MovieChat Forums > Metoroporisu (2002) Discussion > can somebody please explain this movie t...

can somebody please explain this movie to me?

posted 20 years ago by ad-38
3 replies | jump to latest

as a filmlover I have recently developed a keen interest for manga/anime. As i was comlpetely blown away by such classics as akira and ghost in the shell, I was anticipating metropolis with great expectations. howeever i was slightly disapointed as even though i found the visual aspect brilliant and breathtaking, and the use of jazzmusic as well as the original score great, i thought the gharacters were one dimensional and non human. theres no real charachter change except for tima which i dont get. the plot beeing boring, full of cliches and hard to follow. the movie comperad the tower of duke red to the tower of babel, which i foud exciting. but i feel that it somehowe got lost in the background. there was a lot of minor themes and characters(the political president, the rebel leader, the friendly albert robot) but it sort of gets lost in the story which is again sort of thin.

howeever i feel as if i miss something. some profound mening that foes deeper thatn the story apperently does. please fill me in as i wanna understand it.

Element

[–] 20 years ago

[deleted]

[–] lordiviv 20 years ago

Maybe I'm not the best to comment on this.
Anyway, here goes:
The movie was made on a long manga comic book. The movie had to fit into a time limit so the comic's story was very much stripped of all non-esencial parts. OK, so they lost some important things too :-)

[–] King_Otomo 20 years ago

The manga wasn't that long and the movie is only based on the manga. It uses many of the same characters as Kenichi and Duke Red, but that's about it.

The reason there are so many subjects in the movie is mainly because of it's writer, Katsuhiro Otomo. Those who have seen Akira and read the manga know how Otomo likes to put many different characters and situations in the story.

But Otomo also tried to stay true to Tezuka, who has also put a lot of social criticism in his stories. For example the robots who where treated like second rate humans, which was his way to write about racism.

So in the end, we have Otomo putting a lot of stuff in the movie, plus the social criticism of Tezuka, which leads to too much characters and situations for a 2 hour movie.

And I think that if you read more Tezuka manga and Akira, the movie will be a lot clearer, because you will understand the messages that both of them try to tell.