Review: One Night Only
Attack on Titan Part 1 | Shinji Higuchi | Japan | 2015 | 99 min
Marcus Point Cinemas, Wedensday, October 7, 9:00pm»
James Kreul looks at the live-action adaptation of the popular anime series, Attack on Titan. The film is difficult to review purely on its merits because it arrives burdened by expectations from fans of the original series and assumptions about blockbuster special effects. Released in two parts, Part 1 will screen for only the third and last time in Madison at Marcus Point Cinemas, making it one of the stranger theatrical engagements in recent memory.
Let me cut to the chase: I liked Attack on Titan Part 1 quite a bit. It may be a genre driven, plot-heavy franchise origin story, but as a 99-minute one, it exemplifies that rare breed of hour-and-a-half pulp that I have come to appreciate in this era of overblown 150-minute (plus!) Hollywood comic adaptations. Just as I thought it was really starting to get interesting in terms of characters rather than just the action and plot, it was over—and I wanted to buy my ticket to Part 2 next month.
There’s something admirable about films that just start in-medias-res (instead of “world building”), move forward towards a simple goal (instead of juggling multiple plotlines), accelerate to a climax and end with a bang. In those terms, Attack on Titan is a fun mix of tones and genre conventions (from both feature films and anime) that provide a consistently entertaining ride.
Part 1 is a challenge to review just in terms of my own appreciation and enjoyment of the film, however. I feel obligated to at least mention the generally negative reactions from Japanese critics and fans of the original anime series. I enjoyed the film without their baggage, but I should probably acknowledge that baggage before suggesting you try to catch the final screening at Marcus Point.
Personally, I have only had cursory exposure to the Attack on Titan series, just a few scenes vivid enough to persuade me that I need to watch the whole thing at some point (it is currently streaming on Netflix and other sources). If I were more familiar with the series, I might indeed object to or at least question some of the changes in the live-action adaptation, which have been well documented elsewhere. But for the most part I believe that the streamlined plot in the live-action adaptation enhanced rather than hindered the theatrical experience.
In a simple animated opening sequence we learn that giant zombie-like man-eating Titans appeared about 100 years ago, but they have been kept at bay by three concentric walls. Where are we? Well, that’s part of the adaptation controversy, so let’s just focus on what we need to know in the world of this film. We eventually learn that the three concentric walls separate three areas of commerce, and the action starts in the outer-most protected area dedicated to agriculture. The ominous walls have been quiet protectors for the youngest generations, some of whom suspect that the Titans might not be real.
Three young adults meet near the wall: Eren Jaeger (Haruma Miura), Armin Arlert (Kanata Hongō) and Mikasa Ackerman (Kiko Mizuhara). Yes, those names sound European, but again let’s stay focused what we see: most of the mise-en-scene suggests a Japanese setting. Eren is a hot head who has lost his job and yearns to see the world beyond the walls, especially the rumored oceans. Mikasa is Eren’s girlfriend who remains curiously silent when she is asked what she wants in her life. Armin is, well, you know, the other guy in the group. There’s your backstory. Boom…pow! Let’s get to the action.
Just as the three venture a little too close to the wall, they (and everyone else) hear a turbulent pounding from the outside. Everyone looks up to see a Colossal Titan—keep in mind, we haven’t seen any regular Titans yet, so the fact that this bad boy seems taller than the wall doesn’t look good for the home team. The Colossal Titan kicks a hole in the wall and then seems to dissolve into smoke. The good news is that he’s gone; the bad news is that the much smaller (but still pretty damn big) Titans easily walk through the hole and begin to attack (and eat) the humans. This first wave of violence ends with Eren apparently not able to save Mikassa from the Titans…but we don’t see her actually snapped up by the Titan (see picture above), so there’s hope for the second and third acts.
Boom. Two years pass and now Eren and Armin are enlisted in the rag-tag army assigned to defeat the Titans. We’re introduced to their colleagues to facilitate various war movie platoon conventions. Then we learn their short-term goal: they must return to the hole in the wall and seal it off with explosives (remember, only the Colossal Titan was taller than the wall; reducing that section to a tall pile of rubble will keep the other Titans out). Once the wall is sealed, they can focus on eliminating the Titans who have already breached the barrier. While at first the Titans seem immortal (they can regenerate any damaged body part) they do have a weak spot: the nape of the neck. To reach the nape, the army is equipped with “Three Dimensional Maneuver Gear,” which basically a mechanical version of Spider-Man’s web-slinging (plus swords).
The first step in the plan is to rendezvous with the mysterious Captain Shikishima, the best Titan killer anyone has ever seen, who is guarding the last supply of explosives large enough to accomplish the mission at the wall. The second best Titan killer anyone has ever seen is the equally mysterious “Goddess” who accompanies Shikishima. You’ll probably figure out who the Goddess is well before the reveal.
I usually don’t like this much plot summary, but this does not take us too far into the film. Most of the rest of the film rhythmically alternates between the spectacle of Titan attacks and relatively brief reprieves from the action. Much of the negative criticism I’ve seen so far focuses on the reprieves, some of which indeed only barely make sense. The most frequently cited scene involves particularly strange timing for sex for two pairs of human characters. While the scene is indeed strange, it does help at least help hint at through sublimation what is really the elephant in the room throughout the whole film: Titan sexuality. The titans have no genitalia, and a stated mystery about them is how they reproduce. For me, the human sex scenes played out as some kind of weird displacement that might foreshadow future reveals, rather than making sense immediately.
In fact, nothing seems to make that much sense immediately, something else seems to be going on with the Titans which make them intriguing and entertaining. Despite their constant threat of violence, they also seem childlike, like an orally-fixated toddler out of control. The casting of the live-action Titans is a mix of Felliniesque faces and body types, and the performances frequently teeter on the line between adults acting like children and decidedly non-PC representations of the mentally handicapped. The unease of watching all this is further complicated by the fact that the Titans almost seem helpless when they get slashed and killed. It was interesting to observe that very few Titan splatter moments were cheered by the audience as they usually would be when villains and monsters are dispensed with in other franchises. (But then, I saw it with an audience of core fans who also refused to laugh at any intentional or unintentional humor in the film.)
The live-action interpretation of the Three Dimensional Maneuver Gear heavily references two recent popular franchises. The attacks on the Titans feel like a mix of Spider-Man bouncing around Manhattan and a hyper-violent Quidditch match in the Harry Potter universe. There are advantages and disadvantages of using these visual frames of reference to stage the action in Attack on Titan. The advantage is that something that should seem very strange actually seems very familiar to even general audiences. The main disadvantage is that by keeping the virtual camera in front of the attackers as they approach the Titans (as we stayed in front of Harry during Quidditch matches), much of the drama is dissipated because we don’t actually see much of the threat approaching. A few sequences in Attack on Titan vary this pattern and are far more visually and dramatically engaging. But like the Spider-Man franchises (both of them) we also lack a sense of weight as Eren and Captain Shikishima dart up and down and back and forth.
Visually what I liked best about Attack on Titan is how it accommodated the small scale and large scale action within the same frame. Perhaps taking a few tips from the recent Hollywood Godzilla, there’s always a sense of continuity between the ground level and upper level action, rather than the old-school cutting between the two (although there’s plenty of that, too). Are the effects that achieve this as good as contemporary blockbuster Hollywood films? For the most part, no; every once in a while the seams start to show. But I’m far less interested in the polish of the image here than the ability to maintain the drama within the frame.
While the cut off point for the first film is not well thought out in terms of the stated plot goal (in fact, at some point no one seems to know or care where those explosives have gone), the final scene does pack a punch as both a reveal and a cliffhanger. The reveal would already be known to any fans of the series, but it is highly effective for those new to the material. Not to reveal too much here, but the final moments incorporate some of my favorite aspects of the mecha genre, where the heroes have to painfully learn that they have new abilities, skills, and powers. So while many of the characters remain relatively one-note even at the end, I’m very curious about how Eren and Mikassa will continue to develop in Part 2.
Meanwhile, I’ll need to figure out some cosplay gear between now and when Part 2 appears at Marcus Point on October 20.