Empire of the Sun marks an interesting transitioning point in Steven Spielberg’s career. It bridges the gap between being full of childish wonder, but also dealing with some more adult themes. It follows a young rich boy (Christian Bale) in Japan after he loses his parents. He then finds himself under the care of a retired war veteran (John Malkovich). Although I truly think that the film made some awesome decisions, I found it to be forgettable to say the least. And I think, if anything, that’s due to the movie’s long runtime (2 and a half hours) and the repetitive plot during the second act. Which is unfortunate, the movie does a lot of amazing scenes. There are some incredible shots, great music, somewhat compelling morals, and perhaps most interestingly, it wasn’t racist. I was worried, being that the last Spielberg movie to featuring an asian race, it was Temple of Doom, and we all know how that went down. So, there’s a lot to love here, but I just felt like something was always missing.
Part of my issue, as I said, was the film’s 2 and a half hour run time. This can be fine, there are other movies with long run times that have perfectly memorable plots. However, Empire of the Sun struggles because the characters learn the same moral over and over again throughout the second act. It took a lot for this kid to learn that war is bad. Every time it seemed that he learned there were problems with war, almost right away, he’d go back to cheering for planes flying overhead, which happens a lot. One could even consider this film to glorify war, excluding the very end. This seems to be a common thing every time Spielberg makes a film about war. His stance on war worked in Amazing Stories, but it feels wrong here, especially having the end goal that it does. For the most part, that character is in the same place at the end that he was in the beginning. If they established the kid’s love for war just a little bit stronger from the very beginning, it would have made the slow change of his views more impactful. More than anything, Steven Spielberg deals with the economic gap. Although I don’t think it was the intended overall moral, Christian Bale’s character that actually changes in those regards. When he sees his parents after everything, his is changed in that way, but not too much in his views on war. He understands that he has everything, as a rich white boy, and that he should use the fact that he’s fortunate to help others.
All in all, I will admit that Empire of the Sun is genuinely pretty good. It does a lot that’s really good. But I just felt that something was wrong the whole time. It was forgettable and long, but, it did have quite a few compelling moments and interesting scenes, making it a fairly decent film. 8.2/10
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