Under the Microscope:

Repo! The Genetic Opera

By Wolfen Moonsget
July 27, 2009

Nathan hides a dark secret from his terminally ill daughter, Shiloh: Nathan is a Repo Man, a surgeon who repossesses organs. His mobster-like boss, Rotti Largo, owner of GenCo is dying, but doesn't want any of his three children to inherit the business; instead, he wants to give it to Shiloh — but not before stealing her love away from Nathan, the man who stole Rotti's fiancé, Shiloh's mother, away!

I wanted to love this film, I really did. I already adore Nathan's portrayer, Anthony Stewart Head, and I own a couple of the albums of Sarah Brightman, who plays Blind Mag. The acting was decent all around, as were the vocals. I did rather enjoy the visuals for the most part — not really the blood and guts, but I accept they were necessary. Otherwise, the costumes and the sets were well-done. I loved the premise,the idea that your organs could be repossessed at any time is a great concept for a horror story. I liked some of the music. And I loved the fact that parts of the story was told via comics. But the plot and a good hunk of the soundtrack left a lot to be desired.

First of all, there's a difference between just haphazardly singing dialogue and singing songs. I would have preferred having songs tell the story than just sung dialogue. It was discordant about half the time, and there wasn't much in the way of rhythm, rhyme, or hooks — the parts I did enjoy, I enjoyed because they did have those elements. Well, except for "Mark It Up", which had a all those elements but had too much f-bomb-dropping going on for me to enjoy it. "Legal Assassin" had a fairly good hook (even if it was a bit lacking in rhyme) but parts of it — and a number of other songs — was too monotone for my tastes. Still, Head sang it with passion at least. I'm torn over "Chase the Morning", in which Shiloh and Blind Mag converse: while it has the elements I seek in a song, it's more of a spoken-word poetry approach than what I would call singing. Even so, it sounds pretty good — but it also seems a waste of Sarah Brightman, taking no advantage of her incredible soprano stylings. Conversely, "Chrommagia" did utilise her as a soprano — it was a classical operatic piece — and yet it didn't really do anything for me. My fave song — and the only one I bothered to buy a download of — was "Zydrate Anatomy", in which GraveRobber explains how Zydrate works to Shiloh, revealing in the process that Rotti's daughter, Amber, is addicted to it. While that song, too, was mostly done more along the lines of spoken-word poetry rather than sung, it somehow had more musicality to it. And I really liked GraveRobber's vocal quality.

GraveRobber, my fave character, was played by Terrence Zdunich, who co-wrote the original stage production. There was just something very captivating about GraveRobber; unfortunately, the character was put to rather shoddy use. He was narrator, but he only narrated half the time, with the aforementioned comics being used the rest of the time. He was used as exposition, but the main point of his exposition, to explain to Shiloh (and us) the uses of Zydrate and the character of Amber Sweet, Rotti's daughter, served no real purpose in the overall story! This may have been a different story if a couple of GraveRobber / Shiloh / Amber songs hadn't been cut; in fact, I really wish they hadn't been, as I would have liked to have seen more of the three of them interacting. But as it stands, Zydrate has no bearing on the story of Nathan the Repo Man, and is not used in the final act. So all Amber's addiction to Zydrate does for the tale is give her an excuse to interact with the GraveRobber, who deals in a black-market version of the drug. In turn, this interaction seems to exist just so that GraveRobber has an excuse to tell Shiloh about how Amber is addicted to the drug and, more importantly, surgery. The thing is, Shiloh has no reason to know this, neither personally nor for the overall story — she doesn't use that bit of information! And if telling Shiloh about it was just a way to let we the audience know about Amber's problem, this information was also presented by Rotti in the number between him and Amber, where he expresses disgust at her surgeries, so it's redundant! But then again, since the scene is my fave, I guess I can't complain too much about the lack of logic.

GraveRobber also inexplicably draws attention to himself and Shiloh twice in the graveyard, putting them in mortal peril, as people caught graverobbing are to be executed on sight. Yes, the situation allowed us to see that Shiloh was under the protection of both the Repo Man and Rotti, but it makes no sense for the GraveRobber to have done that in the first place! Unless he's suicidal? He does basically say later that his job has gotten tedious and he doesn't know why he bothers anymore. Perhaps that's his whole point: he's hoping to spur Shiloh to look into her living situation in the hopes that she will shake things up in the process. But if that's the case, how does he even know about her father's secret life or the connection to Rotti? There's no indication that Amber knows anything about it.

And why is Amber going to him for Zydrate? Surely she could get as much as she wants from her father's own company? Surely her use of it would encourage public use? Instead, Amber is the poster child for an organisation that helps people addicted to Zydrate. Why would Rotti allow the drug to be painted as anything illegitimate, rather than a wonder-product?

Speaking of Rotti and his motivations, they baffle me in some other ways as well. Why do Amber and son Pavi's repeated surgeries sicken him so? Aren't they the perfect walking advertisements for the family business? It's even said that Pavi spurs the populace to seek face transplants as fashion! And then there's the matter of Rotti wanting to give the business to Shiloh — a girl he couldn't know anything about, seeing as her father kept her locked up all the time. I guess he figures she must be so pure and innocent she's a much better person than any of his children, but that doesn't sound to me like a prime candidate to run GenCo! But then there's the factor that he hated his fiancé, Marni, sooooo much for standing him up at the altar that he murdered her — and then made Nathan think he did it. If Rotti hates Nathan and hated Marni, why on Earth would he want to give their child his business?? This might have made more sense (and a better story) if Shiloh had turned out to have actually been his daughter but Nathan didn't know, or if Rotti suspected it and wanted to find out.

Then there's the issue of Rotti's relationship to Nathan. Why would he keep Nathan on the payroll when Marni married him? What did Nathan have to offer that Rotti wouldn't have him summarily executed, as he did the doctor who told him he was dying? A man who treats life so casually has no reason to keep his rival around! Later, he threatens to reveal Natahan's secret life to Shiloh if Nathan won't stick with his repossession job — but if Rotti knows Shiloh would be horrified by this revelation, this again raises the question of why Shiloh would be a good candidate for running the company! Surely she would call off the Repo Men, thereby tanking GenCo?

And it's strange that Nathan even needs encouragement to do his work, seeing as there's a couple of songs about how much he loves his work, and feels under-appreciated regarding it! Well, other times, when he's being Nathan rather than Repo Man, he does seem sickened; perhaps he's suffering from Schizophrenia. Because it doesn't make sense to me why a good man would get into that work in the first place, much less come to enjoy it! Now, if Rotti had threatened to reveal that Nathan had murdered his wife, that would work for explaining how he started doing it at least. Another missed opportunity story-wise. I liked head in the role, I just though the role itself could have used some work.

And I like Alexa Vega as Shiloh, but Shiloh's pretty schizophrenic herself. (Warning: major spoiler in this paragraph.) When she learns that her father is a Repo Man, she is thoroughly disgusted, screaming how much she hates him. Yet not long after she learns that she wasn't really sick, that her father had been poisoning her her whole life so that he had an excuse to keep her locked away safe from the cruel, sick world, she sings of her deep love for him as he lays dying. Yes, his being a Repo Man is horrible, but at least in that circumstance the people he kills knew what they were getting into — they made a contract and didn't fulfill it. He was doing his job. But what he did to her was a personal betrayal — it sickened me even more than his actions as the Repo Man! I could feel sympathy for him when he would sing about how he was ashamed of his work, but all that went out the window with the revelation of what he did to Shiloh!

Then there's Blind Mag. (Warning: another major spoiler in this paragraph.) She turns out to have been Marni's best friend and Shiloh's Godmother. This story point — as well as her ultimate fate — would have had a lot more impact if Shiloh had actually known the woman for at least a while, instead of just knowing of her as the spokesperson for GenCo. And knowing what Rotti had planned for Mags, how Mags was basically owned by GenCo, a slave whose life could be forfeit on a whim, it surprises me that after learning that, Shiloh would still consider, even for a moment, accepting Rotti's offer of a cure for her illness. She hated her father for doing the job Rotti gave him, but she didn't turn down Rotti himself right away? But on the plus side, I liked how Mag's presence complicated things for Nathan: he looked like a hardass for refusing to help Mag, but it wasn't like he could tell Shiloh why he was refusing (if he helped Mag, Rotti would reveal Nathan's secrets to Shiloh). But in refusing, he was driving another wedge between himself and Shiloh anyway — a nicely tragic bit of storytelling. And while at first I couldn't fathom why Mag was basically walking willingly to the gallows, I liked her revenge.

And then there's the very end of the tale. (Yes, a major spoiler here.) How did Amber Sweet inherit GenCo? Did Rotti have another will, before he decided to name Shiloh as his heir? Did Shiloh give the company to Amber? Why didn't Luigi kill her, to get it for himself? And why did he kill the top three bidders for Amber's discarded face but not Pavi? Did he want his brother to have it? I hadn't had the impression that he cared about his siblings! On a personal note, it would have been nice to have had a little more characterisation for the siblings, too — we know what their issues are but not really why. Well, unless we just chalk it up to bad parenting. (And what happened to their mother, anyway?)

I'm also a little disappointed at the lack of development for the whole Repo premise. I mean, one could easily replace the whole organ repossession / Zydrate scenario with mobsters and cocaine. The story is really about the web of lies Rotti and Nathan have woven and how it's shaped Shiloh's life. I would have liked to have seen a story that concentrates more on the repossessions. And the Zydrate concept — stealing used drugs from bodies — could have been an interesting story in its own right. Maybe some day someone will do a comic on another Repo Man, a story that focuses a bit more on his job, and another comic that stars the GraveRobber.

And I wish singer POE would have been given a meatier role than her little bit-part.

The two featurettes on the DVD are interesting, but I have to wonder about a point raised in one of them by the show's creators, the aforementioned Terrance Zdunich and Derran Smith: they expressed a hope that their concept would help bring opera to a new generation. Now, in my experience, the problem people have with opera isn't so much the format as the musical stylings — if a person doesn't like opera, it's because they don't like the drawn-out warbling, especially in a language they don't know. Others simply don't like musicals in general, opera or not. Instead, though, it seems this show's creators are more concerned with restoring interest in an operatic format — that is to say, a performance where every line sung, the lives of the characters are complexly intertwined, and there's a tragic ending. But I don't think there's a problem in that arena! In fact, they describe their own work as "Rocky Horror Picture Show meets Bladerunner"! Are they not aware that RHPS is still pretty popular, that it's shown and / or performed at conventions and has a strong cult following? Including amongst teens? I doubt Repo, in either form, has engendered a following any larger. So basically, one of the very items they're inspired by has already done what they were attempting to do! Or how about the shows of Andrew Lloyd Webber, including Phantom of the Opera? Those are pretty darn popular! Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, whether we speak of the Angela Lansbury stage show or the Burton film, did it far, far better.

That's not to say I hated the film. I wouldn't buy a copy of the movie or the entire soundtrack, but I'd probably sit through it again if the opportunity arose, if only for the shining spots here and there that I really enjoyed.

Repo! The Genetic Opera — Official site for the film.