Oh Fox, you truly know no limits when it comes to what you'll do for a quick buck... even when I'm certain it would have given you more money not to do what you did to these films. No that's not a typo, there are three movies spliced into one here... and it shows. Digimon fans hate this movie, and with valid reasons. But lets take a look at this blatant cash grab. Digimon the Movie...
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| Might I add, this is a crap promo poster. I thought we were past the days of bad box art... |
Or lets show this as a blatant cash grab and advertise another series: Angela Anaconda. No this isn't a pre movie advert put in by the cinema, this is in EVERY COPY of the movie, this is intentionally a part of the film... actually, before I do, lets talk about the opening line "The greatest movie of all time". I can come up with a list of what not to do in "the greatest movie of all time" and you would have already broken the first two. 1. No blatant product placement, if you think Man of Steel and Bayformers 4 were bad, this has them beat, because Angela Anaconda wasn't a giveaway. The second rule: "The greatest movie of all time" SHOULDN'T BE IN THE SCRIPT UNLESS IT'S ABOUT A MOVIE INSIDE THE MOVIE THAT ISN'T THE MOVIE PEOPLE ACTUALLY PAID TO SEE... if that makes any sense... Basic short hand: Angela and friends are waiting to see the Digimon movie, like the real people who paid real money to see it, they enter the cinema, insert pointless... "fight scene"... and that's it. I know it only goes for four minutes, but for this to be their "best foot forward" what they have to get people excited for the fact that they're actually watching the movie, I'd be walking out if I didn't know that there would actually be a Digimon movie in this Digimon movie. The animation in this mercifully short opening is awful. You know those paper puppets that you pinned the limbs together to give movement, that's what this is minus the pins and barely moving, realistic... "realistic" mouth designs. On the subject of what comes out of said mouths, the voice actors for this thing, you know that Dumb and Dumber "most annoying sound in the world", you could put that right before these and it'd still be the same. These voices are awful, with pathetic writing making them worse. If this was meant to be based on the Digimon series, could you, at the very least, the bare minimum you could have done is make it vaguely RESEMBLE THE ACTUAL DIGIMON SERIES!!! I get that this is a Angela Anaconda thing, but again, effort people, please. I've got nothing positive, lets just get to the actual movie... or at least the first one...
But first, their next best foot... WARNING: BRAIN NUMBING (This is the full version, but the short version of this is in the actual movie)
By the way, I hope you like Lara Jill Miller's voice acting for Kairi, she's the giver of forced exposition in this film.
Set before the events of Digimon Adventure, Digimon Adventure allows us to see what they were actually talking about when they found out why the original 8 became Digi Destined during the Myotismon saga of Digimon Adventure. If that sentence confused you, it was supposed to. For the original movie is also called Digimon Adventure... real original there people... So a Digi Egg comes out of Tai and Kairi's computer, hatches into, eventually a Agumon, Agumon runs a muck throughout the city, a Parrotmon appears, Agumon digivolves into Greymon, Giant Dino and Giant bird destroy streets, daylight breaks, the two are gone with the only witnesses being the original eight Digi destined... Next movie.
So four years later, during Our War Game, a Digi Egg appears on the Internet and is infected with a virus. The Kuramon that hatches from said egg starts causing chaos, eating more and more data, quickly digivolving into eventually Diaboromon... which is meant to be Diablomon... "only the greatest people we can find will be on out localization team", though at least this was released outside Japan unlike many games I know of, example being Mother 3. In an attempt to stop him, Tai, Izzy, Matt and T.K, who are the only ones who have access to a computer during this whole film, send their Digimon in to try and stop him. As a nuclear missile launches, The Mega forms of Agumon and Gabumon, being WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon respectively, combine (called DNA Digivolution, a concept used a lot in the second half of Zero Two) into Omnimon, Diaboromon dies, missile falls safely into the river without blowing up... because he somehow managed to fire the one missile that doesn't work like a missile and can disarm its own nuclear warhead in mid flight (I know Japan's seen as the hub of Technological advancements, but what's the point of that?) and everyone moves on with their lives, time to jump ahead another four years.
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| So this is what the Internet looks like... I thought it would have more cats |
So it turns out a god wannabe in America named Willis (why do I get the feeling this was intentional?) was the cause of the virus, but sadly for him, the power of Deus Ex Machina trumps all. The virus infects one of the two Digimon he has in the real world named Kokomon (if you get confused between Koromon (which was in the first short), Koramon and Kokomon... I don't blame you. But if it helps, one's a cute version of your problems in Half Life, one's a disturbing Jellyfish... and one's actually not a Kokomon, regardless of what Fox wants you to believe. This is a Kokomon:
This is what the movie is trying to tell you is that, This is Wendigomon, the actual name of the "villain" in the third movie: Digimon Adventure 02: Digimon Hurricane Touchdown!! / Supreme Evolution!! The Golden Digimentals)
Getting back on point. Because of his idiocy 4 years ago, Willis and his other Digimon, Terriermon have four years of running from a mutated rabbit with a Team Fortress 2 hat wannabe, chasing after him always saying not so subtle hints as to what he's supposed to do then proceeding to shoot him with the eight guns under his stomach... don't ask... On one of these spiritual run and guns, T.K and Kairi are in New York for some reason and proceed to scare him off, leading to the 02 team, minus Ken as this is mid season, going to Colorado, one massive plot dump, then a Michael Bay... that I can at least sit through and have a good time as there are a few good jokes in it... and it plays Run Around...
With the plots out of the way, the animation in this is quite nice, my personal problem is the version I used, which was unfortunately a version I found online as I couldn't find a more legitimate copy, has some screen crunching problems, mainly scenes being cropped. While I can't vouch for actual copies, there were times where you'd see the mouth moving, but the rest of the head out of frame. Each of the characters are exactly like they were in Adventure and Zero Two, but with scripts that take the worst the series has to offer. Now to be fair, there are times where I did laugh, I did find a few lines funny, but that's because I saw them as 4th wall jokes highlighting the fact that the dub team was lazy. What they actually wanted me to laugh at, I found bland and forgettable. The same could be said for the soundtrack which consists of the Digi Rap (need I say more), Hey Digimon (which does work well for what its used for in the 3rd film), two of my favorite Digimon songs: I'm Going Digital and Run Around and licensed random music of the times that does nothing to help with the movie. Granted, not to the same extent as Mamma Mia, but that's not a compliment.
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| I don't care if there are people who like it, this is Deus Ex Machina. They had 1 and a half seasons to introduce these two and yet this is the only time they appear. This is even ignored if you play the PSP game (I will if they localize it... and I go out and get a PSP...) |
We truly have come a long way haven't we, look at how far we've come in terms of cinema. First we were so bad at compression, we managed to turn just over 2 hours of film into just under 90 minutes, including a blatant promo for an unrelated show. Now we can't keep movies in a single film, we separate them into two-three films that still do the same job as the 90 minute films. Most of the problems I have with the movie, I can personally live with, its a product of the late 90's early 2000's kids entertainment, people were still lazy... some still are... My major problem is that, again, this is three films poorly mixed into one. The third film can be seen as a perfectly fine movie on its own, a decent 65 minutes in length. If they combined Digimon Adventure and Our War Game, then had the third film with the overly long name on its own, I think it could have been fine. Now I haven't seen the Japanese dubs, so I'm not going to say which one is better, for all I know, both are bad. But in terms of this version, there are much better films out there. But for now, Zero Two still has one last story to tell, so come Monday, Digimon: Revenge of Diaboromon.
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| And now you're not going to sleep tonight, see you on Monday |
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