Attack on Titan adapts the hit manga/anime of the same name for the big screen. It explains at the start that a hundred years ago, the monstrous titans emerged and destroyed much of humanity. The survivors built a city with three concentric walls to keep the titans out, and have lived relatively peacefully for the last century. Eren (Haruma Miura) and his friends Mikasa and Armin (Kiko Mizuhara and Kanata Hongo) witness the first titan attack in a hundred years, which leaves a giant hole in the middle of the outermost wall. Two years later, Eren has joined the scouting regiment, a unit given special gear to help deal with the titans. He joins a mission to take a truck of explosives into titan-controlled territory, in the hopes of sealing up the hole in the wall.
Fans of the source material will likely be disappointed with the changes made to the story. People unfamiliar with Attack on Titan will probably just be puzzled. This is a really strange movie that seems to go out of its way to feel odd and awkward. It constantly bringing attention to the weird little tics of the characters, rather than concentrating on telling this story of survival and treachery on a grand scale. Though the scenes with the titans are properly horrifying, the rest of the movie is really kind of awful.
It gets weird right from the very start. It presents its exposition in large clumps, with characters often saying out loud what ought to be conveyed visually. Through all this exposition, the film never really develops much of a sense of place. One of the most compelling things about Attack on Titan is the specificity of the setting, the three-walled city itself presenting a wealth of narrative and thematic possibility. But the movie never really gets around to any of that. It is too busy setting up what appears to be a terribly awkward love triangle at the center of the picture.
The titans are properly horrific. They use real human actors in heavy, monstrous makeup to achieve the affect, and the film allows things to get really violent. Despite some clunky compositing, the film has no problem selling the danger of these threats, which makes the narrative priorities of the film seem even more suspect. It often has the characters disregarding the precariousness of their situation. They are told repeatedly that the titans are attracted to the voices of humans, but that doesn’t stop them from carrying on like dumb teenagers through most of the middle of the film; fighting with each other, pairing up, and generally acting like there aren’t thirty foot giants waiting to eat them outside.
The film spends a lot of time getting to know these various characters, even though they’re each just playing the same beats over and over. One of them doesn’t like Eren. Another likes to eat a lot. Yet another is kind of crazy, and wants to dissect a titan. Despite all this time spent with the character, it still all feels really thin. The movie doesn’t really get very deep into the stories of these characters, or the story of the place as a whole. It gets so tedious that you might end up rooting for the titans to win.
Attack on Titan doesn’t offer any sort of satisfying resolution, either. There is a second part coming in September, and it appears that the real meat of the story will be in that installment. There isn’t nearly enough material in this first movie to justify the split. It’s understandable that the film would want to simplify the lengthy and often complex source material in order to make it work on screen. But what we get here doesn’t quite work at all. At best, the film delivers a handful of disturbing scenes that involve vast swaths of humanity being consumed by these unfeeling monsters. But all the moments in between are pretty tough to watch.
My Rating:
