People call this an "all stars" movie. We get 30+ characters alive after the time period of Dressrosa to just have a fun blast with the action, not caring much about plot, and I agree, it's not the plot I have a problem with, but it's the badly directed action/animation with too much redundancy.
Maybe it's because I'm a huge fan of OP is the problem so I have high expectations, but here we go:
1: Stop redundancy:
Smoker re-iterating for the 10th time "why do I have to work with pirates/these idiots?". We get it already, please write something else in. This is also inconsistent with the character because in Punk Hazard, he set aside his differences to work towards a common goal without overly complaining about it. There are ways you can convey irritation without vocalizing it in dialogue every single time. Likewise execution of already known character tropes didn't hit me hard with emotion because they were poorly executed. There are entire unnecessary cuts just for a character to say what they're feeling rather than expressing it through action.
2: Stop unnecessary cutting:
Yes, there are 30+ characters that need screen time, but the answer is not to scatter action in every direction and cut so much that I lose track of whats going on. Some characters get weird small fractional slices of screen time and it's off putting. Why did the rest of the supernovas just get knocked out completely? The solution is to have characters split into unusual pairings, e.g Zoro and Killer, Boney and Nami, Sanji and Hancock, etc etc, and emphasize attacks/action in combinations, which not only gives us something new but also gives characters a more balanced amount of screen time and paves the way for more comedic/interesting interactions(since they only have Dressrosa level info on the characters).
3: Pretty animation is not fun animation:
Kill la Kill, John Wick(1&2), Mad Max Fury Road, Kingsman(church scene only) etc are examples of media that have a very simple plot or virtually no plot, with emphasis on pure gorgeous action. Pretty action doesn't sell everything, more important is timing and framing. The animation was well drawn but not well paced is my problem. You can have media with no plot and all action work but this movie was not one of them.
Your mileage may very. This movie was released at a very bad time, where if the intent was to just show off cool attacks in luscious animation, it has failed. There is lack of information on new moves for Kid, Zoro/the crew, Killer, etc because not many of them have went all out since after the time skip. They will during Wano, so all in all, this movie should have been done after or sometime during the climax of Wano. I don't see the point in making a movie about the crew at Dressrosa level power because the previous film, Gold, already did this in a fun way. Weirdly I think I might have enjoyed this more if it was the movie done right after Dressrosa to showcase the new world.. but even then it doesn't fix the issues as noted above.
Things I liked about the movie:
There were some surprising cool moments, e.g with Boa's kick, that got me in awe.
Massive giant world being showcased.
The gripping thing in the treasure chest
Maybe upon a re-watch will I see the glory since it seems like I'm in the minority of crazy OP fans that don't enjoy this. I overwhelmingly disagree that this is better than Z or Gold though. Honestly they should have spent the budget on this movie on making a game or improving the current anime
