Attack on Titan (2015)

Disclaimer: I have not read the manga nor seen the anime, so feel free to discount my opinions and continue on to other, more enlightened, reviewers. That said: this movie makes no sense what-so-ever. What's left of humanity seems to live in a walled city, protected from marauding Titans. The wall is breached by an immense deformed giant, accompanied by what appears to be a rain of meteorites. The opening in the wall is exploited by a number of smaller, but still giant, giants, who lack genitals and some, but not all, secondary sexual characteristics. These behemoths (many of whom have a 'slit-mouth', a popular Japanese horror motif) then messily devour people. Flash forward a couple of years: it has been discovered that the giants (who regenerate when damaged and were thought to be immortal) die if attacked on the nape of the neck. As this is a difficult shot to make, the humans devise a Buck Rogers-meets-Spiderman jet-powered grappling hook system (necessity is the mother…). This leads to lots of cool-drenched shots of youths flying around with samurai swords, slashing open the back of giant necks. I was doing OK up to this point but then a fat giant swallowed a 'hero', and shortly thereafter, the fat giant split open and something that looked vaguely like Eddie from Iron Maiden album covers climbed out, beat up the other giants, then spontaneously expired. Upon examination of his disintegrating corpse, the ingested hero is found alive the nape of the neck, prompting one of the characters to state that this must be why the nape-blows kill the Titans. With that elucidation, the movie comes to a close (anticipating part 2, which perhaps will explain everything). That's it in a nutshell, so if this synopsis intrigues you (and how could it not?), you'll have to watch the movie. I would not that say it's a particularly good movie, but it is picturesque and a novel way to squander a couple of hours.

So we saw the live action version of Attack on Titan, and was it as good as the anime? Well, read to find out. If you don't know the story of this series I'll just go ahead and explain. A hundred years ago, titans arrived and killed a lot of people, but humanity built walls to protect themselves from the titans. In present day, the main characters live their lives still inside the walls. But some of them are bored and want to go outside the wall to see what's there. That's when chaos happens. I won't spoil anything else. But is the live action story the same as the anime? Well...yes and no. For starters, the world is the same except that there's a combination of modern weapons and old, and the beginning starts off - and ends - differently from the anime. There are things from the anime that still play a part in this version of the story, even though there are changes.This movie was dark and really bloody (live action violence might bother some people more than anime violence). There were at least two characters I couldn't tell if they were made for this version, or if they were in a anime (they could have been a combination of characters), but the really sad part is that Levi isn't in here. There's a character that seems to be modeled after him, even though he has a different personality (he's more humorous than anime Levi).What I liked about this movie was that we get a real life version of our beloved anime. It was really nice to see at least three characters that looked exactly like Eren, Mikasa, and Hanji; the actors for them were good picks.The dramatic and emotional scenes really make you feel like you're in the chaos, which was nice. As for the titans themselves - they're even more creepy than in the anime.Now, a lot of people would probably not like the changes from the series, but I thought it was a good thing. Like Death Note, it had the main plot but with a different take. I like seeing a different take on things sometimes - like with Fullmetal Alchemist, when you watch Brotherhood after seeing the original it's a new adventure even though some elements are the same. That's what I liked about the live action movie of Attack on TitanFinal thoughts: If you're a big Attack on Titan fan and don't mind change, then go for it. I thought it was pretty good.

This is possibly the most frightening movie I've ever seen. Shockingly badly done. This makes Sharknado look like Citizen Kane. This is the kind of movie you get when people try to cash in as fast as possible on a hot property. The manga is genius. The anime ranks up there with the best. This movie for some reason decided to dump everything from those except the most basic related premise of giant humanoid monsters among us. As a fan of the anime and manga I was expecting much more of this. I have no problem when beloved source material is changed for movies as is so often the case, as long as the result is good. The level of bad here is the kind that seems the film makers had to actively work hard to achieve and in that sense it is an astounding accomplishment. It gets a 2 instead of a 1 from me because, hey, giant monsters ya know. This is one of those rare movies that no matter if you got a free copy, are so bored you can't think of anything else to do, or some other reason... don't watch this, you will regret it. You've been warned.

I was blown away by the Attack on Titan anime series. It was original and almost overwhelmingly thrilling, and it offered an intriguing mystery (as with Lost, the series keeps adding to the mystery without doing much answering, and I've about given up that there's every going to be a satisfactory answer to anything).I also thought the movie was absolutely terrific, with the same level of wild excitement and horrific cruelty. And I was honestly surprised by how hostile other reviewers here are.A couple of the big criticisms of this movie are that the story has been changed and that there is a lack of character development.Honestly, I don't even remember the anime's story, for the most part. All I remember is endless, incredibly exciting battles. I had to do a search on differences to even find out what has changed, and I'm still vague on it. The locale has changed, and the names (everything is Japanese now, which seems fine to me). A character has been excised and apparently the main character's personality is different. And I don't care, because I loved the show for its thrills, not it's people. Was the character development better in the anime? Of course. They had a lot of time for character development. There wasn't a lot of that in the first few episodes, but over time they did create a few interesting characters to a greater extent than the movie. But people, the anime isn't Shakespeare, and these aren't characters for the ages. And in both the anime and the movie, all you really need is a basic sketch of the character since they'll probably be dead soon anyway. The deaths are more upsetting in the anime, but I'm okay with being a little less upset, honestly.People also complain about the special effects. I saw the movie on TV, and on TV, the special effects look decent. The incredibly overrated Hollywood action epic The Avengers certainly had better special effects, but I was still far more entertained by Titan.The movie's certainly not perfect. It lags in the middle. Characters do unrealistically stupid things (at one point two characters do something really dumb when in a real army someone would have stopped them). There is one ridiculous blood-on-the-camera-lens shot. But overall it is tremendously exciting, and for me almost as satisfying as the anime. I'm looking forward to seeing part 2.