Okay, let's begin with the fact that I watched this in a big room together with 100+ other people and a friend who is a big SAO fan. Some ratings may be a bit higher than what i would actually give due to my friend, but I'm not going through this monstrosity again just to correct that.
The story of this movie didn't have a lot of new mechanics at all. The gang is back in the real world and play a game there, that isn't life-threatening itself. But of course there's some guy who needs to kill SAO-survivors through stealing their memories through a headset
...
or something. What bummed me out were the low expectations I went in with, thought if I set them low enough maybe it'll be an alright experience. Boy, did they surprise me. I admit there were parts that had great potential had they just exploited them. But I'll get into that with the characters.
The motivations of the villains came close to the end and didn't feel real. Especially the guy that attacked Klein's group. The villain kid was in a relationship with dead motivation girl and that revelation didn't have an impact at all because of the way the scene was potrayed. I don't know if it was just me but I heard these reasons so often I just can't hear it anymore. And considering how long ago SAO happened in the movie it just didn't make sense for motivation girl's father to do it so late.
The Art was pretty, like always, but that's really all it is. It isn't unique or made me want to watch this any more than anything else. Scenes where characters were just sitting and talking were very still, but hey this is SAO with endless sitting exposition, so I suppose this is alright.
I barely paid attention to the sound so to be fair I'll give it the middleground of a 5.
The Characters. Some parts of the characters were a lot better, while others were a lot worse.
Asuna finally gets some of her spunk back, proving to be a good fighter and strategist even in RL. The story of course needs Kirito to be the hero and so she eventually loses her memories. But. We get to see how bad she is handling this as well. We don't just see Kirito despairing over losing most of their time together, but also how devastated Asuna is to lose so much of a life she considers to be almost more important than anything else. The scene where Asuna goes to get tea and breaks down really shows this. So, Asuna was finally actually handled okay.
Kirito, of course, still boring and lackluster. Still no attachment to him at all. Didn't get any development except for suddenly being really badass in RL after tripping and falling on his stupid generic face. Which was a problem I had with the face-off between him and boyfriend-guy over here.
The guy was aided by a little device, and Kirito sees through that almost immediately and suddenly they're on even ground, which they shouldn't be. Kirito may be the shit in virtual reality, but he ain't shit in RL. It just pisses me off that Kirito gets a power boost in every series adaption of SAO to exist ever and get away with it, without any explanation whatsoever.
All the other characters were either unimportant, for example the whole gang who were just there to be obliterated, or just sucked like the villains.
Still gave this point a five because of Asunas okay handling. Good on you A-1 Pictures. Good on you.
My enjoyment was... limited. I laughed three times in the two hours. Once because everyone was laughing and I have a reflex to laugh with others, and twice because of Kirito suddenly kicking ass, as well as Silica being a stupid little goober. I enjoyed the movie in a 'I had to watch it to judge it' kind of way.
My friend enjoyed it. I hated it and told her what I didn't like, but that I enjoyed seeing that they're actually capable of doing things right, if they tried. If they had properly resolved Asuna's whole arc, given Kirito time to be an actual good character and maybe given the other characters a chance to be a friend to their friends, this could've been good.
But they continue their trend of never truly caring, because someone will like it.
I'm sure there are lots of points I missed, but I've been concentrating on a lot of stuff at the same time. Overall the movie is as good as you'd expect. Which is to say it isn't good and why are we even surprised anymore. I'll give this a 3 overall because the presence of other people enjoying it made it bearable, as well as me actually liking Asuna, bumping the score from 2 to 3.
This probably sucks as review, but I had to get this off my chest. I hope you somehow enjoyed this movie. I sure didn't, but I like it when people like stuff.
Aug 20, 2017
Okay, let's begin with the fact that I watched this in a big room together with 100+ other people and a friend who is a big SAO fan. Some ratings may be a bit higher than what i would actually give due to my friend, but I'm not going through this monstrosity again just to correct that.
The story of this movie didn't have a lot of new mechanics at all. The gang is back in the real world and play a game there, that isn't life-threatening itself. But of course there's some guy who needs to kill SAO-survivors through stealing their memories through a headset ... |
