Saturday, March 31, 2018

Fullmetal Alchemist (2017) (Special Fourth Year Anniversary Review)

As children, Edward and Alphonse Elric lost their mother to illness.  In an attempt to resurrect her through alchemy, Alphonse lost his body while Edward lost an arm and a leg bonding Al’s soul to a suit of armor.  Years later, the two travel the land searching for a way to restore their bodies.  The answers they seek lie in the fabled Philospher’s Stone, one of the greatest relics of Alchemy capable of even bringing the dead back to life.  But dark traps have been set for the brothers and even darker truths threaten to shatter their resolve.  That wont stop Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist.  To restore his brothers body, he’ll risk everything, even if the ultimate cost is everything he has.

Live Action adaptations of Anime are tricky.  There are some things you can only do with Anime as your key storytelling tool, from character behaviors to feats of epic awesomness.  Sometimes, filmmakers can get it right.  I’ll always look to the 2006 Death Note Duology and the first Rurouni Kenshin film as the gold standards of making good adaptations (the second and third RuroKen movies were good but not fully great).  But for every win, there’s a colossal failure.  Just look at last year.  2017 gave us two highly anticipated Live Action Anime films in Ghost in the Shell and Netflix’s America Death Note.  Both fell flat on their face for various reasons (I gave both semi ok reviews that seem more generous in retrospect).  That same year, we got a Fullmetal Alchemist movie.  To say it’s the best of those three films that came out in 2017 is hard to say…cause even when it tries to do things right it doesn’t take things in the positive direction Live Action Anime films need to go.
 
Let’s start with Ed and Al, the heart and soul of this entire story.  Both in the film and Anime, they go through a tragic ordeal that would leave anyone broken beyond repair.  What makes them both so endearing are two things: their optimism, which is often tested but never fully broken; and their amazing brotherly banter.  Neither are fully present in the film.  The Ed that we know is fully aware of his guilt in what happened to him and his brother but in the Anime and Manga, he masks it behind sharp wit and a fiery temper.  Ryousuke Yamada plays Edward in the film with all of his guilt and depression on full display.  The film has a couple moments of lightheartedness, though few and far between, and even there Ed acts less like his normal, short fused self…and in truth he probably wouldn’t raise too much of a fuss that I used the “s” word just then, he is that out of character.  This dramatic approach works on rare occasion, especially during the infamous Shou Tucker scene (you know what I’m talking about if you know the franchise).  Otherwise, I feel like the casting is more to blame than the writing as I could see Anime Ed saying a lot of these lines in his usual form and acting his usual self while doing so.  It’s actually hard to tell if Al is equally or much worse off.  Sure he looks awesome and taken right from the source material with his armor design.  But Al doesn’t really do much for most of the film and sounds even more depressed than Ed…when he’s actually talking.  I swear, Al is mute during several moments when he could easily speak but I guess chooses not to?  That bugged the hell out of me.  As a result, Ed and Al feel like shadows of the characters we know and love.  Their live action portrayal officially, for me, ranks up there with Nat Wolff’s take on Light Turner in Netflix’s Death Note.  If the film cant be supported by its iconic leads then it is bound to fail in the end.
 
Clocking in at a little over 2 hours, you can feel the Fullmetal Alchemist movie dragging on, even when it’s jumping from one important part of the story to the next.  Unless you are well versed in the universe already, the movie doesn’t give much time to digest things and even less emotional impact to keep you invested.  Even the Shou Tucker storyline, while the climax is ok, fails to deliver the full gut punch of the Anime or Manga (both of which told the story in one or two episodes or chapters with a much better handle on events).  At the end of the day though, this movie is meant to be an opener for a franchise, nothing more or less.  As such, it has a beginning but kind of fumbles around deciding how much it wants to get in before it wraps up.  A couple of the Anime’s more memorable epic moments feel less than stellar as a result and definitely lack the “hell yeah” enthusiasm they instill when youre watching them in the TV series.  Actually as the film went on, I could only wonder why I don’t just pop in the 2003 TV Series or Brotherhood and watch those vastly superior stories right away. 
 
Possibly one of the biggest flaws of the film lies in its greatest strength: the visuals.  This movie looks like Fullmetal Alchemist.  From the sets to the costume design to the Alchemic effects.  Everyone looks like they came from the Anime, especially Al and Hughes.  Ryuta Sato brings all the warmth, humor and seriousness that makes Hughes the guy he’s always been.  He is the one shining beacon that kept me hoping this film would right itself.  But, just like Ghost in the Shell, Fullmetal Alchemsit relies too much on nodding to the source material and, as a result, tries to mask its storytelling flaws behind it.  Even moments taken directly from the Manga or the Anime feel like they lack the fun or heart that made them so memorable and epic in the first place.  I was fooled once by Ghost in the Shell (I think I even praised being able to spot most of the many references), I was not going to be fooled this time by Fullmetal Alchemist.
 
It’s funny.  There have been two Fullmetal Alchemist series (the 2003 TV Anime and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood).  Both are shows with very long episode counts but never once will you hear anyone complain about that.  The shows (and even their respective films: Conqueror of Shamballa and The Sacred Star of Milos) are a roller coaster of emotion, heartache, excitement and hope.  Those are four emotions I felt next to none or very little of while watching the live action movie.  Ed and Al aren’t acting like they should and suck up all the hope and fun from the narrative.  The moments when the action should kick in feel half assed or bare boned.  The emotion is kept of full on depressing with nary a sent of optimism or hope.  I will say I felt heartache.  Cause in the wake of Ghost in the Shell and Death Note, 2017 needed a big win in the Live Action Anime category.  Fullmetal Alchemist was not that win.  And that’s kind of sad.
 
3/10
(Jeez, im calling this right now: Next Anniversary im picking something a lot more positive to review…maybe not something live action either…dammit why’d I have to review the Rurouni Kenshin Trilogy back to back).


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