Please, eat them all.
By the end of Attack on Titan: Part 1, I was rooting for the bumbling, dumb titans. Save for three characters, I wanted the titans to eat every member of the Survey Corps, because at least that would have spared me from watching any more boring conversations and awkward drama. The first Attack on Titan live-action film keeps the themes and most of the familiar names from the manga and anime, but is devoid of any heart or soul.
Attack on Titan: Part 1 takes the core elements of Attack on Titan and reshapes them into a lesser version of the existing story. Titans attack humanity’s last stronghold, a bunch of people die, and angsty protagonist Eren joins the Survey Corps to fight the titans and get revenge. His reason for revenge, however, feels much less impactful from the original story due to how his catalyst is altered in the film. This change also makes Eren feel a little aimless, but most of the characters feel this way, unfortunately.
Mikasa, Eren’s best friend, is a cowering, pouty girl and primarily serves as a love interest for two of the characters instead of being a badass protector like she’s portrayed in the source material. Even Eren’s angst had some sort of depth in the original story, but with his motivator completely different, he just feels like an overreacting jerk. The other returning characters (with the exception of Armin, Sasha, and Hans) and the new characters made for the film are bland, one-dimensional, and usually only serve one purpose on screen. The mother is motherly, the couple makes out, and the cool guy is, I guess, cool. The human aspect of this film is terrible.
We want to hear it.
Many of the conversations between characters feel awkward not only because of poor writing, but also due to poor camera direction. The camera frequently lingers on blank stares and empty, boring spaces for too long. This unfortunately carries over to one of the biggest fights of the film and I left it feeling like I had been cheated out of something awesome. These sort of misdirections are really a shame, especially since this film’s saving grace is the titans.
The titans are menacing, disgusting, deformed creatures that live only to eat humans. The miniature effects of the buildings with actors morphed into titans work well, especially with the intense gore. Seeing the titans chomp down on humans is gross but weirdly satisfying. There’s no question about their monstrous nature. Unfortunately when the titans are on screen, the humans are, for the most part, unbearable.
A majority of the characters are excessively helpless. The trained soldiers often stand around whimpering in fear and wait for their impending doom. It’s frustrating to see that hardly anyone gets better at fighting the titans throughout the film. When members of the Survey Corps finally manage to take down a single titan, it’s between the combined effort of five or six soldiers. Then of course there are the two “super fighters” who easily slay titans, and make the other characters even more of an embarrassment.
It would have been more fun to have watched the entire cast be eaten by the titans than to have sat through this adaption of Attack on Titan. This film is not a good starting point for people interested in the franchise, and it’s a slight against fans of the series. The gruesome titans are the only saving grace, but they can only help the film recover so much.
