Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
I absolutely love Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. I has to be in my top three anime of all time if not my favorite. Naturally, when I saw that there was also a follow-up movie for this 2009 version of the tale I was skeptical. The Sacred Star of Milos did have a different director but it was still under the same studio so I didn't really know what to thing. I should have gone in with little expectation. This movie isn't very good. The style and setup is great but quickly becomes generic and predicable.

The story of The Sacred Star of Milos takes place during the Brotherhood storyline, oddly enough. The audience never knows specifically when but from what I could gather it takes place after Alphonse remembers "the truth" (thus he is able to transmute without a circle) but before the brothers know of Father's plans of sacrifice. This bugs me. Because of the pace that the anime has I just don't see anyway that anything other than their main mission could take place between the these two plot points. Before or after, sure, but it's just odd that they chose this scenario of events to play around with in the first place. After doing some research, however, I have found that most of the fanbase doesn't consider this story canon so I don't really know what to think.

Anyway, at the start of the film we are introdced to two siblings, Julia and Ashleigh (strange spelling) Crichton, whose parents are famous alchemists around these parts. Two wolf chimeras slip into their house while they are distracted and kill the father and mother while Ashleigh escapes leaving Julia to fend for herself. Years later, Ed and Al are celebrating the generic Amestris harvest festival when suddenly a powerful Alchemist escapes from Prison and, when the brothers try to confront him, they are unable to detain him because of his strange alchemy. After a short investigation run by Mustang, they discover that this mysterious man is after a girl from Creta named Julia who has been recently detained for illegally immigrating to Amestris. With this information, Edward and Alphonse Elric travel to Table City on the border between Creta and Amestris to learn about this strange alchemy and capture the man.

I do like the premise here. All of the above takes up the first fifteen minutes of the film and I was never disinterested. I truly wanted to see where this went. When the brothers actually get into Table City is when the problems start. On the ride there, the train gets attacked by a group of gliding militants and Ed and Al have to fight both them and a wolf chimera. This action scene doesn't just look amazing but it creates a sense that something isn't quite right because of the warring factions. Then after they find Julia everybody makes up and the story turns into every Fullmetal Alchemist plot ever with the bad guys trying to create a Philosopher's Stone by sacrificing the story. We've seen it a hundred times and it's getting boring now.

It makes me upset because the film started out so incredibly strong with motivations other than "get the stone." We could have had Ed and Al taking sides with the mysterious man or the faction of militants who call themselves the Black Bats. Or maybe the brothers had to try to get them to work together in order to fend off either the Amestrian or Cretan military. Or the plot could have been weaved into the Brotherhood plotline nicely with meaningful conversations about Chimeras or Humunculi. After the first half hour of the film it feels tedious because of how similar it is to everything else Fullmetal Alchemist. Just another story about douche-canoes wanting more power through the Philosopher's Stone.

Despite the story and theming problems, the movie isn't all bad. The animation is top notch but I am very torn on the style. It's hard to explain.

Take this:
Versus this:











The main thing that I notice is the line composition. The Sacred Star of Milos clip is hard and rough while the similar Brotherhood clip is soft and clean. The style is different but not necessarily bad. It just took me a long time to get used to. The music is also very good. The nation of Creta is based on real-world Spain so, fittingly, the music takes a lot of inspiration from that region and culture. It isn't anything to write home about but I do appreciate the fact that the creators of Fullmetal Alchemist do their research on everything from architecture to music.

If you've seen the plot of the 2003 FMA or Brotherhood than you've seen The Sacred Star of Milos. The animation and music is different and interesting in its own right and the film starts out strong but the entire experience is predictable and honestly boring.

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood: The Sacred Star of Milos is not interesting but any FMA fan should still give it a watch.
Saturday, June 18, 2016
I recently saw the movie adaptation to one of my favorite classic books of all time, The Great Gatsby. Though the themes were still intact and the overall story was true to its source material, it took out important plot elements and added in others. At first I was upset at these changes. I had the feeling of "how dare they ruin this story that I love." But after thinking about it more rationally I came to realize that most of these changes were for the better because of the story-telling medium that this classic was now in.

One aspect of storytelling that viewers have to take into account is that not everything that a book can accomplish can be done the same way as in a movie. In a work of literature the author can paint pictures of grand objects or settings with paragraphs describing the life that takes place there, the effect that it has on other settings, or even the history. In a movie, however, this can't be done so elegantly. Monologues are boring to an average viewer of a two to three hour flick so long paragraphs have to be transformed into sweeping shots from above or maybe just a steady shot with a few editing tricks to make the atmosphere special to the movie-goer. In a way, a movie can portrait a setting even more deeply than a book can because of the many types of editing, directing, or sound techniques that the creator of the film can use. Harry Potter is great example of this. Though I've never read the book, I can tell that the atmosphere presented in Hogwarts is taken into great consideration because of the wonderfully orchestrated soundtrack that compliments it. Because of John Williams' score of the movie it just feels magical.

Replacing or changing story elements in the transition from literature to film is what really annoys a lot of people. In the case of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald I believe the changes, though not necessary, do bring the film to be less contrived than it might have been if it followed the book to a tee. For instance, in the film version of The Great Gatsby by Baz Luhrmann the main character Nick Carraway is an aspiring author first and a bondsman second. It may not seem like it but this small detail gives the writers of the movie credence to do much more with minor plot would-be annoyances like exposition. Because the story is told from the perspective of Nick Carraway in the future writing about Gatsby's life he can give the audience as much exposition as he likes without it feeling too forced. Adding plot threads isn't something that just happens from book to film but also in the reverse. In the book version of The Force Awakens Alan Dean Foster, who also wrote for the original trilogy book adaptations, goes into more detail about Supreme Leader Snoke's past. This includes the fact that he had apprentices before Kylo Ren, saw the Empire rise and fall, and even knew that Darth Vader was Luke's father. Because a book can be explained with words, the writer was able to add in so much more and even make the story make more sense in certain aspects.

So is the book always better than the movie? Well, no. A movie's audience has to recognize the fact that a movie can do things that a book can't and vice-versa. A movie can be directed a certain way, be edited, or given a score while a book has to be completely explained with words. A movie, better or not, is simply different.
Friday, April 08, 2016
Lately, Disney's animation division has had a great habit of taking the status queue and twisting it to modern times through means such as diversity in characters, heavy morals, and a larger focus on character interactions. Films before like Wreck-It Ralph and Big Hero 6 have done this in the years prior, but it hasn't done quite as much, at least for me, as Zootopia has.

Other recent movies have dealt with diversity in their own ways by simply having more of it but Zootopia uses this as the main theme of the entire picture. The story takes place mostly in the bustling city of Zootopia where anybody can be anything if they try hard enough; at least this is what the animals who live outside the city limits have been taught. In reality, as in our reality, it's is not quite that simple. This standard of living creates the ideal city but these ideals don't become true overnight as Judy Hopps of the ZPD wants. Of course this should be the case. Everybody should have the same opportunities in spite of ones' religion, class, or race, or species in this case. When the new bunny officer arrives in Zootopia, however, she realizes that the city is filled with bigotry and hate against one another just because of their biology, predator or prey. The eager rabbit takes on a missing persons case and teams up with a sly street fox named Nick Wilde and heads off to solve the case and solve the problems that the city itself has.

Zootopia is an extremely clever film. It manages to take something that we have all experienced at least once in our life and turn it into a comedy adventure flick with great characters that are constantly helping each other out when in need. There really feels like there is a great growth to these characters. Judy Hopps begins on the police force with a sense that she doesn't belong there but with enough determination she learns that she can be whoever she wants to be. Nick Wilde, on the other hand, starts as sort of a conman but becomes more responsible as the film progresses. Usually with Disney's recent films I have the problem of some characters not getting enough screen time but in Zootopia each of the characters got just enough and because of this the twist at the end seemed really fulfilling.

Zootopia does have its problems but not many. First of all, though we did get to see a lot of the city I still wanted more of it. This problem is not the film just simply that it had to fit into a time slot of one hour and forty-eight minutes which doesn't give the characters a whole lot of time to explore. Also though the humor was great when it was present the film wasn't a comedy by nature. Because of the themes it had to portrait, Zootopia was very light on the humor. Again, not a grievance but from what the promotional material was telling me about the experience I was expecting.

Zootopia is a great film with a lot of heart. It swims deep into some themes that other animated movies don't dare to dip their toe into.

Zootopia is wild!
Monday, March 14, 2016
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this film. On one hand it is really enjoyable especially because I'm a sucker for mid evil fantasy stories but on the other hand it does absolutely nothing special. Though Tales From Earthsea doesn't do much that is spectacular, it's opening is great. Right off the bat you see an old ship in dangerous waters, two dragons fighting, and wizard accompanying the ship's crew. This screams mid evil fantasy and I love it when movie intros set up the setting so seamlessly. Right after this scene, however, is when the problems with the film are introduced. We see our first glimpse of the main hero, Arren (yes, that's how it's spelled), as he does a spoiler-free bad deed and receives a mysterious and magical sword out of it. This brings forth the problem with Arren. Until the end of the movie, his feelings about the bad deed he has are only slightly mentioned by the directing. Movies are supposed to show and not tell but at times I feel that the movie isn't showing enough of the character's emotions which make some of them come out at times bland and uninspired. I believe this isn't because of the writing or characters themselves. Rather, it is because of the slow pace of the film. Ghibli's films have always been slow paced but in Tales From Earthsea it seems like the pace is more of a hindrance to the experience rather than part of it. A way, I think, this could have easily been fixed is if the movie was given more action. The reason Princess Mononoke wasn't boring was because it had action sequences during the sections that could have been downtime. In this film, though I enjoy relationships between some of the characters and therefore enjoy some of the downtime, there is just too much of it. What I do love about the film I love. The music, though nothing groundbreaking, is very good and fits with the setting quite nicely. The varied environment are also very nice. The bustling town, the windy desert, and the farm by the cottage. All of these are very nice to look at and don't linger too much before the story progresses. Again, I am very torn on Tales From Earthsea. It is a fun adventure with good characters but the pacing can blind the average viewer from a lot of the good that this movie has to offer.

Tales From Earthsea is not great but worth a look. 
Monday, February 08, 2016
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