MOVIE REVIEW: ATTACK ON TITAN



31/2/5

A hundred years from now creatures called TITANS had destroyed the world, pushing humanity behind the giant walls. Eren Jaeger is twenty something young man who dreams of one day leaving his home country and see beyond the walls. He does not believe in the existence of the Titans. But that is all about to change as the wall is suddenly breached, letting the monstrous creatures in…

Attack on Titan is an incredibly popular manga and anime series and created a huge following all around the world. While movie remains true to the story’s major check points, it re-imagines the original plot in many ways. Just like in the source material, we get the usual trio of young, wide-eyed innocent friends, who face unimaginable horror sand have to become a part of the fullscale war against the dangers they don’t fully understand. But the movie leaves out most of melodramatic moments, focusing on action and horror.

This year’s MAD MAX showed us the new ways of establishing characters and conflicts through action, but this is not what happened in ATTACK ON TITAN. The young actors stumble awkwardly into their roles of cliché characters: a hero, a hero’s side kick, a hero’s girlfriend and so on.  The show stealers here are monstrous TITANS. While using plenty of CGI TOHO studios made a decision to use real people (similarly it happened in the early GODZILLA and GAMERA movies).  Titans look extremely realistic, but also weird, as if child’s awkward drawings had come to life. The kills are very gory with tons of CGI blood splattered across the screen and as a horror movie ATTACK ON TITAN is quite unique.  But the action is stalling a little - the flying devices the soldiers use to battle TITANS may have worked in the animation series, but hardly seem realistic in this live action adaptation. Coming unchanged from the pages of the original manga, these weapons just do not seem practical enough and should have been re-imagined a little to make them more believable.

If you look at ATTACK ON TITAN independently from its original source, you will get a rather “cool” movie, a sort of Japanese “WALKING DEAD” with giant zombies. For the unprepared the movie’s ending is a “jaw dropper”. The crazy twist will be left unexplained, so get ready to see the second film.


Overall ATTACK ON TITAN is a rather interesting horror movie, with some innovative technics and style, but it lacks “the epic feel” that was expected from the beloved anime and manga, and can hardly stand alone without its follow up to be released later this year.

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