Los caballeros del zodiaco

What do I mean by underproduced?

There is no overarching set of quality control for acting skills, special effects, and it makes the movie neigh unwatchable after awhile.

Want to be an indie film? Hire hungry actors and go cheap on effects. Want to be a blockbuster? Hire A-listers and splurge on effects.

This film is jarringly uneven in quality and even though some of the newly faced actors seem to be bent to pour their hearts into their lines and action sequences, others obviously seem to be there just for the check.

This movie would have been better if it had been run a budget 1/10th the size with actors who actually wanted to do their jobs.

In ancient times, the Gods treated humans as playthings. Athena is the only one who helped humanity and trained knights to protect them until the age of Gods ended. Sienna (Madison Iseman) is the modern day reincarnation of Athena. Seiya (Mackenyu) is searching for his sister and trains to be a Knight of the Zodiac.

The special effects are fine although unimpressive. The fights are fine. I actually like the wire work and the long fights. It could be filmed better. A lot of this feels inferior. I almost want to say TV Power Rangers, but it's not that bad. It's the designs. It's Flash Gordon with CG glow. I don't know anything about the Japanese manga or the anime. I assume that the designs come from that. The story is rather basic and simplistic. The characters are one dimensional. I wouldn't say any of this is funny. It's a comic book B-movie with a middling budget.

I am not part of the target audience for this movie. Keep that in mind.

If someone made a movie about the ancient Greek Gods for the 21st Century, and used Asian martial arts action cinematic techniques, then this would be the movie they made. And they did.

The soundtrack is loud and obnoxious. All of the dialogue is ego-oriented; i.e. "Listen to how clever I am." And the fights scenes are out of late night Kung Fu fare from the 1980s.

For all that, it's technically a competent film like all big budget films, but it's agenda is about letting female energy reign in spite of a lot of hijinks by the males, ironically led by a female character., and it's a female instructor that teaches the main protagonist how to fight.

So ... it's pretty cliche and predictable, but is it a bad movie? Eh, I'm not really partial to it, I could see all the plot points and story oriented character moments coming a mile away, including the whole "date outside your social circle" motif, and the feminine angle regarding the responsibility of wielding power and who should and why.

It's a film made for teens and so-called "geek culture". I gave it a chance, and all I can say is that I liked it better than the first Guardians of the Galaxy, but again this is a movie made for the teen comic-book crowd, and not for an older individual like me.

Loud, over the top, predictable, lots of ego oriented moments, if you're looking for some updated martial-arts action with god like powers thrown in, then look no further than this movie. But don't expect high art.

Another poorly made manga adaptation. If you claim it to be adapted from a source, then you should stick to it. Do not change the names, do not change the settings, do not change the plot. I mean, if you take the fairy godmother out of the story, replace the prince with an old man, and then turn the glass slippers into a pair of steel boots, can you still call it Cinderella? You get what I'm saying here? The name changes are atrocious, not to mention the costumes. Seiya's Pegasus armor was supposed to be lean and shiny, not robotic and grim looking. The only thing that's similar to the manga was only Athena's staff. I'm so disappointed, so I'm just gonna give it 5 stars. I should've given it a lower ratings, but I know that a lot of people have worked hard to make this movie. So I'm not gonna be a jerk here.

"Knights of the Zodiac" is a flat adaptation of the acclaimed anime "Saint Seiya", the script takes some elements from the anime and therefore the manga to mix them with "original" ideas, resulting in a boring movie with a poorly made story, practically non-existent. The performances are decent without standing out, the director's work is bad, the cinematography and filming locations fail to stand out or create a mythical atmosphere, the costume design is lousy, the soundtrack goes unnoticed and the special effects have an average result, in some scenes they look well done and in others they look fatal. A bad movie without being totally terrible, but it definitely should never have been filmed.