I've finally watched the Gundam 00 movie! Took me long enough, it's been waiting on my hard drive for a week now. LJ cut below for spoilers.
First of all, how to describe it... The Borg meet the Death Star, on LSD - with an OD of hippie sparkles. I can sort of understand why a lot of fans didn't like the movie, even though I didn't mind it so much. But then, I started watching the movie having really low expectations. Mainly though, I actually don't mind the aliens at all. It's not what we've come to expect from Gundam, but I think it was about time that the Gundam franchise upped the sci-fi factor a notch, I've been wanting for them to do that for a long time. Mecha and GN fields are all well and good, but it ain't no proper sci-fi flick without aliens in it.
The name of the movie though? I don't get it. The trailblazer, is that supposed to be the aliens? What the hell is a "trailblazer" anyway? Did something get lost in translation?
The ending of the movie, I guess, is the part that people were the most opposed to. I agree to some extent, mainly because I thought it wasn't properly explained what actually happened there. Why exactly did the aliens stop and where the hell did the giant space flower come from? I'm not so opposed to the message, really, we've known since the ending of ep 50 that it was about understanding being the only way to end war. I had different hopes during s1 regarding The Message, I thought they were going to let it all end in tragedy. But I gave up on that long ago and faced facts: the anime we thought we had during s1 is not where the producers were really headed, they were going some place completely different than many of the fans wanted them to. It's a shame, but that's all old news. They wanted the anime to be hopeful, not just critical.
On the drama note: Milenia declares her undying love for Tieria and Feldt does the same, if not in so many words, for Setsuna. Me, I'm thinking that those gals are pining in vain. Setsuna has two pretty boys who throw themselves in front of him without a second thought to shield him from harm, Tieria being one of them. =) Those moments, not the ones with Feldt and Milenia, made me cry.
All in all, I thought the movie was somewhat entertaining and not the total trainwreck it could have been, although there were some big moments of wtf and I really wonder what the producers have been smoking when they created those aliens. I'm somewhat glad that I ended up watching it after my G00 RPG was over anyway. Because they did some time skips pretty far into the future, when the characters were old, it really did not leave so much room for anything post-canon. I'm thinking that the great roleplaying potential this fandom has is mostly lost, but there could be some great fanfiction. perhaps one day, I will write it. ;)