Humanity's Last Straw For Apocalyptic Movies: Attack on Titan

There're apocalyptic movies, and there're post-apocalyptic movies. Remember World War Z? The former's zombie-infested planet Brad Pitt tried to save- adapted from the eponymous novel by Max Brooks? Faintly, I do. Like other viewers who paid money then to be convinced by the end of the world, I was more bored than entertained. That said, in 2015, manga-turned-blockbuster Attack on Titan comes second to snooze.

While you can't fault the apocalyptic genre (2012, anyone?) even after a series of blockbuster flops, directors should know its feature isn't the easiest to make or adapt. On literature, readers lucidly dream up all the fantasy, the action and the pandemonium. Though, onscreen, only the filmmaker controls what viewers see.

Similarly, there isn't much to digest here, apart from the artfully created monsters known as "Titans". Released in August with a sequel following the world-saving manga-adapted movie this month, Attack on Titan centers around humanity's battle against flesh-eating giants. They're nightmarish colossal duds; though, unlike childhood fables, Titans don't break out into nursery rhymes. They groan, shriek, and cackle while masticating human limbs with blood splayed to great CGI-effect. But those were just the best bits.

Set in an imagined agricultural society in close-to-extinct Japan, the film departs from the manga's German heritage. Which isn't the only difference, nor is it a problem to anyone who hasn't read the manga. While its people are walled up in a fortress to protect themselves from the Titans, the real problem began when the entire town was wrecked to rubble. Onward, upended lives didn't matter in the face of terror. Only the action did to take down the obvious enemy.

Of course, Attack on Titan is a different movie from the tropes of zombie attacks and natural disasters; it's a monster blockbuster, like Godzilla. Hefty with actions sequences between Titan-killing scouts (formed by the film's main trio Eren, Armin, and Mikasa, who's played by model/actress Kiko Mizuhara) and the monsters, the gory action should have made up for the lack of emotional responses from its characters. However, apart from the repeated saying, "I want to kill Titans", nobody really knows why their saving their world.

By the end, humanity's shared values didn't really matter anyway because the takeaway message was clear: we're only as vulnerable as the cattle bred. Okay. And the "true enemy is the fence [that's keeping us in]". That those lives who lost families, houses, and entire villages didn't cost its own unique story arc as much as they were lunch to the Titans, this movie has also served up a sequel aimed to unravel all its plot holes. Perhaps, humanity's apocalyptic blockbuster should really be canned.