all things. So we look at the things that were kind of ugly, cute things like tardigrades – you know, those little microscopic kind of bears that look like little pods with little stubby legs coming out and a circular mouth. It’s really horrible! They’re indestructible, too. We also looked at like little Japanese frogs that have really wide-set eyes. We looked at French bulldogs because Jerome de Jean, who is the supervising creative director for the show, has a French bulldog named Sunshine. She’s absolutely adorable, but she can’t breathe. We mashed all those things together for the first phase, and then in the second phase, he has to look more like a mammal. We went with bush babies because they look like primate, but they look somehow other. And, of course, the final phase is just Rose messed up through the same filter, with the wide set eyes. That’s supposed to be disturbing.
MILLER: It uses the same evolutionary technique to stay alive that babies do. They’re just cute and then, and then we can’t kill them, when sometimes we feel like we should.
NELSON: Something my mom said is that they make babies cute so we don’t eat them.
MILLER: They would be delicious!
VALLEY: Tender meat.
We also need to dive into “The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur,” in which MrBeast plays the host of a brutal competition for aristocrats. How did his involvement come about?
MILLER: “Evil master of games ceremonies?” I mean, come on! Even before I saw his show on Amazon, “Beast Games,” I thought he would be a great choice. But the real reason is, he’s a huge fan of the show. I went to North Carolina and saw his place. He’s got posters up for the show. He loves it, and he really wanted to be a part of it, and this role just seemed like a perfect thing for him. I feel like him being in it will bring in a different audience that we might not normally get, so I think it’s a great thing for the whole anthology. And I thought he was pretty handsome in this role – but sinister.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
English (US) ·