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[Trailer] Fight Cyborgs and Techno-Viruses in Sci-Fi Short Film 'Temple'

Watch the trailer for 'Temple,' the new film from the makers of the crowd-funded live-action 'AKIRA' trailer.
GIF by Beckett Mufson, courtesy the filmmakers

By 2085, ocean levels have risen to a point that entire coastal cities and islands have been submerged. On an island megalopolis, a genetic virus and cybernetic beings are threatening the survival of its population. Oz, a health services employee, must find a way to survive amidst the swelling chaos.

If it sounds like the elevator pitch for your future-favorite sci-fi feature, it very well may be—it just hasn't been made yet. From the same team behind perhaps the most successful Akira tribute ever—a true-to-manga live-action trailer that was funded by hundreds of fans—Temple, the concept trailer seen below, is the result of a hardboiled car ride home from an anime conference. "The audience would often want us to do the feature film version of AKIRA," director Nguyen-Anh Nguyen tells The Creators Project, "but obviously, without the rights and quite a few millions, it wasn't possible. Coming back from Anime North, I was riding in a car with Laura Nhem (production designer) and Arno Faure (editor) and ideas started flying about a new film. Shortly after, I met with Santiago Menghini (co-writer and VFX supervisor) and we decided to create something original, based on everything I love: dystopian sci-fi, cyborgs and martial arts, with a touch of manga thrown in for good measure."

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Months later, Temple—whose trailer premieres today—was born:

"The narrative itself is an intense race against the clock as the lead character chases his own mortality and causes immeasurable damage around him until he has nowhere left to run," Nguyen explains. "The story of Temple is inspired by my medical background (I was also a dentist in another life) and by my passion for all things related to science fiction and futurism. The world of Temple could very well exist in a few short decades if society makes certain key decisions regarding technology and our environment. I took that premise and then infused it with innovative echoes of video games and Japanese manga, which lends a visceral and unique visual style to the proceedings."

While the resulting trailer would end up, like AKIRA, entirely on the filmmakers' own dime, this time, they had reinforcements. Blackmagic Design lent them their entire line of cinema cameras and post-production hardware, Cinepool provided a lighting and grip package, and, courtesy of Citée 2000, they got to shoot in the same battle-tested warehouse where Cirque du Soleil opened their first studio.

Basically, the forthcoming Temple short film (expected in June) should be something like if you bottled Blade Runner, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Old Boy, up, threw that bottle into the radioactive idea-generator that is crowdsourced DIY filmmaking in the Internet Age, and fished it out on the other side of the uncanny valley. Basically, we can't wait.

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Click here to visit Temple's official website, where you can take a 3D 360-degree virtual tour of the film's set, and check out some stills from the trailer, below:

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