Ok ... They tried to make something - Efforts are appreciated but you can't redo anime moves and talking styles on a live action ! it's gonna be silly ( and it was )

They were going to make a live-action Fullmetal Alchemist one day. It's one of the most well-known and most beloved anime series of all time. It was inevitable. Still, these adaptations have never been what you would call quality entertainment. It's clear that all of Japan's creative talent has chosen to work elsewhere.This movie being no exception. Now, granted, it has a few things going for it. For one, it looks much better than I'd dared to hope. Sure, even modern video games have more realistic textures, at least the best ones, but the effects in this film are realistic enough to please. It also helps that they look exactly how they're supposed to. Alphonse's armour looks frankly beautiful. Sure it's obviously CGI, but the design itself is straight from the anime and works surprisingly well. Likewise with many of the human character designs. Envy, for example, is nigh perfect and Gluttony, while looking a bit different, still retains the essence of the character.They also got a few of the characters pretty well. Some, like Edward Elric and Colonel Mustang are a bit off - with Riza Hawkeye being miles off and in a really uncomfortable way - but Captain Hughes is just about as he should be. If he was given time to shine, that is.And that right there is the biggest problems this film has. It's bullet point storytelling. It's trying to cram half a season into a run-time bit over two hours and it just doesn't work. Half of the scenes feel rushed, there's the bare minimum of character development if even that, and the cool fight scenes take up too much of the screen time. And yet there are scenes that go on way too long. There are odd pauses between lines of dialogues and the film has problems cutting away from a scene, leading to awkward silences. In the hands of a talented editor this could easily have been an hour and a half movie without taking anything away from the story.If you absolutely have to see Fullmetal Alchemist as a live-action adaptation, there are a few good things in this film. Personally I had to immediately go and watch the original classic to purge this abomination from my retinas.

First of all, I am a huge fan of FMA. I wasn't expecting such a great adaption after all now a days, each adaption is just there to use the franchise and make money, fortunately, this trend is not followed in this movie. Costume design and CGI (10/10): The movie has unexpectedly good graphics. Costume detailing is done superbly, especially Ed's red jacket, his metal arms, his gloves and even Roy's gloves are made accurately. These costume designers deserve an award for these details. Also the sets were made accurately, detailing over stairs outside Marco's house, Railway station, Tucker's house, Lab-5, Ed's stone walls(although you can see its made of cardboard in a scene) were done perfectly. They tried to make them exactly like anime. Although I didn't like stone dinosaurs concept but Ed running ahead of popping round stone walls gave the exact nostalgic feeling of series. Also you may see one scene where Gluttony runs with big cardboard teeth its funny and its a mistake easily notable. Best part may be the Gate and the "One and All" sitting in-front of it.Plot (6/10): I have watched everything ever developed on FMA repeatedly(except manga, I started them but didn't had time to finish). Plot is not as expected since the anime is based on Ed and Al's bonding, it was completely absent in the film. They also skipped Scar completely, not much reference on Ishval war, no Huge's daughter, and the emotional scenes between Huge's, Nina with Ed and Al were missing (but they tried hard with flashback thing since you cannot convert a 20+ hours series into 2 hours). Other parts of the movie are exactly as in series and there is no element of surpriseActing (9/10) : Ed's acting was superb, giving character exact range of emotions and body language. Al's voice was too deep. Every other character like Roy, Huges, Tucker, Winry, Lust, Gluttony were played perfectly. You will definitely enjoy Huges character. Although Roy played a good part but there could have been more detailing on him instead of him just walking on everyone. Lust's voice had exactly the same intensity as in series. Tucker's character still gave me chills even when I knew what was he gonna do. They could have taken more psycho looking person as Tucker's character as the current one looked funny rather than scary psycho. Best scene : When Ed tells that envy had last life left, the confidence and performance was exactly what needed to be along with the small grin Ed gives every-time he discovers anything in his favor(in series). Hats off Ryôsuke Yamada, you pulled it off.Continuity (7/10) : According to me, this movie lacked background music at a lot of places. This is easily notable and hard to ignore. They could have spend more on it and put decent score in the background especially when Tucker was explaining and Ed. Rest of the plot is fast moving and OK to watch. You will not be bored even if you know the whole story.So overall, I will rate it 8/10. Its a good movie, these guys have put a lot of effort to create it and I hope they make another part too with a bit more detailing this time.

I grew up as a hardcore FMA fan, so this was something I had to see. I don't have high expectations of live action movies, because they can't quite grasp the effects of an anime, but when it came to character appearances of a European-setting with an all Asian cast, they did pretty well. I was pretty disappointed on the emotion of this movie, it wasn't nearly as moving as the anime, I feel like rather than almost following the original script with slight little plot twists, the story should have been written on a small segment of Ed and Al's journey, it wouldn't have been as rushed and they could focus on details. I think Ed's character was decent, yet he wasn't as loud, rebellious, and mouthy as the anime version, he was too serious most of the time. Al felt really distant as a character, and when it came to characters like Mustang, there was a lost connection. It would have been nice to see more action too, at least have an actor or stunt double that knows martial arts to play in the fight scenes, that would have helped liven it up. Overall this movie was better than I anticipated, yet there were a lot of holes in the story, if they were filled/changed it would have been fantastic.