Now, you would think that would be a recipe for a disaster, as these types of endeavors typically always end with the characters and plot suffering immensely...but somehow, that isn't ENTIRELY true here.
Don't get me wrong, the individual characters don't have a lot of time since there are so many of them, and the character arcs aren't really as fleshed out as they are in the original show. So in that sense, yeah, the movie definitely suffered from being so condensed.
The thing that makes that not nearly as bad as you would think is that the bits of characterization we DO see have been GREATLY modernized and retooled. It's apparent to me that even though this was obviously going to be mainly a special-effects fest meant for older fans of the series, some effort was made to update the characters to be more contemporary.
For example, Seiya is still a shounen hero at heart, but thanks to the movie's animation, his more modern, funnier dialogue and overall more playful personality, he has a roguish charisma that was completely lacking in the original incarnation of the character, which is infamous to Latin American fans for being extremely annoying. This alone is already a HUGE benefit to the movie, because you don't actually want to see Seiya get beat up all the time, and you don't mind it when he has bullshit shounen power ups and wins because he is actually likable.
Tatsumi was completely reinvented from a thuggish bald kendo expert into a fatherly, bumbling butler figure completely overwhelmed and scared at the over-the-top happenings around him but determined to protect Saori at any cost. This makes the character much more grounded and much more sympathetic compared to the original incarnation which was mostly a giant douche.
Saori herself might be the movie's biggest and most noticeable change: she acts MUCH more realistically in this movie compared to the original series. Here she is a confused, scared teenage girl who acts very much like someone whose life was turned around completely in just one day, but still cares for and tries to help the Saints in whatever way she can, unlike in the original series where she was this aloof, bigger-than-life mary sue who did not at all feel like a teenage girl. Another notable difference is that she isn't sleeping for the entire arc, she actually goes with the Saints into the Sanctuary and is conscious during the whole thing; while she doesn't do much besides use her cosmo to heal wounds, it already makes her feel like a much more active character than the original. It might also be worth noting that Seiya and Saori are both 16 in this movie, which is more believable compared to the original where they were both 13.
The movie has similar re-inventions for other characters, such as making Deathmask a complete insane showboat with an oogie-boogie esque lair and short musical number, making Milo into a WOMAN (so the gold saints aren't a complete sausage fest), turning Shiryu into the Comically Serious, etc. Pretty much all of these changes are either not worse than the original, or better.
So the problem is actually a bit different than you would expect; the bits of characterization we DO see, the interactions between the different characters (like when shiryu is individually naming all the houses and the other 3 saints just ignore him and continue on), are so much better and feel so much more HUMAN than the previous series even though it's not that deep, that it just makes you want to see more of that, but the movie can't afford to do so because of the run time. This and the rushed plot are the main weaknesses of the movie, though in regards to the plot itself there are a couple of things which make a little more sense this time around; Seiya actually has the idea of bypassing straight to the final house, but it's made clear the Sanctuary is magically bound to prevent that, as Seiya and Saori just get knocked to the next house that the others were headed to anyway.
There are also some things which bothered me on the character front, like the fact that Ikki basically does jackshit in this movie. He shows up all of twice and spouts off a few one-liners, but besides looking cool the first time and getting trounced the second, he does nothing of significance, whereas all the other four come out looking much better. he could have honestly not been in this movie and very little would have to be changed.
However, the rest of the movie is excellent.
What originally got people's attention from the trailers was the impressive CGI and visual redesigns of both the characters themselves and their cloths, which look much more mechanical this time around. Let me tell you that the CGI in this movie is some of the absolute best I have seen from Japan, possibly THE most impressive. To say this movie is gorgeous is an understatement. The backgrounds are jaw-droppingly beautiful to look at, and I loved pretty much all the character redesigns, because they made each character much more distinctive (giving facial hair to Aioria, giving mu glasses, aldebaran's nose ring, making milo a woman, etc). They're also extremely well-animated themselves; a huge part of Seiya and Saori's likeablity is the charisma of the former and frailty of the latter that is conveyed through their mannerisms and facial expressions.
The fight scenes are extremely well-animated as well with amazing coreography and stunning visual moments, unlike in the original show where there was no fancy footwork, just people calling out attacks and standing behind a greenscreen. There's a HUGE sense of grandeur to the fights, you really feel like this is an over-the-top conflict between larger than life people, almost like Dragon Ball, but in the best possible way.
The soundtrack to the movie is decent, a few moments stand out and give the movie some pizzazz, though on the whole it's not the best SS movie soundtrack.
Overall, this movie is not really a good introduction to SS for newer fans, as it does not really explain things that well and the plot moves along extremely quickly. However if you are already a fan and want to see an amazing re-envisioning with out-of-this-world visuals, much improved characterization (the little there is of it), amazing fight scenes, and decent music, this movie is right up your alley. Even with all of its flaws, it improved on several of the series' original flaws and made it much more engaging for a more hardened fan who is very conscious of the original SS's shortcomings. Please give this a movie a chance, just take it for what it is.
