The much-awaited live-action movie adaptation of hugely popular Japanese manga "Attack on Titan" has been getting less than stellar reviews from critics.
The initial trailer for the movie piqued the interest of many fans as well as non-fans as it showed promise and featured Japanese movie stars like Kiko Mizuhara and Haruma Miura. However, now that the movie is met by bad reviews from revered critics and people from the Japanese industry, it can be said that the big production didn't live up to the hype from the previews.
The film was rated 40/100 points by Japanese movie review website Cho Eiga Hihyo (Super Movie Reviews). They didn't mince words with their take on "Attack on Titan," which states the following, as translated by RocketNews24: "The Attack on Titan live-action film was created with the concept of changing things that were 'unrealistic' in the manga, rather than simply adapting the manga to the big screen. Unfortunately that concept undermined the entire film, making it feel even more like an 'unrealistic' manga than the work it was based on."
The critic from Cho Eiga Hihyo even mentioned that the characters were just "plain stupid" and that their antics didn't come off as funny.
The crew from Kotaku wasn't so forgiving with their review, too. Based from the article title alone, the site thought that the first movie "stinks." It particularly commented on the musical scoring of the film and claimed that the score ruined the tone of the movie to the point that it's "distracting." Writer Brian Ashcraft says, "I don't recall seeing a film in recent memory with such discordant, feckless use of music."
Some people who worked on the film expressed their dismay with the review, comparing it to Hollywood Productions. One notable response came from Yoshihiro Nishimura, "Attack on Titan's" special modeling director. He said his piece via Twitter:
"Everyone says Hollywood movies are great! Well, then they can go right ahead and watch nothing but Hollywood movies! Movies with high budgets and a lot of advanced techniques are great, aren't they? Especially movies with high budgets! You should watch movies that have been hit in the face with stacks of cash! People who like to compare Hollywood and Japanese movies really enjoy that sort of thing, right?"
Nishimura has deleted the tweets.
