Appleseed: Ex Machina was a terrible movie and if you liked it you should be sad, Seriously. Options

[DocTaotsu]

Just saw aforementioned movie, I enjoyed exactly one scene (the first) in that entire flick and felt that it squandered it's material in the most painful way possible. This movie is like the "Showgirls" of mecha/cyberpunk anime, it managed to take something I like (people with big guns shooting things, the difficult life a fully augmented person would live) and turn them into... boring.

I had to apologize to my girlfriend for making fun of her love of Bollywood films. Halfway through I was begging for a song and dance routine just to change things up a little.

The plot is predictable and cliche and the characters are so shallow they don't even rate being described as "Cardboard cutouts". They're like trading cards with nothing written on the back.

I'm about to rant and spoiler heavily although I think so poorly of this movie that I don't feel bad at all for "ruining" it for anyone.

Good god the whole "Lets unite under our happy go lucking one world total information government! Yayay!" made me throw things at the screen. Especially since the movie ends without showing the rest of the world stomping the living crap out of Olympus for oooh I don' t know BRINGING ABOUT A ZOMBIE APOCOLYPSE?!

No rousing speeches, no interesting fight scenes (oh look the epic final battle... it looks like someone else really liked the last Matrix movie.), and none of Shirow's trademark future shock exploration of technology and man.

BOOOOOOOOOO.

Yes, Yes I'm just a little bitter.

[hobgoblin]

isnt the world in appleseed already stomped into near oblivion?

[krayola red]

Just saw aforementioned movie, I enjoyed exactly one scene (the first) in that entire flick and felt that it squandered it's material in the most painful way possible. This movie is like the "Showgirls" of mecha/cyberpunk anime, it managed to take something I like (people with big guns shooting things, the difficult life a fully augmented person would live) and turn them into... boring.

I had to apologize to my girlfriend for making fun of her love of Bollywood films. Halfway through I was begging for a song and dance routine just to change things up a little.

The plot is predictable and cliche and the characters are so shallow they don't even rate being described as "Cardboard cutouts". They're like trading cards with nothing written on the back.

I'm about to rant and spoiler heavily although I think so poorly of this movie that I don't feel bad at all for "ruining" it for anyone.

Good god the whole "Lets unite under our happy go lucking one world total information government! Yayay!" made me throw things at the screen. Especially since the movie ends without showing the rest of the world stomping the living crap out of Olympus for oooh I don' t know BRINGING ABOUT A ZOMBIE APOCOLYPSE?!

No rousing speeches, no interesting fight scenes (oh look the epic final battle... it looks like someone else really liked the last Matrix movie.), and none of Shirow's trademark future shock exploration of technology and man.

BOOOOOOOOOO.

Yes, Yes I'm just a little bitter.

So...are you saying you liked the movie?

[Wesley Street]

If you take the works of Masamune Shirow and strip out the spiritualism, T&A, and philosophy, Appleseed: Ex Machina is what you get. I fell asleep despite how pretty it all was. No one but Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) or Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira) should even think of adapting those manga to film.

Dark Horse published the Appleseed books years ago and I believe is reprinting them in the "proper" right-to-left format. Much more worth your time.

[Stahlseele]

i watched one appleseed movie once . . i compared it to WinXP pre SP1 compared to Windows 2000 latest patch . .
and fuck yes, i would love to see appleseed done by either Oshii or Otomo, as i loved both Akira(have bought several iterations of the movie, including two on VHS) and GITS

[sunnyside]

There are two other appleseed movies. What do people think of them?

(One released in 2004 and one release in, uh, some time further back).

[Wesley Street]

Awful and awful-er. The 2004 release was very "shiny" but I felt like I was watching a fan-made video game cut scene. The 1980s/1990s movie? Terrible in every sense of the word.

[DocTaotsu]

God they are both bad. The first movie seems... less bad now that age has mellowed my bile for it.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who abhors those movies.

I mean... GitS is one of my favorite franchises... I even enjoyed the second movie (even if I thought they spent way to much time... doing the AR equivalent of reading wikipedia articles aloud to one another). But good god... there's just like... no hope for Appleseed I guess.

Not even a decent T&A shot to keep me interested.

[PBTHHHHT]

I love the manga, and I try to like the appleseed movies, I really try and yet I can't. Maybe if they just made a tv series out of it and try to kinda follow the manga it might be okay. And maybe one day pigs will fly too.

[Dashifen]

I actually liked them all, but I'm easily amused by shiny things (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[DocTaotsu]

Well I think that's one of the strengths of the GitS franchise. The people who have taken it have actually done a decent job of farming the source material (the manga) for good ideas while introducing new elements that make it something more than a simple adaption. I for one like how they dropped some of the pervy aspects in favor of focusing on character development, backstory, and people diving through various walls/windows/people and shooting the fuck out of things.

So we lost some cyborg porn... what we gained instead was a well written, well voiced, and thoroughly enjoyable adaption of some very dense source material. It touches... well it touches on a lot of different themes but it tells good stories.

I have no idea why they can't seem to get that with Appleseed. I haven't read the source material but perhaps it's inferior? I have no idea.

I just know I want my 30 bucks back ;p

[hobgoblin]

there was something about this movie thats making me go "hmm"...

ever so slightly annoying...

[Wesley Street]

I have no idea why they can't seem to get that with Appleseed. I haven't read the source material but perhaps it's inferior? I have no idea.

The original manga series is quite strong and I'd rate it equally to Kodansha/Dark Horse Comics' Ghost in the Shell. It's a much more straightforward action piece and while it lacks a lot of the loosey-goosey mind-trip stuff that Shirow is known for it still explores elements of social upheaval and transhumanism. And more importantly, it's entertaining.

I would lay part of the blame for Ex Machina's suckage on John Woo, who produced. That guy hasn't made a good movie since The Killer or Hard Boiled. He became so well known for his style he completely forgot about substance. If it's shiny and slo-mo he's happy, good story be damned.

[hobgoblin]

is it me or did they add a hint of cell shade on the rendering?

sometimes when i pause the movie im hard pressed to tell the diff between a render and a drawing.

[Wesley Street]

Cell-shade rendering is the "in" thing in anime and animation right now. You see it in everything, even in Family Guy episodes. The recent film Vexille uses it. I first remember seeing it in Fear Effect for the Playstation and I rather liked it.

[ravensmuse]

People played Fear Effect for something other than the T&A? Or lesbians in the second one?

Damn shame we never got a third.

sorry, sorry.

[Wesley Street]

I felt awkward for my character walking around in that bath towel.