(soon to be posted in my primary blog at LiveJournal)
Being the self-proclaimed and club-appointed Gundam fanboy that I am, I had to watch G-Saviour sooner or later. Well, last night was sooner, and considering I've owned it for five months, I went ahead and popped it in. The verdict: yeah, it sucks, just not as bad as it's made out to.
Let's set the movie up. Retired military mobile suit pilot Mark gets caught up in a military conspiracy to keep this bio-illuminating enzyme from getting public. The enzyme will supposedly solve humanity's food shortage problem by allowing the growth of edible plant life underwater (I think). Anyway, mobile suit pilot, scientist chick Graves, her assistants, and pilot’s girlfriend go on the run. He gets the G-Saviour and uses it to clear trash in space out of the way of a shuttle and in the final battle when the evil military invades Side 8 (called Gaea). Mark wins with back up, head military guy dies with Mark's girlfriend, Mark falls for scientist chick and they head to Earth. The end.
Yes, I spoiled G-Saviour. You'll get over it.
Now, let's get to what's wrong with this movie. First off, for a supposedly big 20th anniversary production for the Gundam franchise, it's basically a cheaply-made Sci-Fi Channel movie. The CGI is painfully obvious. Even in 1999, we were doing better than that. I can let that pass though. Besides, the final battle wasn’t that bad, except when they switched shots into the badly-designed cockpits (how did UC tech for visual display in cockpits regress?).
The sets though felt really cramped. You didn't really see much openness the colonies should have, except for one shot of the colony New Manhattan, which was a bad CGI mock up of New York. The space ships were all small passenger shuttles (with cargo bays for mobile suits, oddly enough), so none of the large bridges like White Base. It just didn't feel like Gundam.
Plot-wise, you don't care. Really, you don't. Nothing makes you care about what’s going on. If this didn't have anything to do with Gundam (which is almost doesn't), you'd change the channel since nothing is keeping your attention.
The characters don’t help. The acting isn’t horrible, but it’s not enough to make you care about them. Plus, starting with pilot and scientist chick's completely-obvious-yet-poorly-developed kiss, the collective intellect of the entire cast seems to drop.
That is the main problem: it’s just boring. The movie probably didn’t ruin the Gundam franchise because it’s just so forgettable. No one would even know about it if there was no Gundam.
I've seen a lot of movies, from good to bad, awesome to awful, masterpieces to pieces of crap. G-Saviour is not at the complete end of the spectrum, but it's definitely on that side. It’s not the abomination it’s made out to be, but there’s no reward in watching it. Here's hoping Sunrise actually puts a little effort into Gundam's 30th anniversary next year (animated Gundam Unicorn *fingers crossed*).
