G-Saviour

G-Saviour, for the most part, is a fair movie. Decent characters, above par storyline that would fit the Gundam universe, but if you came for mecha fights and robots slaughtering each other for 2 hours, you're out of luck.

For what it's worth the mecha scenes, that are few and far between, are good. The G-Saviour will not win any awards for Best Gundam, but the fights between it and other mobile suits are worth a glance at, and yes you get both laser cannons and beam saber action as Mark Curran flies around in the G-Saviour aptly saving the day and holding up the tradition of Gundam.

So if you're a die-hard Gundam/mecha fan who must see every shred of Gundam footage known to man then knock yourself out. But if you are just discovering the world of anime and/or Gundam and have access to the animated shows, consider this movie a last resort. At least wait until they someday (god-willing) attempt to make a live action version of the original series.

3 out of 5, fair.

Created by a western production company, this was Gundam's "great experiment". How did the experiment fare? While not the worst movie I've ever seen, it is by far the weakest Gundam release by a great margin.

The acting is "passable", nothing noteworthy and certainly on par with other direct-to-video and cable movies.

The visuals are impressive when viewed as still screen-shots. The mecha look great, and so does the set design and costumes. However, once things are put in motion it becomes apparent that this is not a quality Gundam release. While the animation is nice, and well rendered, it's just not Gundam-like in feel. Gundam shows (even the most "realistic" of them) have high-speed mobility and very exciting dogfights. Not so here. The mecha move very slow and almost clumsy, which just doesn't feel right.

Also consider that this is set in the future of the UC storyline. The last we saw of UC was in Victory Gundam, which had extremely fast and maneuverable mobile suits. Here, however, it seems as though technology has regressed so that mobile suits are slower and clumsier than even the first Mobile Suit ever invented in this time-line. I've seen astronauts adrift in space with no propulsion that move better than this. And these are essentially robots covered in high-performance thrusters?

UC Gundam for the most part also focused on Newtypes, except that they are missing here. Newtypes are essentially the next evolution of man. They are much like powerful "psychics" with incredible natural piloting talent, and are a core element to most of UC story lines. I can however, forgive the lack of Newtypes, as later UC Gundam shows tended to try and top the psychic powers of the previous shows, resulting in excessive mental powers able to turn people into vegetables by mere thought alone. So I don't mind a refocusing of the franchise on piloting and dogfights over mental attacks.

However, as mentioned earlier, the dogfights are just terrible. Gundam shows are not new to chapters that are light on action. Gundam 0080 had very little mecha fighting, yet it made up for it with character development, story, and compelling drama. This doesn't have any of that either.

This would be fine if it was some late night cable movie, and had all references to Gundam removed and replaced with generic robots.

All in all, it is an interesting thing to watch, as it is Gundam's "great experiment". A live action Gundam film made by western production companies. Beyond experiencing the magnitude of the failure, there's not much going for it.

If you want to see CGI rendered Gundam in all it's glory, find a way to get ahold of "MS Igloo". It is a fully CGI UC Gundam story set during the One Year War of 0079. And it certainly puts this to shame.

As a side-note, Gundam Wing fans may enjoy the appearance of Enuka Okuma as Cynthia Graves. She is the voice actor of Lady Une, and performs a live-action role in G Saviour.

When I watched G Saviour I was very excited because as a bit of a gundam fan it was new to me. But when watching it i expected some of the gundam ideals to be put in there, Like with Kira from seed, protecting a group of friends but then learning fighting is not the way, even to start saving the enemy from death. However in G Saviour we have more American film ideals, the lone hero is in the gundams but not as obvious as it is in this film, and right away he wants to save the world but does not care for the other side no mater who they are. Even Herro Yui began to realise there was good people on both sides! so in this case i was disappointed a bit, however it did redeem its self by hinting at the fact that there was confusion to which side was right, and the use actually following the style flow of gundam with the off world colonies. Also...even after all that...if you don't give a poop about the missing element of Japaneses-godlyness, it has large Robots with energy blades! 'nuf said! =p people ENJOY its got something for all, even the kiddies

A month ago, I found G-Savior DVD in the "2nd hand" product bin at my local video store. It was really cheap so despite having read so many angry fan ravings about how terrible G-savior was, I bought it, watched it, and was pleasantly surprised by it.

After seeing so many angry fan ravings about how terrible this attempt at a live action Gundam movie was, I decided to check it out myself out of curiosity, and I must say I was pleasantly surprised. G-Savior is not the most impressive looking live action adaptation but it is definitely not "crap" or "an obscenity". Among direct-to-DVD movies, G-Savior is possibly the best of the bunch. Though it pales in comparison with big screen blockbuster movies, such a thing is expected seeing as G-Savior's budget was only slightly less than 9 million dollars.

The story starts of with a great premise. The year is Universal Century 223 and the various Space Colonies have proudly let go of their colonial past and now consider themselves independent "Settlements". The ruling government of earth known as CONSENT once again seeks to bring the outlying colonies under its control and does so by creating a food shortage in the colonies. In that way, the colonies now depend on CONSENT for food hence giving the earth total economic control over the space settlements. Enter Ex-CONSENT mobile suit pilot Mark Curran who, while peacefully working as a mobile suit operator for an underwater research facility, is swept up into the war when "terrorists" attack the facility and steal a top secret research project that may be able to solve the food crisis and break the earth's economic stranglehold on the colonies. In a crisis of conscience, Mark makes the decision to help the colonies, much to the displeasure of his former CONSENT commander Jack Halle, who has been tasked with eliminating this rebel faction. Shocking twists reveal a hidden conspiracy as Mark Curran must once again take up arms against a powerful enemy despite his past traumatic experience in space combat.

For a low budget direct-to-DVD movie, G-savior actually looks very good when compared to other 1999/2000 movies, but pales very much in comparison to other giant robot movies such as Transformers or Matrix, especially in the special effects department.The computer generated graphics used for space vessels, the various mechs, the G-savior tend to clash in the most obvious ways with the live action footage thanks to some off key lighting and the unrealistically blocky designs. It felt like watching two different shows; a sci/fi TV drama inter-cut with footage from video game cut-scenes. At least they tried to make the mobile suits move realistically as opposed to lightning fast movements of the mecha in the anime.

One would normally forgive a movie's sub-par graphics and special effects in view of its low budget, but this movie's acting is really hit or miss. I had no problems with a Caucasian cast (after all, most Gundam characters had western names and facial body features), but only a handful of them manage to deliver good performances. Aside from the main characters like Mark Curran, Cynthia Graves and Jack Halle, the rest of the actors sound about as good as characters in a bad Saturday morning cartoon.

The greatest crime of this movie is the action, or rather, lack of action. Almost an hour passes before the viewer gets his first dose of Mobile Suit mecha combat. Before that, the whole show plays out like a pilot episode for some boring TV drama series. Overall, the story is good; the plot was interesting and managed to incorporate a number of political themes, a staple in the Gundam stories. The action scenes are few and far in between, but when they do come they come in hard and fast. The final battle is definitely a well earned payoff for sitting through the horrible pacing in the first hour; Epic in scale and truly a spectacle to behold.

G-savior is not as terrible as so many people claim but it does have its flaws. It has an excellent story with a couple of good plot twists, a well developed main character that really grows on you as the show moves along and some intense action sequences coupled with a grand sweeping film score composed John Debeney(who also composed for The Scorpion King and The Passion of Christ). Too bad the acting was such a mixed bag, the CGI effects were disappointing and the production values were so low.

Gundam fans would no doubt feel let down that this was not the big budget blockbuster that they fantasized a Gundam live action movie would be. I personally enjoyed G-Savior for what it was, not what people expected it to be. It is highly entertaining and one of the best, though low budgeted, direct-to-DVD movies around nowadays.

This would have been a great Gundam movie if they had focused less on the romantics and more on what people watch Gundam for, the Mobile Suits. I'm not saying that the different Gundam series don't have plots that are very interesting and bring the audience in, i'm saying that this movie focused too much on the relationship between Mark(Gundam pilot) and the two central women in the story. When the Suits do come out to play it is intense and visually amazing but unfortunately this only occurs 2 times throughout the entire movie!! All-in-all I would consider this to be a good movie that attempted to do much and took away from what could have been an awesome Gundam movie.