Terra Formars Reviews!
Watched this yesterday! (yes I realise I'm still behind on a shit ton).
I went with my friend who is a Terra Formars manga reader, but me not having done any homework (for once) went in with the expectations of:
- lots of action
- episodic fighting missions
- something similar to GANTZ in terms of fights, violence and relationships between the characters.
I'd like to say I was half proven right ^_^
I really like the world created in this and all the characters were very interesting and it quickly escalated into this 'oh fuck!!!' battle which seemed completely hopeless on the human side.
I really enjoyed the CG - it was all VERY well made.
And the set was huge and amazing so it clearly got a huge budget!
The Terra Formars themselves looked SO cool! The make up and prostetics were amazing and it looked so GOOD!! My favourite look was either YamaP's or Ito Hideaki's.
Oh and Oguri Shun looked so good! He was also very funny. I was laughing whenever he was on screen cos he's just ridiculous but also a littke badass at the end.
It kinda annoys me that Takei Emi is on the poster but YamaP isn't. YamaP got 1000 times more screentime than she did! She wasn't important AT ALL!
Now we all know I have a love/hate relationship with YamaP and his acting but I really liked him in this! And kudos on the English <3 it seems that although he had a dodgy like 6 year period of just doing shit acting and shit roles, that since 2014 he's picked it back up again and it back to 'Yes YamaP CAN act and do decent roles'. Thank god...
The other actor who spoke English was Kosugi Kein and his character was BADASS! I wanted to see SO much more of his character!
In fact the LACK of character development in this film is what left it down.
According to my friend, this ONE filmed covered all of ONE manga volume (it's still on-going and already has 17 volumes) and it's like 'if they're so insignificant in the manga then why I just wasted 2 hours with this characters?' sure you'd have picked more important characters and also really developed their backstories? Cos I REALLY wanted to see these character survive and I wanted to see them go on more missions together. But all this was the first volume? Then wtf? What a waste of a movie kinda.
So the lack of character development is a downer cos they were ALL interesting and badass!
As previously mentioned, I expected it to be more episodical. Like a 'we're in a ship in space and we're gunna send you down on missions to kill these creatures in doses' but I was wrong there. We got thrown right into the middle of it all and it was a FULL out battle from the start.
Last thing I expected that I already mentioned was lots of action and violence. In my opinion (and we know how much I love blood and violence) there was no where NEAR enough. You'd like cos the cockroaches have white blood and not red, that the studio would take advantage of that and just have it spray EVERYWHERE. The amount of action was also in small amounts. I needed more. They spent more time in a car trying to drive away from the cockroaches than actually fight, which is a shame. I was ready to see just like 20 minute blocks of action at a time where all the actors are just fighting the crap out of these things. But we only slightly got that in the last fight, which ended on a RIGHT cop-out. You could totally tell
It felt like this was a big introduction movie. Especially with the fact that we got constant voice overs from this random guy throughout the entire film who was explaining the whole Terra Former thing. So it felt more like a 'How To Play' movie. Which leads me to my last main negative: Where the FUCK is part 2?! SO many Japanese movies recently have automatically been given 2-part movies and it's like 'WTF TERRA FORMERS ISN'T A 2-PARTER?!' This movie DEFO needs another to come out after it. Especially cos at the end of the film the guy is like 'I'm coming back here to finish them off' and it's like 'YES!!! I WANNA SEE THAT!' but they didn't film a part 2?!?! WTF?!!? RAGE!! I need it NOW!!
A random point I wanna say is: The ending theme song to this movie is SO good! I was and wasn't surprised it was an EXILE song xD It's 三代目 J Soul Brothers's 'BREAK OF DAWN'
I think that's all I have to say on this movie xD
I'll defo be reading the manga when I have time though cos I wanna know more. Especially cos there's pyramids on freaking mars in this story - like wtf?! xD
---
Overall: I was entertained and I really enjoyed what I saw but it wasn't enough; it felt like one big introduction to this world and I need a part 2 asap! This was a VERY highly produced product (yet another big budget movie from Japan!) and it was visually pleasing and the CG was great and the end song is so catchy! I was very impressed by the English in this too. Didn't need to read the subtitles for most of that time they spoke English but of course there were a few dodgy pronouncing parts xD second movie please?
Rating: 6.5/10
I went with my friend who is a Terra Formars manga reader, but me not having done any homework (for once) went in with the expectations of:
- lots of action
- episodic fighting missions
- something similar to GANTZ in terms of fights, violence and relationships between the characters.
I'd like to say I was half proven right ^_^
I really like the world created in this and all the characters were very interesting and it quickly escalated into this 'oh fuck!!!' battle which seemed completely hopeless on the human side.
I really enjoyed the CG - it was all VERY well made.
And the set was huge and amazing so it clearly got a huge budget!
The Terra Formars themselves looked SO cool! The make up and prostetics were amazing and it looked so GOOD!! My favourite look was either YamaP's or Ito Hideaki's.
Oh and Oguri Shun looked so good! He was also very funny. I was laughing whenever he was on screen cos he's just ridiculous but also a littke badass at the end.
It kinda annoys me that Takei Emi is on the poster but YamaP isn't. YamaP got 1000 times more screentime than she did! She wasn't important AT ALL!
Now we all know I have a love/hate relationship with YamaP and his acting but I really liked him in this! And kudos on the English <3 it seems that although he had a dodgy like 6 year period of just doing shit acting and shit roles, that since 2014 he's picked it back up again and it back to 'Yes YamaP CAN act and do decent roles'. Thank god...
The other actor who spoke English was Kosugi Kein and his character was BADASS! I wanted to see SO much more of his character!
In fact the LACK of character development in this film is what left it down.
According to my friend, this ONE filmed covered all of ONE manga volume (it's still on-going and already has 17 volumes) and it's like 'if they're so insignificant in the manga then why I just wasted 2 hours with this characters?' sure you'd have picked more important characters and also really developed their backstories? Cos I REALLY wanted to see these character survive and I wanted to see them go on more missions together. But all this was the first volume? Then wtf? What a waste of a movie kinda.
So the lack of character development is a downer cos they were ALL interesting and badass!
As previously mentioned, I expected it to be more episodical. Like a 'we're in a ship in space and we're gunna send you down on missions to kill these creatures in doses' but I was wrong there. We got thrown right into the middle of it all and it was a FULL out battle from the start.
Last thing I expected that I already mentioned was lots of action and violence. In my opinion (and we know how much I love blood and violence) there was no where NEAR enough. You'd like cos the cockroaches have white blood and not red, that the studio would take advantage of that and just have it spray EVERYWHERE. The amount of action was also in small amounts. I needed more. They spent more time in a car trying to drive away from the cockroaches than actually fight, which is a shame. I was ready to see just like 20 minute blocks of action at a time where all the actors are just fighting the crap out of these things. But we only slightly got that in the last fight, which ended on a RIGHT cop-out. You could totally tell
It felt like this was a big introduction movie. Especially with the fact that we got constant voice overs from this random guy throughout the entire film who was explaining the whole Terra Former thing. So it felt more like a 'How To Play' movie. Which leads me to my last main negative: Where the FUCK is part 2?! SO many Japanese movies recently have automatically been given 2-part movies and it's like 'WTF TERRA FORMERS ISN'T A 2-PARTER?!' This movie DEFO needs another to come out after it. Especially cos at the end of the film the guy is like 'I'm coming back here to finish them off' and it's like 'YES!!! I WANNA SEE THAT!' but they didn't film a part 2?!?! WTF?!!? RAGE!! I need it NOW!!
A random point I wanna say is: The ending theme song to this movie is SO good! I was and wasn't surprised it was an EXILE song xD It's 三代目 J Soul Brothers's 'BREAK OF DAWN'
I think that's all I have to say on this movie xD
I'll defo be reading the manga when I have time though cos I wanna know more. Especially cos there's pyramids on freaking mars in this story - like wtf?! xD
---
Overall: I was entertained and I really enjoyed what I saw but it wasn't enough; it felt like one big introduction to this world and I need a part 2 asap! This was a VERY highly produced product (yet another big budget movie from Japan!) and it was visually pleasing and the CG was great and the end song is so catchy! I was very impressed by the English in this too. Didn't need to read the subtitles for most of that time they spoke English but of course there were a few dodgy pronouncing parts xD second movie please?
Rating: 6.5/10