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Synopsis:
After a century of relative peace, the people within the walls are growing restless. A young man named Eren and his friends Armin and Mikasa venture to the wall’s edge with the hopes of seeing what’s on the other side. But before they can get there, the unthinkable happens; a Titan larger and more fierce than any that have been seen before breaches the wall, kicking a large hole through the base of it. Now, a once isolated world is flooded with seemingly indestructible Titans, and the only way to beat them is to fight back. But the military forces Eren joins to protect humanity appear to be protecting some secrets of their own. The future looks bleak, but there’s more to Eren than meets the eye: he may be humanity’s last hope against extinction.

Review:
Attack on Titan has been a global phenomenon since the manga was adapted to anime. Packs of cosplayers can be spotted at every convention event dressing up as their Titan character or just slapped on the uniform and join the ranks of the survey team. With every hugely popular and successful anime comes the infatuation of “what if this was live action?” I have seen quite a few live action adaptations of anime, and most of them had been a miss more than a hit. While I have read some comments from the internet that the movies were bad, I kept an opened mind and experienced it for myself. Here are my thoughts.

From the beginning, the movie introduces the three characters any fan would recognize, Erin, Mikasa and Armin. Maybe not Armin, because he is not a blonde anymore. But anyways, they go about their daily routine while everyone else goes about their’s. When Erin decided to try and go out because he does not want to be trapped in the walls anymore. The grounds suddenly began to shake. A giant titan appears and destroys part of the wall to make way for the rest of the titans to march in and feast on the humans.

If you have watched the anime or read the manga, this part of the movie does not change. The little details do however, just to make it flow better for the live action. At least, that’s what the director Shinji Higuchi hoped. I did not think the story played out as well. There were a lot of those moments where scenes felt sped up and skipped over to meet the constraints of a movie runtime. Erin’s character was annoying in the anime, but he is even more so as a live character. From beginning to up to Erin turning into a titan, the show felt it was on auto pilot mode. There were pieces of action here and miniscule points of interest there. When Erin finally turned, that was when I felt the movie finally showed off the ability of a “live” action. But the fun ends almost as fast as it began. The humans carved Erin out of his titan body and we must wait for part two. There is something significant about the end of part one though. We are introduced to the idea that the titans were once humans, whom became infused with the titan shell, as the power overwhelmed their humanity.

So what are my thoughts on this live action? Nothing much, to be honest. The plot was a mess, the titans looked dumber than the drawings, and the movie’s representation of the characters of the series was annoying. If the final scene of part one did not occur, I cannot imagine myself donating my time to watch this live action any longer. At this point, it is more about finishing what I started and not about finishing it because the movie was super entertaining….

I delayed publishing this review, due to time constraints. I wanted to watch part two, End of the World, and give this show a chance to redeem itself, before I put it in the garbage pile. After finally freeing up time to sit down and complete this live action movie. I must say, I regret ever finishing this movie. Ending Attack on Titan Live Action with part one was fine. It would have been a failed attempt at hopping on the bandwagon of the success of the anime and manga, but at least it was not an atrocity. After watching Attack on Titan part two, I was seriously disgusted. The story was horrendous and it turns out that this guy is a titan, that guy is a titan, everybody is a titan. Comon. What the heck happened? It was like the whole film crew just collectively had a brain fart. Was it the expectations that caused the negative views? I doubt it. The movie as a whole was a huge disappointment, with part two killing any redeeming qualities this movie had (which was minimal to begin with). People should be asking for refunds.

The Breakdown:
Remember, while watching a live action, keep an opened mind, you probably won’t like everything or anything for that matter. The anime or manga has likely set a certain standard in your mind, the movie is not going to be a view changer. Just try to enjoy it. If it fails to meet your expectations, it would not be the first or the last. The Attack on Titan live action has its moments, but I felt a lot of those moments were dull moments. The majority of it felt like a formality. A note to any studios planning to release multi-part films. Please make sure that both parts are at least worth the admissions. No one has time or money to spend on crappy multi-part films.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 23rd, 2016 at 4:12 pm and is filed under Reviews, Genre, Type, Company, Action, Fantasy, FUNimation, Live Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.