Terra Formars - Missão em Marte

Some reviewers have taken this movie far too seriously and read far too much into the it.

So imagine an 80's kids cartoon does The Breakfast Club with the plot of Aliens, all with a modern take. That's basically it. Plus being as it's Japanese you get crazy fight scenes with insects, bonkers daft and nothing to trouble the brain.

OK, here's the shocking truth: this film, which ought to have the English language title of 'Cockroach Planet', is pretty bad. In it, Miike abandons any of the art-house pretensions about which people find to argue and discuss in some of his other work, in place of lurid and batty SF fantasy. At the start it rips off 'Blade Runner' - almost shot-for- shot in a couple of places. The characters are shallow. The central idea is ludicrous. The plot is underdeveloped. The flashbacks do nothing to advance things, can be confusing and, at least once, amusingly bathetic. The CGI can be substandard. The director slips in a gratuitous Yakuza moment, and thinks it cool. There is also a token terrorist announced as a job description, and a villain who is, patently, a fashion victim. The cockroaches, who move super-fast at one moment and can fly their legions, usually stand round and stare at their victims quizzically, waiting for them to gear up before attacking slowly. The evil insects are cute, rather than menacing, and when they grin, look like they wear dentures. There are what appear to be the pyramids of Giza on Mars; I don't know why, even when explained on screen - but that's OK I guess, as we never get close. And of course the science is ridiculous.

So I watched this colourful, surreal, and jaw-dropping extravaganza marrying insects and cinematic insanity ... and was thoroughly entertained. In short, don't expect more for your money than you get from all of the above which, as you now know, is plenty: just rush to see it like I did, and be pleased. At least there is no boring John Carter and they are not talking about botany again.

I checked this out after reading the synopsis. I was hoping this would have some cool sci-fi ideas or something, but this is Sci-Fi like Dragonball Z is Sci-Fi. It's fun and imaginative at times, but it's absolute nonsense.

The basic premise is that we terraformed mars with moss and cockroaches, but the roaches evolved into massive humanoid beings whose only evolutionary purpose seems to be punching people's heads off. Luckily the humans have serums they inject themselves with that imbue them with the advantages of certain insects, but how a child might think of it where it's like very specific superpowers.

It's entertaining in a silly kind of way, but it's incredibly stupid.

This is adapted from the manga of the same name. The story in the manga continues well past where this movie stops. That means that there are a lot of things that are set up here but not resolved. The main storyline is not revolved. I get that it is part of a longer story but a movie needs to have a beginning, a middle and an end. It needs to be able to stand on its own.

The effects for this are a real mixed bag. The sci-fi spaceship sets look really good. The CGI for the monsters looks really dated and poor. The costumes for the bug transformations mostly look terrible. There are a lot of characters but most of them are only there to get killed and get no development. The movie doesn't have much of a story. It's not one of those movies where nothing happens. Something is happening all of the time. There just isn't much of a through line. There's a not a lot of rhyme or reason to some of it. It really feels like it's condensed from a longer story and sometimes coherence suffers as a result. As for the ending, it doesn't have one as I mentioned before. It just sequel baits and then stops. This one flopped at the box office so that sequel is probably not coming.

Initially when I sat down to watch the 2016 movie "Terra Formars" from director Takashi Miike, I must admit that I was expecting a bit more than what the movie turned out to be. Why? Well, because this was directed by the legendary Japanese director Takashi Miike, of course.

Sure, "Terra Formars" was a watchable movie, but it was hardly among Takashi Miike's best work, not even by a long shot.

It was the storyline told in "Terra Formars", as written by Kazuki Nakashima, that didn't really sit well with me. Sure, the concept of colonizing Mars was interesting, but the whole bug vs. Bug concept was one that just was a bit too far out there.

Visually then "Terra Formars" was actually rather interesting. The CGI was good and the visual effects for the transformed hybrids of human/insect was actually interesting to look at, and it had a lot of nice details to it. However, again, the concept was just one that didn't really find a base of approval in my liking. And having great visuals can only do so much when you don't have a fully working storyline and script.

The acting in the movie was adequate, though I can't really point out any particular performances to be memorable or outstanding though.

All in all, then "Terra Formars" was a watchable, albeit somewhat quite far out there action sci-fi movie from Takashi Miike. The movie is also listed as horror here on IMDb. Well, there weren't actually much of anything horror about "Terra Formars".

My rating of "Terra Formars" lands on a mediocre five out of ten stars. This was, however, hardly a movie that I will be watching a second time.