Sure, I prefer 16mm or 35mm over the early digital look but I still liked this film a lot. I really wish great Japanese genre directors like Tsukamoto could get crazy 50-150 million dollar budgets for their work. It seems rare for the budgets to increase for sequels in Japan unfortunately. At least, the director Yoshihiro Nishimura appeared to have gotten more money with the sequel to the 2005 film
Meatball Machine since the cinematography was much improved on
Meatball Machine Kodoku but digital also came a long way in the 12 years between those films. Back to Tsukamoto's work though,
Body Hammer also looked to have a much larger budget than the first film so I'm sad that doesn't seem to be the case with number three. I always wish we could get more behind the scenes details on these Japanese films. Joe Bob Briggs was saying that Tarantino tried to help Shinya Tsukamoto get this third film off the ground but it never materialized. After reading interviews with Tsukamoto, it's easy to see why that didn't pan out since American producers wanted Tetsuo to be more understandable to US audiences, they insisted on a famous lead actor, etc. I think it's good his vision wasn't compromised by doing his third Tetsuo in Hollywood. Regardless, the ingenuity, insane passion, and creativity will forever impress me on this belated third entry. He still managed to do a ton of FX and action with some very cool sequences. Of course, I would've preferred grungy 16mm or 35mm but regardless, I very much enjoyed it.
Tetsuo is such a unique interesting trilogy. I hope one day we can get a fourth film with more money behind it but only if Tsukamoto can do it his way.
