Fullmetal Alchemist

I was skeptical of this movie, to say the least. As a huge fan of both animes and the original manga, I doubted that Fumihiko Sori and his crew could do Hiromu Arakawa's masterpiece any kind of justice.

However, the end result is surprisingly okay. Sure, the CGI tends to be an eyesore, the acting is all over the place, and some characters aren't remotely similar to their badass manga/anime counterparts (here's lookin' at you, Riza). But on the whole, this film kind of works. The screenwriters made good choices in terms of what to adapt and how to fit it all together, and some characters (mainly Hughes, portrayed by Ryuta Sato) work really well.

Most importantly, the film has heart. I get the feeling that Fumihiko Sori and c:o genuinely cared about the adaptation, and that ain't nothin'. It's an ambitious production, though arguably an overly ambitious one.

FAR from a perfect adaptation, and nowhere near as good as the animes or manga, but it's not an insult to the original story, and not a bad way to spend two hours of your life.

I never read any of the comics or watched the Anime of "Fullmetal Alchemist", so I had no idea what I should expect from this live action rendering of the concept. I just had a little information about what it was about, so I sat down to watch it with no expectations or hopes, as I found it on Netflix.

It turns out that this movie was actually entertaining enough for what it was, although the storyline was somewhat simplistic, and there were no twists or turns along the ride.

"Fullmetal Alchemist" (aka "Hagane no renkinjutsushi") was long, painstakingly long. And they could have trimmed it down with some more intense and thorough editing, because there was a lot of stuff which wasn't really serving more than being eye-candy and filler on the screen.

The characters in the movie were adequate, although the lead role played by Ryôsuke Yamada was somewhat of a swing and a miss, because he was rigid and monotone in his performance. Yasuko Matsuyuki, playing Lust, was really perfect for the role, but it was a shame that she, as the villain, didn't have more time on the screen. Tsubasa Honda, playing Winry, was carrying a great deal of the movie, as she had to pick up where Ryôsuke Yamada came in short.

The visuals and special effects in the movie were amazing, and they carried the movie quite a long way.

An entertaining movie for sure but it was just way way too long.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie. Is it perfect, no far from it. I do think it's much more faithful to the source material then the live action Death Note was, like Death Note it is a very ambitious movie trying to pack a lot of story into a short amount of time. As a result, some characters are omitted and the story is condensed. To be honest, it felt like I was watching a fan-made movie with a big budget. This is not a bad thing, actually it was refreshing because it makes me believe those who worked on it really cared deeply about the original anime and did their best to show it. Other reviewer's issues with the show are right, the acting wasn't the best and I would have liked to have seen more comedy. Also elements of the story were passed over or not explained. What I did like was the homunculus, I thought they were done very well. While the story was condensed, it was still easy to follow and the movie had a good (sometimes too fast) pace.

If you watched the movie because you are a fan then you probably expected that it was going to be bad as hell. The thing is that as a "movie" it was fine. Compared to the anime though it was shit.

The movie fails in every aspect to deliver the chills that you get from watching the anime BUT we all expected that.

It is understandable though since we do not have the technology yet (We do but it is expensive af) to make a "Good" live action movie. There are things that can be achieved in anime that you simply can't put into a movie, such things include: Facial expressions, the anime faces, the hairstyles (They look terrible IRL), the CGI for the super powers which is bad... like really bad and so on.

In order to achieve the fine perfection the anime has, the budget of the movie itself must be like insanely high. The reason is because first of all this should not be a movie but a series of maybe 20 episodes(1hour each). Cause squeezing all this content to a 2 hour movie is just not going to work.(Even 4 hours is too little I count the sequel as well). Another thing which I PERSONALLY WANT TO BE FIXED is the god damn hair, for the love of god it just looks fake af please moar realism to dat.

Anyway having to write all of the flaws is actually super boring so im going to focus on the positive things.: Nice audio.

Anyway, I really hope the one piece live action series will do great as it will have one of the biggest budgets every like 10m/episode.

Overall, its a decent movies that have many positive aspect, but the cinematography and directing are not as good as the original, pretty good acting, good cg, as any other anime adaptation it would have its story packed short, its a pretty good job for this one though, yet there's lot of good moments in anime left behind, i don't mind with japanese cast even if the anime setting in alternate universe of europe, otherwise it would've been a better portrayal of the character.