You know that moment when you really don't want to watch
something even though you love the franchise, well this was my situation with
the live-action Attack on Titan, I found the first part a horrific mess leaving
me completely disinterested in the idea of bothering with the second part. After enough time and a lot of therapy I managed to psych
myself up to watch Attack on Titan: End of the World, to be honest it’s more
than just name for such an appalling piece of work, as the end of the world
would be preferable than sitting through this shambles again but let’s not get
ahead of ourselves. This second part continues where the first left off, Eren is
being held against his will, believed to be a threat to humanity until a new intelligent
Titan appears, takes out half the squad holding Eren, and makes off with him, following
this the film hits you in the face with a conspiracy story within the
government which is logical and fantastic idea, but comes across terribly, in such
a way that makes it totally unclear if this was an afterthought to the whole
movie, this also includes a lesson on the history of the titans which could of
been pulled off on its own, but only managed to make my brain turn to mush as
all the exposition is performed as boring and mindless drivel.
99% of the characters are dull and pointless with the only
people sporting close to a personality being the bad guys with their terrible over-flamboyant
badness being their only redeeming feature, some characters seem there just to
bring some laughs, but the comic relief just made me feel awkward for watching
it and dirty all at the same time. Coming into these films as an AoT virgin is probably the
best way to approach them, the greatest challenge to a fan is understanding who
is who, most of the characters aren’t anything like the manga and anime
counterparts which we’ve become accustomed to over this time, for example
Mikasa seems to be there as more the love interest, struggling with the fear of
imminent death and the wears of battles rather than being the strong-willed badass
character in the manga, not some 15 year old emo girl who is getting all weepy
over her latest crush.
Luckily Eren's character isn’t as bad as the rest but when I
say isn’t as bad I mean, it’s not by a large margin by any stretch of the
imagination, he’s nothing amazing just your average bog standard character, driven
by the death of his mother, out for revenge, will he lose himself to the Titan
inside or keep his humanity to save his friends? and at least he isn’t Armin. The Titans again are well done, though the line between CGI
and actors in rubber suits and makeup is quite obvious at times, with the final
battle against the colossal working being a prime example of this, the only decent
parts of the film are the action segments with one very cool Titan
transformation sequence which is really the only time when the movie tries to
show us something new and interesting, but over than that there isn’t ever
anything amazing or stand out here, I did really enjoy the death scenes, but maybe
I was kinda cheering for the wrong side throughout the whole thing again. The ending was good as it hint towards the secret of the
world outside the walls, it left me with hope, hope that this is the end of these
live action versions, and not plucking a third movie out of their collective
asses, I really don't think I could sit through another butchered version of a
manga I love, filled with bland and hackneyed characters and an idiotic story interspersed
with some very average action. With the second season of the Attack on Titan anime
coming out soon I urge you to not waste your time on this, something seemingly
so haphazardly slapped together, creating something so bad and detached from
the source material that you’d think you were watching Dragonball Evolution or The
Last Airbender
Attack on Titan: End of the World is out now on DVD and Blu-ray