Hi everyone, hope I'm not late to the party, with my review here
I ordered a few weeks ago one of the last remaining copies of the special Blue Ray edition of the movie on CDJapan. I've watched the movie several times, from start to finish, including once while flipping through the pages of volumes 4 - 6 of the manga to see which parts of the original story have been cut/altered in the movie and which parts remained intact. And boy, does this movie stink. No negative comments that I have read about "Golden Age I: Egg of the Supreme King" already could have possibly prepared me for this trainwreck of a film, nor could any positive comments really help me find much anything enjoyable or redeemable about it. Although everything that has undermined this movie has already been talked about before, I will try and be more detailed and in-depth in my review and give examples on some of the things that had made this movie the way it turned out to be.
I'll start off with the CGI "animation" - watching it last through the whole movie, it's even worse than seeing it in 30 second trailer clips. The jarring flippity-floppy visuals made it hard for me to feel any sort of emotional connection with Guts or any other characters during what were supposed to be the emotionally-gripping, action packed battle scenes. I don't know if this is what they'd call crossing the "uncanny valley", when a human mind gets repelled by an excessively blatant artificial computer-generated imagery, but this movie feels very close to it. The 3D CGI when used on human characters, in addition to making the said characters physically look bad while they only remain stationary, it also causes them to often move in a bewilderingly lethargic pace when they are moving. For example, in the opening battle scene when Guts confronts Bazuso, he walks up to him in what at first appears to be dramatic slow motion. But then quickly I noticed how
all the soldiers in that scene as well as Bazuso himself, in fact, move about in that same laughable "slo-mo" effect. Forget about just only the usual video game comparisons here. Almost immediately it reminded me of a scene from Family Guy, when Tom Tucker is shown walking in dramatic slow motion, with moments later the camera zooming back and revealing that this is how Tom Tucker actually walks
This ridiculous slow motion "trick" is nauseatingly repeated for much of the rest of the film, particularly during the dramatic scenes, as well as the scene where Griffith shows his Beherit to Guts for the first time. In addition, the movie is made even worse by the overuse of Dutch angles, shaky camera movements and the George Lucas-esque ridiculously overblown camera pans and rotations.
Then there's the film soundtrack which, although hasn't received as much attention as the CGI, also deserves an honorable mention. Susumu Hirasawa's song "Aria" is excellent, and works beautifully for the movie. Its dark yet catchy melody has all the unusual and eccentric dynamic textures which're to be expected from the great master composer, and the whole song sounds refreshingly enjoyable. Unfortunately the same can't be said of the Shiro Sagisu's musical score for the movie. The main problem with this movie's music is how it has often gotten misplaced in the movie's scenes. In scenes where silence would have sufficed and no music was needed, there's music. Just one example of this is when we're shown autumn leaves being blown by the wind, after Guts gets spooked out by the Beherit, as Griffith reveals his ambitions to him. That schlocky Muzak-like piano was really unnecessary there. And in other scenes, the music just doesn't fit the mood of what's happening on the screen and ultimately spoils those scenes. Like in the nightmare that Guts experiences while in bed with Casca. During the first few seconds the music there starts off actually sounding like a passable cover version of a Hirasawa song. But then the music takes a turn for bad and then worse, when the Pro-Tooled, digitally enhanced "ethereal" vocalizations and synthesized orchestration kicks in. The other scenes that come to my mind are when Guts introduces himself to Griffith while taking a look around at the Hawks' camp, or during the scene where Julius and other Griffith-hating nobles are shown gossiping about him and the Hawks. In both instances, the music sounds like something straight out of the "Desperate Housewives"
There's a lot of scenes where music is overblown or not emotionally appropriate to the on-screen action. Basically, too much "operatic" vocalizations during scenes of battles, and too much elevator schlock music during the scenes of calm.
And of course, there's the issue of poor screen adaptation of the original manga itself. The excision of Guts' childhood already takes away a lot of the movie's fire as it is. But the whole slew of characters, dialog and scenes that have been cut from the film adaptation, when added up, is quite staggering. As a result of all the numerous cuts, the events and characters that take place in the movie not only have their importance in the story diminish significantly but they also all just "happen to be there", with no explanation. Without Carcus telling his fellow Hawks about how he'd wanted to be the one to kill Bazuso and collect the reward for it, we have no idea why he and his buddies are attacking Guts in the first place or why he always felt resentful towards Guts right from the beginning. Or when Griffith informs Guts that his mercenary group are the Band of the Hawk, in the original manga Guts is mildly astonished to hearing this and he mentally notes about what a feared and formidable mercenary band they are. But in the anime, his reaction is like "Ah, okay. Whatever." and to shrug it off. This creates an impression that the Hawks are just another merc band whose members occasionally happen to commit highway robbery upon random strangers. There's no Guts' first battle as a Hawk in the movie and no post-battle "induction" drinking scene, which would leave those unfamiliar with manga as to how Guts learned to fit in so well with the Band of the Hawk or why he chose to stay there after being forcibly conscripted against his will by Griffith. Also, without Foss encouraging him and giving him advise, we have Julius deciding to try and kill Griffith all by himself. This drastically takes away from the tensions of court intrigue and if he ever gets introduced in the future Berserk movies, it also reduces Foss' role as the conspiracy-minded master manipulator in the series. Then there's the dialog between the various Hawks at the beginning of the episode "Nosferatu Zodd (I), where they talk about Zodd defending the enemy castle that the Hawks want to take and the legends about his immortality and invincibility in battles. This piece of dialog gives us the clue on how mighty Zodd is. But no such thing occurs in the movie, where after a brief shot of the enemy keep, they cut straight to Guts shouting and cursing at his comrades for trying to restrain him from going inside there. There are many, many more of such cuts and listing them all would take days and require a separate thread. Thus, "Egg of the Supreme King" fails, both as an adaptation and simply as an anime film in its own right. I honestly have no idea why it ever had to happen this way. Perhaps it was the Studio 4°C red tape and their executives' demand that the movie's running time be kept at no more than 80 minutes that has resulted in all these cuts. Or, as some have suggested, with Kentarou Miura having given the producers and screenwriters a complete creative carte blanche with their adaptation of his manga, those guys just decided to go nuts with it and cut out/change whatever they pleased. I don't know. But whatever the cause, as a fan it's sad and disheartening to know that with Golden Age trilogy Studio 4°C had the golden opportunity (no pun intended) to rectify all the errors and wrongs that OLM had made with their '97 TV series. Studio 4°C could have brought Miura's story full and intact onto the big screen, win the hearts and minds of all the Berserk fans worldwide. And of course, in the process, more of the fans' hard earned money. But alas, they chose a different route and made their film adaptation so irredeemably bad, that not even Kentarou Miura's limited edition slipcase cover art can salvage it. And for that, shame on them.
So with that, it has been option # 5 for me
And for those who still haven't seen the movie or bought the Blu Ray - caveat emptor.
i didn't really like the style they chose to animate it with and felt there were far too many things left out expected to see more of the hawks (judo,pippin,ricket and corcus) they were barely even in it i hope they have more screen time in the following movies and the zodd scene!?! it was so short! I think an extra 15-20min could have made this so much better! But ohwell it was still fun to see berserk animated again and some scenes were pretty daym cool still I'm hoping part 2 is better...
) So of course theres more but this was the one that stood out the most and I just cant muster enough energy to make a hate campaign atm...
