Attack on Titan (2015)

I was blown away by the Attack on Titan anime series. It was original and almost overwhelmingly thrilling, and it offered an intriguing mystery (as with Lost, the series keeps adding to the mystery without doing much answering, and I've about given up that there's every going to be a satisfactory answer to anything).

I also thought the movie was absolutely terrific, with the same level of wild excitement and horrific cruelty. And I was honestly surprised by how hostile other reviewers here are.

A couple of the big criticisms of this movie are that the story has been changed and that there is a lack of character development.

Honestly, I don't even remember the anime's story, for the most part. All I remember is endless, incredibly exciting battles. I had to do a search on differences to even find out what has changed, and I'm still vague on it. The locale has changed, and the names (everything is Japanese now, which seems fine to me). A character has been excised and apparently the main character's personality is different. And I don't care, because I loved the show for its thrills, not it's people.

Was the character development better in the anime? Of course. They had a lot of time for character development. There wasn't a lot of that in the first few episodes, but over time they did create a few interesting characters to a greater extent than the movie. But people, the anime isn't Shakespeare, and these aren't characters for the ages. And in both the anime and the movie, all you really need is a basic sketch of the character since they'll probably be dead soon anyway. The deaths are more upsetting in the anime, but I'm okay with being a little less upset, honestly.

People also complain about the special effects. I saw the movie on TV, and on TV, the special effects look decent. The incredibly overrated Hollywood action epic The Avengers certainly had better special effects, but I was still far more entertained by Titan.

The movie's certainly not perfect. It lags in the middle. Characters do unrealistically stupid things (at one point two characters do something really dumb when in a real army someone would have stopped them). There is one ridiculous blood-on-the-camera-lens shot. But overall it is tremendously exciting, and for me almost as satisfying as the anime. I'm looking forward to seeing part 2.