Knights of the Zodiac

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.

Having not read the manga on which this is based, I can only judge this as a film. And the reasons to see it are for the hand-to-hand combat scenes (which are well-shot and full of energy) and for the few satisfying moments of personal redemption and self-forgiveness sprinkled throughout.

Sadly these positives are few and far between, and the movie is too often bogged down by dialogue that's inhuman and stilted, a plot that's somehow generic and excessively convoluted, and visual effects that are laughably underfunded and unfinished.

The cast is full of capable supporting actors who aren't helped by the unintentionally funny script nor by the charisma-free lead actor.

Lastly, the movie takes itself far too seriously, and this makes the goofy stuff hard to watch rather than campy and enjoyable.

It had the pieces to be good, but it just dropped too many of them to work.

"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.

This movie fails to send me back to the anime, and I know it was supposed to be based on the newest properties that are coming out targeting the new generations, but I think it swings and misses at all target groups.

I guess Seiya works well and he kind of has a good chemistry with Saori. His training with Marin is done well and the first fights that don't have the armor are nicely choreographed but everything else is terrible.

I couldn't care more about Famke's character, her motivations are so shallow together with Ikki, who is there mainly so there's a final fight. We have Mitsumasa who isn't Mitsumasa. The VFX looks straight from a 2012 PS3 game. There are so many futuristic ships I didn't know if the movie was supposed to be an alternative world or 20 years in the future.

But the main thing for me is that the movie didn't feel like Saint Seiya, it was like someone who saw the anime 30 years ago tried to explain it to a Hollywood producer who didn't bother to watch the original content and stick to the description given to him. In the end it didn't have the sense of humanity against gods and the sense that even when Seiya lost all his senses he would never give up.

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.