Netflix's FMA Movie is a Dumpster Fire. Here's Why.

so Warner Brothers and Netflix just released a brand-new Fullmetal Alchemist movie and in keeping with the proud tradition of full metal alchemist movies it's [ __ ] terrible yay I could go off on this movie for God so many things the 90s caliber CGI the lackluster production design that leaves every set looking like a set in every costume looking like a costume with no sense of period authenticity or realistic wear and tear the terrible wigs they put on the child actors the terrible child actors they put in those wigs or [ __ ] gluttony but I don't want to nitpick this movie to death because well it does have plenty of technical flaws to tear apart it suffers from a much more substantial underlying problem it's exactly the kind of adaptation that we nerds so often say we want to see in the wake of films like Death Note a mostly straightforward copy of the original story with a slavish devotion to recreating the most iconic visuals in that story and like ghosts on the shell and Batman vs Superman before it it serves as an excellent example of why this approach to adaptation almost invariably fails when you look at how FMA the movie is laid out in comparison to the original manga and anime it becomes clear what mandate the screenwriters were given in composing the film script to cram as many iconic FMA moments as possible into a two-hour runtime and leave off on a big climax without giving away too much in case the movie makes enough money to get a sequel in 2 hours and 15 minutes full metal alchemist covers in this order which is not the canon order EDD nails origin story the Lior incident the show Tucker Ark the search for dr. marcoh Al's existential crisis the murder of Mays Hughes the assault on the fifth Laboratory the homunculus zombie army zom monkey I I guess and the death of lust FMA Brotherhood dedicates 9 episodes a little over three hours most of them somewhat rushed to the bulk of those plot points while the zamok you lie are a major factor in the entire last act of the story FM a 2003 takes 11 episode almost four hours to cover the same subject matter and those last two plot points aren't even in the original series this means that events are condensed for time and condensed really badly at that the worst offender is the death of Trisha Elric at the start of the film which is set up and concluded in under two minutes hi kids real proud of your alchemy bye kids forever alright bro let's Frankenstein this [ __ ] also just as an aside this movie commits one of the cardinal filmmaking sins in this first scene the score lies to the audience the music playing as the brothers transmit their toy horses is some super tense horror movie [ __ ] while the scene itself is really cute and wholesome for about 40 seconds until she dies I really don't get the point of creating this dissonance it's not funny it doesn't add anything to the plot the film doesn't otherwise treat alchemy as anything scary it's just really out of place and there are lots of other moments where the music in the film feels like it was lifted from a different film or some sort of creative commons music library and just graft it on to FM a randomly but moving back to that death the problems with it carry through to every major plot point that the film tries to recreate after the boys start trying to bring back their mom and get Wizard of Oz out of their house because the filmmakers couldn't think of a more interesting way to do the door of truth scene we abruptly cut to Ed chasing father cornello through the back streets of Lior and okay look I'm not opposed to the idea of this arc being used as an in medias res here's what James Bond was up to before the actual mission started deal but the execution here is really hackneyed and fundamentally undermines what made cornello an interesting threatening villain in the first place let's put aside the fact that this actually would have been a much better place to start the movie than they rushed prologue and that's not the only sign that this movie is an editing hack job why in the hell is cornello running from the boys in the first place in the original he had them on the ropes the whole time right up until they beat him cornello is a goddamn cult leader he shouldn't be skulking in back alleys and he certainly shouldn't run into a crowded Town Square to take a hostage he should be proudly out in the open rallying the townspeople to murder the Elric brothers as heretics the whole [ __ ] point of his character is to demonstrate the frightening manipulative aspects of religion one of the underlying themes of the series entire plot here we have literally no context for why the people think that he's a good guy in the first place or why they'd listen to Envy disguised as him and start rioting on his orders [ __ ] we don't even know why the boys are chasing him and by having them simply run him down and catch him with force instead of tricking him into exposing himself as a charlatan we lose an opportunity for Edie to show off how clever he is which is another running problem for this movie live action Edie isn't exactly some brilliant alchemic prodigy rather he's led by the nose to every major discovery by another character Tucker points him in the direction of dr. Marco Hughes discovers the location of the fifth laboratory and as a result of that Edie never figures out how philosopher's stones are made until Tucker spells it out for him in his villains speech Ed's intelligence is his single most defining trait it's both what gets him into trouble and what gets him out of it it makes him cool and the fact that intelligence is the main characters greatest weapon is a big part of what makes FM a cool at least for nerds like me taking that away is the last thing that any FMA adaptation should ever do but the movie has to do it that way because smart investigation scenes take time and require on-screen development to be believable and they've still got a cram like eight more iconic FMA moments in for the trailer I mean who's gonna watch an FM a movie where lust doesn't get lit on fire a whole lark too early and the whole thing with show Tucker doesn't happen [ __ ] they didn't even have time to put furor King Bradley in the movie but no that's definitely an artistically driven choice and not a transparent bid to leave a spot open for casting a popular actor if they get a sequel greenlit just like it's totally an artistic choice to write al the only character who's entirely CGI out of like half the scenes that he's supposed to be in see this is the problem with being faithful to the original and trying to please the fans hardcore fans are naturally going to get excited about seeing say a live-action nina chimera or a live-action version of lust and Mustang so if a marketing executive is running the show they're gonna say you have to put those parts in but they may not be the best fit if the goal is to tell a good story or even if the goal is to execute on those moments in a satisfying manner I mean the show tucker story is rushed as hell in brotherhood but at least it's a story in the live-action movie the boys go to the tucker residents play with nina and alexander for all of 30 seconds and then edy sits down for a conversation with tucker where he mostly just explains his backstory which sets up an awkward as hell dream flashback sequence where Edie relives the incident at the door of truth but this time he's a teenager and my only guess as to why it was done this way is because the child actor they picked for Edie was so shitty that he just wasn't capable of carrying such a pivotal scene seriously what happened to those kids from the erase drama they were great put them in more movies sorry I got a bit sidetracked there but hey that's exactly what this movie does to Tucker then sends Edie and Winry to find dr. marcoh while he's busy hypnotizing al because reasons on the train Winry reminds Eddie to have a flashback about how much Nina likes him because otherwise the audience wouldn't know that they're supposed to care about her and they couldn't find time to organically work that scene into the actual story they also talked to dr. Marco for all of two minutes before lust shows up and kills him in front of them which doesn't make much sense then they go back to the city and oh [ __ ] Nina's a chimera now and Ed's got a punched Tucker in the least convincing way ever now Nina's sad okay it's over there's no build-up no time to get invested in or attached to these characters the only way that anyone is gonna care about any of this is if they've seen or read FMA before because it will remind them of a thing that made them sad but this version of that thing is incapable of making anyone sad because it's so rushed and poorly handled if all you care about is a movie being visually accurate to the comic or anime then sure this is almost a one for one translation of that scene and that is cool to see on the big or small screen just like it was cool to see parademons show up in Batman vs Superman but that doesn't stop the movie underneath those nice visuals and accurate references from being half human half dog [ __ ] in the anime and manga you have time to come to care for Nina and even for Tucker you see the desperation start to break him and hope nothing bad will happen even though it slowly becomes inevitable that something bad will his betrayal is devastating and frightening li understandable at the same time in the movie it actually straight up doesn't make any sense alright so in Full Metal Alchemist the movie the boys don't study under Tucker for their alchemy exams they're sent to his house by general hakuro to give them a leg up in searching for the Philosopher's Stone at least ostensibly in reality Hocker OHS goal is to separate the brothers so that Tucker can experiment on Al and find out how he works while ed is sent off either to go on a wild-goose chase or to find dr. Marco so that lust can assassinate him this isn't directly stated but it's at least implied by the fact that hakuro and Tucker are working together and it's the only way that any of the film's events even remotely make sense hakuro needs to figure out how al Sol bonding works so that he can bond Philosopher's stones into his a monk you lie army which he needs to do so that all of the characters aside for Mustang have something to do in the climax so given this given that show Tucker is directly working with a superior officer to make a scientific breakthrough that will theoretically benefit the military why is he so worried about his job security that he's willing to sacrifice his only daughter for a science experiment again like Tucker doesn't just turn Nina into a chimera because he's crazy and evil he does it because he's desperate really desperate again the movie is missing the whole [ __ ] point of a major villain Tucker's supposed to serve as a warning of what happens when you get too obsessed with science if you get so caught up in your work in your lifestyle that you forget that it's all ultimately for Humanity and for your family is the scientific equivalent of cornello a mirror of what edy could become if he gets too desperate or obsessed and loses sight of what's important and he can't serve that vital narrative purpose if he's just a crazy [ __ ] [ __ ] who kills his only daughter for no [ __ ] reason the other villains don't fare much better either hakuro is just the nice guy who was secretly evil and his only purpose in the plot seems to be to pull these levers so that the final battle can happen lust is just like an evil lady they completely omit or play down all of her sexual relationships with the men that she kills again the whole [ __ ] point of her character and when she dies she's happy about it because I honestly couldn't tell you envy is there his costume is really good he doesn't do much except for pretend to be some people unconvincingly and that sucks because anyone who's seen FMA knows that he's arguably the best villain in the whole show he shouldn't be a sidekick to lust that's gluttony 'he's job and speaking of him a hog gluttony what did they do to you [Music] none of these characters are given any real weight in the story they're just they're being evil because a plot has to happen and the movie has more villains than [ __ ] amazing spider-man 2 so they have to be evil very quickly at that honestly I was half-expecting cornello to come back in a rhino suit at the end and naturally this lack of development isn't just a problem for IDI and the villains almost every supporting character gets the short end of the stick as well Hughes's the closest to his manga counterpart and he gets exactly one scene of being a good dad / husband and one scene of being kind of smart before he's killed off Ross and Hawkeye are again just kinda there and I actually don't know what purpose Ross serves since Mustang takes her entire role in the plot oh yeah Mustang ends up being framed for Hugh's murder which is well dumb on a lot of levels since Mustang is supposed to be a sacrifice and those are still very much a thing in this version of the story weirder still the movie frames it in such a way that it seems like we're supposed to believe that Mustang actually is the killer except the movie also expects the entire audience to have seen FMA so that twist doesn't really work and even if it did work it lasts for all of seven minutes like every other plot point in this stupid [ __ ] movie we don't even have time to acclimatize to a world where maybe Mustang is the killer before it's revealed through some very sloppy editing that he's not they also waste a lot of screen time doing that thing where al gets all sulky because he thinks he's a fake which makes even less sense here than it did in the manga or anime since the doubt is sown in his mind by Tucker instead of Barry who's another suit of armor and therefore would have a reason to shake up his personality anyway it really is just an excuse to have them fight in an empty warehouse to break up the story but it's also like literally all of the development that al ever gets in the movie look I could keep banging on about this forever but the point is while it may hit many of the same plot points as the manga and copy its visuals this movie contains none of f mas heart the characters are flat and wrong the message of the story is non-existent and the plot doesn't hold up under scrutiny and I think the underlying cause of this ironically is a push to adhere too closely to the source material the writers were clearly allowed to shuffle things around to fit the runtime of a movie but from the final product it looks like they weren't allowed to include anything new or change any of the key scenes that were seemingly mandated for inclusion I would honestly rather watch the Netflix death don't movie again than something like this that movie's not very good it's definitely not faithful but at least it was directed by someone with their own story to tell and hit some of the originals core themes FM a is just another written by committee hodgepodge of meaningless fanservice meant to milk an existing fanbase for money and set up a sequel and it really sucks to see my favorite anime turned into something that you can make a good movie out of FMA maybe even a great one the pieces are there but you can't do it by running down a top 20 list of most badass FMA Brotherhood moments and cramming all the ones from the first quarter of the series into one incoherent jumble the soul of the work is always what's most important in adaptation and a good filmmaker would be able to identify that soul and build something new and distinct to their vision around it I hope FMA gets that someday he'll maybe they can give this movie the Brotherhood treatment too I'm Jeff thew professional shitbags signing out from my mother's basement [Music]

Channel: Mother's Basement

Views: 1,501,637

Keywords: Mother's Basement, Anime, Fullmetal Alchemist, FMA, fullmetal alchemist movie, fullmetal alchemist movie review, fullmetal alchemist movie netflix, fullmetal alchemist movie live action, Netflix, FMA Netflix, Edward Elric, Roy Mustang, Shou Tucker, Winry Rockbell, Alphonse Elric, movie, live action, brotherhood, alchemist, edward, fullmetal alchemist brotherhood, alphonse, alchemy, video essay, anime (tv genre), film, full metal alchemist, fullmetal alchemist 2017, gluttony

Id: lQ-RhorEwpo

Length: 16min 33sec (993 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 24 2018