Asian Film Review: Space Battleship Yamato (SPACE BATTLESHIP ヤマト,2010)

Sorry, been so busy lately, trying to keep up with a lot of work!  Here's a movie blog from last week I didn't finish!

Last Thursday Jane, Hiro and I managed to sneak into an opening day screening of Space Battle Ship Yamato ( SPACE BATTLESHIP ヤマト), the new live action adaptation of the classic 1970s Anime series 宇宙戦艦ヤマト.  This version is staring SMAP superstar Kimura Takuya ( 木村 拓哉) with the beautiful Kuroki Meisa playing the female lead.  

30-something Americans like me may recognize this under its US release 'Starblazers'.  

I think if you've never seen the anime you will not enjoy this movie much... its attempt to cram 26 episodes into a 2 hour movie leaves a lot out... so in that respect its meant more to be a 'oh wow, they actually made a 21st century CG+live-action attempt to recreate this super-famous 70's sci-fi anime' type tribute...

I think most people will find these costumes and set designs cheezy, but staying true to the original is actually a big plus for me. :-P One of my major criticisms of Japanese 'Blockbusters' in general is that they invariably seem to run out of money half way through the production so the 2nd half of the film seems light on expensive CG sequences or long shots that require big sets.  It gives the film a claustrophobic feeling because you never get any establish shots to help tell the story.   Yamato suffers from this a bit too despite being one of the biggest budget Japanese movies ever made...   

another problem it has is the absolutely atrocious pacing problem at the end.  In the middle of a fierce space battle,  the main characters will stop everything for 20 minutes while they chit-chat...   It becomes laughable at some point in time! :-P

Lastly for purists like me,   this film adaptation actually 'cheats' and includes elements and characters from the 2nd season in addition to the 1st season story line on which its mostly based.   That said, they also updated and altered the story quite a bit (the Gamillons aren't just Nazis with blue skin anymore!)   Some of the changes to add more females to the line-up and give them real jobs besides being damsels in distress is actually welcomed.

Unfortunately for me, the version I saw screening in HK only has Chinese subtitles to go with the Japanese dialogue, so I had to try to read in Chinese while trying to understand the Japanese (and my Japanese has gone to crap over the last few years!).  I understood 90% of it til the story veered dramatically away from the original... at which point I was somewhat lost. :-P

Anyway. Long story short - if you're a fanboy (but not too much of a purist fanboy!) and you don't expect a good movie, you'll enjoy it - 6/10.  If you've never seen the original, you'll probably get really bored.... You'll probably think more like 4/10.

PS - This was the best scene in the movie -

(lifted from this guy's screen grab)