Terra Formars (2016)

My overall rating of this movie is 2/10 and I'll explain why.

Let's start with the story.
There is nothing wrong with it...
It's a pretty creative base to an alien action movie and if executed well it could have turned into "Movie of the year". It had a lot of potential but sadly this movie did not live up to it.

The Characters, (Beware of spoiler - ish comments!)

This is a war movie so obviously, people/monsters from both sides are going to die. But don't worry, you're not gonna feel sad watching them get brutally ripped apart because you're gonna have only a few seconds with each character. What happens is; They briefly tell you why they are criminals and then for the rest of the movie, you get to watch them die without knowing their full names, their background stories, their dreams, who their loved ones were or how they got into this mess in the first place. Out of 7 or 8 forgettable main characters (Can't be bothered to remember how many they were), you only get a half-butted background story for 2 of them. Not to mention that at the end they try to make you think they were best buds, even though some characters barely had any screen time together.

The Make-up and the CGI
Okay, so a lot of people gave this movie some really big thumbs up but as I understood it, all they could say was good about this movie, was the CGI...
I have to admit that the CGI was better than most Japanese action movies. It actually gave me some hope for the upcoming Live action adaptions of FMA and Joe's Bizarre adventures (Even though they picked Yamaken to play a macho man when he has a typical ikemen face...). The make- up was not too bad either. I don't know how to feel about people being half morphed into insects but they were very creative while trying to make it work and it looked pretty okay.

The music
No comments. Not memorable.

Actors.
I don't know what to say. All of a sudden Yamapi starts speaking English then a Japanese terrorist starts speaking random English, both for no reason at all... I guess the acting was okay, though. Not much to talk about since they did not get much screen time and the script was a mess. Well... The whole movie was a mess so if the actors couldn't show their best performance, it wasn't their fault.

To sum it all up
The story was good. It had a lot of potential but because everything was so rushed it couldn't live up to my expectations. Had they divided this one movie into 3 movies and added more detail it would have been more interesting. The characters were hollow so I could not emotionally connect with any of them and the actors did not have so much space to act so their general performance was bearable. The visual effects were better than expected but the music was not memorable at all.
In the end, it was barely entertaining enough to keep me watching so I give this movie an overall 2/10

I do not plan to watch any upcoming movies.

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Story 4.5/10 : The story's concept was interesting, the opening scene really draws you in (its a shame they couldn't continue this throughout the whole film) and gets you curious. However, the story just turns out to be boring with an excessive amount of flashbacks. Although, the latter still doesn't help the viewer relate to the characters like when people died I really was just like 'oh'. I really wish they had spent more time on character development because there were some real bad ass female characters that sadly didn't have a lot of time to shine. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen even the so called 'plot twist' really did nothing for me I just was like 'oh' lol. The CGI on mars was good but the cockroaches I wish they'd been more scary looking they just looked sad and kind of harmless.The action scenes were the only good thing for me about this film they were really good actually but I'd exchange those in a heartbeat for a more interesting plot. Oh and I don't think I really mentioned this but the female characters were really good in the sense that they never expected any guy to save them they were really strong and independent which was very refreshing!

Acting/Cast 6/10 : The acting was okay there was no-one that was glaringly bad. I was so excited about the cast btw because Yamapi and Emi and Yamada but they failed to impress me or really add anything. HOWEVER, Oguri Shun really outdid himself with his characterization, I almost didn't recognize him! I was really impressed with him ( I don't know why he is a phenomenal actor). You could really see the effort he took with his mannerisms and tone from the moment he stepped out the hovercraft lol. I was almost wishing he'd played his character a little more crazy and eccentric just to offset the boring mess of everyone else! (Btw why were people randomly speaking English I was so confused lol!)

Music 1/10: Was there music? I almost wish there had been noticeable good music maybe it would've of spiced up the movie a little bit! Kind of like suicide squad the movie sucked but at least they had good music!!

Rewatch Value: Yeah its a no for me! The story isn't interesting enough for me to re-watch and if I want to watch a sci-fi movie similar in set-up to this one I'll just refer to Ridley Scott can't go wrong with Aliens!

Overall 6.5/10: The plot wasn't interesting but the action scenes were a majority of the film which helped a lot. So basically watch if you really like action and don't care if the plot is boring and not interesting. But if your watching for the actors honestly DONT i promise you they have better and more note worthy works then this film. However, if your a big Oguri Shun fan and want to see another example of his awesomeness , (albeit wasted on this film) go for it! Overall the story had such an interesting concept I just wish it would have been executed better!

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