Forum - View topicREVIEW: 20th Century Boys 1 (live action) DVD
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8502 Location: Penguinopolis |
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While I certainly enjoy Carl's writing style in his reviews, this one especially, I disagree with some of the content. I found the first 20th Century Boys movie to be rather a good one, though perhaps not as good as it could have been with a better director.
It was clear to me the production crew painstakingly put together the sets and casted appropriate actors for each role, something impressive for the number of sets the story requires and the astonishing number of characters. The scenes that take place in 1969, with Kenji and his friends as children were remarkably well done. The acting itself was competent enough, as well. I felt like, other than a few missteps in the cutting down or out certain scenes, the narrative remained solid, and I never felt anxious or just hoped for the next scene to come, other than desiring to see more of it play out. Fortunately, the movie had the luxury of Urasawa himself taking part in the scriptwriting. In my own review, I mention how the movie puts across all the important themes of the manga (which is my favorite manga to date) and even has a tighter focus on Kenji than parts of the manga. The mistakes seemed more negligible to me than to Carl, obviously. As far as live-action adaptations of manga, this one was the best I've seen. |
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minakichan
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Yeah, I have to disagree as well; the cast was great, the movie was dramatic and exciting, and it all was very faithful to the original. Sure, it kind of plays out more like it should be part of a serial drama than a movie, but considering it as the first of a trilogy, I thought it was great, and I'm usually terribly picky about "butchering."
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Kirikiri23
 Posts: 130 |
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Didn't this come out over a year ago?
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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I have to agree with this statement. Also, I showed this movie to my anime club at my university and everyone loved it. That's real rare for anything we show since everyone has different tastes and such, but they were actually mad at me for bringing in the first movie before the second and third were released, cause they wanted to know right away what had happened afterward. As a fan of the manga, I admit that the manga itself isn't exactly a perfect narrative. I feel that the movie more or less matched the manga in its jumping back from one time to the next and such without any warning. The only qualm I had with the movie (and I understand that there's a limit for an adaptation) was that most of Kenji's group were barely even given a background and many things about them were cut. |
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kkayala
Posts: 2 |
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i was so looking forward to this movie too...i'll probably still watch it at some point but i was hoping for better.
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Araki
Posts: 397 |
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Couldn't agree anymore with the review, i found this movie to be a huge, HUGE disappointment. So much that i'm still trying to find the will to watch the sequels, even being a big fan of the original work.
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skins2153
Posts: 14 |
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That is so sad that it is beyond words. A 0/10 movie cant be the best out there. This movie was ATROCIOUS. You are either sublimely tolerant or have NEVER seen something actually good in your life. You adapt something to make it better. The process is needed to make things flow because it is a different format than week to week chapters. Drama is built differently across both mediums. This director forgot that and filmed a manga. I liked the manga and thought it would make a great hollywood movie...then it came out in japan. This was the first live action manga/anime based movie i have ever seen come out of japan and omg all I can think is that it was seemingly made by an infant who has no clue how to generate drama or tension even in the slightest. I was so angry and disgusted when I saw this. Did this director ever watch a good movie either? I bet (pray to god) that he had a George Lucas post episode one moment where he realized "JUST WTF HAVE I DONE!?" Otherwise not only is he an incompetent filmmaker but also an idiot...like anyone else who liked this trash. This isnt a hate rant. This is not opinion either. Sometimes an opinion is so far off and unjustified it is just an error of fact. Roger Ebert said that and it is definitely applicable here. I hate this rotten movie. I hate that I looked forward to it. I laugh if you think this is "good." |
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penguintruth
Posts: 8502 Location: Penguinopolis |
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skins2153, it's hard to believe that's not a "hate rant" when all you do is make vague criticisms and don't address any specifics at all.
Also, 20th Century Boys would make an horrible Hollywood movie. Japan factors in quite a bit in this story. As for if I've ever seen anything good in my life, why don't you decide for yourself from the ratings in my My Anime List? There's a link right down there. Last edited by penguintruth on Sat Jan 09, 2010 5:38 am; edited 3 times in total |
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Brack
 Posts: 291 Location: UK |
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Boy, that's damning it with faint praise! 
I enjoyed this for what it was, I had no problem with the adaptation or the art direction. The real issue I have is with the cast, and the direction of some of the performances. But that's somewhat endemic of Japanese cinema as a whole, and I've certainly seen worse. Teruyuki Kagawa acts everyone else off the screen in his role as Yoshitsune, but they'd have never found enough cinema actors of his calibre to fill the hundreds of roles across the trilogy. Instead you've got people alongside him there doing TV performances and worse, stage performances. You don't need to perform to the back of the room when you're blown up on the silver screen or being played off a DVD. Hidehiko Ishizuka is guiltiest of this here, but there's plenty of others doing it too. And it's really on the director to have got them to dial it down a bit. |
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penguintruth
Posts: 8502 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Well, I didn't think the Death Note live-action movies were too horrible. Not nearly as good as this movie, though. |
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Anton Chigurh
 Posts: 257 Location: Guam |
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Usually when there's an active back-and-forth between people who either liked or hated a movie I'd chalk it as its ability to create debate in the audience - a certain positive for a work of art.
However, after watching the trailer on Youtube... nah, thank you. Its cinematography looks inept and its acting offensive. And it follows that the story itself cannot be anything but a compression of the manga, which logically eliminates the attention to detail that endeared the story to me in the first place. But Urasawa was actually helping in the creative progress and I did like the manga a LOT, which means I do see myself seeing this in the future - except it would be the distant future, and not paying a cent for it. |
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Sven Viking
Posts: 1043 |
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A fair attempt to squash too much story into a movie length. Obviously a genius director would have made a huge difference, but it was clear that the guy did his best. I was particularly surprised that the actors actually looked like their manga counterparts.
I see why it would disappoint people expecting something great, but contrary to what's said in the ANN review -- and unlike most adaptations -- it hardly butchers anything. It merely fails at presenting them well. Skins2153 has obviously (fortunately?) missed out on a heap of truly bad films.
Though they had plenty of problems, I thought the film ending was a considerable improvement over the manga's. |
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Gilles Poitras
Posts: 481 Location: Oakland California |
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I also have to disagree. The "Junked scenes" play out pretty close to the way they are in the manga. How is that junked?
The movie has much of the feel of the manga with the cuts from one time period to another. Also be aware there are bootlegs of this series (and Death Note) in some stores. |
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Kirikiri23
Posts: 130 |
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I think they were about the same 6/7 ish I would say Still got to watch the last two parts the ending to the first part was the only thing I didn't significantly like averwise I think it's like a 8 worthy movie actually |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3495 Location: Back stateside |
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First of all, as someone who considers 20th Century Boys her favorite manga and one of the best manga ever written, let me say "Darn" and "I'm not surprised." I mean, I'd wanted this to be awesome, but Urasawa's work is so very serial, made up of many, many mini episodes tied together in a myth arc, that turning it into a movie would be a huge challenge.
Which leads me to....
Rule #1 of adaptation: What works in one medium does not necessarily work so well in another. I was reminded of this watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy again the other weekend. Yes, it changes a lot of things from the book, but about 80% of those changes I would actually consider necessary, because things that work in a book don't always work in a movie, unless you've written your book to be made into a movie, and then your book likely sucks because what works in a movie doesn't always work in a book. Did you follow that rambling sentence? 
Basically, what I'm saying is that if you wanted to take the three movie option, rather than a long-running TV series as they did with Monster, matching the manga or being religiously faithful would be a Bad Idea. I would much rather have a movie trilogy of 20th Century Boys that messed with plot details but worked as a continuous cinematic narrative than one that was exactingly close but seemed choppy. I will say, from clips I've seen, that the actors they cast look unnervingly like the characters in the manga. I wouldn't be surprised if they sacrificed talent for accuracy in that regard either. All that aside, though, I am probably going to rent this just to see how well/badly it was done for myself. Even if it's awful, I know it won't ruin the manga for me, and given that I write blog reviews on everything, it wouldn't even be a waste of time, just an opportunity in writing. Oh, and for all of you saying it's "the best live action adaption EVAR!", please go download the live action Nodame Cantabile. Often unfaithful to the plot and small details of the manga, it works beautifully and has a great cast. I wish somebody would license it so I could replace my low-video-quality fansubs. |
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