As fan films go, "Search/Destroy" is hard to beat. It brings to life a futuristic mutant bounty hunter from the pages of "2000AD", along with his partner who, in that comic's glorious tradition of "just because", is a big ginger viking. Both Johnny Alpha and Wulf Sternhammer are lucky enough to pass as "norms" in a world where the egregiously mutated are regarded as barely human, but for all its various historical parallels Alpha's world isn't a metaphor for anything, just a miserably extrapolated backdrop against which the fun violence can happen. Still...
Sorry you've gone, Carlos Ezquerra.
It is specifically in the realisation of this world where I think "Search/Destroy" plays an absolute blinder. About eleven minutes in, our heroes approach the main baddie in his layer lair. From his insignia he's clearly politically aligned with Kreelman (the prick pictured above) so he's a Pulp Nazi, but he's also a "norm" like us rather than a foreigner, which is why he's drinking tea. And here's what gives me real chills when I watch the film: as a not-Nazi, the Colonel isn't listening to Wagner either. He's listening to Elgar. In Johnny Alpha's dystopian future, "Nimrod", that beautifully stirring, loved, and entirely familiar work, has become every bit as tainted as "Tristan und Isolde", and can serve as just as effective a lazy shorthand for evil. It's a brilliant touch, and one you couldn't do in a comic. Bravo, team.
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