DVD Movie Review | Attack on Titan: The Movie Part 2 - End of the World (Lights, Camera, Action!) Page 1

DVD Movie Review | Attack on Titan: The Movie Part 2 - End of the World (Lights, Camera, Action!)

Attack on Titan The Movie Part 2: End of the World (UK Rating: 15)

A quick synopsis of the story so far kicks off this second part of the tale. Titans suddenly appeared 100 years ago and decimated humanity, and then humanity built huge concentric walls to hide behind. After a breach was made in the outermost wall, a trio of friends - Eren, Armin and Mikasa - witnessed what a terrifying threat the Titans were as they decimated the land and slaughtered the people, until they fell back to the second wall. Eren and Armin joined a team to take back the wall and had reunited with their long-thought-dead friend, Mikasa, where she became a seemingly emotionless killing machine fans have come to love. With Mikasa came fan-favourite Levi… oh no, he was cut for no good reason and replaced with Shikishima; a character with the great power of magically making apples appear out of thin air. The team was sent on a mission to escort a truck of explosives to the wall to try and bring down parts of the wall onto the breach, thus plugging the gap.

The first part ended with things not going well for the heroes. A truck of explosives was wasted, many were killed and, in familiar scenes from the source material, Eren jumped into the mouth of a Titan to pull out his friend. Throwing Armin from the mouth of the Titan and being devoured himself, he then went on to transform into his Titan form and go on a Kaiju-style smackdown, slaughtering all of the other Titans before returning to his true form, with his arm and leg re-grown. Cut to black as he is captured by his own comrades.

This is the second part, and the final. As a side note, what is it with anime adaptations always getting a two-part movie? Trilogies are the hot thing in Hollywood, so why the two-part release? This officially reaches the point where the adaptation completely diverges from its source material. There is no rebellion against the King, no Annie, the Armoured and Colossal Titan appear... in a form… but it's not the Reiner or Bertolt fans know. The focus of the story is instead entirely around the plan from the first film, to blow up the section of wall above the breach, causing an avalanche of rubble to plug the gap. Meanwhile, the strange masked faction has a different plan for the explosives - they want to pull down the government, to blow up the inner walls and let the Titans run free to slaughter the elite within… and everyone else. Their plan doesn't seem particularly well thought out.

Wait! What's that you say? The explosives they were planning to use were destroyed in Part 1 when some idiot drove them into the leg of a Titan out of grief for no good reason? True enough! Chekov's bomb from the first movie makes its appearance to deal with that small plot issue, though! It is lucky Eren doesn't have a stronger kick…

It's worth noting straight away that this movie is not made tongue-in-cheek, it's done straight and wants to be thought of as a serious movie. It does not come over that way. It feels like… shlock, for want of a better word. A bit like the Kaiju movies of the '90s, or the annual Super Sentai series. It's a shame, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its place. Instead of being the dark and serious series with cool giant monsters and dynamic action, it's the type of movie to watch with friends and build drinking games around.

The ridiculous over-the-top gore is a good place to start, as it not only returns here but ups the game, with CGI blood splatters in abundance. Soldiers are slapped into sprays of pink mist, leaving just mixed body parts flying through the air. Others are squashed underfoot into CGI jam and others still are torn limb from limb, quite literally. It seems the actress playing Hange somehow was in on the joke of the shlock of the film as she's an utter maniac that manages to play the role of comic relief and deus ex machina plot device sent straight from above; cackling maniacally and ruining attempts at straight-faced seriousness wherever she goes - laughing right along with the audience, and even snuggling up against an RPG while other characters share a tender moment.

Another great place is a rather particularly surreal sequence in which Shikishima and Eren chatting in a strange room… with a jukebox piping out Skeeter Davis' End of the World. Suddenly, their clothes change to stylish white shirts and trousers, a bottle of champagne and some flutes randomly appear and vanish at whim, and then suddenly there's sand and deck chairs in the room! This sequence includes one of the best moments of the movie, too, as the pair watch footage on how the Titans originally came to be. The footage shown is great, showing all manner of Titans from across the world - in America and London and the Middle East, each looking like horrific versions of each area's inhabitants. If having only seen quite Japanese-looking Titans in the source material up to this point, it's nice to see something new.

Most of these are the "so bad it's good" type of flaws, but there are some frankly unforgiveable flaws. One of the most unforgiveable is the ODMG. It's criminal that this plot device is so underused. This could have been a device to base the film around alone as everyone remembers the spectacular scenes when the first Spider-Man movie hit. Seeing him web sling from building to building, the fantastic camera work and motion sickness inducing scenes - sublime. The anime showed just how cool the scenes can be and the live-action has completely failed to live up to it.

5/10

Average

Shlock. Pure unadulterated shlock… the good kind of shlock, though; the type that requires a gathering of friends to watch with alcohol and laughs. Absurd and stupid, with some breathtakingly bad Titan vs. Titan battles straight out of a Super Sentai series, with slow choreography and rubber looking suits included. Such a waste considering what could have been for Attack on Titan: The Movie Part 2 - End of the World but at least it makes the audience laugh. Be sure to sit through the lengthy credits, too, for an absolutely baffling post-credits scene.