Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door

A terrorist releases a virus in a Mars city. Spike and the crew of the Bebop take the bounty. What could have been a feature-length clip show is instead the most confident theatrical extension of a TV series the medium produced in the early 2000s: the film knows exactly what the series was, does not attempt to improve on it, and simply gives the characters a larger stage to occupy for two hours.

The action sequences operate at a scale the television budget could not reach. Vincent Volaju - the film's antagonist - is one of the few Bebop characters who exists in the same moral and emotional register as Spike Spiegel: a man who chose death once and has been living in its aftermath. The conversation between them when they finally meet is the film earning its right to exist in the same space as the series.

Shinichiro Watanabe directed it in 2001 with the same crew and the same compositional instincts. Yoko Kanno scored it. The ending does not contradict the series. It rhymes with it - which is the only thing a film set inside a completed series was ever allowed to do. You need to have seen the show first. The show is in this archive. You have no excuse.