In my last article I reviewed a movie based on a manga I love. The movie was an abomination. I didn’t go into the details there because it would have taken too long, but here I will examine the first few minutes of the film. Why only the first few minutes? Because the rest of the movie is exactly like the first few minutes: wrong, pointless, and an insult to the source material.
The film proper begins in much the same place in the story the manga does: with Edward and Alphonse in the town of Liore, an eastern town under the sway of the Cult of Leto. That’s after the film has tried and failed to show us the Elric brothers’ backstory; let’s start with that.
Bad Child Actors and a List of Chemicals
The film begins with a mishandled scene of two horrible child actors in equally horrible wigs as they feign mild surprise at their supposed mother’s death.
I don’t want to be too hard on these kids, but they’re even worse than the adult actors in this thing. One of the child actors recites a list of elements in the human body:
“Water: 35 litres. Carbon: 20 kilograms. Ammonia: 4 litres. Lime: 1.5 kilograms. Phosphorous: 800 grams. Salt: 250 grams. Saltpeter: 100 grams. Sulfer: 80 grams. Fluorine: 7.5 grams. Iron: 250 grams. Silicone: 3 grams… and fifteen other trace elements.”
Let’s think about why this was significant in the manga. This list of elements was important because Edward would later recite the list to Rosé Thomas, who believed that her priest could bring back the dead.
This makes a connection between Rosé’s desperation to bring back her boyfriend and the brothers’ desperation when they tried to bring back their mother. Remember this for me, as it’ll become important when I examine the Liore incident.
The Liore Incident
The scene where we’re introduced to Edward through his fight with the cult leader Father Cornello is mishandled in almost every conceivable way. In order to see how, we must ask ourselves what purpose the Liore incident served in the manga.
First it serves to introduce us to the Elric brothers through their interaction with Rosé, a woman who’s going through much the same grief and despair that they went through. Next it demonstrates the destructive power of religion through the cult leader Father Cornello. Lastly, the brothers’ actions in Liore will have an unexpected impact on the plot down the road.
Riots in Liore
The last of these is the easiest to address, as this movie has no plot; nothing has much of an impact on anything. Even were this not the case, the simple matter of having riots in Liore isn’t actually one that needs the Elric brothers to be there. Were it not for the other important reasons, this could have happened offscreen. Let’s look at the others.
Father Cornello
There’s the character of Father Cornello. Cornello is a cult leader, and he demonstrates how religion can be used to manipulate people to do terrible things.
He’s got the entire town of Liore worshipping the sun god Leto and believing Cornello can bring back the dead. He intends to build an army of fanatics unafraid of death and use them to gain power.
This is what makes him scary, and it’s what makes him interesting. Having him skulk and flee through dark alleys and deliberately blow his own cover by openly taking one of his cultists as a hostage just makes him seem pathetic.
Rosé Thomas
In the manga, we are introduced to the Elric brothers through their interaction with Rosé. Rosé’s boyfriend recently died, and she has become a devout follower of Father Cornello’s cult in the hope that he’ll bring her boyfriend back from the dead.
In the same way as Cornello, Rosé demonstrates the terrifying power of religion to control people, except that Rosé is the one being controlled. We see Edward and Alphonse try to help Rosé so she won’t suffer the same fate they did when they tried to bring their mother back, and in this way we get to know them.
I’m sure that—considering everything I’ve said—you saw this coming, but Rosé never appears in the movie. Instead all we get is a lame chase scene with Edward and Father Cornello. The action would feel more at home in Pirates of the Caribbean, but that’s the least of its problems.
Then Father Cornello outs himself, his Philosopher’s stone is assumed to be a fake, and for some reason Roy Mustang shows up just in time to arrest him. Then we see the homunculi just standing around, and that’s the end of the sequence. The brothers never interact with Rosé, and we therefore learn nothing about their characters throughout their time in Liore.
If these scenes serve none of the purposes they did in the manga, then I am forced to ask why in Truth’s name they were included in the movie at all! Seriously—these scenes serve no purpose whatsoever, and it’s the same with every other scene in the movie.
Transmutations
One of the biggest problems with this movie is that it assumes both that you know the story and that you’re entirely ignorant of it.
Such is the problem when the film makes a big deal of Edward clapping his hands together without even establishing that most people need a transmutation circle.
In the manga, the first time we see Edward do this, he claps quite nonchalantly and creates a spear to the shock of Father Cornello. Because we recently saw Alphonse perform alchemy using a transmutation circle, we can assume that most people need one, and the other characters’ shock at Ed’s abilities makes it clear it’s something unusual.
It’s not handled quite so well in the anime, but it’s not bad. Here, however, he holds his hands together for so long that it seems like we’re meant to know what’s going on.
Alchemy Takes Forever
And that’s another problem. Remember how in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender the bending took forever?
The action in Avatar: The Last Airbender was fast-paced; the elements followed the benders’ movements as though an extension of their bodies, and yet M. Night Shyamalan thought it a good idea to have the actors perform incredibly complex synchronized dances just to have a pebble float across the screen several seconds later.
You wish I were exaggerating! This movie does much the same thing. Not only is there no electric discharge from the transmutation, the lack of which makes everything feel stale, but transmutations in this movie happen so slowly that nothing feels dynamic.
The Little Alchemist
I didn’t know it was possible to screw up the joke about Alphonse being mistaken for Edward because of Edward’s short stature, but the movie screwed it up!
In case you don’t know, here’s how the joke goes: people hear that the older of the two brothers is the Fullmetal Alchemist; they assume it’s Alphonse because he’s bigger and “wearing” a suit of armour; Alphonse corrects them, saying that he’s the younger brother; everyone turns and says something like “That little runt is the Fullmetal Alchemist?”; and Edward overreacts and screams “Don’t call me little!.”
How do you screw up this scene? Well, let me tell you… In the movie, this scene begins with Edward having left the town square. The townsfolk assume Alphonse is the Fullmetal Alchemist, and Alphonse corrects them, to which they laugh and reply,
“You mean the shorty? That’s bologna!”
Then Alphonse starts to protest, insisting that it’s his brother and not he:
“It’s true! He can do alchemy without a transmutation circle. He may not be tall, but my brother has a big heart.”
The thing that made the joke funny was Edward’s overreaction to the situation. Because Edward isn’t there, the joke has no punchline, and it’s only an unfunny reference to the source material that the movie uses to lead into some forced exposition.
Scenes Strung Together
The whole movie is like this. It never gets better; it never gets worse. It just continues to wreck just about every famous scene from the first season-and-a-half of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I could go on and on about how every scene is ruined, but that would be pointless.
I’ve told you pretty much everything wrong with the movie; just imagine these few scenes repeated over a matter of hours. As I stated in my full review of the film, this movie is awful. It has no plot; it has no characters; it has no heart. It’s just a bunch of scenes from a much better story mutilated and then strung together.
This film has no redeeming qualities worth mentioning; avoid it as you would the Great Pestilence. Read the manga and/or watch Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood; they’re worth your time. This movie isn’t.