Reviews

This was an entertaining movie, but I indulge in a lot of Asian entertainment and it had a lot of the hallmarks of some of the tropes you find in them. Especially the whole environmental crisis thing. Granted, while not woke like American movies in that regard, it was there and it's usual for the sci-fi genre. Still, the characters are fun for the most part, but you find tropes even with them. Tough guy mechanic, Tough girl captain, and tough, but traumatized MC. Then there's the little girl who as usual for movies that use children, acted more like an adult than a child. There was also the robot who was there for comedy relief.

There's a lot one could critique with this movie. For example, I mentioned there's the environmental crisis in this, but the villain is also a population control advocate due to those nasty humans being evil. What bothered me about the philosophy used to further the villains goals is that it was hypocritical. I guess you might say, well it's the villain, but what always bothers me about story tellers is they never have the heroes counter the villains monologues and accusations. For example, in this the villain will use someone's love for their family and bribe them to do something well "bad" and then call them a bad and greedy person for doing it. I'm like that's one, hypocritical because of what you want to do as the villain and two because you literally just used their care for another person, sometimes multiple people in their family and THEN CALL THEM GREEDY for giving up their morals to save loved ones. You could have a moral argument with them, sure, but I don't think greed is in the cards there when they're sacrificing who they are, what they believe in just to ensure the safety of others.

Then as some other reviewers pointed out, there's some issues with character choices. For the most part, these remain simple, but it goes with the above criticism about the moral argument in the story. There's a point in the story where the Big Bad gets over on the good guys. All story long it's about how the good guys need money and the MC needs money to save a loved one. So, the Big Bad throws a pile of money at them after getting what they want. Long story short, the whole crew decides to get rid of the money and do the right thing. My only complaint here is that I felt MC's need for the money was righteous and despite who gave him the money, he should've used it to do what he needed for his loved one AND double crossed the Big Bad. MC's goal was to save a life and he couldn't do it without money and he had a time limit to get the money before his loved one was gone. I'll put it that way and leave it at that. So, I felt he had just as serious a reason to double cross the Big Bad and use the money AND go against the villain. It would've been the beyond smart thing to do. It was at this point in the movie, when he decided to get rid of the money with the rest of the crew that I paused to type out this venting rant.

Aside from those criticisms, it's a fun, entertaining movie to watch as I said if you don't put any more thought into the philosophical and moral arguments the movie attempts to present. The actions scenes are great, the overall story is easy to follow, and the CGI is well done.

There are too many things in this movie that are obviously forced and not well thought out for the plotline the creators were trying to convey and the emotions they were equally trying to create within the viewer.

The problems all start in the beginning of this story. You don't meet the villain and have enough time with him to have any type of insight into him nor create empathy with the MC, Cecilia played by Elizabeth Moss. But let me stop here and commend Elizabeth Moss on her acting. If there's one thing positive about this movie, she did a phenomenal job acting at times when she was wrestling against an invisible foe. As did many of the other actors and actresses. Ms. Moss also did her best with what she was given and I commend her on that, but the writing and internal consistency and logic fell short for me. I know at times you're supposed to turn your brain off to enjoy things, but when minor details are obviously forced to try to manipulate a story and force the plot, it's pretty obvious.

As said, if the beginning had provided a different viewpoint, I might have grown more invested in the story and overlooked some of the silliness. There's a point in the story where Cecilia is framed for murder by the villain and I told my wife at that point that if the story had likely started there, I would have been invested without caring about seeing the aforementioned abusive relationship.

There are other elements such as the story wants me to believe this obsessive compulsive controlling ex-boyfriend will go to such extremes to torture his ex-girlfriend, but somehow Cecilia managed to befriend another male whom she's able to flee to immediately after escaping said overly obsessive compulsive controlling boyfriend? When was she able to meet this over six-foot tall, muscular, athletic, intimidating (her own words) man? As a guy, I could tell you that even guys who aren't insane obsessive compulsive controlling boyfriends and secure in their relationship would question their girlfriends befriending a guy like that. And no, before someone wants to call it insecurity, she's in such a relationship with this other man that it's intimacy with out the romantic and sexual intimacy. She's so close to this other guy that she professes love for his college age daughter? My point, again, is that unless said guy is already a friend of the couple which disarms alarm of any other normal guy who would be in a relationship with her, somehow we're supposed to believe that this insanely controlling ex-boyfriend stood by while she befriended this intimidating other male?

I know in society today, the above alone rubs some people the wrong way, but if you think men and women aren't intimidated by other men and women getting in relationships with their significant others, then you're quite naïve. It happens all of the time. Even with women. So don't go to the "Insecure male" stereotype and think about it. Think about the women who just harmlessly asked in probing, "Who was that lady you were talking to on the phone?" and such.

Apart from that, there were other forced and question raising things that diminished the story for me.

Then there was the lack of information that I mentioned in the beginning. For about 15 or so minutes, my wife and I were trying to figure out who the aforementioned male friend was and what his relationship was to Cecilia. I kept vacillating between platonic friend or someone she was in a romantic relationship with until my wife pointed out that she slept in the room with the guy's daughter. But we didn't get that revelation until well into the movie when the villain decided to show (well through actions) himself.

Then finally there's the entire plot itself. It's quit unbelievable and the MC herself asks the overarching question to the villain, "Why me? You could've had any other woman?" So, why her? As I stated above, we're led to believe that this guy is so insanely obsessive to the point that it's compulsive for him, he can't control himself but to control others, specifically her and he just can't let her go. I know there are people like this in the world, let me reiterate, THERE ARE PEOPLE LIKE THIS (AS IN MEN AND WOMEN, NOT JUST MEN), but I cannot for the life of me believe beyond fictional representation of such people, that either control freaks would go to such extremes. Especially given the man had plenty of other ways to torture his ex should he chose to do so. He had money, he had resourced, heck if you watch the movie, he had willing family who would go along with any of his plots, yet he chose this route?

In other words, the story feels like it's missing a necessary element that would glue all of this together and make it even believable enough to suspend the proper amount of disbelief to remove questions.

Very minor spoilers ahead.

It's been a long-time since I logged into my IMDB account and that's saying something, but after watching the first three episodes of this show, I felt I had to vent and I see I'm not the only one disappointed.

If you're reading this and other reviews here on IMDB, I would be wary of the higher star reviews. A lot of them, in my opinion, seem to simply be written to try to counter the negative reviews of which have merit. I mean even some of the positive reviews tell you that the show has problems.

As a long time fan of anime/manga/manhua/manhwas, kung fu films and shows, and a variety of entertainment originating out of Asia, I've seen a great deal of their style of storytelling. From Astro Boy to RoboTech (or Macross Saga for those purists out there) to Cartoon Network and everything in between including the occasional light novel or two. You're looking at someone with 30+ years of indulging in this type of entertainment and it annoys me to no end that the most cliche of cliche villain types that are so overused in anime/manga/manhua/manhwas showed up in this story, the Catholic Church. Or I should say a horrible caricature of the Catholic Church or what someone who doesn't understand the Catholic Church and Middle age Christian history thinks. That aside, it's cliche. The evil Catholic Church or a caricature of it is always there in these medieval-type settings or even when they're dealing with a supernatural threat. Vampires and monsters mercilessly killing people, let's make the Church (or caricature of it) the main villain and the monsters misunderstood or some other nonsense. It's lazy writing, very lazy and overused writing.

So with that said, I started losing interest the moment the evil Catholic priest showed up.

I further lost interest when the writers forced an unnecessary scene at the beginning of episode 3 where the cliche evil priest dragged the title character out in front of the village he's been living in for who knows how long, but long enough for people to know his name, recognize him, get in his boat, and know that in all that time nobody died by Yasuke's hand. Noooo, but lazy writing prevails, and this random foreigner these village people don't know from Adam shows up and claims Yasuke murdered someone and the village people suddenly believe it? Even the boy who looked up to Yasuke suddenly believes it? Lazy writing turns random characters into idiots and I despise that. Not only that, but the scene served absolutely no purpose whatsoever in the story's narrative. It served no purpose to establish the cliche evil priest's villainy, that was already established. It served no purpose to establish the cliche evil priest's entourage's villainy, again, already established. This seems to only be done to throw the viewer further into Yasuke's melancholy, which again, has already been established since episode 1.

This all made the show seem obnoxiously slow to me and by the time the first arc was resolved, I didn't care about the second arc. The titular character did very little over the first three episodes and for those of you out there ready to say "you just wanted a shounen style anime with unrealistic fight scenes, etc." Nope, I've enjoyed my fair share of cerebral anime/manga/etc. But this show dragged along. Also, let me just point out this show starts with unrealistic fight scenes with giant mecha robots in Sengoku era Japan. It introduces superpowers (magic, mutants, or whatever) in a historical drama. So get off your high horse and no, I'm not complaining about that.

After that, it was the lack of focus. The show keeps flashing back to Yasuke's past which seems far more interesting than the present story about some girl with powers that everyone's after. Yeah, some aspects of the flashbacks tell you certain things about why Yasuke is the way he is, but again, that was already established in the first episode. They could've held out on so many flashbacks and only used them when Yasuke needed to remember something or make a connection to something in his past which I won't give away. This also made the show feel like it was dragging along because it couldn't make up its mind as to which story was more important, the past or the present. Again, showing the writing for this show is lacking.

Then you have the period drama of Japanese culture that doesn't respect that culture and I'll say this for people who will jump on the Politically Correct "Woke" aspect of the show. First, it's NetFlix, what'd you expect? Second, it wasn't that bad. Third, I agree with you. Fourth, and this is to the people thinking Politically Correct "Woke" preaching in entertainment is a good thing. It's not. It's just like the Cliche Evil Christian Church Caricature I harped on above. It's been overdone, it's tired. It's played out. It's only preaching to the choir of people who believe in that and even some of them are starting to get tired of it. I digress.

Putting this in Middle Age Japan meant you should respect certain things while breaking some limits. And no, I'm not saying the Japanese don't do things like have Women Samurai themselves, but they don't preach about it with characters saying things like,"Is it common for women to be a general in this country?" and the woman character saying things like "Don't go easy on me because I'm a girl" and then proceeds to get whooped, etc. I don't necessarily consider that as feminism, but I was a little irritated with a show titled "Yasuke" and the titular character getting beat up, tossed around, and needed saving by a little girl, even if partially. Now that, that spoke volumes to me about the underlying agenda here. Someone might say, well it was just the third episode and they were still building the story. No, this show has six thirty-minute episodes and it wasted a lot of time in the first two episodes repeatedly emphasizing things already established about characters, etc. Take out a lot of that and you should've had Yasuke fighting at a moderately victorious level by the third episode. If you wanted, you should've had him and Saki fighting together by the third episode.

It's evident the show, IMHO, wanted to be the spiritual successor of Afro Samurai with the science fiction elements, outlandish martial arts abilities, and unique Japanese setting, but it failed.

Having just watched Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress I wanted to quickly address some of the complaints about the similarities to Attack on Titan.

The main similarities I see that someone could bring up between KotIF and AoT are these: 1) It takes place in a relatively post-apocalyptic setting. 2) Humanity is fighting against monstrosities threatening the existence of mankind. 3) Humanity lives in a walled city environment. 4) The walled city is breached in the first episode. 5) The main character wants revenge. 6) The main female character, so far, is stronger than the main male character. 7) There is some type of militarized fighting forced designed to protect the remnants of humanity against the monster threat. 8) The main characters have hybrid powers that help them fight the monsters.

In these comparisons there are differences that set Kabaneri apart and the reason I say people are over-reaching to find a problem with these. For instance:

1)In Attack on Titan the setting is 100+ years after the Titans appear. In Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress the time is still within the same period that the monsters appear, not 100+ years after it.

2)The monsters are not titans. They are not giants. I know some scenes make the monsters appear to be large, but when the humans, the Bushi warriors, fight the Kabane, the monsters, they all are of equal size with a few hulking or tall monsters here and there, but even then it is nothing beyond a tall human since the monsters are created when a Kabane bites an uninfected human. With that said, the Kabane are somewhat the equivalent to what most movies and television shows would call a Zombie. Not a giant. The Kabane/Zombie have the ability to heal, are stronger than normal humans, more durable, and for some reason their heart glows and is hard to pierce. Given that fact, piercing the heart and chopping off the head seem to be the only way to kill them which would also make the Kabane similar to the Western concept of a Vampire. Not a giant. Contrast this to AoT where the Titans are only killed by cutting out the nape of the neck.

3)In both stories humanity lives in a walled city, however, in Kabane of the Iron Fortress there is more than one walled city. In the opening scenes the train travels through one walled city, they call train stations that has already been overrun prior to the story starting. The walled city that the story starts in is another walled city and after that one is attacked by the Kabane you discover through character dialogue that there may be other surviving walled cities/stations. Contrast this to AoT's solo surviving human walled city.

4)As stated before, the second walled city you are introduced to is breached by the Kabane. Similarly, the walled city in AoT is breached. The differences are in how the breach happens.

5)The only similarity I can think of between the two main characters is Eren wants revenge against the Titans and hates them for the breach and the death of his mother and Ikoma wants revenge and hates the Kobane for something that happened in his past. The differences in these two characters are far more recognizable. Ikoma saves himself at a pivotal point in the story whereas had that been Eren, he would've gotten saved by Mikasa or someone else. Ikoma is aware of and starts to gain some relative control of his hybrid abilities despite misunderstanding them pretty early in the story whereas it takes Eren some time to figure out he is a Titan Shifter and how to control his abilities. In fact, deep into the manga, Eren still has a difficult time controlling his abilities. Their personalities are relatively similar, but one should chalk this up to anime and manga using stereotypical generic tropes in characterization rather than the creative team copying AoT into Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress.

6)Mikasa and Mumei, at least, start off stronger than the main male lead. I'll also add they both have somewhat of an odd, aloof, emotionless personality. I'd argue that Mikasa showed more emotion than Mumei early on in the story, but is somewhat of that stereotypical trope of an emotionless character who sometimes shows emotion. Still, the main similarity I see between the both of them is in strength. However, once again the differences are more prevalent. While Mikasa was good using the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment the corps used to fight Titans, Mumei started off with the impression she was simply good at fighting Kabane with fighting skills and the gas/air powered guns they use to pierce Kabane hearts

7)There is a militarized fighting force that defends and assaults the monster threat. In AoT these are the Survey Corps along with, I think, two to three other branches of the military. In KotIF, these are the Bushi warriors. While this is a general similarity, I don't think one could point to it with any real strength of an argument.

8)The main characters have hybrid powers, or the existence of hybrid powers. The problem with calling this a similarity to AoT and only AoT ignores the usage of this trope in a number of other anime and manga. Not only this, but again, Ikoma and Mumei have and use their hybrid abilities fairly early in the story whereas Eren doesn't unconsciously use his abilities until far later into the first season of AoT and even then it takes a small amount of time for the story to reveal it is Eren.

In all this, this show offers a unique view of various tropes mentioned above. Ikoma, the main character alone doesn't simply cry about his situation or declare loudly how he will win and overcome. He actually does it and it makes sense despite the lack of tact during his victories.

Firstly, I understand the director, Jennifer Lynch, left the project due to creative differences about the finished product. From what I've read she envisioned a sort of love story while the rest of the crew wanted a horror film.

I'm not entirely sure either would have worked. Personally, I think the writers, directors and editors failed to think coherently. The originating event when coupled with the end result makes no sense. Let me explain, the reason for the whole ride revolves around a stereotypical American man out for his own selfish desires. He has cancer of the brain, which according to some makes him a bit crazy, therefore he wants to capture the snake goddess and force her to make him immortal so he won't die of cancer. Now...opening scene, Mr. Stereotypical American along with some "misguided" Indians find the snake goddess and her male counterpart procreating. Here's where you're going to have the question....because right here is where they fail to think. Instead of snatching the snake goddess...they snatch the male and run away after Mr. Stereotypical American taunts the deity and continues to do so throughout the film so he can....capture her.

Aside from that my other problem with the film is that it doesn't give me a reason to really care. I can understand her rage, but beyond that I didn't really care...I was just curious. Maybe if the male counter part also transformed into human form while under torture it would've pulled me in more. Maybe if they gave her some dialog to show she actually could think beyond primal instincts and the occasional erotic transformation or what I'll just call a nature scene....I would've cared more.

I can't really say much for the acting as I'm not too familiar with the cast. I understand Irrfan Khan and Divya Dutta are considered talented veterans. I have no idea why the cast Jeff Doucette as the villain. He came off forced to me. He didn't look the part or act the part. I would have rather it been a suave rich looking guy, although stereotypical, yes, but at least have him look a little more menacing.

That brings me to the stereotype. Of course this is a foreign movie, and it's expected to have a negative outlook on an American. Of course there is the possibility that his brain cancer caused him to act irrational. However, I got the vibe that the whole message was that Americans don't respect culture or warnings and can easily corrupt everyone with money. While some of this is true, I think it would've been easily successful to have a secularized Indian business man as the culprit just as well.

Overall the movie fails. It's linear but falls apart. Some of the events aren't properly explained like certain deaths, certain ominous situations,etc.

If you're bored...watch it....if not, I suggest something else. There was a Thai movie about a female tiger woman, name slips my mind now, that executed far better than this.

While it isn't the biggest blockbuster movie to hit the screens, it's a well rounded movie. You have to be super stiff to not care about the characters involved and don't expect a long drawn out explanation of events. The movie gets to the story at a decent pace and reels you in with interaction between the cast. If anything annoyed me it was my feelings for the characters' plights such as the annoying insistence of some of the friends as if they couldn't comprehend the father's stance, but expected him to forego 8 years due to the mother's sudden appearance. Although, it's to be expected and it's not so annoying as to kill the movie...it actually helps you get into the situation and relate.

Overall this was a good movie...

SyFy movies are a dime a dozen on Saturday nights and this one has a decent and original story line. There are no big blockbuster effects and no deep philosophical plot twists or ideologies. It's simply a sword and sorcery fantasy movie with tidbits of action here and there. Taking it for what it is keeps it in perspective. Those individuals who will think its "apallingly bad" are individuals who can't look past the low budget presentation of the film, although this one isn't that low budget in presentation.The acting is decent for a SyFy movie, the effects are decent, fight scenes decent and setting decent. Again it's not your top of the line straight to the box office film....take it for what it is and stop trying to be the newest critic on the block. We have enough of those.

This review is mostly written to counter one of the complaints given in another review. The following may contain spoilers: The story showed Jozefa's (MyAnna Buring) conflict with her mother, the Red Queen from the Red Queen's initial introduction. So the fact she found out the King is her brother along with the fact that she's taken a liking to the King's best friend is the catalyst for her betrayal. Not to mention the King's best friend talking her down.