Cosmoball: Goalkeeper Of The Galaxy

And The "Babe Draft"

If there’s anything I like more than real sports in movies, it’s completely made-up sports in movies. One of my favorites is “Salute To The Jugger”, aka “The Blood Of Heroes”, a combination of “Youngblood” and “Mad Max” set in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future where scuffles are settled by a game of Jugger, a combination of rugby and lacrosse. The movie was written and directed by David Webb Peoples, the writer of “Blade Runner”, and it has that same eye for detail, both in regards to it’s own dystopian world as well as the unique game in question.

As serious as that film is (and, to an extent, as level-headed as we’re meant to act towards Jugger), I also like a good old make-believe game born out of gibberish. Enter the would-be Russian global blockbuster “Cosmoball”, which calls to mind Motorball in the earlier “Alita: Battle Angel”, but stretched to feature length. It’s not every day when aliens arrive on earth in a massive spaceship and then invite you up to play a sport. Seems like golf would maybe be an easier and more convenient choice than this.

Anton is the boy at the heart of this hero’s journey, in a wold that has been forever changed by the incursion of alien lifeforms. Some of us are melting, and some are frozen in the cold due to the altering of the poles. And Anton is the young average joe who is about to be recruited towards a higher cause, as he’s a secret descendant of those originally given superpowers due to the initial invasion of extraterrestrial forces. He’ll be recruited from an ordinary life and pressed to learn Cosmoball from varied characters, some at crosspurposes with each other.

The game itself owes more than a little bit to the theatrics of “Shaolin Soccer”, with spheres being propelled by flying ninja maneuvers, whirling spin kicks delivered from hundreds of feet in the air. Humans compete, but just barely, and following the sport seems to be the only relief humans experience in a world that feels as if it’s bound to end any time soon. Anton “resists the call” obviously, as the hero is supposed to do according to Screenwriting Rules that were carved into a rock by the cavemen millennia ago. But he’s soon coaxed into service by the Earthlings’ team captain, played by the frankly unusually-gorgeous Viktoriya Agalakova. Men have gone to war for less. There is an unscrupulous, tough-talking mentor as well, the wise elder Belo, though the casting of Yevgeny Mironov is hardly convincing – he looks like the impotent viceroy who gives the main villain vital bad news that gets him murdered in the next scene, not the steely old-timer who runs the team with mature resolve.

There’s a critique of sportswashing here, as Cosmoball is meant to be the diversion to allow the aliens to rob us of our resources and agency. Anton’s biggest choice seems to be whether or not he plays Cosmoball, beats the alien at their own game, and gives the humans the inspiration they need to resist their scaly overlords – this choice would put him alongside Agalakova, too. But he’s also possibly swayed by the chance to sabotage the entire affair from within as a double agent, ultimately fighting the system and refusing to participate in these theatrics. The idea being that to participate in such a nakedly-political bit of theater really benefits the oppressed. This would mean he gets to spend time with another baddie, a freedom fighter played by Maria Lisovaya. It’s a reasonably complication that particular character isn’t completely trustworthy, though this complicates the message instead of diluting it.

I don’t get hung up on special effects – yes, this is Russia trying their hand at a big effects film, and a lot of it comes across as rubbery, shiny pixels, cartoonish in their inability to connect with their physical surroundings (there is plenty of green screen). But the scale of certain effects, and the energy of Dzhanik Fayziev’s direction keeps his affair moving at a satisfying clip. As far as foreign attempts to create an American-style blockbuster, this is a decent effort, pleasing in the way four-quadrant superhero films tend to be, but with enough foreign flavor to feel fresh and unusual. “Cosmoball”, like the admittedly-exciting game with which it shares its title, moves fast and doesn’t bore.

We had to make up a lot of nonsense in prison to keep from being bored. One guy liked to grab the Risk game set early, turning the game from one of skill to, essentially, craps, using his own rule system. And there were always new rules coming from nowhere when I played Monopoly with everyone. But this grew tougher during the pandemic, when we were locked in for weeks and months at a time. Stuck among the same 100 guys all day, I planned a series of drafts we would have, where everyone would get together and select certain pop culture items during various rounds, usually twenty to twenty-five.

There was a TV Show Draft, and during October we did a Horror Movie Draft. A more basic Great Movie Draft covered the 2000’s-era only, and a Music Draft ended up being interesting – somehow, it wasn’t until the #48 pick when someone selected a woman (Aretha Franklin). There would be no winners, exactly, just a final collection of picks which we could weigh against each other to determine who would have had the best draft. And because it was an all-male environment, I tried to preach a good-natured sense of patriarchal camaraderie with a sexist “Babe Draft”, with the advisement that no one act weird or speak negatively about women. As with every draft, some drafted to strategy, and some picked whomever they would like – the controversial number one pick was Reese Witherspoon. But, in a twelve-team draft, when I drafted Brigitte Bardot in Round 8 and then turned around to pick Marilyn Monroe in Round 9, it was hard to say I didn’t win that one. Yes, we were objectifying women, and we were also locked inside, in a prison, during a pandemic, in an institution with a COVID infection rate well over 80%. If there was any time to be imperfect, that was it.