You'd think that condensing 22 hours of anime into a 2 hour movie would be a bad idea, and it is. This movie is such a clusterfuck.
The movie starts with a quick 20 second narration that tells us that humanity is behind walls because massive titans lurk outside. Then immediately the wall is smashed and Eren's mother dies 2 minutes in. Eren then says he'll kill every titan, followed by a shot of him as a fully trained soldier 5 years later. The colossal titan immediately appears again and destroys the wall. We are at minute 4. Eren and a bunch of unnamed soldiers go to fight the titans but then get gruesomely killed. Why should we care about these people? We then get Armins character introduction, with him immediately swallowed by a titan. Eren then sacrifices himself to save this character we have seen for 20 seconds.
As you can see, the main problem of this movie is that it gives you absolutely no time to make sense of anything. Things fly past you at such an amazing speed that you can't keep up at all. Not to mention most character development was completely gutted to try and fit the entire story into 2 hours. Hannes is shown twice before his death. Reiner is shown twice before his betrayal and Bertholt once. I don't even think Annie did anything before she became the Female Titan. Importance is lost because of how little the movie makes us care for the characters.
And even as a recap this sucks pretty bad. You want to see some of the best fights from the show? All cut out except for Levi vs Beast Titan. The basement flashback scene takes about a minute and a half. The entire first half of season 2 is condensed into a single minute. Lot's of plot holes form as a result of condensing and may not be recognized by people who haven't watched the series in a while.
The audio and visuals are the same as in the anime, but the way they edited everything was extremely piss poor.
To sum everything up, do not watch this. There is no reason for anyone who has or hasn't watched the series to watch this. What really should have been made were 2 recap movies of the 3rd season. This movie just goes to show what condensing can do. This feels very similar to the Unlimited Bladeworks Movie, but even worse because of how much was actually cut and because of the terrible directing and editing.
