Gantz Live Action Review
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Last night I went to the world premiere of the live action adaptation of Gantz. Gantz stars Kazunari Ninomiya and Kenichi Matsuyama. How does this adaptation hold up? Is it true to the Manga? Read on and find out.
Story - The story follows two friends Kei Kurono and Masaru Kato. One day while waiting for the train to arrive, a homeless man falls on the tracks. Kato and Kei rescue the homeless man and end up dying, getting hit by the train. Following there deaths the friends are transported to an Tokyo apartment. There they meet others who had died that day, one in particular a girl name Tae Kojima. They all find out that they have been brought to room by Gantz. A man inside a black sphere. They learned that they will have to kill aliens and earn points for there freedom. One hundred points and they will either can go free and have there memory erased. Or revive someone back from the dead who died on these missions. I won't spoil any further. I will say the film does follow the Manga very well. However this film is in two parts so you will get a cliffhanger ending. The pacing of the story is well done, it takes a while for you to really get a back story on some the supporting characters. However the sequel should fix that problem. The movie length is 2hrs and 30 mins and you don't feel bored. Overall the story did a good job of adapting.
Acting - The acting was really excellent. The problem is that the premiere had it in English dub. This made the acting part hard to critique. However based on the facial expressions, the action I say that the acting was done very well. The English dub was horrible. The voices was out of sync. You can tell the Japanese language had more lines. The voice acting sounded so wooden, not even the worst anime voice acting made me cringe this bad. I really wish they would've showed the movie in Japanese with English Subtitles. It would have made the experience better and I wouldn't felt like I was watching a bad anime. The action scenes where good to an extent. All the fight scenes were at night and the director could've use more lighting. There are times you don't even know what's going on in the fight, because it's either too dark or the camera is shot up too close. Overall the acting is solid and they make you believe in this world.
Music & Film-making - I love the music in this movie. I' am a sucker for orchestrated music and Gantz has a great OST. The music brings so much more emotional depth to an already good story. The cinematography is great! There are a lot of great shots of Tokyo, the best scenes are the ones during the daytime. The worst scenes like I said above is the nighttime, which is disappointing because all the action is night. I hope to see some improvements on lighting in the sequel. There are some use of CGI when it comes to the blood, but it doesn't take away from the movie. Makeup, Costumes and the Aliens all look really realistic and faithful to the Manga.
Final Grade English Dub Version C+ /**1/2 out 4 stars - The movie has it's moments, great characters, great story, good action when you can see what's going on. The performance you can tell the actors put there passion into the role. However the English dub really destroys everything. It takes away from the experience, for a movie that is suppose to be serious, you'll find yourself laughing on how badly the English version is executed. For that reason alone we can only recommend this movie in Japanese Dub with English Subtitles only. Final Grade C-/**1/2 out 4 Stars
Story - The story follows two friends Kei Kurono and Masaru Kato. One day while waiting for the train to arrive, a homeless man falls on the tracks. Kato and Kei rescue the homeless man and end up dying, getting hit by the train. Following there deaths the friends are transported to an Tokyo apartment. There they meet others who had died that day, one in particular a girl name Tae Kojima. They all find out that they have been brought to room by Gantz. A man inside a black sphere. They learned that they will have to kill aliens and earn points for there freedom. One hundred points and they will either can go free and have there memory erased. Or revive someone back from the dead who died on these missions. I won't spoil any further. I will say the film does follow the Manga very well. However this film is in two parts so you will get a cliffhanger ending. The pacing of the story is well done, it takes a while for you to really get a back story on some the supporting characters. However the sequel should fix that problem. The movie length is 2hrs and 30 mins and you don't feel bored. Overall the story did a good job of adapting.
Acting - The acting was really excellent. The problem is that the premiere had it in English dub. This made the acting part hard to critique. However based on the facial expressions, the action I say that the acting was done very well. The English dub was horrible. The voices was out of sync. You can tell the Japanese language had more lines. The voice acting sounded so wooden, not even the worst anime voice acting made me cringe this bad. I really wish they would've showed the movie in Japanese with English Subtitles. It would have made the experience better and I wouldn't felt like I was watching a bad anime. The action scenes where good to an extent. All the fight scenes were at night and the director could've use more lighting. There are times you don't even know what's going on in the fight, because it's either too dark or the camera is shot up too close. Overall the acting is solid and they make you believe in this world.
Music & Film-making - I love the music in this movie. I' am a sucker for orchestrated music and Gantz has a great OST. The music brings so much more emotional depth to an already good story. The cinematography is great! There are a lot of great shots of Tokyo, the best scenes are the ones during the daytime. The worst scenes like I said above is the nighttime, which is disappointing because all the action is night. I hope to see some improvements on lighting in the sequel. There are some use of CGI when it comes to the blood, but it doesn't take away from the movie. Makeup, Costumes and the Aliens all look really realistic and faithful to the Manga.
Final Grade English Dub Version C+ /**1/2 out 4 stars - The movie has it's moments, great characters, great story, good action when you can see what's going on. The performance you can tell the actors put there passion into the role. However the English dub really destroys everything. It takes away from the experience, for a movie that is suppose to be serious, you'll find yourself laughing on how badly the English version is executed. For that reason alone we can only recommend this movie in Japanese Dub with English Subtitles only. Final Grade C-/**1/2 out 4 Stars
