cyguration

I have no idea what the manga or anime series of Gantz is like but man are the Gantz movies frustrating. Out of the three films I've seen, GantZ:0 is easily the best of the three, with the other two live-action films being way too long and way too stretched out for what they are.

My biggest gripe with Gantz:0, however, isn't the story -- as it stays relatively contained and moves at a good pace, opposite of the other two live-action films. The problem with Gantz:0 is that they introduce a bunch of other cool characters that are highly underutilized.

Worse yet is that these characters get the Pacific Rim treatment like the tertiary Jaegers.

I get what they were trying to go for -- trying to keep Kato as the main star, but I can't stand when veteran characters are introduced just to then dispose of them like nothing.

That was the other problem with this film -- the characterizations were pretty horrible. Either the characters were super useless or sociopathic. There was also the standard issue in all of the Gantz films I've seen, where characters stand around hesitating instead of FIRING THEIR WEAPON. Gantz is the only series where it seems like these characters would rather die than survive by just standing around. I do not understand it, but other than the three characters from the Osaka team, everyone else stands around hesitating, pointing their gun, and just doing nothing. I don't get it. If you know you will die if you don't shoot, why are you not shooting?

The only levelheaded character in the whole movie who seemed to actually both take the threats seriously and not act like a complete doofus or dingleberry about the matter is Kato. Others are either completely useless or seem to have a death-wish. I just don't understand the logic of the characterization here.

The movie also spends a good amount of time building up certain characters only to then relinquish them without a second thought. More than the standing around and not attacking, this is probably one of my biggest gripes with this film.

The logic behind the devil-may-care attitude just doesn't make a lot of sense in the context of the Gantz universe. Either you fight and survive or you lose and die... permanently. The fact some people seemed careless or nonchalant about the whole ordeal despite being veterans just made me scratch my head.

You would think someone like Oka -- who was depicted as being a long-time specialist with lots of points and tons of cool high-tech gear -- would have taken each encounter FAR more seriously and would have been a lot more protective and helpful with teamwork to avoid losing everything he earned. But the movie seemed to just depict all the veterans as being completely reckless, callous, sociopaths or psychopaths. The other Gantz members were seemingly in a stultified state, completely useless.

It took the entire runtime of the movie for some characters to finally understand, "Hey, if we don't do anything, we will die". It's like... yeah... that's common sense! It almost made me want to rip my hair out, especially since certain characters easily could have lived had the braindead characters just FIRED their weapons and helped out. It would have completely changed how the final boss encounter played out, and maybe I would have raised the score a bit because the encounter may have been more satisfying instead of frustrating.

Still, despite my gripes with the characterization, this film does a far, far, FAR superior job of depicting the aliens as being very dangerous. They really outline just how weird and how gruesome the encounters can be, something that the two live-action films just did not do a good job at.

The CGI also opened up the studio to showcase the Gantz weaponry a lot better. For instance, highlighting the limitations on the range, power, and charge times. The live-action films didn't really hone in on the logistics of the weapons much, which made it frustrating when wondering why the characters didn't use certain weapons more often?

In this case, however, I think showcasing HOW the weapons worked and their limitations while also highlighting just how dangerous the aliens were is what made the way certain characters were handled so much more frustrating.

Gantz as a franchise seems to have a lot of potential, but it can't seem to get out of its own way. The poor writing with the way the characters are handled almost always seems to be the downfall here.

I feel like in the hands of a good South Korean writer/director this series could really shine as either live-action or CGI format (preferably the latter given how much more room they have to work with when it comes to the weapons, gadgets and aliens). But all that being said, if you're looking for a good CGI action romp with some uncompromising horror-themed encounters, Gantz:0 isn't a bad way to spend your time. It has a modest runtime and a self-contained story, so whether you're familiar with the franchise or not you'll be able to mostly follow along (although if you have watched the live-action films some things might make a bit more sense to you). Just don't take the character writing too seriously and you might enjoy it more.

Dan Trachtenberg is the worst thing to happen to this franchise.

Apparently ALL Predators no longer know how to use any of their equipment, and it always results in them destroying themselves.

It's completely ridiculous and laughable.

What made the original Predator so good was that the Predators were hunting the best of the best, and even then Dutch only managed to barely get out alive BY LUCK. A contingency trap for a contingency trap is what saved him.

Yet here in all these stories the Predators have NO CLUE how any of their weapons work. It was the same problem in Prey, where the Predator was clueless how his own equipment worked.

It basically turned into a tale of Looney Tunes, especially the third story, which was basically MCU-tier when it came to the dialogue and story. I mean, this untrained kid is on the wing of his plane trying to repair it in mid-air? It was the sort of thing you would expect a 14-year-old to cook up while reading Marvel comics.

The physics and logic also don't track. In the first story the Predator is able to blow things to pieces with his repulsor emitter, yet he can't blast through a wooden shield?!?!?! Really!??!

I was just rolling my eyes the entire time.

Also, the Predator is one-shotting everyone until he gets to Ursa, identical to what we saw when the Predator in Prey was one-shotting everyone and everything until he fought Naru, and then he decides he's not going to hit her at all.

The only almost decent one was the middle story, wherein at least the two brothers were actually skilled warriors, but even then the Predator decided to do a lot of goofy stuff instead of killing them. And once again, he somehow didn't understand how his own technology worked.

I couldn't tell which was worse between the Predator in the Shield or the Predator in The Bullet in terms of not understanding their own tech.

Also, the pilot kid figuring out the Predator tech by goofing around with it was just nauseatingly bad. So apparently humans who have never used the tech before are better at using it than trained space killers who trained their whole lives to use it? Really?!

The problem is that this series just keeps defying its own logic, and it's asking us to go along with it because... well... movies these days can't be written to be sincere, and most audiences will just default to "Well, it's fiction, so it doesn't matter".

Just because it's fiction doesn't mean it can't be grounded within the sensibilities of its own storytelling. In fact, that's what made the first Predator and the original Alien trilogy so special: they treated the material seriously and kept the actions and logic grounded within their own world-building. Dan Trachtenberg's Predator content does not do that at all.

The Predators are these big, dopey, goofs who get thwarted by humans in the most illogical ways, and then always have their tech turned on them in Looney Tunes fashion. It's not cool, it's just embarrassing.

In many ways, the original Predator was basically a perfect film, so the only way it could go was down, and that's exactly where the series has fallen.

Now, Killer of Killers isn't all bad. Despite the ridiculousness of the first, third and last segments, the art-style is at least visually enticing, but I am not a fan of the stop-motion animation. It's jarring and it's even worse when it comes to action sequences because it makes it hard to follow the action and see what's going on.

Some of the Predator designs looked cool, especially the Elder Predator and the NInja Predator, but since they were treated like cartoon goofballs, it was hard to take any of it seriously.

I know I had some big gripes with Terminator Zero, but at least they respected the Terminator WAAAAY more in that depiction than what Dan has done to the Predators here. Treating them like idiotic fodder just completely detracts from what made the franchise so popular in the first place.

But I imagine most of the younger audiences who did not grow up with the original two Predator films won't really understand what made them good, and just seeing pointlessly gory violence in non-sensical ways with uneven combat logic will make them fall in love with Predator Killer of Killers.

I will say this, if you enjoyed Prey, then you will like this. If you saw the actual major problems that Prey had, you will see ALL of the exact same problems in this film, and it will detract from your experience greatly.

Reading the reviews after having rewatched this film almost 30 years later, and it's funny how similar many of our thoughts are that align with what this managed to accomplish back in 1994: it's a brilliant masterpiece.

The thing is, back in the 1990s, I never seemed to be able to see this film all the way through. I always missed bits and bobs, pieces and parcels here and there -- but this film always fascinated me. I always loved the intro, and I thought it had one of the best climaxes in any film to date.

I finally decided to rewatch the whole thing from start to finish -- uninterrupted. And what stood out to me the most was the original screenplay by the Coen brothers and Sam Raimi.

Wow... what an absolutely masterful script.

I had to go reading about this one because the screenplay for this is one of the most original modern day films ever made. Heck, it's one of the most original films made in the history of films.

It has speedball dialogue delivered with panache and plenty of alliteration, mimicking inflections from the 1930s and 1940s, but with a unique flair all its own. It's both smart and whimsical, and in many ways you can see the influence in TV shows that came later like Pushing Daisies.

But as almost every other review has pointed out, while the dialogue is smart and the story is both unpredictable and unique, it's the production design that is the real winner here.

This film looks gorgeous!

One of the thing that typically annoys me with a lot of period piece films is that oftentimes the cars are too clean, but here that's not the case. The sets look like they come out of 1958, but the cars also look authentic to the area -- some of them are dirty, spotted, a little worn. It adds to the authenticity of the piece, and in many films set back during those eras oftentimes the cars look like they've come from a vintage restoration lot. It's jarring, dare I say, a journey across the uncanny valley.

Even still, it's not just the outdoor shots that look great, giving the movie this larger-than-life visual aesthetic, the indoor shots are absolutely stunning. Large hallways, art deco garnishing, and that enterprise-era veneer really highlights the stylistic indulgence of this film's commitment to the era.

There's also a bit of a larger-than-life approach to a lot of the indoor set pieces, especially those set inside the Hudsucker building. Large walls, imposing hallways, and gigantic rooms make the whole movie feel like some kind of cartoon recreation from Acme industries.

There's a bit of that Looney Tunes flair with the over-wrought gear room of the clock tower, and comically convoluted mail room, which must have been a nightmare to film.

But the movie moves at a brisk pace, despite its lengthy runtime, and it has a very endearing score, along with great performances from every single person involved (especially Newman, who hunkers down the airy presence from Robbins, and juxtaposes himself as a foil for the Lois Lane-expy in Leigh's character).

I can't say enough good things about this film. It's really well done, and such a joy to watch. It's always seemed bizarre to me that the more pulpy and garish Pulp Fiction was the original screenplay that stole the spotlight a year later, even though this film had a much message, very witty dialogue, and a feel good vibe that should make it part of anyone's movie collection. Even still, at least, 30 years on, I was able to find myself entranced with its quality today just as I did back when I first saw it.