Grimerlana Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

jehannaicker Wow! and not in the sense that it was good, wow as in how could you dare pass this off as Attack on Titan. The story strayed so much from the original content that its unrecognizable. I don't mind a retelling or different approach when creating a live-action film but to completely change its context is unacceptable, especially when your target audience are the fans who love the manga/anime so much. Eren's motivation for killing the titans was revenge for how they destroyed his hometown and eating his mother right in front of the poor kid but now its just to ease his own conscious for leaving mikasa out of the shelter to die. Mikasa went from a strong headed female character in the anime to something completely different. And the whole point of not having Mikasa and Eren be together as a couple was a link to their backstory of being childhood friends with their father both having worked together. Armin suddenly creates gadgets. I don't recall that at all. He was more of a strategist. The side characters had more depth than the lead roles. A lot of other characters that trained with Eren weren't featured which was disappointing due to the fact that they helped influence Eren's personality throughout the manga/anime. Then we get to the real thing that pisses me off. Who the hell is this Shikishima character and why is he the armored titan and the General-Commander is the Coloussus Titan. What?! Just what?! No I can't accept such liberal recasting of who gets to be who. The actors didn't play their parts except for the side characters. Everything felt forced liked they were role-playing an anime instead of owning a live-action version of it. I think an American studio would've done a better job considering that not all the humans left in the world were Japanese. I understand that its from a Japanese source but the fact of the matter is that all of humanities survivors were of different races and ethnicities which is what showcased that humanity could put aside their differences and come together to face this threat.I think the first part should've been about Eren's character development and his training then the second part should've been the next attack on wall Rose when Eren seals it with the large rock.All in all it was a huge waste of time and i couldn't wait for it to end. Yet another failure for live-action adaptions.

phoenix 2 Hmm...this one was better than the first one. It had more action scenes, with the guys flying among the titans beautifully, a better explanation over the whole titan thing and a nice setting. The love story was not good, the special effects were okay this time around, but I wish I could get a better understanding of what and why the guy was becoming a titan. Having not watched the anime nor read the manga, I am rating this solely on my experience as film lover, so 5 out of 10.

Charles Herold (cherold) I really enjoyed the first Attack on Titan live feature, which may have not always been faithful but was pretty exciting. The second movie, on the other hand, is a nonsensical piece of tripe with little to recommend it.There shouldn't actually be two movies. These were filmed at the same time and the second movie is full of flashbacks to the first one, so you could easily tighten these two 90-minute movies into one that was under two and a half hours. Alas, this wasn't done.This movie makes no real sense from the first scene, in which Eren is tied up in a weird way and a mad commander screams. There's a surprise early on when the movie actually explains how Titans came to be, something the anime series has been dropping hints at for years without giving any real answers (no idea if the movie's answers will be the same in the anime or manga).Outside of that, the movie is just a fairly incomprehensible story involving a bomb and some big titans that feels disjointed and poorly thought out. Characters do incredibly stupid things (as they did in the first movie) and no one's motivations make any sense. And the big action sequences in the end are less enthralling than the best action of the first movie.I do enjoy Satomi Ishihara's comical take on Hange Zoe, but the other characters are virtually devoid of personality. Had the big action scene of the second movie been allowed to build out of the action of the first movie it might have all worked, but the producers clearly wanted to get two movies out of one, with very bad results.

Mek Torres The first Attack on Titan already missed the point of the anime/manga. Disregard the source material, it still delivers enough dose of delightful violence. But since it now made an even more complicated storyline for this mythology, it would be tough to gain the chance of having a compelling story. And here we are, the sequel that is suppose to make sense out of something that's already made stupid. Maybe the predecessor was sort of forgivable for bringing a lot of cool action and bloody death scenes from the Titans, but here, it's more explaining; while that's not a bad choice, the characters aren't improved, the themes are even more vague and the plot is just shallow. The action is fine when it delivers, but we witness more horribly written characters here than whatever made the first movie at least fun.This sequel is about unraveling conspiracies from tyrannical governments, and that doesn't sound so bad since it's representing its own dystopian future allegory. But every time it keeps explaining the life inside and outside the walls, things get seriously confusing. At one point, it states that life inside the walls is suppose to be some sort of a utopian facade, but we hardly even get to explore that commentary. We're just explained that everyone inside the walls are slaves from a classified science experiment. And the rest of the movie has these characters deciding which side should they choose, either to destroy the wall or kill many innocent civilians. It would be cool if this argument doesn't take forever, but it keeps going. The problem is it's not given much tension since we hardly even knew who the people they were defending. It's just a nearly unending argument of which choice is supposed to be the right thing and it gets tedious.And the story gets even stupider the more they reveal the secrets of the villains, but we'd rather shrug it off and wait for the next action scene. Too bad, it takes a chunk of every ten to twenty minutes to get there. The first movie, while dumb, does spend a lot establishing the terror of the Titans. Here, the action is much reserved, which is a shame since these scenes are the only ones that are quite glorious to watch. Now we see hand-to-hand fights between two or more Titans and that's pretty awesome, but again, these scenes are just so little compared to the dreary expositions the entirety took over. The effects still looks nice, but it's easy to overlook these merits if everything else seems boring.Attack on Titan 2: End of the World is just not trying anymore. The first movie have established too much of the terror of these creatures, but then there happens to be a greater villain, which is presented with dull verbal expositions that leads to an utterly underwhelming finale of a franchise that hardly has anything to put out to begin with. They could have made things simple, like a direct adaptation, rather than being a much shallow version of The Giver movie or an exasperatingly complicated version of The Scorch Trials. The anime/manga is already a pretty clever, and once again, morally complex material. So why follow these generic trends? Well, fine, if you want to be a mindless fun movie, then go ahead. Besides, the title "Attack on Titan" and even more so with "End of the World" are perfect to enough to indicated a mindless, but pretty cool epic. But this movie sadly justifies nothing.