These movie versions are awful.

The animation, despite being "glitzier" had a weird, disjointed, unemotional aspect to it--the facial expressions are just so lifeless. Not to mention Griffith looks like some sort of creepy doll and Casca is somehow less dark-skinned. The fight scenes are flashy, yet, the original knew when to slow down to really amp up the drama. These movies just seem to want to run through everything as fast as possible. Gut's first fight and his fight with the monster-vampire thing (his name is eluding me right now). The show had this amazing ability to make every impact and wound have enormous weight and consequence. With these movies, it's just wam-bam-bam-bam, OVER. There's no dynamics to the action.

Also, it barely went beyond what the anime covered and also had a frustratingly incomplete cliff-hanger ending. What is it with incomplete animes being turned into movies that only cover the same story arcs?

And, most importantly... the music. The music is absolutely god-awful. As music can be sort of an un-noticed bystander, I didn't quite realize how awful it was until I watched the climatic ending of both back-to-back (as I heard the movies went further than the show). These 'arcs' have some of the most generic, unrelated-to-the-events-on-screen music I've ever heard. When Guts is trying to get to Griffith while he rapes Casca, the music is practically comedic. I did literally LOL at how goofy it sounds. The laughable bobbing of Griffith's head as the camera zooms in on his eyes sure didn't help. Just another example of how the show knew how to "slow it down"--sometimes less is more. In the anime version, Griffith just stares, unmoving, unflinchingly at Guts. It was creepy and intense. The way the movie handles it is just goofy. Is there some reason the movies couldn't use the same music? Or did they really think what they put together was better?

You'd feel cocky too if you were full of myself.