So I watched the live action version of the most overhyped manga of the past years and then checked the impressions other people had about it. Almost nobody liked it, with their biggest grip being the various things they changed. But changes are not what make something bad. It’s a live action movie, it is bound to change a lot of things, like pretty much all Marvel and DC superhero films did.
For example, there are no horses and people move around with cars. It’s clearly a budget restriction; where would they get so many horses and how could they control them in such crazy action scenes? This doesn’t mean anything for the plot though, besides making the setting far more technologically advanced. Yeah, you can always bitch about why they have cars and not tanks or airplanes, but if you go that far you might as well ask how people who haven’t invented cars yet, can fly by using steam and try to kill titans with a sword, instead of snipping them with steam propelled blades.
A somewhat bigger grip is how everybody in the movie was Asian, when the manga was supposed to be taking place in Europe. Sounds like it’s a minor thing but part of the appeal the manga had, was not taking place in the present and was not about Asian people. The only oriental character in it was Mikasa, which was also what was making her exotic, and they took it out. Now she is just another person, and she is not even that obsessed with Eren.
Speaking of Eren, he is a completely different character. Instead of that eternally pissed off teenager who felt imprisoned behind the walls, and who was hell bent on killing all the titans, in the movie he is just an average person who is simply curious to find out what exists beyond the walls.
Something similar happens with all the characters. None of them has an over the top behavior, so they feel far more realistic, far less cartoony, and far harder to distinguish them, much less care about them, since nobody sticks out too much. In fact the most memorable one ends up being the dude who somehow used a sumo grappling move to throw a titan over his shoulder. Don’t ask me how that is possible; all I know is that this is what made him more memorable than that guy who is not called Levi but is otherwise able to kill a dozen titans.
Now speaking of the titans, they did the best they could to make them look scary and bizarre, but still pass as silly. What made them look eerie in the manga was the different way they were drawn, something which doesn’t translate in the movie. They look like normal naked people, trying too hard to act like weirdoes.
The biggest issue ends up being the lack of downtime between action scenes so the viewer can bond with the characters. There are a few such scenes but it is mostly about Eren looking at people and commenting how he feels about the situation. There is very little physical interaction amongst characters, and they pass as mouthpieces infodumping us with things we should be seeing instead of being told.
The movie ends when Eren transforms, and leaves it open for a sequel. At this point it is identical to the manga, meaning that it is enjoyable if you watch it for the teenagers flying in the air, killing titans, followed by getting power ups and turning the whole thing into a Godzilla knock off. It becomes just mindless entertainment that will leave the non-otaku audience wondering why the hell is this shit considered to be one of the best anime of all times, followed by the expected reply of “read the manga”. Yeah because the manga does not have Eren becoming a titan and destroying everything the premise was about.
The movie is forgettable and lacks a lot of details that make the manga attractive to the edgelords but saying it is not showing what the story is all about is a big fat lie. It is just another zombie apocalypse flick, with the difference being, the zombies are huge, humans fight them by flying, then turn to huge zombies themselves, and we get to see zombie Godzilla fighting zombie Mothra.
