Too much of everything

Simply Perfect

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

If you guys read all my reviews before regarding a japanese movie based on manga. I always make comparison & not happy with the adaptation (except one, Ore Monogatari). But this one, because I never read the original source, I guess its a good interesting sci-fi movie! About a group of human with added superpower versus humanoid super strength cockroaches! (Really?) . I think its really good, with all the cool suit. Fighting scene whatsoever. Its quite enjoyable. Its like watching an anime in live action version. Its so japanese like all japanese movie you ever watch. They have their own style, no one can copy them.

In the crowded 21st century it was decided to green (terraform) Mars so human life can inhabit it. We gave it moss and cockroaches. A crew of selected criminals and others go to Mars in 2599 to eliminate the roach problem. When they get there, they discover the roaches are large, humanoid, and aggressive. Rather than just kill them with conventional weapons, the crew resorts to injecting themselves with the DNA of various insects to give themselves a superpower as told by the narrator in order to make their superpower seem feasible and create Comic-Con outfits. No Caspar Van Diem with a machine gun...which at some point would have been welcomed.When they were not engaged in fighting, they were engaged in boring dialogue. The character building was awful. No explanation of gravity in the ship, no delay in transmission to Mars...which varies between 4 and 24 minutes. This was more science fantasy than science fiction. A lot of heads being whacked off.Guide: 1 F-word or so. No sex or nudity.

So yeah it's a Miike movie, but it also feels almost normal. Kind of formulaic in a way. Something you can sort of predict and see where it's going. Which is a weird thing to say about a Miike movie. But here we are (again). It's still fun, if you let yourself into it and just enjoy it for what it is (Miike light?).So just don't expect this to go far out (even though it is mainly in space or beyond) and just take the weird character mix. This is almost like a film like "Man with the Iron Fist". The one RZA made, which is kind of a dream some Teenagers might have had. You know, throw in some ridiculous characters, let them do their thing. It's way funnier than the one RZA made of course, but still not masterpiece and certainly not something Miike fans might have been hoping for ...

With the space program attempting to travel to Mars, scientists were tasked with warming up the planet so that humans could survive. They came up with a plan of sending cockroaches and moss to the surface so that the moss would absorb sunlight and the insects would serve as food for the moss. Now, a manned ship to Mars has landed and the crew members are ready for their mission: to exterminate the roaches. But what they find instead… are giant, mutated, humanoid cockroaches!Director Takashi Miike is known for having worked in a wide range of genres, from crime to horror to musical and superhero films. Among his best known work is "Audition" and "Ichi the Killer", though he has also become notorious for his banned contribution to "Masters of Horror" and the outrageously over-the-top "Visitor Q". Although far from retired, it seems appropriate that Fantasia is honoring Miike with a lifetime achievement award, and as part of that he is presenting his latest film, "Terraformars".The story is based on a manga, as well as a short-lived TV show, with a script by Kazuki Nakashima. Not being familiar with either of the earlier incarnations, I cannot comment on how faithfully Nakashima and Miike follow the source material or what new twists they may have added. So let's just look at the film as if it were a stand-alone feature.The concept is interesting, and the idea of space exploration is taken seriously. Whether this is "hard " science fiction is open to debate, but the writer clearly thought about the reality of what it would take to make Mars habitable for oxygen-breathing humans and how to increase the planet's temperature naturally. The methods proposed do, in fact, seem plausible assuming the melted ice caps could provide enough water. Now, of course, the science goes out the window after the initial premise, but that's another story.The cityscapes and "flying cars" of Earth are very reminiscent of "Blade Runner", with the neon lights everywhere and the dark, dirty overcrowding. Unlike "Blade Runner", however, this film is wisely set in the 2500s rather than a few decades after the date of the film itself. (If "Blade Runner" was right, we would already have the Nexus 6 by now.) One could compare some of it to "Starship Troopers" because of the "bad guys" being insects, but the similarities are only superficial.The film features beautiful color schemes, especially on the Mars landscape, which contrasts wonderfully with the glaring, garish neon of Earth. While the aliens (or what-have-you) don't look awful, they don't look great, either. Little attempt was made to hide the fact they are, graphics-wise, little better than something you might see in the latest video game. This is still worlds better than what you'll usually find on the SyFy Channel, but the CGI gets noticeably worse the more roaches are shown at one time. Someone either did not put the time or the money into making this everything it could be. (Exactly how the roaches have evolved into what they have become is less than convincing, bit that is a whole other issue.) After 20 minutes, the plot goes wildly different from anything we have come to expect. We have less of "The Martian" and the video game comparison becomes more apt. Without giving too much away, the story becomes more like a superhero action film, like a live-action version of "Tekken" or "Soul Caliber", though with an insect theme and a Mars setting. For me, the wonderful set up quickly started to deteriorate at this point. (But again, not knowing the original manga, this might be very appealing to viewers who know what's coming.) "Terraformars" is far from Miike's best work, and far from the best that Fantasia 2016 has to offer. What transpires over approximately two hours is good fun if you turn your brain off and maybe enjoy a few potent libations first (Sapporo, perhaps?). But more discerning viewers who want substance and are sick of the downhill curve that CGI has been taking over the last decade or more… this is not the film for you.