I had the pleasure of being invited to attend the exclusive screening of Terastorm with the cast and crew before the film was released to the general public on 24 November 2022. There was a feeling of celebration in the air, with everyone present in awe of the diligent work that has spanned five years by the creator, writer, and director, Andrew Kaggia, to bring this film with all its elements to light. I found myself seated right in front of Timothy Owase, the CEO of the Kenya Film Commission, in conversation about our film industry with a representative from the Ministry of ICT. I had only learned a few minutes prior that the Kenya Film Commission was now under the ministry of ICT, so I wrung my neck to ask the men the thinking behind that, being of the strong opinion that film should only exist through the lens of art. That in turn led to a brief conversation about what movies are really for—as a source of entertainment or a medium for information—and if movies as an art form can exist without technology. The trailers unfortunately disrupted any conclusive consensus from being reached.
I bring this up because that conversation ended up being the perfect prologue to encapsulate the feelings this film stirred in me. Film is unfortunate for being an artform that can rarely be done solely by the artist. With music, paintings, and literature, an artist can disappear for months and emerge from the deep pits of their creativity with a masterpiece in hand to show for it. For film, preproduction, production, and postproduction require collaborating artists working in synchrony to bring to life the vision of the director. The director gets most of the credit, but every department, be it music, lighting, make-up, or stunt rigging, can proudly show the film as the product of their effort. Marvel has instilled in me the patience to wait through credit scenes, and the wait is long because thousands of artists are involved in the making of every film that comes to life. Unfortunately, Terastorm feels like a one-man echo chamber.
Being both an animated film and a superhero film made in Kenya, Terastorm is groundbreaking. Touted as the first feature film in the world entirely produced in a game engine, one can’t help but celebrate its place in the history books. I am no expert in Unreal Engine or other visual effect software, but I have been a fan for a while, revelling in the leaps and bounds that seem to come every few months in an industry that has only been alive for a few decades. We stand at an unprecedented vanguard in film technology, and my god, does it feel good to have Kenya curving its mark at the forefront?
Terastorm follows a group of superheroes who have to team up to fight an ancient wizard who has risen from his sleep and stop him before he can transform the earth to fulfill his desires. You know that trope in superhero movies where the villain attacks only America and the heroes have to pretend they are saving the earth? This movie does that, but this time, the action is in Nairobi. How awesome is that?
Before I start on what I didn’t like, I want to single out what I did love. First, the voice acting was top-drawer. Melvis Alusa (Country Queen) as Ammadu, Mungai Kiroga (State House writer) as Adrian Radi, Peter Mudamba (County 49) as General Maxwell, Sarah Muhoho as Nuru Amira, Ali Mwangola (Subira) as Victor Thimba, and Arabron Nyyenque (40 Sticks) as Eli-Ra. They are the best part of this film, so flowers to them, especially the wizard himself, Nyyenque; his voice screams villainous intent, and I love it.
The animation work is also quite impressive. The action, which is the predominant spectacle of the film, is done with great care and flair to provide a memorable watch. If this is to be the foundation for the future of animation both locally and internationally, there is much to look forward to, especially from Kaggia, who will surely grow both technically and with confidence.
Now my gripes. Terastorm’s story is shallow, to say the least, if not entirely nonexistent. With the events of the film seeming to occur within the span of a few hours, there is little done to build up the characters as anything other than the instruments inside the action scenes. The dialogue juggles between overextended expositions and quippy one-liners, with no real detail given to the characters. Characters come in and out of the narrative with no real coherence, and there is a literal deus ex machina who I’m not sure will ever reveal his name. All this ends up making Terastorm feel like a collection of in-game cut scenes for a narrative that was simply not formulated. I love Pixar, for the most part, because it was a group of technical geniuses who pioneered so much of the 3D scene but were always careful to make these tools nothing more than instruments to tell a good story. They proudly share how they scrapped everything they had done for Toy Story 2 and brought back John Lasseter, who directed the first Toy Story, simply because they didn’t think the story worked. The story is the soul, and everything else is the body. Visual effects, animation, stunts, and every other technical aspect of a movie should elevate a good story, not take its place, and sadly for Terastorm, there is no soul at the heart of it.
On the technical side, though impressive, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Like most professions, good work goes unnoticed while bad work stands out. For film, especially visual effects, bad effects take one out of the trance of the medium. Kaggia admitted he was working for 16 hours a day, sometimes 19, to finish this film, and it feels almost wrong to point out the little things he didn’t do to perfection, but I have to, not as anything against his work but as a precedent for future animators and filmmakers. For starters, if you choose to have an action scene on the moon, using lighting and gravity as you would on earth takes someone like me out of a film, and though the average audience member probably doesn’t notice, the academy is less likely to miss it. Rather than making a fully-fledged feature film, a part of me would have wanted they make a focused short film to garner the funding required to hire more animators and more specialised to make the film Terastorm simply doesn’t have the heights to reach. For example, an actual score for the movie, rather than a background ominous sound would have done wonders for the action scenes elevating the thrill of every punch.
To wrap this up, as a template for what is to come and a fellow filmmaker, I have nothing but praise for what this film achieves and a deep respect for everyone involved in its making. However, as a Kenyan movie lover who is paid to hold our films to a higher standard, Terastorm doesn’t feel ready for a release, let alone as Kenya’s submission for Best International Feature to the 95th edition of the Oscar. Someone at the screening pleaded with me not to compare it with the international landscape of filmmaking, but it forfeited that right when we chose it to represent us at the biggest film award in the world, going against the likes of South Korea, France, and every other country known for their films outside Hollywood. Suffice to say, this year, even Tanzania, with its submission of Vuta N’kuvute, which we reviewed here, is miles ahead of us.
There are elements in Terastorm that simply inspire. The film is opening a lot of possibilities for both animation and the visual effect scenes in the country, and one can’t help but hope both Kaggia and emerging animators continue in stride to lead in the African space and worldwide.
