Thoughts on the FMA live action panal. Contains spoilers
The live action FMA panal at AX was amazing but not perfect. I know that this may get me some heat….
-December 1st release date (Japan guessing)
-Director Fumihiko Sori and Ryosuke reaffirmed their commitment to bring as accurate a representation of the original work as possible, to the point that Ryosuke did all of his own stunts.
-They reaffirmed the possiblity of a Part 2 tot eh film, meaning that as per Director Sori, Part 1 has a very good conclusive end, however if it does very well and fans support it after theaters, there will be a Part 2.
****Start getting spoilery*** During the clips they showed, we got our first looks at Roy Mustang, Winry, Hughes, The Homunculi, Shou Tuker and Nina, and last (literally) but not least Riza. They all looked fantastic and looked the parts perfectly. Like seriously i think the casting was perfect.
-Got told that we may get a brief look at Scar and Maj. Armstrong but look “forward to part 2″ (no word on Greed/ling :( but I won’t make that a con)
Here is where I think that it kept it form being “prefect”. During the panal Director Sori said that he once lived in LA 20 years ago and worked in Visual Effects (VFX), he worked on a little film called Titanic. When he left LA and returned to Japan, he slowly began working into directing. He said; “My dream was to make a FULL VFX movie, and with this film, I finally did that” This line right here is why I was given pause. Now he did say this film has tons of “heart” and is “incredibly story driven” but during the clips they showed off A LOT of VFX shots and they looked very good, but there were a few times where during the shots and scenes they showed, the VFX looked so unnatural that I was ripped out of the immersion of what I was watching. You’ve all seen the trailer and seen the VFX in those, and they look good and feel natural. But there are 2 shots I’d like to focus on. **SPOILERS***
1. Building collapsing. This scene isn’t new, we’ve seen it in the trailers, it’s a scene where you see a tower start to get destroyed by alchemy and then the top falls over and looks like it’s coming right at the camera. This is all done in VFX and looked good and natural, but as being in the Panal we got an extra bit. Right before the tower “lands” onto of the camera, we get a jump cut to essentially a helicopter shot of the profile of the tower falling. The thing is that this tower literally falls in a perfect diagonal line that completely took me out of the scene and made me cringe, because building will never fall in a perfect diagonal line at a perfect degree angle. It was very easy to tell this was a computer simulation that was captured and edited into the film.
2. Scene where we see Lust on fire. We all know this scene form the manga and anime adaptations. Roy mustang lights Lust on fire. In this shot we see her already burning and almost calmly walking to a fence and grabbing it. This isn’t a man in a fire suit or something. It’s a VFX person walking with VFX flames on them. It certainly looked pretty but did not feel natural and I was pulled once again out of the immersion. We know that Lust screams in agony when she is burned but this scene (admittedly with no actual sound besides the loud music they played over all scenes to hide the actual audio for now) felt so unnatural of a person on fire.
I as a very big fan of FMA was excited and worried about this film when it was first announced. I was very excited to go to this panal to learn more. Upon leaving I am now very much more worried, BUT I am also very much more excited for this film to come out. So basically nothing has changed
