to preface this, I'm not a fan of the series anymore. I had dropped off after season 4 for a variety of reasons. The reason I actually came to this movie was I was doing one of my mates a solid and going with them.
I actually was hoping I might enjoy this film in the same way I enjoyed the second. I'd even consider the second film better than the franchise it's a part of.
this will have some spoilers later on, but let's be honest, most people are coming for the action scenes and animation. So we'll cover that first.
Outside of fights, the animation is fine, it has it's moments. Meanwhile the fights are really fluid, which sounds great, and it should be, but it's so focused on fluidity that scenes start to lose impact. There are several moments where it can be difficult to tell what's going on, because everything is going so fast, and focused on individual actions rather than show the battles in a way that let's you follow them(sometimes it does, but it does have this issue a LOT of the time)
Another problem is the lack of tension. These fights have plenty of moments where you think "yep, they're dead,", which honestly feels like the studio is compensating for the fact that the fights have no buildup. Fights just happen with random antagonists that show up, get defeated and disappear.
This is an obvious issue. Most shonen movies, even the bad ones, have set antagonists, rivals for the characters, so in the final act when these rivals are fought and beaten, there's hype behind the battles, even when the rivalries are bad, at least there's something. There are no rivals, and then I just don't care.
This creates another problem as well, as spoilers, but the villains are supposed to be an anti-quirk cult, yet so many of their members have quirks. if there were only a few, then it would be fine, I can suspend my disbelief for 2 or 3, but not 10+ to the point where several handfuls are just faceless goons.
They could've given the villains advanced technology and just 2 or 3 quirk characters instead of so many quirk users. It would make sense for them to have technology since they've been preparing this plan for such a long time.
It's even worse when, and the film doesn't even hide this(though you might think it did), but the leader of this world wide, anti-quirk cult has a quirk! It's like if in Korra Book one, Amon was completely open about being a water bender. I thought blue guy had face paint, but no, he just has a quirk, and it shatters any sense of immersion.
To be fair, the plot doesn't have much immersion anyway. A cult this powerful should've been mentioned in the series beforehand. Both the other movies had excuses for why their plots were separate, placing themselves on islands, but this is a cult on par with the catholic church.
The villains plan also makes no sense. They want to more or less genocide quirk users to prevent the apocalypse, even if their bombs basically cause apocalyptic destruction, even if bombs wouldn't be effective in their goals, bombs are more often than not used for assassinations or intimidation, even if parents that have quirk could give birth to someone without a quirk and vice versa, and so many more issues that would require more spoilers.
Honestly, with their resources, they could build bunkers to wade out the apocalypse rather than pick a fight that really won't be as effective as they think. the morons.
Though I guess the villains are side note, since the film lacks a rising action. It just kinda meanders around until SUDDENLY, we're in the final act.
The film doesn't use it's time well. At one point there's a montage of the characters driving across a European country that's basically Greece. you can walk across most European countries in a day. you're not going to to be driving across one for a couple days.
Cut this segment
Also cut all the cutaways to characters that mean nothing, like the other hero teams, who feel so redundant. cutting to them for a few milliseconds would be fine, but seeing their reactions, making sure they get that lines and have things to do feels like a waste of time.
The first movie picked a select characters to use, and gave the others frames of time on screen. cameos basically. The second film made use of everyone in team battles, strategy, etc. This film wants to give these characters a purpose, but since they're off to the side, the time is wasted.
of course they'd have to have something to do, because the stakes are so high, it decreases the tension even more. it'd help if the characters had some focus that added more impact, but the only character who gets any focus is Rody, the film exclusive character, and even his development feels undercut due to all the wasted time.
He is a good character, I'd say better than most of the wastes of space Horikoshi writes. He makes decisions based on his character, ones that don't necessarily seem like the good guy thing(he doesn't do it that much tho). He's not just a generic good guy, and he has plenty of time to express his personality. As opposed to a lot of Hero Aca characters whose decisions are all....basically the same with a different skin/design/single personality trait.
At the end of the day, this film was made for profit. I don't think anyone really cared outside of the animators. The film was marketed as being about Deku, Bakugo, and Todoroki, but realistically, Bakugo and Todoroki are just there for the poster. it's not like the second film where Bakugo actually felt important, as did his relationship with Deku.
The film almost has something at one point, a villain who sees quirk as evil, and a hero(Deku), who sees them as something for good. they don't have a lot of time to develop this conflict, and they ruin it by...implicating Deku as ablest.
The villain's quirk has made it difficult for him to interact with other people. He can't touch them, in short. Then we have Deku, who, while quirkless at one point, could still live a completely normal life. Most people in Hero Aca do that outside of heroes and villains. This isn't counting the fact that Deku has had everything handed to him by All Might, more or less
So when Deku tells the villain that he "wasn't trying hard enough,". it just comes off as a privileged rich kid telling a guy in a wheel chair the same thing. This wasn't the intention, I think the writers just weren't thinking, but it's a big issue, and makes me hate Deku in a way, even if the real thing I hate is this film.
This film is awful, it's boring, it's stupid, and it's even good for a few laughs at points(tho not enough to make it so bad it's good). Save your money, or go to a different one
Thank you for reading
