Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

[SonjaJade]

So who has seen it???

I saw it last night, and while it was certainly better than CoS, there were some moments when I raised my eyebrow and wondered WTF...  Ididn't understand the wolf chimaeras at all.  Where did they come from?  Why did that Ashley guy feel it was neccesary to track Julia with them?  I understood the resistance group, but why were they bats?  And evidently border control is so tight in their world that no Cretan has ever been to Amestris and then on to Xing, because that was totally alkahestry Julia and Ashley were using.  Ashley even did the Scar HEAD ASPLODE! super power with his hand.

I didn't think Julia was a Mary Sue, and I'm glad she wasn't all over Ed's **noel**.  But the last scene where Al was stammering about how pretty she was made me furious (but that's because I'm an Al/Mei shipper and it had nothing to do with the fact that realistically he prolly should have little awkward girl crushes at his age despite being housed in the armor).

Armstong's 5 second appearance was AWESOME.  Should have been more of him in there.  Braeda's 5 second appearance made me squee too.

The animation was ALL OVER THE PLACE.  There was CGI (landscapes, the train sequences), more traditional cell painting (like Brotherhood), and then some hand drawn stuff that was like OLD SCHOOL animation, reminding me of an older early 80's cartoon or something (mostly in the action sequences).

My favorite part: Yoki-looking Amestrian officer decides he's gonna shoot Roy in the back, but when he cocks the rifle, it alerts Riza and she pulls her gun and dead-eye's him in the shoulder.  The audience in the theater cheered at that point XD

Long post is long.

[SonjaJade]

also: wtf was it that Julia did?  She lost her leg, but Ashley wasn't even dead when she did whatever it was she did... and they both had two perfectly good philosopher's stones they could have used as payment...  It's weird.......

[ALchemist81]

Yeah, I saw it yesterday afternoon, and I don't understand why she lost her leg either...

[SonjaJade]

and why did the ashley imposter look JUST LIKE Haji from Blood+???  It was disconcerning... made me keep thinking Crispin Freeman should have been voicing him.

[Cerceaux]

The kind of strange thing about this movie (for me anyway) was that it really didn't pander to returning fans at all. There's not a single instance of someone referring to Ed's height, there's no slapstick humor or familiar witty banter between characters, etc. It felt really different from the previous FMA incarnations. Ed and Al are more like supporting characters here, they don't develop at all over the course of the film.

Obviously the intent was to make it more accessible to newcomers and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but you still  need some familiarity with the source material to follow all the alchemy talk, and the film provides only minimal backstory for the Elrics (if I had never seen FMA before I'd probably be wondering what the heck they were doing in the military, what a state alchemist was, wtf are chimeras, etc), so it sort of fails as a totally standalone work. Then on the other hand, certain story developments are extremely predictable for FMA  veterans. It was pretty easy to guess what the "sacred star" would end up being, not to mention the significance of a circular city with carefully placed towers.

The inconsistent art was a little odd too. The actual animation looked great throughout (the scene near the beginning with Julia escaping and getting chased was especially well-done), but sometimes the characters looked really flat and MS-paint-like.

TL;DR:  I was entertained by this film, but it had some issues and doesn't really know who its target audence is.

[SonjaJade]

I agree.  Ed wasn't even a big part of the story until the end it seemed.  It was like they were forcing these new characters into this sort of familiar universe.  And I truly missed the comedic side of the story as well.

[BUU8800]

Nowhere near me is showing it so I haven't seen it yet but posting here really doesn't bother me as I just don't seem to be that interested in it. I may watch it eventually but I dunno....it just doesn't look that great to me. Am I wrong?

[ALchemist81]

This movie was soo good I had to see it twice!!

And it's coming out on DVD/BD March 27th.

[SonjaJade]

I would consider watching it again, just for the background on Creta/Amestris diplomacy which would play out in fan fic.  And the story wasn't horrendous and unbelievable like CoS, it just had some wtf moments.  I'd definitely recommend it, just don't expect Brotherhood's animation style.

[XenopusTex]

I live in BFE ...won't be seeing that out here, ever.  Between Nowhere, MT and Nowhere, ND

[naraku361]

I only watched about 27 minutes, and probably will finish eventually, but what I saw was a lack of quality that was almost offensive. A movie should have a better animation budget than a 64 episode series. Even if the movie has a budget less than half the size of the series, it's 2 hours (approx.) vs. 32 hours (approx.). I don't know or claim to know what the budget looked like in comparison to the show, but to put it lightly, movies #### near always look better than the show unless it's a quick cash-in. FMA may be mainstream, but it isn't generally something I see as being a quick cash-in franchise. A simple example, and this was something I saw repeatedly in the movie, is Ed's hair blowing in the wind. Series-wise, it by all means looks like hair blowing in wind. In this, it looks like a glob of yellow being assaulted by triangles. This wasn't the only animation complaint I have, they were all over the place. From Ed stick his leg out and the people (for no reason) doing cartwheels over it, but not even looking as though they'd made it to the other side or, in the same scene, 3 fare inspectors being attcked by the cartwheel people but what we see is the inspector bringing a nightstick down, then falling over in pain and another inspector stumbling for no established reason, the third inspector has totally vanished, and the cartwheel guys ripping off masks. The continuity was poor enough that I had to rewatch it at least a couple times to make sure I knew who'd hit who, but it ended up being irrelevant because the fare inspectors forgot it even happened and just continued checking people, while Ed and AL just act as though a somewhat unimpressive carnival had entered their train car; they weren't at all concerned about the incident as they'd be in the series. They only got worried when someone screamed a full minute later. What the hell, guys?

Those are only the complaints about animation; however story-wise,I really hated the stupid chimera thing. That was stupid and my biggest gripe. Though, if the story gets worse, I might dislike it more.

[vumanchu]

The movie was really good but my only complaint was Mustang not kicking some serious butt and Julia she's cute♥. I think she'd be a good pairing with Al and it's about time Al got some romance.