Unfortunately, this entry is guilty of one of my all-time least favorite standalone movie tropes... The villain being an old never-before-mentioned childhood friend of one of the protagonists. Thus explaining away any motivations said protag might need to justify helping them. It's just such a meh cop-out to me. I like to see more effort put into movie characters. Zoro's a simple guy. Stubborn, but I feel like they definitely could have found some way Saga could have appealed to him and gotten on his good side as a stranger. They probably would have had to cut out the dojo being a facet of the marines-- and thus being in opposition to everything he now is by default-- but that part never really flew with me anyway. As loyal as Zoro is, I'm not totally sold that even keeping a promise to a childhood friend would have been enough for him to put up with this group loudly gloating about their intentions to separate him from his crew.
And honestly, that final fight was a bit lackluster. But the plot itself was executed fine. And visually, this movie was a really good one. I really liked the settings and color.
