Introduction
Attack on titan. A title that does not make any sense to anyone at all... is there only one Titan? is Titan a place? Maybe a moon? if you are confused by the name... THEN THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY YOU MAY LIKE THE MOVIE!!! This movie is actually a Japanese Anime that has finished its season one quite a while ago. In fact I believe it is a 2013 anime that ended at 23 episodes in Sep 2013. The anime itself has obviously a more well developed storyline as it is more then 10 hours long as compared to this short short 1 and a half hour movie.
The problem with this movie is that the director of the movie took his own artistic direction to the movie. It will not be like the anime, but whether this is a good or bad thing, it will depend on the audience. Ok so what is a Titan in this movie? Sorry its not the roman Titan that fights with Zeus and Poseiden all that. It is merely this ugly fella
| Yum yum little humans! |
And what more! Like humans, they come in different shape, sizes, pose, gender, and even ugliness. Only that all those aspects, they have a much bigger range. Except gender.. They are genderless and merely look female or male or a genderless thingy. Of course this is the anime version. To whet your taste bud.. here's the movie one!
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| Roar! I'm so HOT! Global warming has taken a toll! |
Woops! Sorry if you puked or anything... Here's some pictures of the staff to get you back on your feet
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| Posing! Looking good.... or relatively similar actually... |
Storyline 2 (If you really hate people not following the canon) 3 (if you try stay neutral) /5
Lets get it out there at this point of the review. This movie is not going to follow the anime. I would say that besides the presence of the same Titans, use of same equipment, use of same names, it is a pretty different show. In fact, try to look at this movie as an ALTERNATE dimension of their world and maybe it would just be more palatable to you.
That being said, the speed of this movie is slightly too slow. It unfortunately cannot start off running like the usual action movies where at the very beginning there are already action scenes. As a result its a slow start that introduces the background and everything else but in general, it was still too slow for me. Once the action picks up however, it gets a bit more exciting and flowing but there was also quite a slow segment towards the middle of the movie and after that it is mostly action all the way.
However, the storyline as it has to be fitted into 1 hour and 30 mins, suffers from too many jumps and everything finishes a bit too quickly (if you can really consider that the movie finishes).
Character 3/5
There is some attempts at character development and there is effort put in to create a distinction between all the characters in this movie. But its short play time is back to haunt this movie as at the end of the movie, you would probably not feel too much for most of the supporting characters of the movie.
People who follow the anime will at least be able to know more clearly what the significant difference in the characters are but then again, it is still quite different from the movie itself.
Cinematography 3/5
For an action flick, this movie is just missing a bit of the more traditional shots. Sure there is some high speed shots where you can see how fast the characters are flying here and there but there are some parts of the movie that is pretty dark and it is just missing out on extra effort such as epic top down shots and more.
There is a good feeling of speed and excitement but there is really much more this movie could have done to make every battle that bit more exciting.
Music 4/5
Actually, the movie and sound effects in this movie did do pretty well to add some elements of disgust and fear and excitement throughout the movie. It really did bring out the hopelessness of the world that they live in.
Spectacle 3.5/5
Again from a neutral stand point, this movie does introduce a pretty interesting new world that we live in where nothing is in favor of man kind. So the storyline would be fun for the newcomer. Sadly, the short movie length means everything ends just a tad bit too soon and all the action scenes are relatively short and ordinary. The whole movie could be made to have a lot more exciting action on a more large scale basis but guess that was not the direction they wanted to take overall.
Overall
Storyline: 3 (Too short, not able to tell enough without making sacrifices to depth of story)
Character: 3 (Too short, not able to have the opportunity to build up audience empathy to characters)
Cinematography: 3 (Has some good action shots, but that's about all the shots they have and they are generally a bit short lived and quick to end)
Music: 4 (Good use of sounds and music to bring up evoke audience feelings of disgust and more)
Spectacle: 3.5 (Average on the storyline side, also average on the action side. It gets a .5 as it is a new alternate world which still helps to keep the movie new and engaging)
Overall: 3.3 (Overall, I would say that this is a fair enough action flick, for the short 1.30 hrs movie in the midst of 2 hours action flick, this movie may not be exciting enough to be a must see yet. It's a good way to spend the time if you were looking for something to do and like to see an action movie in a alternate world with some gore and quite a lot of dying. For fans of the anime, you can enjoy this movie, but you must first set aside all expectation that this is the same as the anime. It is probably not a movie that you MUST see at this juncture and you will not really be missing too much by not seeing this movie.)
