Attack on Titan II: End of the World (2015)

Good idea lost in the noise

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Hmm...this one was better than the first one. It had more action scenes, with the guys flying among the titans beautifully, a better explanation over the whole titan thing and a nice setting. The love story was not good, the special effects were okay this time around, but I wish I could get a better understanding of what and why the guy was becoming a titan. Having not watched the anime nor read the manga, I am rating this solely on my experience as film lover, so 5 out of 10.

I had such high hopes for this one.It goes downhill immediately and drags on while nothing of the first movie is surpassed.The fact that the titans were made by humans was something interesting I wanted to see but it got glossed over while it would make a good part for a trilogy.This idea of putting to much story in 2 movies fails horribly and makes this sequel painful to watch.I really hope someone reboots this because it really has enough material for multiple movies,preferably a trilogy.Everything felt less in this movie from the acting, to the script, to the production value, with only the ending feeling somewhat O.K.I'm rating this real low. Rating for both these films would be 4 or 5.This could have been great.Sad... it ain't so.Remake.

It's very unusual for one cinematic tale to be broken up into two separate movies (a "Part 1" and a "Part 2"), that are released in consecutive months. The Japanese film "Attack on Titan" has done just that. Japanese audiences got to see Part 1 on August 1, 2015 and Part 2 on September 19, 2015. American theaters showed the movies on September 30th and October 20th, respectively. With the U.S. release dates of these two halves just three weeks apart, Part 1 is probably still fresh in the minds of those who saw it, but some people may have missed the first one and want to see the second one. So, before I review "Attack on Titan: Part 2" (NR, 1:28) – also known as "Attack on Titan: End of the World" – let's look back at how we got to this point in this Japanese apocalyptic action/adventure/horror/fantasy… The basic story in "Attack on Titan" first emerged as other forms of entertainment in Japan and grew rapidly in popularity in a relatively short period of time. The Japanese manga (graphic novel) series, "Attack on Titan" debuted in 2009 and became an anime TV series in 2013. In this story, all civilization exists behind three sets of concentric cement walls designed to keep out Godzilla-sized man-eating human-like creatures called titans. After a century of peace (and the younger generation wondering if the titans are a myth), the calm is shattered when a new kind of titan that's taller than the wall kicks a hole in it. The titans lumber inside and promptly begin eating people. The survivors retreat behind the second set of walls and form a military regiment to plug the hole in the outer wall. For this concluding segment, Eren Jaeger (Haruma Miura), his best friend, Armin (Kanata Hongo), Eren's girlfriend-turned-fierce-titan-fighter, Mikasa (Kiko Mizuhara), and a few others who survived Part 1 are still intent on completing their mission in spite of the setbacks they encountered right before the end of that film.Part 2 picks up the story right where Part 1 left off, but sets the stage first. There's a short flashback scene from Eren's childhood which explains the special ability that he displayed at the end of Part 1 (which, at the time, seemed to come out of nowhere). Next, there's a short compilation of scenes from Part 1, which prepares audiences pretty well for viewing Part 2. Then the story moves forward, starting with Eren chained up and threatened with execution for what he revealed about himself in the previous battle. Eren lives, learns more of the history of his civilization and the titans who decimated it, finds out what is really going on in the current war and has to decide what role he will play in its final outcome.For those who saw the first half of the movie, the best way for me to tell you what the conclusion is about (without, of course, resorting to spoilers) is to give you a list of questions that Part 2 answers: How can Eren's special ability make a difference in the war against the titans? Are there others who have that same ability? Why did the titans suddenly reappear at that particular moment in time? Where did that titan's titan who broke through the wall come from and why does he look and act differently than the others? Why are the titans vulnerable to injury at the nape of the neck? What are the competing agendas at work here? What happened to the original scouting regiment from Part 1? Can the outer wall be effectively patched? And, last but certainly not least, what lies beyond that outer wall? Part 2 answers all these questions and, in the process, gives us a movie that's better than Part 1."Attack on Titan, Part 2" / "Attack on Titan: End of the World", even though it's the second half of a single movie, is very different in tone and substance. Part 2 improves upon many of the problems that I had with Part 1 (which led me to give that movie a "C-"). The story is more interesting in Part 2 – especially with several plots twists and surprising reveals. The script leaves far fewer unanswered questions and has fewer plot holes (fewer, but not none). The creepy/silly-looking titans get less screen time in Part 2 and hardly any close-ups, which helps the audience take the story's conflict more seriously and earns the film higher marks overall for its special effects. The characters are less annoying (especially the scouting regiment's comically gung-ho female squad leader who is still kind of ridiculous, but a little more amusing than in Part 1), but much of the performances is still overly melodramatic.This two-part film would have been more effective as a single film. Joining them wouldn't have necessarily resulted in a bloated three-hour movie. Eliminating the credits at the end of Part 1 and that review compilation at the beginning of Part 2 would save time. That, and more judicious editing of the story, could have produced a half-way decent two-hour-long "Attack on Titan" movie. Releasing the story as separate films was probably about selling two sets of tickets, but that only works if Part 1 is good enough to make people want to talk it up and to see Part 2. I can't help thinking that making this into one movie would've turned out better both creatively and commercially. As it stands, however, Parts 1 and 2 were released as separate movies, leading to separate reviews and separate grades from us. "Attack on Titan: Part 2" is better than Part 1, but still not what I'd call high quality. "B-"

The first Attack on Titan already missed the point of the anime/manga. Disregard the source material, it still delivers enough dose of delightful violence. But since it now made an even more complicated storyline for this mythology, it would be tough to gain the chance of having a compelling story. And here we are, the sequel that is suppose to make sense out of something that's already made stupid. Maybe the predecessor was sort of forgivable for bringing a lot of cool action and bloody death scenes from the Titans, but here, it's more explaining; while that's not a bad choice, the characters aren't improved, the themes are even more vague and the plot is just shallow. The action is fine when it delivers, but we witness more horribly written characters here than whatever made the first movie at least fun.This sequel is about unraveling conspiracies from tyrannical governments, and that doesn't sound so bad since it's representing its own dystopian future allegory. But every time it keeps explaining the life inside and outside the walls, things get seriously confusing. At one point, it states that life inside the walls is suppose to be some sort of a utopian facade, but we hardly even get to explore that commentary. We're just explained that everyone inside the walls are slaves from a classified science experiment. And the rest of the movie has these characters deciding which side should they choose, either to destroy the wall or kill many innocent civilians. It would be cool if this argument doesn't take forever, but it keeps going. The problem is it's not given much tension since we hardly even knew who the people they were defending. It's just a nearly unending argument of which choice is supposed to be the right thing and it gets tedious.And the story gets even stupider the more they reveal the secrets of the villains, but we'd rather shrug it off and wait for the next action scene. Too bad, it takes a chunk of every ten to twenty minutes to get there. The first movie, while dumb, does spend a lot establishing the terror of the Titans. Here, the action is much reserved, which is a shame since these scenes are the only ones that are quite glorious to watch. Now we see hand-to-hand fights between two or more Titans and that's pretty awesome, but again, these scenes are just so little compared to the dreary expositions the entirety took over. The effects still looks nice, but it's easy to overlook these merits if everything else seems boring.Attack on Titan 2: End of the World is just not trying anymore. The first movie have established too much of the terror of these creatures, but then there happens to be a greater villain, which is presented with dull verbal expositions that leads to an utterly underwhelming finale of a franchise that hardly has anything to put out to begin with. They could have made things simple, like a direct adaptation, rather than being a much shallow version of The Giver movie or an exasperatingly complicated version of The Scorch Trials. The anime/manga is already a pretty clever, and once again, morally complex material. So why follow these generic trends? Well, fine, if you want to be a mindless fun movie, then go ahead. Besides, the title "Attack on Titan" and even more so with "End of the World" are perfect to enough to indicated a mindless, but pretty cool epic. But this movie sadly justifies nothing.