Space Battleship Yamato

OK so why Japanese movies don't have higher budgets? These types of movies deserve much more money. What they can do with 20x time less than US movies is amazing.

Excellent work, excellent movie, please film more of such Sci-Fi movies, this is great. More more more ! I just can't believe that we could get for instance 16 movies of such quality e.g. 12 milion per movie = $200 million, and one US movie costs $200 million(Transformers). I could watch 10 movies instead of 1, that would be superb ! Blu-ray's here I come :-)

I mean Transformers for example are ALL about mambo-jumbo folks, some teen "superstars" and we have a movie - WRONG ! Quality movie doesn't requires superstars, it requires good story, great directing and great production. 'Yamato' movie showed us that.

Now about the movie, effects, robotics etc only Japanese can do that, nice stuff guys. Love the sound, and sound effects.

Enjoy watching this !

12 Million Dollars to produce Yamato? Money well spent, I'd say!

Even though it takes place in limited spaces what is there, looks good. Imagine making Yamato with a Transformers budget. That would give time to bring to life the lengthy battles from the original series. Especially the scene, fighting the subspacemarine would be interesting to see in a sequel.

What I liked about the movie is that it has characters. Somewhat cheesy and over-dramatizing characters at times, but that's Anime for you. There are some actual hero's voyages here involving more than cutting a distance between point a and b. There is the personal story of every character that makes this movie connect on more than an action level, in its best moments.

In its worst moments there are a lot of things I don't understand. Enemies there and then gone. A lot of stuff involving "why didn't they do it" scenarios on either the human or alien side. Plot vagueness might be a good way to call them without giving anything away.

The overall picture is recommendable to any Sci-Fi fan. It feels like they crammed a lot into it and don't always succeed with it. As has been said, the ending is kind of a drag, but it's alright. If I were to chose between this and Transformers, Yamato would make the race due to better story development, more interesting characters and a higher entertainment factor. I guess the Japanese acting is a bit stiff at times, but there is this sense of serenity about it, which makes it yet believable and enjoyable to the end.

I watched and loved the anime 'Starblazers' as a kid and now 30+ years on I find out they've made a live action version of the series that I knew absolutely nothing about! Well, I just HAD to watch it, not expecting anything great.... putting my hopes as high as a SciFy movie of the week or a campy Godzilla movie.

Boy was I surprised! The movie does leap right into things without the background development of the main 'spaceship' or real character introductions, but to enjoy the movie, especially if you have any familiarity with the source cartoon, it really didn't hinder it that much. When the 'Yamamoto' took off and the special effects were introduced, I almost crapped my pants! It looked FANTASTIC!! Exactly like my 9 year old mind pictured as if it were brought to life!

This movie is FAR from Shakespeare, but for an action space romp, popcorn munching entertainment vehicle... it sure impressed me silly... especially compared to the dreck coming out of Hollywood these days.

If you have fond memories of 'Starblazers', this is a MUST SEE... even if you never saw the cartoon, I'd highly recommend this as a decent time waster.... you could do far worse!

Well, considering the length of the original series, the movie producers have done well cramming it all into a 2-hour long film.

There are a few flaws in the movie I thought needed a bit more work on.

1. There is little feelings of romance between Kodai Susumu and Mori Yuki. It just felt flat. This, I attributed, to the target audience of the original animated series.

2. The melodrama at the end, on the bridge, was very Japanese..... in the 1970s. It should have been shorter and more modernized. I guess one has to be a die-hard fan not to find that scene particularly long-winded.

3. There wasn't enough battle footage of the Yamato and her enemies. This I was seriously looking forward to, but was left disappointed.

4. I wish Mr Kimura would shed a few tears, that would have made his performance more believable.

That said, there were quite a few good points about the movie, 1. Realistic space-fighter maneuvers. The big turnarounds of spaceships and fighters in American sci-fi is just plain BS. The only other sci-fi that got it right was Babylon 5.

2. Up until the bridge scene right at the very end, I was actually not aware of the time passing.

3. This movie have some of the better Japanese actors in recent years. Overall, their performances are well delivered and their friendships believable.

4. Swearing and vulgarities are non-existent in the entirety of the movie (or none that I am aware of). This is a rarity these days, especially with all the filth coming out of American and European films.

5. The graphics and SFX are quite good. They are quite realistic. I have no problem with much of it except for those SFX sounds the lasers and beams made.... sound very arcade-like and very 70s.

This movie is worth the ticket you paid for.

... should have been made by the people who made this "live-action" Space Battleship Yamato (2010) movie-- which is based on the Classic (first major "space opera"-- after Star Trek, before Star Wars) animated TV series of the same name , and much closer in style and content to Star Trek The Original TV Series... since it doesn't devolve into the teen-angst or "slo-mo" action of recent Hollywood blockbusters.

The source material is given many judicious "updates" which largely made sense to me from a story, if not production, stand-point: e.g. the talking robot "Analyzer" is now a "SIM" module which you can load into other devices and the aliens are now truly "alien" with technology and energy signatures which humans have difficulty detecting or understanding.... And the writing is smart enough to make light of the "old-schooled" stuff they keep-- like their costumes ("we're still wearing this?") and one-liners. In fact, there is so little "fan-service" or "sequel baiting" that non-fans probably won't realize that this is an adaptation of a 1970s TV animation series (using the ORIGINAL music)!

P.S. To anyone who thinks that the characters' reactions to the movie's apocalyptic story is unrealistic (taking time to make decisions, say farewells, mourn/salute the dead)-- just look at how real Japanese people deal with their earthquakes and tsunamis.

Owing to the fact that the Japanese "general movie audience" is not that much larger than the Japanese anime/manga audience, there is no faux issue of "re-imagining" the source material for a "new/larger" audience-- and the writers rise to the monumental task of "condensing" many epic, if episodic, story-arcs (which should have taken a trilogy, if not a series of 7/8 movies) into a single feature film... by focusing on the STORY! In fact, this movie is so tightly structured that the only really unexplained or implausible thing in it is probably all of the actors' great hair... and the secret lies in using sci-fi movie tropes (most of it actually originating from their source material), NOT explaining them-- since no amount of techno-babble will turn a plot device into reality.

Which is where, I believe, this movie will divide audiences into fans and non-fans of the source material (or sci-fi/anime in general)-- a downside of all this emphasis on story is, of course, a relative lack of characterization.... Though thankfully, anime stereotypes have at least one more dimension than their Hollywood counterparts and the casting is mostly SPOT-ON (you who believe skinny anime characters with fluffy hair do not exist in Japan, repent!) And some inevitably heavy narration and exposition which might have been risible were thankfully short, focused and well-delivered-- with a touch of self-awareness (*eye-rolling*) by the characters themselves. And as expected, veteran actors deliver their lines and inhabit their characters without batting an eyelid, while younger cast members are less convincing with their histrionics.

So while this might seem like a pretty generic space adventure to "general audiences"; it is and has always been intended as a treat for the fans. And this movie won me over for the simple fact that, after decades of Star Wars and Star Trek, it could still make me go "WOW..." every time an alien or a space-ship appeared, for all of 3/4 of a second-- because it's not what you have, it's how you use it!

For this is low-budget movie-making by Hollywood standards, so there is absolutely no "pimping" of expensive special effects-- which means that the only time you get to see the aliens/space-ships is when they are actually doing something ESSENTIAL to the plot. And sci-fi fans might also note that they got the relative speeds of capital-ships (bigger = slower) vs fighter-ships, missile-fire, warp-effects (almost instantaneous by comparison) RIGHT-- so there is no such rubbish as waiting for "visual confirmation" (which is meaningless in the vastness of space) or capital-ships "dodging" long-range fire (which would hit almost as soon as they are "detected").

All this means going back to the "bridge battles" of submarine/battleship warfare (this Yamato looks/works more like a submarine with a skeletal crew, than some cruise-boat or flying-city) which rely more on having good scripts/actors than special effects-- and people who don't think this can't be nerve-wrecking should see how they "set-up" the Yamato's SPLIT-SECOND "warp-maneouvers"!

The budgetary limits really start showing up near the end of the movie-- but if the money is lacking, the heart is not: the relatively simple yet distinct special effects design (transforming "2-stage" fighter-ships!) is always a pleasure to behold, even when very tight (or wide) shots are used in order to avoid rendering very expensive details. It may be just a few frames of CGI, but the "impact" will leave you re-playing it in your mind...

The real only disappointment for me, if any, would be how the human and environmental issues (Living with irradiated earth? Leaders making up "white lies"?) ever-present in the best of Japanese anime is left in the background-- as both the challenges and solutions presented in the story are essentially alien-related. I mean, I'm ashamed to admit to one of the more touching moments for me was when "Analyzer" finally took on its robot-form (hey, it had more lines than the "red shirts")....