L'Attaque des Titans

Attack on Titan is recently one of the most popular manga/anime in a while, it wasn't nearly as rich as some of the greatest ones out there, however the material tackles a rather mature subtext, otherwise a really fascinating showcase of macabre in a larger scale. It's clearly destined to be a movie, it might as well fit in today's blockbuster trend of post-apocalyptic settings and revolution ordeals. But the movie's approach is rather standard in comparison. While it still wonderfully realizes the most grotesque moments of its source material, the characters are watered down with less interesting plights. Newcomers might find its premise intriguing, but what makes Attack on Titan interesting is hardly existent in this adaptation.

How the main characters are introduced is painfully contrived. Like every piece of exposition is immediately crammed into that one long scene that is supposed to establish who they are and what their world is. The difference is it's not quite compelling. I personally don't mind changes from its source material; the protagonist, Eren, is basically now a slacker who is tired of living behind the colossal walls from the titans, instead of an aggressive kid with some sociopathic tendencies who vows for revenge. It's not necessarily horrible since they're still represented as unlikely heroes, but Eren's arc is basically just trying to win back his girl and living up to that image, it makes him look lousier. What makes this character originally interesting is the fact that he is a traumatized kid who is too full of himself, which eventually crosses the line of his humanity and morality. It may not be the friendliest role model you'll see from a hero, but it rather makes him more relatable.

And that sounds more reasonable since this circumstance would really affect one's senses into insanity or paranoia. But in this movie, they're just verbally expressing their fears, sentiments and humor. The plot is ought to be followed through these characters, but most of them are single noted. They might as well exist in some YA where they're designed to be hormonally appealing. In the end, they're clearly just uninteresting. To its credit, the visuals are pretty cool. It may not be perfect or spectacular, but it's impressive enough to take these exciting moments into live action. There are some scenes that can be count as genuinely awesome, specifically the climax, even though it now seems to be quite senseless since they're taking this story to a different direction. Nevertheless, as long as these Titans and gore are on screen, there is some real pleasure to be taken.

Attack on Titan, in spite of its scale and production, is surprisingly underwhelming. The filmmakers are clearly just following the conventional direction of adapting a popular material, more or less. Visually, it's appropriate to call it a fan service; because it indeed puts these big action where it belongs. But thematically, it is a letdown. Attack on Titan isn't only great for its creepy titans and cool gadgetry, in fact, these things are basically small compared to its surprising complexity within its characters. That is what I personally believe that makes this material great, and yet that's what the movie ended up altering. Therefore it's just a standard B-Movie. It can be mindless fun, but you won't find anything else to like in the end.

Well let's start by saying that we all knew coming in that the movie was going to be different from the manga and the anime. The movie was supervised by Hajime Isayama the author. The story is similar but is its own story. The CGI of course is not like the Hollywood movies CGI but then again the budget for Japanese movies compared to Hollywood movies are lower. I think they did a decent job with the CGI and the story is not that bad. You have to go into this movie with an open mind and try not to compared to the manga. I laugh when I see people complaining that all the actors are Japanese and that they should be white ..These are the same people that talked trash about Dragon Ball Evolution. The ones that said " why did Hollywood destroyed my childhood? " .. well now they want Hollywood to make AOT... The acting was decent and I really can't wait for the second part. Let's not forget that a lot of movies that are based on books and novels are always change... people are crying for Hollywood to do it better ..well let's see what they are going to say once Lionsgate makes the Naruto live action movie since they got the right to it from what I read...

First of all I have seen the anime and it's definitely one of my favorites. This movie is a complete and utter disgrace to the franchise and does not have any positive quality that gave the franchise the popularity it earned nor does it have any qualities that make up for how bad it is.

The story in this version is for some reason changed severely from the original, which I would not even mind if it were just as good or even remotely decent, but no, it is very, very far from that. The story has A LOT of holes in its plot and logic. They removed the things that made the story beautiful, dramatic, and powerful and replaced them with their own amateurish, illogical, juvenile, excuse for writing. I cannot even fathom why or how the creator allowed this to happen.

Like the story, the characters are so heavily altered, they don't even have the same personalities as the original. Eren is now some kind of personification of "cool" from some nine year old's mind and Mikasa is now your average dumb, doting, beta girl. The dialogue is so completely stupid that I could not stop cringing the entire time. Despite the fact that they only needed 90 minutes for this movie, there are still a lot of awkward, unnecessary scenes and pauses that make the cringing feeling really set in.

The acting is also terrible, it's more of something you would expect from kids in a school play rather than from professionals in a big screen movie for a huge franchise. The CGI would have been impressive twenty years ago, like everything else they seemed to have settled on something mediocre at best yet they still add a lot of unnecessary CGI scenes that just help pronounce how bad it is.

I have no idea how much their budget was but they can't expect to release this movie without expecting massive negative criticisms not just from fans but even from your average consumers of today's media. Yes if you showed this movie to a caveman who's never seen any recent entertainment media, he might be impressed but the standards have been set and this garbage cannot even pass as "decent" for today's standards. Even more so because this movie belongs to a huge, successful, popular franchise and this movie has had so much hype leading up to its release.

As a non-fan I was mildly entertained. Didn't think it was terrible, didn't think it was the best film ever. I felt it faithfully translated a very convoluted TV series the best way it could within 90 mins while not sacrificing action and Titan screen time.

I don't consider myself a fan of the TV series, but being someone in their late 30's who grew up on they heyday of Japanese animation back in the 80's and 90's--Attack on Titan was the first time in a long while that an animation from there felt fresh, poignant and emotionally compromising for the viewer. The young kid in me would have loved this TV series, but the late 30's me who has been through a lot in life and chooses to seek out more positive and cheerful entertainment felt it got a bit too overly depressing and macabre. That's not saying I felt it was bad, just no longer my taste in entertainment anymore.

Fanboys/fan-girls on here rating this film 1's have noticeably a lot of impractical whines concerning the film. They simply are expecting a 600 hour TV animation series to be summed up in 90mins. It doesn't take someone who has worked on a film to realize that is setting up an impractical expectation. Characters and situations ARE to be expectedly retooled in order to give the film proper pacing. Sure, some characters in the film that fans had invested a lot of hours into via the TV series are sometimes sidelined, rewritten or killed off. I expected and knew this would happen and it didn't change my perspective on the overall film because I didn't go in with impractical fan expectations of this "film adaptation". Of course a 600 hour TV series has plenty of time for you to become emotionally invested with meat shield fighters that the overall story had every intention of killing off down the line for more emotional impact. But trying to delve into all those characters in a 90 minute film isn't going to happen. Have to be more objective than that within the context of this adaptation.

That being said the film does suffer from being disjointed and rushing through major plot points towards the final cliffhanger. It's really a film that just gets to the point and does not bores you with exposition that you can pretty much obviously figure out on your own.

The Titans are absolutely as terrifying as I remembered from the TV series and faithfully depicted. I found myself covering my face in some parts like I did with the TV series, so I think they did their job well in translating the horror and macabre of what the humans went through.

The action was obviously CGI heavy, but not done in a way that felt tawdry. They perfectly captured the aerial flight and feel of the fights from the TV series well.

Attack on Titan was by no means a 1 rated film. It's no Ed Wood film. It's no Manos the Hands of Fate. It's not Glitter levels of bad. It's not a film that is really that terrible. It's a film that on a baseline captures the terrifying essence of the TV series main concepts, but does suffers a little bit on core characters development.

A few minutes into the movie I was taken by surprise that the director chose to wildly mash up the characters and their relationships. Even though I really like the anime I was open to a new envisionment of the source material, since prejudice is something I try not to practice. Maybe the director wanted a new interpretation, while maintaining the essence of the series. But then it dawned on me that this new interpretation was leaky at best and the capturing of the essence was a parody. It was a 90 minute crap-fest of half-assed dialog, disinterested story telling and slasher-like violence. The movie also had a particular inability of finding a tone. Any tone. All the scenes feel staged, unreal and almost completely unrelated. Most disturbingly however was the implausibility. Nothing seems connected and nobody related. This is a waste of brilliant source material!